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This statement led to an all-out discussion about how our generation had been sorely cheated when it came to the sophistication and cool factor of today’s toys, and I had to think really hard about the kind of toys I’d played with. There’d been Barbies—of course, there’d been Barbies—but instead of Big Wheels and board games, I had satiny sashes and sparkly crowns.
And then I had nothing.
As the group started talking about summer plans, I tried to pay attention to where each of them was planning to go. Cam and Avery were going to spend their summer in D.C., since Cam had made it onto the United team. I’d never been to D.C., even though Shepherd wasn’t too far from the capital. Brit and Ollie were doing something amazingly crazy. They were leaving a week after school let out and heading to Paris, and they were planning to road-trip across Europe. I’d never been on a plane, let alone overseas. Hell, I hadn’t even been to New York City. Teresa and Jase were in the midst of planning an awesome beach trip to the Carolinas with his parents and little brother. They were getting a condo on the beach, and all Teresa could talk about was soaking her toes in ocean water. I’d also never been to the beach, so I had no idea what sand felt like under my feet.
I really needed to get out more and have a life. Seriously.
But that was okay, because those things, including gallivanting across the continent with a Hot Guy, weren’t part of my goals—the Three F’s.
Finish college.
Find a career in the nursing field.
Finally reap the benefits of following through on something.
Goals were good. Boring. But good.
“You’re awful quiet tonight, Calla.”
I tensed up, unable to help myself, and then I felt heat seep across my face at the sound of Brandon Shiver’s voice. Lowering the bottle between my knees, I forced the muscles along my shoulders to relax. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten that Brandon was sitting next to me, to my left. How could I forget that? I was just currently pretending he wasn’t there.
I wet my lips as I shifted my head so a sheet of my own blond hair fell over my left shoulder, shielding my cheek. “I’m just taking it all in.”
Brandon chuckled. He had a nice laugh. And a nice face. And a nice body. And a really nice ass.
And then there was Brandon. Sigh. Like an extended sigh felt around the world. He would also be a close second to the lieutenant of the Hot Guy Brigade with his brown hair and broad shoulders.
“With Ollie here, it’s always a lot to take in,” he commented, eyeing me over the rim of his bottle. “Wait until he starts talking about the tortoise roller skates idea he has.”
I laughed, relaxing a little more. Brandon was hot, but he was also a nice guy, somewhere in between Cam and Jase. “I can’t even imagine tortoises on roller skates.”
“Ollie’s either bat-shit crazy or a pure genius.” Brandon shifted on the ottoman. “Jury’s still out on the verdict.”
“I think he’s a genius.” I watched Ollie scoop up the tortoise and head back around the couch to the pretty extravagant habitat the little green man lived in. “The way Brit talks, he’s acing all of his courses. Med school can’t be easy.”
“Yeah, but most really smart people are totally insane.” He grinned when I laughed under my breath. “So, has the epic battle for next-semester classes ended?”
I nodded as I grinned again, settling back in the moon chair. With only a semester and a half left before I graduated with my BSN in nursing, getting into classes was like arm-wrestling Hulk Hogan. Everyone who knew my name, or was within earshot, knew I’d been battling my schedule for what felt like an eternity. We were currently a week away from the end of the semester and almost a month since academic advisement for next semester had closed up.
“Yeah, finally. I think I had to give up my right leg to get my classes, but I got all I needed. I have to meet with someone in financial aid on Monday, but I should be good.”
His brows knitted as I glanced at him. “Is everything okay with that?”
“I think so.” I couldn’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t be. “Any plans for this summer?”
One broad shoulder rose. “Haven’t really thought much of it since I’m taking summer classes.”
“Sounds like fun.”
He snorted.
I started to say something else ridiculously not clever since I was doing pretty good with this one-on-one convo with Brandon, but I lost track of what I was about to say when there was a knock. My gaze tracked Ollie to the door. He answered like he lived here.
“What up, pretty lady?” he said, and I sat up, my fingers tightening around the neck of the beer bottle.
A pretty, little brunette cruised on into the apartment, a red Sheetz bag dangling from her fingertips. She smiled at Ollie and gave Brit a little wave.
I didn’t know her name.
I sort of refused to learn it, because after the last two semesters of knowing Brandon, I didn’t put the effort into knowing any of the girls he “hung out” with because there were many and they never stuck around long.
But this girl—with her tiny brown pixie cut and ballerina body—was different. They had a class together this semester and they’d started hanging out in March, but this was the first I’d seen her with Brandon outside of campus.
Actually, I’d never really met her. I’d never really met any of his frequent flyers, just seen them around school and sometimes at parties, but Brandon hadn’t been on the party scene since . . . well, since March.
“There she is.” His green eyes lit up.
Oh shit.
I was a slow learner.
I inhaled through my nose and smiled as she made her way around the couples, coming to Brandon as he straightened from the ottoman and opened his arms. She went right into them, easing onto his knees and looping her arms around his neck. The Sheetz bag bounced over his back, and her mouth was like a Brandon-heat-seeking-missile, and I couldn’t blame her for that.
They kissed.
A big, wet, and deep kiss—a real kiss. Not the “we’re getting to know each other” kind of kiss or “we’re just hooking up” kiss, but a “we’ve already swapped lots of body fluids” kind of kiss.
And God, I watched them kiss like they were trying to eat each other’s faces up until the moment I knew I was upping my creeper status to a whole new level. I forced myself to look away, and my gaze collided with Teresa’s.
A sympathetic look crossed her pretty face as she turned in Jase’s arms, because she knew . . . oh lawd, she knew I’d been harboring a big gushy crush on Brandon.
“I brought you a cheesy pretzel,” the girl announced when they came up for air.
Brandon loved cheese-stuffed pretzels like I loved double fudge brownies.
“She brought you a pretzel?” Ollie asked. “Man, you put a ring on that.”
Brit rolled her eyes as she looped her arms around Ollie’s waist. “Does not take much to impress you.”
Twisting in her arms, Ollie dipped his head to hers. “You know what it takes to impress me, baby.”
I kept waiting for Brandon to fly out of the chair and run away from the idea of putting a ring on the finger of a girl he’d known for only a couple of months, but since I didn’t get the lovely view of his ass heading for the door, I glanced at him when I knew I shouldn’t. But I was a glutton for punishment.
Brandon was staring at the girl, grinning in a way that said . . . that said he was absolutely happy.
I swallowed my sigh.
And then he looked over at me, and before I could freak over the fact that he caught me staring at him like a stalker, his smile went up a blinding notch. “You haven’t gotten a chance to meet Tatiana yet.”
Damnit. I didn’t want to learn her name, but Tatiana was such a cool freaking name.
Tatiana shook her head as she turned brown eyes toward me. “No, we haven’t.”
“This is my friend, Calla Fritz,” he said, smoothing a hand up her back. “We had music class together last semester.”
That was who I was—Calla Fritz, always and forever the friend of the Hot Guy Brigade. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I blinked back the stupid sudden rush of tears as I wiggled my fingers in Tatiana’s direction. “It’s nice to meet you.”
That wasn’t a lie. Not really.
On Monday, I left my dorm early enough to head down to Ikenberry Hall, which was all the way down a huge hill my ass so did not appreciate. It was early May, but the temps were already cracking into the eighties, and even with my hair pulled up into a hasty knot, I could feel the humidity cloaking my skin and threading its annoying fingers through my hair.
Soon, before the end of my finals today, I’d look like a frizz ball.
I cut down the side path outside of Ikenberry and winced when I had to open the door and dip inside before a spiderweb of epic proportion dropped from the little roof over the door and onto my head.
Cold air was cranking in the building as I pushed my sunglasses onto my head and walked down the hall, entering the financial aid offices. After giving my name, the overworked and frazzled-looking middle-aged woman motioned me to take a seat.
I only had to wait five minutes before a tall and slender older woman with silvery hair cut in a fashionable way came out to get me. We didn’t go into one of the cubicles where aid advisers worked. Oh no, she led back into one of the closed offices farther down the hall.
Then she closed the door behind us and walked behind her desk. “Please have a seat, Miss Fritz.”
Knots formed low in my belly as I sat.
This had never happened before. Usually, when I got called down here, it was due to information being missing from the file or a paper needing to be signed. After all, it couldn’t be a big deal. I only used financial aid for living expenses that weren’t covered by the crappy waitressing job I had, and it came in really handy when I quit at the beginning of the semester to focus more fully on my studies.
The nursing program was no joke.
I slowly placed my book bag on the floor beside my legs as I scanned her desk. Elaine Booth was on her nameplate, so unless she was pretending to be someone else, that’s who I was sitting in front of. There were also a lot of photos on her desk. Family photos—black-and-whites, colored, photos ranging from toddlers all the way up to my age, maybe even older.
I looked away quickly as an old pang hit me in the chest. “So . . . what’s going on?”
Mrs. Booth folded her hands over a file. “We received word from admissions last week that your check for next semester’s tuition has bounced.”
I blinked once, and then twice. “What?”
“The check didn’t clear,” she explained, glancing up from the file. Her gaze drifted over my face and then quickly averted away from my eyes. “Due to insufficient funds.”
She had to be wrong. There was no way that check bounced because that check was attached to a savings account that I only used for tuition, an account that held all of my money for school. “There has to be something wrong. There should be enough money in there for the next semester and a half.”
Not only that, there should’ve been enough money in that account just in case of some crazy emergency, and to carry me through at least a couple of months after graduation while I did the job hunting thing and decided where I wanted to live, if I stayed here or . . .
“We verified with the bank, Calla.” She’d dropped my last name and somehow that seemed worse. “Sometimes we have problems with checks due to the amount or a typo in entering the account number, but the bank confirmed there was insufficient funds.”
I couldn’t believe it. “How much did they say was in the account?”
She shook her head. “That’s proprietary information we’re not privy to, so you’d need to talk to the bank about that. Now, the good news is that you’ve always paid your tuition early, which means we’ve got time to work something out. We’ll get this fixed, Calla.” Pausing, she opened my file as I stared at her like my butt was suddenly frozen in my seat. “You’re already in the system for financial aid, and what we can do is adjust the requests for next semester, ensuring that your classes are covered . . .”
My stomach had dropped to my knees at some point and was quickly plummeting to the floor as she continued on about increasing loan amounts, applying for Pell grants, and even a crap ton of scholarships.
At this moment, I didn’t give two craps about any of that.
This couldn’t be happening.
There was no way there wasn’t money in that account. I was meticulous when it came to which account I used for which bill or need, and I never used that account unless it was for tuition. I hadn’t even activated the debit card attached to it.
Then it hit me as I watched Mrs. Booth pull form after form out from racks next to her desk, stacking them neatly and calmly as if my entire life hadn’t just slammed on the brakes.
Ice drenched my veins as I tried to drag in my next breath, but it got stuck in my throat. This might not be a giant fuckup by the bank and the college. This could very well be seriously happening.
Oh my God.
Because there was someone other than me who had the means to get access to that account—one person who was virtually dead to me, so virtually that I behaved as if she were dead—but I couldn’t believe she’d do this. There was no way.
The rest of the meeting with Mrs. Booth was fuzzy to me. Numbly, I took the FAFSA applications and I walked out of the chilly offices, out into the bright sunlight of an early May morning, loaded up with forms.
There was still time before my final, and I found the nearest bench, sat down, and shoved the papers into my bag. I pulled out my cell phone with shaky fingers, looked up the number to the bank back home, and hit call.
Five minutes later, I sat on the bench, seeing nothing beyond the shades of my sunglasses, and feeling nothing, which was good—the blank and empty feeling in the pit of my stomach was all right because I knew it would turn to red-hot, blinding and murderous, cut-a-bitch rage in no time. I couldn’t do that. I had to stay calm. Keep my emotions in check, because . . .
All my money was gone.
And I knew—every cell of my body knew—this was just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg.
Chapter 2 (#u61c4e561-efdc-5938-b2e5-4e32584e820f)
How my life went from mostly being okay, with the exception of being a little lonely sometimes, to one giant hot mess in a span of a week was beyond my ability to comprehend.
I was so screwed, and not in the fun and sweaty way.
It wasn’t just my savings account that had literally been cleared out two weeks before I’d written my check for tuition. Oh God, if only that was it. I could’ve bounced back from that. I could’ve even let that go, because what else could I have done?
After all, I knew it had been my own flesh and blood that had cleared me out, my own mother—my hocked up on pills, and most likely drunk off her ass, mother who my closest friends believed was dead. In a way, that hadn’t been too far from the truth. A terrible lie, but I hadn’t talked to her in ages and the alcohol and the pills and God knows what else had over the years killed the caring and fun mother I remembered from when I was little.
But she was still my mom. Therefore, the last thing I wanted to do was involve the police, because seriously, her life was already shitty as it was, and inexplicably, after all the drama and the heartache, a whirl of pity always surfaced when I thought of her.
That woman had to experience things no mother ever should.
But it hadn’t only been my savings accounts. Over the course of last week, during my finals, which I somehow managed to still complete without losing my ever-loving mind, the tip of the iceberg sunk the Titanic.
I pulled my credit just because . . . well, I had this horrible feeling it was worse. And it had been.
Credits cards I’d never seen in my life had been taken out in my name and they’d been maxed out. A student loan with a major bank I hadn’t even known existed had also been taken out, and that alone cost more than four semesters at Shepherd did.
I was in debt, to the tune of over a hundred thousand dollars when it was all said and done, and that wasn’t even including the debt I racked up on my own with the small student loans I’d taken out and the car loan I now wasn’t sure I could afford.
My stomach dipped and my chest seized every time I thought about how badly I was screwed, and it took everything in me to talk myself down from losing my shit. Credit and debt made or broke you in this world. I wouldn’t be able to get a loan if I needed one. Worse yet, even if I managed to scrape together the money to finish out college, any job I applied for could pull my credit and base their decision to hire me on what it showed.
