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Maybe it's You

By Christy Hayes

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Chapter One
Reagan Bellamy picked the wrong night to wear the right boots. Every step she took in her heeled boots shot an arrow of galvanized steel up her calves, past her internal organs, and straight into her cranial membrane. She stopped walking, placed a steadying hand on a nearby tree, and closed her eyes on a deep breath of morning air.
Birds tucked into their cozy nests mocked her walk of shame across Addison State University’s otherwise peaceful campus, determined to condemn her with their shrill accusations: Sinner. Hussy. Trash. Reagan shot a regretful glance at the overhead branches, mustered her strength, and limped on.
The predawn sky painted the sidewalk and stucco buildings of ASU with a dull film not unlike the one coating her mouth and her memories. Fitting punishments for her night of debauchery. Why had she inhaled more shots than she had fingers on one hand? More disturbingly, why had her best friends and roommates let her leave the bar with her worst nightmare and freshman mistake? Only now, in a frightening replay of events, the same boy had become her junior mistake. Fool her once, shame on him. Fool her twice …
Reagan was the world’s biggest fool.
Some days, like this one, when the morning fog held everything in a tight vise, the sourness of the distant paper mill along Georgia’s coastline hung in the air. Off in the distance, the cloud cover was giving way to a headache-inducing glare that would eventually burn away the scent, but not before she’d returned home. She followed the sidewalk into the entrance of her apartment complex and prayed to make it inside before anyone caught a glimpse of her in last night’s clothes.
The squeaky hinges of a second-story door proved Reagan had wasted her prayers. She squared her shoulders, flipped her hair behind her back, and winced as the searing edge of the morning’s hangover almost brought her to her knees. She tugged on the hem of her sweater dress and tried to pass for heading to church early Sunday morning.
When a pair of scarred leather boots appeared at the top of the stairwell, Reagan bit back a groan. Dash Carter was the last person she wanted to face when feeling her worst. She caught him giving her a full body appraisal before he hiked his guitar case onto his shoulder and descended the stairs with a loose-limbed gait she could only describe as a swagger.
“Rough night?” He eyed her as she worked up the nerve to tackle the staircase, more exposed than if he’d plopped her under a microscope.
“Late night.” A wave of nausea pummeled her shaky stomach. She grabbed hold of the handrail, swallowed back the bile, and closed her eyes.
Within seconds, his minty fresh breath brushed her face. She pried her lids open, but quickly looked away. She couldn’t stare into his hazel eyes for more than a second. He had a way of looking at her—with absolute focus—that stripped her bare.
“Whoa there.” His tone oozed sympathy, sympathy she didn’t deserve. “You okay?”
The gentle hand he placed on her lower back set every nerve ending ablaze. She forced herself to take the next step, and the one after, dislodging his hand and creating some distance. He smelled of soap and sandalwood, while she reeked like a garbage bag left at an abandoned tailgate. “I’m fine. Just got a little dizzy.” The throbbing in her head kept her from sprinting up the stairs.
“You need some Pedialyte,” Dash said.
She stopped at the top of the staircase and carefully turned in his direction. “What?”
“Pedialyte.” Instead of looking at her like a cheap piece of trash, he flicked a lock of chestnut hair from his forehead and pierced her with his calm stare. “It’s an electrolyte replacement, like Gatorade. You find it on the baby aisle in the grocery store. It’ll help the headache.”
“I’m fine.” She did little to hide the snark in her voice. Couldn’t he just leave her alone?
“No sense hurting when you don’t have to.”
She’d never disliked him more, and her aversion ran as deep as the string of women who probably fell at his feet. She hoped her closed-mouth smile conveyed her annoyance. She turned around, unlocked the door, and promptly slammed it, sending a shock wave of pain through her skull. What a jerk. He would have been less obvious if he’d asked who she’d hooked up with the night before.
“Will you please stop making so much noise?”
Reagan took two steps forward and found her roommate, Kayla, sprawled on their L-shaped couch wearing a tank top and underpants, her favorite crocheted throw twisted around her legs. Her arm lay over her eyes and she still wore a butterfly barrette in her messy blond hair.
“What happened last night?” Reagan asked Kayla.
“Shh.” Kayla held a finger to her lips before gripping her temple with both palms. “Not so loud. It’s like an echo chamber in here.”
Reagan lowered carefully onto the couch to remove her boots. “At least you made it home. Alone.”
Kayla gave a noncommittal grunt before propping up on her elbow. “You’re the one who insisted we leave without you.”
Reagan’s pulse pounded, and her stomach vibrated in response. Leaning back into the cushions, she resisted the urge to pace and argue against Kayla’s insanity. “Come again?”
Kayla groaned as she attempted to sit up. “Shelby tried to drag you away from the sweater vest, but you refused.”
“Oh no.” She dropped her head in her hands as an image of Chad Ferguson the night before fluttered through Reagan’s mind like a puff of smoke. He hadn’t been wearing the sweater vest that morning, or anything else as far as she could tell when she’d slithered out of his bed. She could barely stand to look at him with his pale chest, spindly arms, and the hair he kept perfectly gelled shooting like bamboo reeds against the stark white pillow. “Why? Why didn’t I listen?”
“The same reason I’m lying here in my underwear. The devil alcohol.”
“Never listen to me when I’m drunk and insisting I stay with someone you know I detest.”
“You’re more convincing when you’re drunk and lapping him up like an ice cream cone.”
“Tell me you’re exaggerating.”
“I would,” Kayla said. “But I’d be lying.”
Reagan’s head fell back until it nestled against the soft cushion, her eyes drifting closed. Yes, she’d intentionally sought Chad out when she’d found him at the bar. As Professor Atkins’s graduate assistant, he had pull in who became the professor’s next undergraduate research assistant. Reagan was willing to do just about anything to make inroads with Professor Atkins, but she never thought she’d stoop that low. What a nightmare. “How could I go home with the jerk who took my virginity my freshman year and then acted like he didn’t know me the next day?”
“Is he ignoring you now?”
“I got out of his apartment as soon as I woke up.”
“Did you …?”
The bowling ball in her stomach nose-dived into the gutter as shame flamed her cheeks. “I don’t know.”
Kayla’s eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. “You don’t know?”
“I was wearing my clothes, so I hope not.”
Kayla reached a hand over and patted Reagan’s arm. “Assume nothing happened and purge it from your mind.”
“My mind is purged. I can’t remember leaving the bar with him. What happened after is a total mystery. All I know is I’m never drinking again.”
“Me neither. Let’s make a pact.”
She shook Kayla’s hand, and used her roommate’s grip to lever herself off the couch.
“Where are you going?” Kayla asked.
“To scrub every trace of Chad Ferguson from my body.”
Reagan clutched the side of the shower, lightheaded from the steam. Or from lack of sleep. She stumbled to her bed and burrowed under the covers but found sleep as evasive as the details of the night before. She’d made a mistake. A big one. She didn’t know whether she needed to apologize to Chad or act like the whole thing never happened.
Reagan hated not knowing what to do or how to act after spending her whole life walking on eggshells around her volatile mother and the men who waltzed in and out of their lives. Finally living life on her terms, surrounded by friends, the last feeling she wanted to relive was the sickening dread of not knowing what the next day held. She had a plan, she stuck to the plan, and everything she did was according to the plan. Getting blisteringly drunk and going home with Chad Ferguson wasn’t a part of her plan. It wasn’t even scribbled in the margins.
Hours later, after a nap and a bowl of leftover spaghetti, Reagan sat cross-legged at the kitchen table, contentedly engrossed in a paper disproving Keynesian economics. She glanced over when the apartment door opened and her roommate Emily walked inside carrying a bottle of red liquid.
Still dressed in last night’s clothes, Emily lacked both the hangover and the embarrassment of a night spent away from home thanks to her boyfriend, Dylan. Reagan was still sober enough to remember when Dylan pried the beer from Emily’s hand and whisked her out the door. They were disgustingly in love and nauseatingly dependent on one another. Reagan never wanted a man to order her around, but it would have been nice to have someone to run interference for her last night.
“What is this?” Emily set the bottle on the table before breezing past to the refrigerator.
Reagan struggled to remember the point of her half-typed sentence. “What’s what?”
“It was on the doormat,” Emily said over her shoulder.
Reagan reached for the bottle, turned it around, and nearly choked on the shame of last night’s debacle. It had taken hours to expunge her reckless behavior from her mind and find solace in the safety of schoolwork, and the bottle of Pedialyte pulled her back to the present where humiliation ruled.
Her feet hit the floor with a resounding thud, she grabbed the plastic container, and rocketed out of the apartment. Somebody was going to pay.

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