Into the Deep 01 Read Free

concern. “I’m not stupid. If he wants in my pants, he has to earn it.” She rubbed her hands together gleefully. “And I am going to have so much fun making him earn it.”
    I didn’t particularly enjoy the idea of attending a party where I’d be left to socialize alone as my best friend attempted to wrap Beck around her finger. But … she was Claudia and I loved her and I’d never seen her so instantly excited over a guy before. I’d suck it up for her. “Then I guess we’re really going to that party tonight. Maybe we should invite our roomies?”
    “What are their names again?”
    I searched my brain, knowing the answers were in there somewhere. “Maggie, Gemma, and Lisa. Right?”
    “I thought it was Maggie, Jemima and Lauren.”
    “Jemima? I would remember if her name was Jemima.”
    “We are awful roommates.”
    “We are. I’m going to organize some kind of get-together for us all.”
    Her eyes glittered. “Ooh, can we invite Beck?”
    Crap. She was definitely a goner.
     

     
    “Maybe I should’ve worn a dress,” Claudia muttered for the fiftieth time as we walked up stairwell one to apartment three. We could hear the music throbbing from within and we’d already passed a couple of drunken freshman out in the courtyard.
    I sighed, squeezing back against the wall to let an annoyed-looking guy hurry down the stairs and outside. “I told you a dress would be too much. This is just like any other student party, Claud, not a formal.”
    As soon as we hit floor one, she knew I was right. The door to apartment three was thrown open and there were students milling around outside drinking out of red plastic cups. A couple of girls smiled at us and the guys gave us “the nod” as we passed to wander inside. Everyone was dressed casual and I was glad I’d talked Claud into jeans and a tank top.
    “This place is much bigger than ours,” I commented as we gazed around the crowded common room and kitchen.
    “There are more rooms,” Claudia explained, pointing down the hall to our left. I noticed at the end it turned a corner. I counted five doors on the one side, and guessed Claud was right and that hidden corridor housed more.
    “You came.” Beck appeared like magic in front of us, holding out two beers. “Nice to see you again, ladies.”
    Looking much the same as he had that afternoon—except perhaps hotter—Beck’s presence seemed to paralyze us for a second as neither of us said a word.
    He grinned cockily as if he knew what kind of reaction he elicited in the opposite sex and shook the beers at us. “You want?”
    I reached for one of the bottles. “Thanks. Good showing.” I gestured to the busy party.
    “I told you… put ‘free booze’ on a poster and voila.” He smiled at Claudia as she finally came out of her stupor to take the beer. His eyes flickered back to me and my chest. “Nice shirt.”
    My vintage Pearl Jam T-shirt, faded, worn, a little snug, but as soon as I saw it in the thrift store, I had to have it. Thankfully, the fact that it was snug just made it hot. It wasn’t the first time a guy had complimented me on it and I still couldn’t decide if it was because it was vintage Pearl Jam or if it was because it was tight across my breasts.
    Probably a little of the first and a lot of the second.
    “Thanks,” I muttered and “accidentally” hit my elbow off Claudia’s arm as I looked around the room.
    She took my hint.
    “So, Beck,” she stepped closer to him, “you here on the study abroad program for the semester or the year like us?”
    “The year,” I heard him say as I pretended to be more interested in the room at large than in the conversation between him and my best friend. “I came from Northwestern. What about you guys?”
    “Not that far from you, actually. Purdue.”
    “I think a couple of the guys who live here are from there. You know them? Alan and Joey? We met them first night here.”
    I turned back now, taking another swig of my beer and