The frat kept the good stuff in a locked cabinet in the back of the dining room. Heading through the crowd, he found Kurt and Zane, two of his frat brothers and baseball teammates, making their way through a bottle of tequila. Kurt held out a full shot glass by way of greeting Sean.
“We were wondering when we were going to see your sorry ass in here.” Both guys were already drunk enough to be sprawled on two beat-up leather couches.
“If I knew you were waiting on me for a tea party,” Sean said as he took the glass from Kurt, “I would have at least worn a tie.”
Used to be, a couple of shots of tequila would make his throat burn and his eyes water. But lately, he’d been drinking so much that downing it in one gulp was no sweat. He didn’t bother to wait for the buzz to hit him before he refilled the glass, and a couple more shots in, he finally got to where he was trying to go.
Numb.
Totally numb.
For the past three months, everything inside his chest had felt raw. Splintered. Broken. Hell, he thought as he reached for the bottle and splashed more booze into the glass, it had been longer than that.
One year ago, his family had gotten the news that his mother, Lisa, had cancer. She’d been supposed to beat it, only forty-seven and in great shape. She’d always eaten right and worked out, and taught her kids to do the same.
But none of that had mattered. Not how healthy she was supposed to be. Not how hard she fought with medicine and meditation and positive thoughts. Not even the fact that she had six kids and a husband who all needed her to live.
Sean had missed his finals last year, had been at her bedside along with the rest of his family when she’d finally slipped completely away. They’d known for a few weeks that it was coming, as she drifted in and out of consciousness depending on how much pain she was in and how high they’d cranked up the medicine. But knowing it was coming hadn’t meant Sean had been able to prepare for it at all.
Every moment he wasn’t with her, he’d been taking the pictures he knew she loved so much , and that had been her connection to the world outside her fifteen-by-fifteen-foot hospital room. Pictures of his brothers and sisters and dad. Pictures of the bayside path by their house where she’d always walked their dog. Pictures of the magnolia tree in their yard as its large pink flowers bloomed. Whenever she woke up, he’d made sure there were at least a couple of new pictures hanging from the lines he’d rigged up on the ceiling.
Each of his brothers and sisters had helped with something. His oldest brother, Grant, who’d founded one of the most successful social networking businesses in Silicon Valley, had taken over the day-to-day of running the household finances and managing their parents’ portfolio. Drew, his second oldest brother who had become a pretty big rock star in the past year, had wanted to cancel his European tour to sit in her hospital room with her, but his mother had made him promise not to do that, a promise he had made himself keep until those last few weeks. Olivia, his middle sister, who was a year ahead of him at Stanford, had appointed herself the one in charge of making sure their littlest sister, Madison, stayed on track for her senior year at high school and got all of her college applications in. Justin, Sean’s twin brother, who was also a junior at Stanford, had put his science brain to work on researching the best possible doctors and treatment plans. Maddie, who loved to cook, must have made her mother every single recipe in every single diet book that promised to cure cancer with nutrition. And all of them had taken care of their father, Michael, who had barely left his wife’s side.
Since her passing, Sean hadn’t taken a picture. And three months later, even with buckets of beer and tequila pumping through his veins, he could still hear his father and Maddie sobbing, Grant and Drew cursing, and the scary silence from Olivia in his mother’s hospital room.
Sean had had to get out, get away from it all. When he’d finally gotten outside into the sunshine, before he even realized what he was doing, he’d lifted the classic 35mm Canon film camera his mother had given him for his thirteenth birthday over his head and smashed it down onto the concrete. He was strong enough from years of playing baseball and weight lifting that it had shattered immediately.
He couldn’t imagine wanting to take pictures again. Not when they hadn’t helped one damned thing.
For tonight, at least, he’d managed to get to the point where nothing could touch him. Where he could pretend to be the carefree jock that everyone thought he was. Stanford had begged his brother Justin to come here based on his grades and science trophies. Sean’s grades weren’t quite as good, but when combined with his baseball skills, they were enough for a scholarship. Everyone looked at the Morrison twins and saw one as the brain, the other as the jock. Only when they were at home did those labels fall away, and they were just brothers.
For a moment, Sean wished Justin had come to the party tonight. The two of them could have hung out and turned their minds to mush playing video games upstairs. But Justin had never been into frat parties, especially not when he could be hanging out in some science lab with one of his fellow brains. Especially Taylor, the girl he was too much of a wuss to make a move on. Just think what egg-headed kids those two would have if they ever managed to get it on.
Zane finally pushed himself up off the couch and wobbled for a second before saying, “Time to go see what gifts the freshman class is offering up tonight. Give me a ten-minute head start, Morrison,” his friend said, “so that I don’t have to get second-best.”
“Third best,” Kurt said to Zane as he got up in just as wobbly a manner. “You’re going to have to get in line behind me.”
School had been back in session for two weeks, and every night so far there had been a party during rush. The main room was already overheated as everyone danced and drank. The loud music, the laughter, the sour smell of beer that never left the frat house no matter how hard the cleaning crew worked to eradicate it—all of it felt like a vise tightening around Sean’s chest. Just as he’d needed to get out of his mother’s hospital room, he needed to get out of here, too.
Sean was pushing through the crowd, hell-bent on reaching the door, when he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
Because he was looking at the most beautiful girl in the world.
* * *
See, Serena told herself as she kept moving to the music, this isn’t so hard. In fact, she was having a really good time dancing with Abi. Serena hadn’t gotten to know her roommate too well yet, as they both always seemed to be running in different directions, but it was definitely awesome of Abi to stick with her like this. Especially considering Serena wasn’t exactly sure what she would have done if some guy had come up to her instead and wanted to dance with—