My palms were sweaty.

Knees weak.

Arms heavy.

Goddamn, I was a walking, talking, breathing—well, barely breathing—Eminem song right now. Minus the vomit on my sweater of course. And thank fucking god for that because my date was already making her way up the stairs toward me, all sophisticated and gorgeous. And very much looking like she wouldn't be the type of person to go out with someone who had remnants of their mom's spaghetti down their front.

Not that Momma Martin would even make spaghetti. Well, maybe she would. As long as it could be paired with at least three other courses. Maybe two.

Shit, focus. Stop thinking about your mom while you're on a date. Think about her, you asshole.

She wore the red one. Somehow I'd known she was going to wear the red dress. Out of all the ones I'd sent her as options, that one stuck out the most. Begged to be put on and showcased at a gala like this one. Only the best for the Cardairel Hotel. Only the best for Collins Bryant, this beauty I didn't even know.

But I was going to know her soon.

Holy hell, I was going to give Bren my Range Rover. That was it. I'd decided. He deserved it after setting me up with this girl. She glanced up at me with those dark, melting eyes, and something flipped on inside me. A light switch? No, not even close. A flame torch would be more like it. And not just any torch but like...a special one. Yep, the Olympic-mother-fucking-torch was burning up my body from the inside out.

An opening ceremony raged on inside me, and my heart was the host. Unbuttoning my suit jacket, I rubbed at my chest, needing the thumping in it to chill out with the celebrations. This was just the beginning, and Olympic event number one was coming right up.

Just say hello. Introduce yourself. Be cool, dude.

"Hey."

__

before sophomore year

If I had a time machine, I'd probably take a little ride to that timeless era of the early 2000s and hop into some pee-wee football. Because if I'd learned one thing from this afternoon, it was that football players got girls.

Never did I think I would stoop low enough to be hanging around a football stadium, radiating jealousy, but fuck it. Sell my soul to the pee-wee devil and sign me up.

"I mean, three-quarters of these guys just stand around on the sidelines and twiddle their fucking thumbs. I can do that, right?"

Nessa looked me up and down. "I mean, sure. But is that really how you want to spend half your weekends at college? Sitting on the sidelines of a football field?"

I gave a pointed look around us.

"I'm here right now, aren't I? And I'm probably going to be at half of them with you anyway. Might as well get some action for it."

Her nose scrunched up, disgust and judgment in the twisting of her facial expression. But I just rolled my eyes.

"Don't even give me that, Wednesday." I waved a finger in her face. "You're here for the exact same reason. Just reversed."

She leaned back against the bleacher behind us. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You wouldn't be sweating your ass off in this stadium watching a goddamn practice if you weren't getting some from the starting wide receiver. Am I right?"

The wide receiver in mind took that moment to look up from the field, flashing his ridiculously white smile at us. Well, at Nessa. The girl he was giving it to. She squirmed on the bleacher next to me, proving my goddamn point.

"That's what I thought."

"Okay, fine. You have a point." She tilted her head to the side, a smile slipping into place. "He's just so...."

Aaaand she was gone, her eyes stuck on her boyfriend, wide and appreciative. Daydreaming right in front of me. Fucking rude if you asked me. She giggled, and I looked back at the field to find Grayson mouthing something at her.

I cleared my throat. "Don't finish your sentence on my account."

Nessa sighed, eyes slowly slipping away from Grayson and back to me. "For the record, I'm here to keep an eye on him. To make sure he doesn't end up back in the hospital after all his...you know."

You know meant suffering from a stroke, falling into a coma, and disappearing from the planet for a good two months.

She had a reason to be worried, but I couldn't help but wonder how Grayson felt about his girlfriend watching over him like a hawk. Granted, there were other people in the stadium. Other girls.

Hence the pledge to the pee-wee devil.

But still.

I rattled my ice around in my drink and took a sip. It was the perfect day for a lemon iced tea, even if it had so much sweetener in it that it was more lemonade than tea. Shit still hit just right on a hot-ass day like today. Honestly, I should have left Nessa high and dry and stayed back at The Grounds, where Madie and Bren were working, brewing coffee in the nice air conditioner.

But Nessa had begged. Said she had to talk to me. And so here I was.

"What does Grayson think about you babysitting him at his practices?"

Nessa smiled. I was positive I'd never seen her smile as much as she had in the past few months. And even though I was currently sweating my balls off because of her new boyfriend, I was also so fucking happy for her.

"I don't know how to say this without sounding ridiculously conceited, but Grayson is...."

She paused, biting down on her lip as if hesitant to finish the sentence. But I had no problems putting it out there if she wanted it to be out there.

"Obsessed with you?"

"Well, yeah." She laughed. "He loves that I'm here."

Yeah, yeah. She had a point. I leaned back against the bleachers, matching her position. "I suppose he likes showing off for you, huh?"

A nod of agreement. "He definitely likes showing off."

I watched as Grayson Everett jogged across the field, joining the line of dudes on the side. It was a whole slew of muscly bros, shiny sweat, and deep hollering. And the thought of being clumped into a group of football players on a sweltering field was...not appealing.

"Maybe I won't join football," I mused. "I don't really need to be compared to that all the time. What about soccer?"

"Do you even know how to play soccer?"

"Who doesn't know how to play soccer?"

"I don't."

I shrugged. "Bren and Madie play together sometimes. They can teach me."

Nessa looked over at me, cocking her head to one side. "I thought you just said you knew how to play."

"I didn't say that. I insinuated that. Listen closer, Nessie."

Her eyes rolled back in exasperation, and I laughed, knowing I was being unreasonable. I wasn't going to play football, soccer, or any other collegiate sport. For crying out loud, we went to a Division 1 school, and while they might accept walk-ons at OSU, those walk-ons would need to be able to do more than just...walk.

"Beau, if you want to get involved in an activity, pick something you know how to do already. Oh!" Nessa perked up. "Don't you ski? I heard Professor Evans is the ski coach."

Professor Evans was Madie and Nessa's history professor last year. Slicked brown hair, glasses, dark academia vibes—not exactly someone I pictured as a ski coach. But then again, if he were the coach of anything, it would definitely be skiing.

I shook my head. "I snowboard, but I definitely don't ski."

She waved her hand. "Same thing."

I sat up straighter. Hell no. "No, definitely not the same thing. A ski has two—"

"Whatever," she cut me off, and I bit my tongue. We weren't done. She'd offended the snow gods. But then she distracted me, piquing my interest by saying, "Anyway, I had an idea for our third roommate, and I wanted to float it by you."

Yes, okay. This was important. The semester was going to start in a matter of weeks, and we still had an empty room. And while I could just pay double the rent to cover it, I knew Nessa wouldn't be chill with that.

If someone had told me that my best friends at college would end up being two girls and a dude—my freshman roommate—who disappeared two months into college and abandoned me to live alone, and yet I'd still lay down my life for him...well, I'd say what the hell, man.

But here I was.

Sometimes when I told my mom stories about college, I could see that look in her eye, that twitch that told me she was barely resisting yanking me back home. But as much as I loved the home where I grew up in Sacramento, I loved my new one even more.

I mean, campus was imperfect. I hated how fucking big it was, and the dorms smelled a bit like there mold hiding in the walls. Classes were alright, but they weren't anything ground-breaking. College had always felt to me like a necessity. A rite of passage. Stepping stones to get me to a different part of my life. The next part. Where I'll probably fuck around until I get my MBA and then sit in an office somewhere, growing old.

But the people here...Nessa, Bren, Madie, and now Grayson—they were what made this place home. That made this part of my life the best part.

"Give it to me, Nessie. What's the idea?"

She glared at me, and I knew it was the nickname. I just smiled, leaning forward onto my knees.

"So...Bren found out that—"

She stopped.

"Spit it out."

After taking a breath, Nessa, as directed, spit it out. "That Collins applied to OSU for this fall. She's looking for a place to live off-campus, and I was just thinking...Well, I kinda wanted to see how you'd feel about her living with us."

I froze. Oh, no. Oh no, no, no. Of all the names. Of all the two-syllables Nessa could have just uttered. Of all the people on this earth, Collins Bryant would not be a good choice for a roommate.

Well, objectively speaking, she likely would be. I mean, why wouldn't she be a good roommate? She was good at everything else. Everything else.

But my roommate? Our roommate?

No, that would not be good. It would not be good at all.

"What do you mean?"

Maybe if she repeated it, it would make sense in my head.

Nessa shifted on the bleacher. "I mean...I want Collins to live with us."

Nope, still didn't make sense. "What do you mean you want Collins to live with us?"

"I mean, we need another roommate, and she's looking for somewhere to stay," Nessa said, repeating it slower this time, hoping I'd finally get my shit together and understand.

Which I did. Well, I didn't have my shit together, but I understood. And it was causing a cold sweat to break out on my forehead and goosebumps to pop up across my skin. I wasn't surprised. I'd had a physical reaction to the mention of Collins since we met that night at the gala. Fuck, the gala.

No, Collins definitely couldn't live with us. But everything would be okay because there was no way in hell that she'd agree to move in. After our night together, she had made it pretty clear that she didn't want to see me again. When she heard that I was living with Nessa, she wouldn't say yes. I'd bet my imaginary time machine on that.

So I shrugged it off.

"Yeah, cool, okay. That's cool. That's very cool. That's—"

Nessa raised a brow, seeing straight through me. "If you're not comfortable with the idea, we can forget it."

I could say yes, Nessa, let's forget it, but then I would have to explain why. And there wasn't anything I wanted to do less than give Nessa a play-by-play of that night and everything that went wrong between Collins Bryant and me.

"Who says I'm not comfortable around Collins?" I spit out after getting stuck on the first word for a few seconds. Lies didn't fall out of my mouth easily.

"You did. When you just repeated cool three times in the same breath."

I leaned back against the bleachers again, trying my best to be....cool. "I don't know what you're talking about. Cool is the opposite of uncomfortable."

The skepticism in Nessa's gaze was crystal clear. As bright as the fucking sun beating down on my back. She stared at me, and I stared back, taking a sip of my iced tea without looking away.

"Beau..."

"Wednesday..."

She wrinkled her nose, hating when I called her by her full name. But then she relented.

"Okay, I'll talk to her. Or Bren will. Either way."

Nodding, I released a breath. Crisis averted. Bren or Nessa would talk to Collins, she'd pass on the offer, find a different place to live around campus, and then the only thing I'd have to worry about would be running into her in the student union. Everything would be fine.

I held onto that thought. Really tight. But then Nessa came back a few days later with a big grin on her face and told me the one thing I couldn't believe.

Collins had said yes.

And now we were roommates.

✨

a/n:

thanks you so much for checking out the first chapter of we fall like ashes! I'm very excited and a bit (or more than a bit) nervous to finally bring you Beau's POV. as always, I welcome feedback and comments. Let me know what you think!

updates will begin as about once per week and will likely increase in amount as I get going.

make sure to keep an eye out for the Christmas bonus coming up next Saturday 12/18 that will feature a scene from later in this story, but from Grayson's POV.

see you then!

xoxo amelie