As predicted, the Art House had boxed wine. Within five minutes of our arrival, I'd downed two glasses and poured myself a third, which I nursed as the three of us wandered around the party aimlessly.

The house rented out by the art club was perhaps the oldest on the Rodeo—an enormous brown-shingled monstrosity with peeling paisley wallpaper and warped wood flooring in every tiny, cramped room. Smoke drifted through the house from the screen door in the back, and the song blasting from the speakers in the living room was one I didn't recognize.

It wasn't exactly my scene. But I'd been there enough to know how to fake it.

My roommate, on the other hand, was right at home. We barely made it through the door before a cluster of kids from her figure drawing class came over to greet her with hugs and fist bumps and one formal handshake. So Hanna was having a delightful time—although it probably had something to do with the five shots of whiskey she'd had at the pregame.

"We should play beer pong!" she exclaimed. "Andre! Where's Andre?"

Andre, who was standing directly behind her, put his hand on top of her head.

She spun around under his palm, her hair getting all mussed.

"BP. Let's go. I'll kick your ass."

This coming from a girl who was a full foot shorter than him.

Hanna's face was flushed bright red and her pin-straight black hair—which she'd chopped off over the summer so it fell two inches shy of touching her shoulders—was rumpled, but somehow her winged eyeliner had remained un-smudged.

That was Hanna, though. She was a walking Instagram candid.

"Those are fighting words," Andre warned her.

"Laurel," she said, "get the Natty Light."

My red Solo cup of wine and I made our way into the kitchen, where a pair of guys were having a loud and slightly slurred argument.

"No, you're not listening," one said to the other. "If Banksy was one guy, we'd have caught him by now. It's gotta be more than one guy—"

"Excuse me," I murmured.

They didn't show any sign they'd heard me.

I huffed and shouldered between them to grab a cardboard case of beer from the countertop. It was pretty heavy. I debated setting my wine down and ditching it, then decided to get creative and bit the edge of my cup so I could use both arms to carry the beer.

If only my dad could see what my tuition's really paying for.

Hanna and Andre were in the dining room, setting up empty red cups on either end of a table that looked like it been handcrafted by a freshman who'd accidentally enrolled in a woodshop class and decided to roll with it.

Hanna kept knocking cups over with her elbow. Andre hovered beside her, diligently setting them upright again each time.

"Don't you dare spill!" Hanna warned when she saw me.

She'd let me borrow one of her shirts to wear with my high-waisted denim shorts, which were technically also hers from her chubbier days back in freshman year, before she'd taken up running.

I set down the beer and carefully plucked my cup from between my teeth.

"Ta-da!" I said with a flourish.

Hanna wasn't amused.

I helped Andre pour four beers into all twenty cups, then stood back and sipped my wine while Hanna made a show of stretching.

"Is that really necessary?" I asked as she bent over to touch her toes.

"You're just mad—" she huffed, nose to her knees, "—that you have the flexibility of uncooked spaghetti."

"I'd challenge you on that, but these shorts are really tight."

Also, she was right.

"Can we start already?" Andre groaned.

Hanna popped up, dark eyes flickering like twin bonfires, and took her position on the opposite end of the table. She and Andre held each other's eyes as they tossed ping pong balls to decide who got first throw. I leaned against the wall and watched, curious to see who'd get bragging rights for the night.

Somehow I'd managed to befriend two people with impressive athletic ability.

And then there was me.

I'd played softball in high school, but that was only because I needed to fill a physical education requirement and it'd been either that or soccer, which required far too much running for my taste. I wasn't the worst on the team—turns out I really liked smacking things with heavy sticks—but I was far from what you'd call skilled.

I'd been average.

I sighed heavily into my cup of boxed wine.

"I hear moping," Hanna accused without tearing her eyes from Andre's. They tossed their ping pong balls simultaneously. Both missed. "No moping."

"I'm not moping," I mumbled, like a liar.

Hanna sunk the first shot. She threw her hands up in triumph and whooped out a cheer. While Andre rinsed beer off the ball, Hanna turned to me and set her hands on her hips.

"Your article was shit," she said. "Okay? You blew it. But you turned it in. It's not your problem anymore. Now get over here and help me catch Andre's missed shots."

"Um, excuse me," Andre drawled. "What about all the missed shots on my side?"

Hanna tossed her head back and laughed. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she sent a ping pong ball soaring into the center cup on the other end of the table.

"Good one, champ," she said. "Drink up."

❖ ❖ ❖

By the time one o'clock rolled around, I was pretty tired—a side-effect of the wine, perhaps, but more likely a result of my tumultuous morning.

I found a spot on the kitchen counter where I could sit amongst half-empty liquor bottles and assorted garbage to watch Andre root through the fridge. I swayed slightly to the muffled beat of an indie pop song playing two rooms over while I sipped at my sixth glass of wine.

"All they got in here is kale," Andre grumbled.

"They're starving artists," I whispered against the rim of my red Solo cup.

Then I snorted at my own joke.

Andre stood abruptly.

"We should get Pepito's," he announced, eyes wide.

I tossed back the rest of my wine and jumped off the counter.

"I love it. Let's do it. Kobe!" I shouted, chucking my empty cup at the trash can eight feet away and missing spectacularly. "Where's the Pham?"

As if I'd summoned her, Hanna appeared in the kitchen doorway.

Despite her size, and the inevitable red tint her face got whenever she drank so much as a sip of something alcoholic ("Asian glow," she'd snarl into the bathroom mirror as if coming face to face with an old nemesis), Hanna was good at cutting herself off before she drank too much.

She was also good at beer pong, so she usually only drank at the pregame.

"You ditched me!" Hanna accused, folding her arms over her chest as she looked back and forth between Andre and me. "You big babies. I had to be my own BP team against those two obnoxious art history jerks."

"And you won," Andre guessed.

"Obviously," she snapped. "Now what are we doing? Are we stealing stuff? Because if we're gonna steal stuff, there's a new poster in Danny's room that would look so cute in the apartment—"

Danny had been Hanna's primary booty call last semester. I didn't need to ask how she knew what was currently on the walls in his bedroom. I could fill in the blanks.

"We're not stealing anything!" I blurted. "Jeez."

"Yeah," Andre added. "There's nothing in the fridge worth taking."

Hanna sighed and pat his arm.

"Let's go get you some food, big guy," she said. "Pepito's?"

"You know it."

We made our way into the living room, pushing through clusters of students with multicolored hair and clouds of marijuana smoke on our path to the front door.

The night air was warm and full of noise.

From the porch of the Art House, I could see up and down the Rodeo. People in various states of inebriation were shouting and laughing.

Across the street, outside the Engineering House, a girl in Birkenstocks was aggressively flirting with a boy on the front stairs while simultaneously holding back the hair of her friend, who was puking into a hedge. Passing by on the sidewalk, a pair of boys in identical salmon pink shorts were loudly debating our football team's odds of making the NCAA Championship that year.

Like I said. It was great people-watching.

Hanna, Andre and I fell into step beside each other as we headed down the Rodeo towards Cerezo Street, the main road in Garland. The two of them almost immediately started up a discussion about beer pong strategies, and since I'd never been anywhere near good at drinking games, I let my mind wander.

I wasn't sure if Ellison had read my article yet.

She hadn't called me to tell me I was kicked off the Daily team.

That felt like a good sign.

I wasn't paying any attention to where I was walking, since my need for constant positive feedback and validation had totally taken over my thoughts, so I was only mildly surprised when the toe of my white canvas sneaker caught a ledge in the pavement and I stumbled forward a few steps.

Hanna, ever the supportive friend, threw back her head and cackled.

"That was the wine," I grumbled, "not me."

"Whatever you say," she said, looping her arm through mine.

Up ahead, smack in the middle of the two-block span the Rodeo covered, the Baseball House was blasting their usual brand of rap music—something Post Malone, it sounded like.

If the houses on the Rodeo were fraternities and sororities, then the Baseball House would've been the frat full of gorgeous, empty-headed boys with muscular arms and rich parents. The wraparound porch was packed with beautiful, laughing people.

I spotted Bodie St. James before I realized I was looking for him.

He was leaning against the porch railing, a smile on his face and a can of beer in his hand. His jeans were dark wash and his t-shirt was black, the sleeves rolled up a little to show off his biceps, which were, admittedly, very aesthetically pleasing.

But it wasn't his arms that struck me—it was the crowd of people gathered around him who seemed to hang on his every word when he was speaking and glance at him for approval when he wasn't.

I wondered, briefly, what it felt like to be that adored.

In high school, I'd kept to myself. I'd had friends in my classes, sure, but we never hung out after the final bell. We knew our friendships were built out of sheer self-preservation. I didn't have any siblings or cousins, either. My mom came to the US when she was nineteen and died when I was five. For most of my life, my dad had been—without a doubt—the single most important person in my world.

It'd been hard to leave for Garland, even though it was only a two-hour drive from home.

I'd been so lucky to find Hanna and Andre.

They were enough. They were everything. But sometimes, I wondered what it would feel like to walk into a crowded house party and have people climbing over each other to say hello and snag a high five.

Hanna gave my arm a squeeze.

"I'm fine," I blurted.

"I know you are," she said. "But let's go eat our feelings, anyway."

I squeezed her arm back.

Before we passed the Baseball House, I looked again.

Bodie was clapping friends on their shoulders, nodding and tipping his head in a way that seemed to say, it's late and I'm gonna head out. He turned to come down the porch stairs just as we were passing them on the sidewalk.

I looked down at the pavement.

I didn't want to trip.

❖ ❖ ❖

It is Wednesday, my dudes. I'm eventually going to run out of my stockpile of pre-written chapters, but until that happens, I'm just tossing two up every week. You could say I'm in a rush to get to my favorite part of the enemies to lovers trope (the enemies with underlying sexual tension that they try desperately to ignore).

I also have a somewhat odd request! I want to read a ROMANCE (preferably a mystery/thriller with like background romance) set in a coastal town. Don't ask. I just have the specific urge. So if anyone knows something that might fit the bill, PLEASE TELL ME. It could be published or on Wattpad or whatever. I'm just desperate to read something with that kind of spooky coastal aesthetic. With romance. Please and thank you!

Your friendly author,

Kate