Again by Lisa Burstein Read Free Book Online

asking me how my first day was, it was abundantly clear she couldn’t
care less.
    If she had asked I would
have said fine . Even though with each passing minute, I wondered if
starting my life over to make up for my mistakes might have been my biggest one
yet.
    So far all college-take-two
had given me were a massive case of lady blue balls and more guilt than I knew
what to do with.
     “Why the hell are you
starting second semester anyway?” Dawn asked, watching me closely. It was only
then I noticed she wore colored contacts, the darkest brown.
    Wow, what was she hiding
from?
    Dawn was the only person
here who had given me even a second glance. It made me wonder if she suspected
something, or maybe she’d forgotten what someone without a shitload of white
pancake makeup and black lipstick looked like.
    I’d already told her I took a
year off, but that didn’t answer why I was starting second semester. There
would definitely be more people than Dawn who would view it as questionable. I
wasn’t in the mood to deal with it now.
     “What happened to your last
roommate?” I asked instead.
     “She thought I worshipped
the devil.” The sound of her shading increased like the pencil and paper were
about to come to climax.
    “Was that why she moved out?”
    “No,” Dawn replied curtly, “she
was a stupid whore who liked beer and dick more than school.” Her eyes rolled. “She
dropped out.”
    I nodded, trying to ignore
my stomach falling to my toes. In college-take-one I had been her ex-roommate
almost to the letter. Who was I kidding? It would still be me now without my
rules.
    I took a sip from my water,
a small bite from my sandwich. “Do you worship the devil?”
    She shook her head, “Not
yet, but I’ve heard junior year is pretty hard. I might need his help then.”
    I laughed heavily, loudly;
people at other tables turned.
    Dawn squinted, practically
cracking her eyes in half. Clearly, she didn’t like making people laugh. I was
curious about what she did like, besides freaking me the fuck out.
    The thing was, having her as
a roommate might be the only thing that kept me safe. She didn’t want to talk
to me, hang out with me, bother me, or be friends with me.
    She would not deal with me
bringing a guy back to our room, especially a professor. Though I was pretty
sure they didn’t come back to dorms with students anyway, and I was absolutely
positive Professor Parker wasn’t that kind of professor. As long as I stayed in
our room any time I wasn’t in class, I would have to follow rule number two.
    Hot guy GIFs on repeat, or
not, Dawn would literally be my gothic chastity belt with fangs.
     
     

Chapter
Seven
    Carter
    Walking to my next class, I
thought about how I would have answered Kate’s question about what had happened
my freshman year if I could have told her the truth.
    Back then, I was exactly
like most of the students I was an RA for, a completely spoiled, snot-nosed
brat. I was invincible and I lived that way. How else would an eighteen-year-old
who’d had everything paid and taken care of for his whole life act?
    Nothing could touch me.
    Growing up rich makes
everything easy. Whatever you want is just in your reach and if not, you can
buy it. Or your father can, and my father did. I never complained about his
money, until he used it to pay for Jeanie’s silence.
    I would probably be a
totally different person now if I hadn’t rushed TKE, if I’d gone to a different
school, or even been born to different parents. If my father wasn’t, as Tristan
had put it so eloquently, a “prize-winning dick hole.”
    Tristan was lucky, as a diver
he basically had his own frat in the diving team. He didn’t need to try to find
a group of people who would accept him. Freshman year, while I was pledging, he
would watch me from his bed, his hands propped behind his head as I ran around
doing everything my older frat brothers told me to do.
    “You look like a chicken
with its balls cut off,” he