A Regular Thing (BCU #1)

CHAPTER ONE

Am I drooling?

VANESSA

This is probably the most embarrassing moment of my life.

I’ve been stood up.

For the past hour, I’ve been sitting in this fancy Italian restaurant and people are starting to give me awkward glances as I pick at my fourth piece of bread. My waiter has been by every five minutes to ask if I’m ready to order, and I have no idea how to tell this middle-aged man that I’ve been stood up by a stupid Tinder date. I want nothing more than to go home and put on my comfy sweats, dive under my covers, and eat an entire pint of ice cream.

Preferably chocolate fudge brownie.

I should’ve anticipated this. The first red flag is that the guy I’m supposed to meet up with is named Chad . I should’ve known that nothing good ever comes from a guy with a name like that.

Chad is the point guard for BCU—Boston Central University—the school we both go to. We matched on Tinder the other night and he offered to take me out for dinner. And me being me, I accepted—because who would turn down a free dinner with a hot basketball player? He’s tall with broad shoulders, biceps that look like he could throw me across the room, and handsome in the way that makes your panties wet. I can’t believe I allowed his hotness to blind all my rational thinking.

I’m not even that upset that he stood me up. I’m more upset that I wasted a perfectly good outfit on a useless date. I wish he’d at least have the decency to text me that he wasn’t coming, then I could’ve planned for a backup date. I know that sounds kind of slutty of me, but I believe that girls should be able to enjoy dating just like guys do.

I’m not looking for any sort of commitment right now.

I enjoy spending my free time in nonmonogamous relationships. Relationships require you to be too intimate with someone—and not just sexually. You have to be fully open with a person, share all your deepest, darkest secrets and fears. They come to know your favorite food, favorite color, favorite everything. It’s all a little too much for me.

At the end of the day, being stood up on a date still stings, even if I wasn’t expecting anything more than a good dicking.

The funniest thing about this situation is that I didn’t even set this date up. He did . He picked a beautiful five-star Italian restaurant and left me sitting here like a complete idiot.

Athletes are assholes.

Honestly, most guys I hook up with are assholes, so again, I’m not surprised. I at least thought that going out with an athlete would be a guaranteed hookup, but my expectations just keep getting lower and lower.

I haven’t had sex in three months, and I need a good stress reliever.

I’ve been on a few dates here and there, but none of the guys do it for me. They’re either super egotistical or they have the personality of a door.

I don’t think I’m a hard person to please, but God can any man find the clit?

I can’t really blame anyone other than myself for the situation that I’m in. I’ve had a bad track record of only dating guys that my parents would definitely not approve of. Am I doing it out of spite?

Most likely.

My parents would rather see me with an educated man as they say, which really means that they want me to end up with someone who would fit in perfectly with our family. So that narrows down my dating pool to doctors, business majors, or trust fund boys—all of whom I have no interest in dating.

They want me to not only follow in my family’s footsteps and live up to the high expectations they put on me and all my cousins, but they also want me to find a partner who precedes the family standards. Or as my mother says, she wants me to date someone with class. Whatever the hell that means.

But I couldn’t care less about finding a boyfriend right now. And I sure as hell don’t care what my family expects of me. Well, sometimes. I think I make them nervous because I’m so different from the daughter they were trying to raise.

When I was in high school, they expected me to be on the debate team, be at the top of all my classes, and really strive to fulfill the family name. Instead, I spent my teenage years behind a camera, filming and taking photos.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a horrible kid. I filled my time with extracurriculars and was on the honor roll in school, but it didn’t matter to my parents, because I wasn’t taking classes like AP chemistry or physics. Maybe if I turned out the way my parents wanted me to, I would be in a stable relationship studying law and ready to take the BAR.

But I am so far from that.

All I wanted from this night was to get wined and dined by one of the hottest athletes at BCU. Instead, I’m still sitting at this stupid table like an idiot waiting for a guy I know won’t be showing up.

To hell with this.

I muster up the courage to wave over the waiter. He strides by with that same pitiful smile he gave me only moments ago.

“Hi, I’m sorry for wasting your time tonight , it seems my date had better things to do. Do I need to pay for the bread?”

“Oh, sorry he’s not coming. Don’t worry, we comped the breadbasket. Hope your night gets better.” His eyes wash over my face and continue to give me the same pitiful look.

All right, that’s enough embarrassment for tonight.

I mean, the audacity of this man—no, this boy —to set up an entire evening and then bail on me without a single text? I deserve better.

My heels click against the marble floor as I walk out of the restaurant and stand outside while I wait for my Uber to arrive. My fingers fly across my phone, quickly typing out a message to my friends to let them know that I’ll be joining them at the bar tonight rather than enjoying myself on a date. Within seconds they respond, anxiously waiting for me to spill about my date. Jokes on them because they’re going to get an earful.

My Uber pulls up and I climb into the black sedan, soft curls bouncing as I slide into my seat. I stare at my reflection in the window, and I know that if I were a guy, I wouldn’t stand myself up.

When I found out that we were going to this fancy restaurant, I made up an excuse to my parents that I needed a dress for a school event. I told them some lie about going a the political science gala and they practically threw money at me. And since they don’t really care too much about what’s going on in my life, they sent me money and wished me a good time.

Is it bratty of me to take money from my parents? From an outsider’s perspective, probably. But after being emotionally neglected by them for most of my life, I don’t mind accepting the money they’re willing to offer me.

I will thank them, though, because this dress is to die for. Literally . I want to be buried in this outfit. It’s a gorgeous black satin material that hugs my body. The bodice is tight with a square neckline and long sleeves that are snug at my wrists. I would live in this dress for the rest of my life solely due to the confidence it gives me. I complemented the dress with simple gold jewelry and pointed black heels—an outfit that screams I want to go home with you .

Sorry Chad, your loss.

I watch the busy streets as we drive through the town. Boston is bustling this time of year. With school now in full swing, students line the streets patiently waiting to get into bars and clubs, restaurants overflowing, utilizing their patios while it’s still warm enough.

The Uber jolts to a stop and I thank him for the ride. I climb out of the car and turn toward Shaker’s. It’s the hottest bar around BCU right now.

I shut the door to the car and the driver pulls away as Sydney and Maddie greet me.

Sydney whistles in my direction. “ Wow… I can’t believe you got stood up when you look like THAT!” I love when my friends compliment me. I feel like I’m the hottest girl on the planet.

Sydney and I have been friends since freshman year. I wish we had a cool story about how we met, but unfortunately, it’s the same old boring tale. We were paired up as roommates in our freshman year and ever since then we’ve been attached at the hip.

Looking at us, we’re almost complete opposites. Sydney is like a golden Barbie goddess with honey-blonde hair, long legs, and tan skin. She shares her tall height and hazel eyes with her older brother—Nate. They also have a younger brother, Ethan, but he looks a lot more like their mother, whereas they take after their dad.

Sydney has that gorgeous defined face that is fitting for a model, while my face is a little more rounded.

Sometimes I feel very inferior to my best friend. I mean she’s drop-dead gorgeous and looks like she just walked out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

“Boys are dumb. All I wanted was a nice dinner and maybe end the night with sex, is that too much to ask for?” It’s a rhetorical question, but I wait for an answer.

Maddie, the third part of our trio, rolls her eyes at my statement.

Now, the story of how Maddie and I met is an interesting one. During freshman year I decided that I wanted to have some financial freedom from my parents and save up a bit of money on my own. So, I applied to work at a paint store, and that’s where our friendship started.

My first day on the job, the manager introduced me to Maddie, and I was scared shitless. Maddie is the dark and broody type, with her long, jet-black hair, pale skin, piercing blue eyes, and a small horseshoe nose ring. Her resting bitch face made me want to run, but then she introduced herself and we bonded right away over our love of crime documentaries and sharing our trauma with each other. I ended up quitting almost a year later, realizing that the retail life wasn’t for me. But at that point I had already introduced Maddie and Sydney, and the three of us became inseparable.

“Your past three dates have been a bust. Maybe you should find someone the old-fashioned way and not on an app.” Maddie always likes to point out the obvious. Even when I don’t want her to.

Can you blame me, though? Dating apps are so much easier. Most people don’t download Tinder because they want a boyfriend or girlfriend, they’re on the app to find a casual hookup.

And that’s exactly what I want.

Most girls my age want a serious relationship and start to settle down, but why the hell would anyone want that when there’s such a large dating pool?

My last real relationship was in high school, and my ex ended up being a dick, so my motto since college started is casual hookups only .Ninety percent of my hookups are due to late-night swiping on multiple dating apps. Then there’s the stages that follow: texting, asking the same basic questions, meeting, hooking up, and forgetting that each other exists.

I will admit that it does get exhausting after a while. The same routine over and over again. But sometimes it’s nice to have that simplicity and forget about it the next morning. And that’s my goal for tonight. Especially because it’s been a while since I’ve been with anyone.

I shake my head at Maddie. “You know what, maybe I’ll find a good-looking guy tonight and have great, mind-blowing sex. If not, then it looks like I’ll be back to my trusty vibrator.” I walk past my friends and lead us into the bar.

Shaker’s is always busy on a Saturday. It’s one of the newest and closest bars to campus in downtown Boston. We’re still at the beginning of the semester, so most students choose to party on the weekends rather than study.

We’ve come here a couple of times during the summer when it first opened, and the crowd is always college students. Some dressed up, celebrating birthdays or other occasions, and others dressed more casually for a fun night out. They always accept our fake IDs, so we couldn’t care less about the odd decor. And by odd, I mean the giant electric guitar that hangs behind the bar that’s positioned right next to a moose skull and antlers.

We push our way through the crowd and make our way over to the busy U-shaped bar where Sydney orders for us.

Tequila . My arch nemesis.

I don’t know what it is about the liquor, but anytime tequila weasels its way into my system, I become an entirely different person. I become someone who is overly charismatic, capable of moving her hips to any beat, and for a lack of a better word, horny. If this is how we’re starting tonight, I can already tell that I’m going to be in for a wild ride.

I toss back the first shot with ease. As the alcohol works its way into my bloodstream, I feel the all-too-familiar flush go right to my cheeks. This always happens to me whenever I take a shot.

The second shot burns my throat on the way down. The cheap tequila feels like gasoline in my esophagus, and it takes me a second to compose myself and not throw up. Here’s the thing about me and tequila, if I’m already drunk, the taste doesn’t matter to me. But when we start with it, sometimes the fruity notes don’t settle well.

The third shot has my stomach feeling warm and content, as if I’m lying on a beach with a margarita in my hand. My lips pucker as I suck on a lime wedge to take the taste of tequila out of my mouth.

I find that three is a lucky number for me. Whether it’s three shots, three drags, or three beers, I’m always at the perfect level. Right now, my head feels light and free, the prior events of tonight have been washed away. My legs move without my brain telling them to, pulling Sydney and Maddie with me toward the dance floor.

I firmly believe that alcohol is liquid courage because there is no way in hell that I’d be able to dance the way that I do if I was sober. As we move with the bass of the song, my thoughts start to slip from my brain. I’m no longer sad about being stood up tonight, but instead the alcohol makes me mad that I was stood up. I am so much better than Brad or whatever the hell his name was . See, I don’t even remember his name; this night has already improved greatly.

I mean, it did hurt my ego a little bit. Normally I’m the one who calls it quits with someone, and now I’m on the other end of it.

We weave through the crowded dance floor and make our way back to the bar where Maddie and Sydney both order something fruity with an orange wedge on the glass. I settle for something basic yet hard enough to get me where I want to be tonight. A double shot of rum with a splash of coke. I know that without a doubt this rum will pick up my spirits for the remainder of my night.

I quickly down my drink and order another to bring back to the dance floor with us. Maddie and Sydney nurse their first mixed drink and take their time, but I’m ready to party.

We make our way back to the dance floor at the perfect time. The DJ changes the music to something more sensual. I didn’t know how badly my body wanted a change in the music. House music is okay to dance to every now and again, but the pounding of the bass sometimes gives me a headache. There’s something about R&B music that flows through your body, it’s like sex to your ears. The beat of the song has my body moving like my bones are made of liquid. I allow the music to take complete control over me.

The girls and I hip and grind on each other. Maddie is the better dancer out of all of us, but once I have a little alcohol in my system, my hips can move in ways I never thought possible for someone with such bad coordination.

As I’m grinding my ass into Sydney’s pelvis I can feel a heated stare in my direction. It’s almost like a tingling sensation going up the back of my neck, sending goose bumps across my skin. I turn my head a little to the right and notice the hottest guy I’ve ever laid my eyes on—tall and tan, messy brown waves tousled on his head, and a lopsided grin that could melt anyone’s panties off.

Holy shit , he’s hot…and somewhat familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it. The alcohol has my brain a little fuzzy.

The hot stranger is leaning against the bar with whom I’m assuming are his friends. He’s one of the tallest in the group, easily a head taller than me. His hair is the perfect combo of curly yet fluffy. The plain T-shirt he has on highlights his muscular pecs, and his jeans hug his thighs perfectly. Is this guy made of marble or something? Even in clothes I can tell he’s built like a wall.

Am I drooling or did I accidentally spill while taking a sip of my drink?

Our eyes meet for a moment, and I can feel the tension between us from across the room. I feel like I’m in one of those cheesy rom-coms where they spot each other and immediately act like magnets, being pulled toward each other. Because that’s exactly what it feels like.

He watches me as I check him out, and if I didn’t have any alcohol in my system, I would probably be blushing and turning away. But I feel confident and look sexy as hell, so those little insecurities completely vanish.

As we maintain eye contact, a devilish smirk breaks across his face. I don’t know what it is about eye contact, but I find it so sexy when a man can hold my gaze without wavering. Maybe it’s a dominance thing or something, but whatever it is, I’m stuck staring at his gorgeous face.

My heart starts beating faster as I watch him saunter through the crowd, making his way toward me.

Oh shit. Okay, Vanessa, be calm, cool, collected. Just because one date ended up poorly tonight doesn’t mean the rest of the night will follow suit. Just be cool, don’t act like a weirdo, and let the alcohol do the talking tonight …because I know exactly how I want this night to go.

With me going home with him.