Chapter 1
Chapter One
April Harris
Boom, boom!
“Come on, April, wake up!”
“Go away!” I manage a muffled shout, but most of my reply is muted by my oh-so soft pillow, beckoning me back to blissful slumberland.
Bang, bang! “April, get your ass out of bed. You have plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead,” Amerie Clinton yells back.
Now, didn’t that make death sound almost desirable?
Annoyed, I fling my pillow at the back of my dorm room door and hear my friends’ laughter on the other side. “Fine, I’m up!” I shout. This better be worth it.
“Hurry, we’re going to miss it,” my other friend Jacquie, who also goes by Jax, calls out from the other side of the door.
Groggily, I hop down from my elevated twin bed, stacked higher thanks to two cement slabs under each foot. Still grumbling, I slip on a pair of tie-dye joggers, which I’d had the foresight to place on my desk chair before going to bed last night so I’d be ready for this.
Getting up at four a.m. had sounded like a good idea yesterday, in the dining hall, when my friends had brought up going to view the Leonid meteor shower.
Now, I want to slap my eight-hours-ago self for agreeing.
All right, so it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, but I’m majoring in English with a minor in Psychology.
It’s not like I’m going to be an astrologist or a meteorologist or whatever.
I pause, debating whether to put on a bra and a different shirt, but I opt for leaving on the ribbed tank top that I slept in and reach for my hoodie, only to remember that I still haven’t gotten the missing zipper pull fixed.
I sling it on, but since I can’t zip it up, I tug the comforter off my bed in a swift motion that would have made a magician proud.
Somehow my teddy bear remains in the same spot, even after I’ve wrapped the buffalo check plaid duvet around my shoulders and hug it to my chest. I need to try that blanket-pulling trick again when I’m not half delirious.
For now, I shove my bare feet into my well-worn UGG boot dupes and open the door to my single.
The jarring fluorescent lighting above my two friends and their boyfriends leaves me squinting and wanting to turn around all over again.
“No, you don’t,” Jax warns, tugging on my comforter and pulling me out fully into the hallway with them.
She reaches past me and grabs the keys hanging above the light switch in my room, then lassos the lanyard around my neck.
“There we go, ready?” she asks, firmly shutting the entrance back to dreamland.
I stare her down like she’s the grinch of Snoozeville, which she is. Several curses and unkind replies flutter through my mind, but I release them with my pent-up breath. There was no going back to bed now, so no use sulking. I might as well get this over with.
“I can’t wait,” I say with an over-the-top brightness that would make an anchorwoman proud.
Given the eye rolls I receive, my friends aren’t fooled or amused.
Brady Hale, Amerie’s boyfriend, at least snickers at my attempt to be positive.
I wouldn’t have expected their match in a million years, but it seems to be working out, given the annoying honeymoon stage they are still in.
“What’s going on?” asks an unexpected male voice to our right. Several of us jump, but I recognize that voice, and it’s not welcomed so early in the morning … or at any time. Turning, I take in a bare-chested Cal Chase peering out from his opened door. I tell myself that I don’t like what I see.
Liar, liar, even my joggers feel on fire.
While I resent my infuriating neighbor, I’d be downright blind not to notice how sexy he is.
He looks too mature to be just twenty-one.
Too buff to only be on the track team. Too everything.
Even his facial hair is perfect, not substantial enough to be called a beard exactly, just a manly scruff.
And dammit, how does he make bedhead look so good?
Barbers should list a photo of how he looks right now as an option because it is a gorgeous, rumply mess of chocolate-brown hair with a couple of natural golden streaks garnered from running out in the sun so often.
My own hair is probably a cotton-candy-like mess of midnight black frizz.
I should have at least put my fingers through it first, never mind a brush, before opening the door.
I’m still getting used to it being so short, but I don’t regret chopping it off this summer to just below my chin to donate it to Locks of Love.
Besides, my friends have assured me that my sleek bob emphasizes my green eyes and is both sophisticated and flirty. Their descriptors, not mine.
“We’re headed out to Thatcher Field to catch the meteor shower,” Amerie explains, checking the time on her phone. I’m glad at least someone can talk because, for some reason, I’m tongue-tied looking at Cal.
“A bunch of us are going,” Jax adds and Diego nods.
“Word. Give me a sec and I’ll join you,” Cal says, and my mouth drops open.
“You weren’t invited,” I call after him, and Jax jabs me in the ribs with her elbow. Yes, I’m being rude, but still, I’m just speaking the truth.
“I didn’t realize I needed a private invitation to look at the sky,” Cal calls back from inside his room, undeterred. “Be right there.”
Ugh! He shouldn’t be here at all. Stef, my college bestie, should be living in his room.
At the end of our sophomore year, I’d won a high lottery number, allowing me first dibs on selecting the best housing on campus for our junior year.
So, after much investigation, Stef and I had chosen these attached rooms in Atwood Quad’s historic Tasker Hall, which had been built in 1890.
But when Stef up and transferred to a local college in New Jersey, leaving one of the best private colleges in New England just to be closer to a guy, she also left me high and dry.
And now I’m stuck with a jock next door living up his senior year.
For a girl who prefers to go to bed by midnight and loves sleep more than books and Boba Tea, Cal is an unwelcome thorn in my side this semester and likely until summer move-out.
To top it off, not only do I share a wall with him, but a connecting door, too, which is thankfully locked.
While I can’t hear anything from the room on my left, I hear too much on Calvin’s side due to that stupid door.
I know things—like his favorite songs, that he calls his parents every Monday and Friday, that he sleeps with the light on, and that he almost always has a giggly female in the room with him. Seriously, no one is that funny.
Occasionally, I overhear snippets of his conversation, but it is hard to make it out unless he’s shouting or talking right near the adjoining door. So, I mainly hear mumbling and, of course, that constant giggling from his girl fan club.
There have been two major exceptions. One time, after I pounded on the wall for him to be quiet, I overheard a female voice say, “Is she always like that?” My resulting gasp had been so loud, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they heard it on the other side.
But then came his garbled response that went like, mumble, mumble, and then, “She’s not like you. ”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
This time, my breath had stuck in my throat, or rather my ego, and it was still living there weeks later.
I’d heard that kind of shit back in high school, but I was never the girl panting after the guy or pretending to like the same stuff as them.
Nope, the days of me trying to be like everyone else are behind me, because here …
here I’d found my people. Yet all those hurtful, childish memories came flooding back with Cal’s cruel remark.
The second embarrassing incident … well, I’d rather not think about with my friends nearby. Hell, a shiver of desire runs through me for a brief second as I recall the experience, and I pull the comforter tighter to ward off the unwelcome sensation as we wait for Cal.
Seeing him come bounding out of his room breaks me from my annoyed thoughts.
I’m not sure if I should be thankful or disappointed that he’s thrown on a Thatcher College sports hoodie, hiding his rocking abs, and slipped on track pants over his boxers.
Yup, I’m torn. I only let myself absorb him for a moment before I come to my senses and remind myself, he is everything I don’t like.
He is arrogant, annoying and he is a player.
And he is undeniably one of the best-looking men I have ever seen.
He knows it, too, given the smile on his face as he looks me up and down.
“Let’s go,” declares Amerie, turning on a flashlight I didn’t realize she’d been holding and pointing it toward the exit. She’s a natural born leader, which is to be expected of a daughter of a US senator.
We dutifully follow, and I try to gather up my comforter so it doesn’t drag down the front steps of Tasker Hall, but it’s too much for my five-foot-two height to manage successfully.
Cal leans over, grabs the bottom of the plaid fabric, and holds it aloft, continuing to walk behind me.
I grunt my thanks, feeling a bit like a queen with a loyal subject assisting her.
The image is ridiculous, but it’s happening and I’m going with it.
It’s pitch-black outside, and the frigid, early November morning air smacks into me, bringing my spine up straighter. Now I am a haughty queen. The thought makes me laugh, and I feel Cal’s gaze pivot to me. I shiver, but I don’t think it’s from the cold.
Our group trots through the quad like an unchoreographed parade until we finally reach the sports complex. Half of the student body is out on the football field. The grass, which usually looks like a dark lake in the night, is now littered with blankets and folding chairs.