Chapter 1
For an icebreaker evening, this isn’t half bad.
And this place is definitely a lot better than the Pizza Express where we spent an awkward, stilted two hours earlier this evening, swapping details of our A levels and college courses and our preferred pizza toppings.
(A necessary evil, given that the restaurant was booked for us by our new employer so we could all “get to know” each other ahead of working together on the Arrowmile internship program this summer.)
Tonight is about anything but the impending internship.
Which is really saying a lot, because it’s taken over my life for months, between the application process and the agony of waiting to hear if, out of five thousand applicants, I would be one of the fifteen who made it.
As of today, I am officially one of those fifteen. Tonight, we enjoy a taste of freedom and excitement before Monday, when we start one of the most coveted, prestigious internship programs in London.
Tonight, I let my hair down for once.
For me, that involves some rum and Coke, half a glass of prosecco, and dancing on the sticky floor of a too-loud club with fourteen relative strangers.
Four of whom have double-barreled names, and three of whom are students at Cambridge.
All of whom seemed pretty okay at Pizza Express, and right now feel like my new favorite people in the whole world.
There are hands on my hips, the brush of a body behind mine.
Broad, masculine. One of my new roommates and fellow Arrowmile intern for the summer, Elaine, a tall, bony girl with long blond hair, catches my eye and waggles her eyebrows, apparently in approval of my new dancing partner.
I glance over my shoulder, staring for a moment in the flashing lights before deciding I don’t recognize him; he’s not part of our group.
I turn back to Elaine and shrug, not minding the attention until I’m grabbed by one of the interns, who, laughing, pulls me away from my dance partner and into a ramshackle conga line back to the bar.
By the time I’m jostled to the front of the group, someone’s bought a round of tequila shots and Elaine is pressing one into my hand, a lime wedge balanced on top of the glass.
Someone else holds out a salt shaker to me.
I follow their lead and lick the back of my hand holding the shot, spill some salt there, and pass it on to the next person.
Across the room at the other end of the bar, there’s a guy.
And, God, but he’s a cute guy. Dark, curly hair and chiseled cheekbones accented by a light scruff of stubble, and full lips.
He’s sitting on one of the few barstools, his elbows on the counter (which, in that light-blue shirt and in a place like this, is a risky move) and hands clasped around a drink.
In spite of all the people packed in here tonight, it’s like he can tell I’m looking at him, because he lifts his head and turns in the direction of our group.
Not our group.
Me. My direction. He’s looking at me.