Premature Evacuation (Underground Sorority #1) (5 page)

You’re amazing
. The same words Corey had said after we’d first had sex. Words Ryan had never uttered in all three and a half years together.

“Plenty of people paint this way. Vermeer set up a pin hole camera and traced his paintings onto a canvas.” I tromped to Fallon’s standard-issue Grade B for
boring
wooden desk and rummaged through her drawers until I found what I was looking for. I held up her sketchbook from last year and flipped through the pages. Figure drawings that captured the emotions of the models. Self-portraits that each conveyed that deer-in-headlights look Fallon always seemed to have. “Look at these. They’re damn good. I don’t know why you’re so down on yourself. You copied these from life, and they’re perfect. You can do the same with a photo.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll try your method. But only if I get details about your night. I’m dying here!”

I opened my mouth to speak, then clamped it shut. For an entire year now, Fallon knew everything about me from my penchant for binging on sunflower seeds in the middle of the night to which underwear I wore most often—the purple lacy ones. It didn’t seem right to keep something this huge from her. After all, she’d taken both the LIRR and NJ Transit a total of four hours to console me after Ryan crumpled three point five years of our life over a snuffed out campfire on what was supposed to be our anniversary spent in a single sleeping bag under the stars.

But Corey’s text embedded into my mind.
Let’s keep what happened between us for now, okay?
Still, he had no idea who Fallon was.

So I told her everything.

I was a ball of nerves at our first sorority Chapter meeting of the semester. The secret about Corey and me seemed so huge, I gasped for air as it suffocated me. I lined up in alphabetical order with my pledge class, hopping from foot to foot. With last names at the beginning of the alphabet, several sisters separated me from Bianca and Erin and I usually hated the few minutes of silence. Now, I welcomed the separation, if only to give myself extra time to calm the hell down. I thought when I joined a sorority I’d instantly have one hundred new best friends, but it turned out cliques formed inside the main group. We acted as a unified front in public, but in private, we fled to separate corners and congregated with our own kind.

Once inside the large room, I weaved through seated bodies until I reached Bianca and Erin along the back wall. I dropped onto the floral carpet into the empty space they saved for me. Only seniors got to sit elevated on couches. Different floral patterns warred for supremacy in the room: the rug an ornate oriental design, cobalt blue couches with tiny flower appliqués, drapes patterned with big round roses. It was like the sorority told their interior decorator, “We really want people to know we’re
girls
. Please conform to every stereotype there is. Don’t worry about matching.”

I twiddled my hands in my lap, my knee rattling. Bianca placed a palm on my leg to steady me. “What are you so jumpy about?”

My heart leapt into my throat. “N—Nothing.” Everything.

Erin pulled my hair back from my neck. “Oh my God. Is that a hickie?”

“No!” My hand flew to my neck. “A…rash.”

Nearby, a few girls turned to me, wrinkling their nose. Erin shook her head, smile wide, as if she didn’t believe me. Bianca squinted at me in confusion.

A loud clap at the front of the room signaled the start of the meeting. Our president, Layla Davies, sat in a winged back chair she treated as a throne. If it wasn’t ridiculous to wear a crown, I bet she’d proudly display a sparkling one on top of her her dark black bob. “Welcome back, ladies,” she said.

Fifty hands went into the air and snapped, though Bianca turned her snap into a finger gun and aimed it at Layla. She wasn’t exactly at the top of our Friends List. Last year during pledging, she’d been the harshest, mentally hazing us by testing us on meaningless information and then scolding us when we got it wrong. Most of our other pledge tasks had involved bonding activities, like casually interviewing the other sisters to get to know them better, or passing a candle around in a dark room and sharing secrets.

“Before we discuss which frats we want to party with first—”

“Beta Chi!” someone shouted and a few snaps rang out.

Layla glared at us until all chatter ceased. “Well, then. You’ve just demonstrated that my assumption was correct. Before we get to the fun stuff, we need to re-hash the rules.”

I rolled my eyes at Bianca. The rules were clear and simple:
don’t fuck up
. Well, that and pay dues on time, don’t pledge another sorority, and keep trade secrets hush hush.

“As a member of Rho Sigma,” Layla continued. “You represent us, whether on campus or off. If you do something bad, it reflects bad on the whole house.” She shifted in her seat, clearly pausing for dramatic effect. “Need I remind you of the cautionary tale of the on campus fraternity that got kicked off a few years ago.”

Erin groaned. “Not this again.”

But Layla launched into the same old spiel. “One of their underage members was caught drinking in the small park in front of their house on a nice sunny day. Two violations right there: underage drinking and open containers outside.”

Bianca widened her eyes and whispered, “The horror!”

“That’s all it took. The fraternity was done for, their house bulldozed and turned into the new science building.”

Another pause while Layla clearly played
dun dun dun
music inside her own mind.

“
One
fraternity member caused the entire house to fall due to his stupid actions.”

Someone in the center raised her hand. “I heard it was actually a few members drinking on the lawn while playing football, but only one was underage.”

Layla shrugged as if those were minor details. The threat was still the same. If we didn’t adhere to the standards Rho Sigma set forth, we could be next.

A few days later on a school night, Bianca didn’t feel like going out. Which meant I had to. If Corey and I were keeping what happened between us a secret, maybe that would explain why he hadn’t come out with us the last few nights: he was afraid our chemistry would spill over and alert Bianca. At least I hoped that was the case because I couldn’t bear the alternative: he only wanted a one-night stand. Aside from accepting my friend request on the campus social media site, he hadn’t called me since our night together. So I casually put “Out at Quigley’s. Shots are on me! ;-)” as my status message in the hope he might see it. And do something about it.

Despite Fallon’s firm anti-bar stance, I begged her to go out to Quigley’s. Like a dutiful friend, she rubbed my coral lipstick all over her sealed lips, my secret squashed inside. She squeezed her toes into my highest heels and teetered each time she tried to dance, shaking her hips in a way that didn’t even count. I couldn’t possibly have been much company; my eyes didn’t leave the door the entire night. I caught her yawning several times while I sucked back glasses packed with caffeine. Only a few hardcore drinkers were out that night, and I felt like a true lush. I even did a solo shot of Smurf on the Red for good measure.

“Mackenzie,” Fallon tugged on my sleeve. “He’s not coming, let’s just leave.”

I nodded in defeat. We both had eight A.M. classes the next morning. We made our way toward the door, coasting through the empty space that was usually crammed with bodies. Just as we reached the exit, Corey walked in with some of his fraternity brothers, Nate absent from the pack. Corey’s entire face lit up with a grin. “Hey, babe.” He kissed me on the cheek, swinging me into his arms. I closed my eyes and savored the touch of his lips against my skin. Soon the two of us were sharing shots and dancing to the music, our bodies in sync to every beat, every swivel of hips.

He pulled me close to him and whispered in my ear. “I missed you.”

His words tangled through my chest, burrowing close to my heart. “You did?” I trailed my nails along his torso from shoulder to crotch.

“You missed me too, admit it. Your status message wasn’t exactly subtle.”

I looked away at Fallon chatting up a girl we knew from freshman year. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Corey cradled his nose against my neck and breathed hot air into my ear. “I thought this was casual.”

His words made me deflate. Still, I kept my voice flirty. “Who said it wasn’t?”

“Okay, just checking that you weren’t, like, waiting for me tonight or anything.” He laced his fingers in mine.

“And I thought this was secret?” I held up our interlocked hands.

“It is.” He didn’t need to say anything else for me to understand. …
But only from Bianca.

I could live with that. For now.

A
FEW WEEKS LATER, I joined Bianca, Erin, and the guys at Quigley’s where my sorority was hosting a graffiti party. The dress code required everyone to wear a white t-shirt, quite a change from the usual low cut tank tops that graced the floor. At the door, customers exchanged cover charge for a colored marker with a portion of the collection donated to the charity Rho Sigma sponsored. Corey usually only came out with us once or twice a week and I equally savored and dreaded those nights. I wouldn’t dare look at him the entire time, fearing my face would give away our secret tryst. So instead I’d watch Bianca stealing glances in the boys’ direction as they ordered our drinks, dragging Corey and then Nate in turn for provocative dances that probably belonged in lesser establishments. Every time she and Corey shared a laugh, my stomach squeezed. But then he’d swoop me in his arms for a single dance. We’d fit together like puzzle pieces, my leg sliding between his. He’d whisper treats into my ear under the guise of singing, little sweet nothings that amounted to everything to me:
I missed you. There’s a new position I want to try. Come over later.

And there usually was a later. I’d go home to keep up the ruse, then switch gears to head over to his place. Still, I kept hearing about Corey attending other sororities’ functions—crush parties, semi-formals, mixers—and I feared maybe there was someone else, a reason why we had to keep us to
only us
. A reason why he didn’t ask me over
every
night. I didn’t want to be a polygamist’s wife. I had to say something before I exploded.

Tonight, a sea of white shirts lit up the otherwise dreary wooden decor. Layla Davies roamed around with a blue marker, drawing phallic symbols on everybody’s shirts so the guys didn’t have to. As soon as we stepped inside, Corey immediately spun around and drew green nipples on all of our chests. He made mine lopsided, so I wrote a cheery, “Ask me about my hairy balls!” message on his shirt in bubble letters, earning a chuckle. Bianca drew chaste little stars on Nate’s sleeve in a clear attempt to downplay the vulgarity. But Erin kicked it back up a notch with some good old fashioned swear words written in giant letters across our backs.

After completing our art masterpieces, Corey led the way, shoving through the crowd until we found sanctuary in an empty patch of floor away from the counter. “Drinks?” He pointed at each of us, his finger lingering on me an extra second. Nate flanked him like a body guard. “First round’s on me,” Corey said. “Unless you’d all prefer to ask me about my hairy balls?”