Phil’s parents couldn’t afford an out-of-state university, so he’d gone to the local community college. Studies, books and high grades had come easily to him, therefore frequent time at a university not his own hadn’t caused a dent in his academic prowess. He’d had the pleasure of watching and vaguely participating in the Saxton rituals and parties without ever becoming wholly part of them. Even now if you asked an alumnus would say Phil went to school with him. Amy had always perceived him on the outskirts, part of the scenery but never the center of it. It wasn’t until she’d needed the comfort of his familiarity that she had finally noticed him waiting for her. His aloofness became part of his attraction, his separateness part of his belonging.

She sat at the kitchen table after hanging up with Eliza and ran her fingernails along the grooves and marks on its surface. She followed the small numbers and letters pressed there over years of homework assignments.

“Get it together,” she mumbled out loud to herself. There were things to do. Eliza had asked her to make one lunch and one breakfast this weekend. She’d use this chance to show off her homemaking expertise. No prepacked sandwiches for the Lowry lake house.

Amy pulled down a set of cookbooks from the kitchen shelf. If she focused, some thick cement of obligation would obstruct thoughts of Nick.

But she couldn’t find the magic recipe—or the will—to stop the escalating memories of the night she met Nick Lowry.

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

The congested room reeked of stale beer and the sweet-rotten smell of human contact. Sweat trickled down the back of Amy Malone’s neck. Her skin felt thick under her blouse and she wished she hadn’t worn long sleeves. The frigid air outside had fooled her into believing that she wouldn’t sweat in the airless, windowless cinder-block basement of the Kappa Alpha house. She’d lost her roommate, Carol Anne, the minute they walked in the door and she didn’t know a soul in the room.

She glanced around; there was a boy with a cleft lip smiling at her, a boy with a pledge pin on his Izod shirt being convinced to drink beer through a long plastic tube: funneling. A frightened look clouded his face, and she imagined that he wished he were home in his adolescent bedroom dreaming of college, not facing the reality. She turned from him, walked toward the bar, hoping for ice water and a glimpse of Carol Anne.

A slime-thin mixture of substances she would rather not think about coated the floor, and she realized she was ruining her JCPenney shoes.