Free What If by Rebecca Donovan Page A

finally see right again, Cal is smiling up at me like something’s funny. I’m afraid my hair is stuck up or something.
    “What?” I ask, suddenly embarrassed.
    “You should laugh more. I like it.”
    I laugh again. And Cal laughs too.

Chapter Six
    “Who do you keep looking for?” Eric asks, distracting me from constantly checking the face of every girl in the room.
    “No one,” I answer, giving up with a heavy breath. If she’s going to show, she will. There’s nothing I can do about it. I should know that by now.
    “Let’s get a shot.” Eric leads us to one of the bedrooms down the hall. It has an old-fashioned barber’s chair set up in the center of it.
    A girl gets in the chair. Although she adjusts her short skirt, I can still see her red underwear when she lays back. Most of the guys in the room tilt their heads for a better view. Guess I’m not the only one who noticed.
    A guy with a backward baseball hat tips a bottle over her open mouth and then another wearing a cowboy hat helps him spin the chair while everyone cheers her on.
    “I’m not going in the chair,” I tell Eric. He chuckles and holds two fingers in the air to one of his frat brothers doling out shots. The guy steps up onto a wooden chair and says, “Open up.”
    I lean my head back and let him pour the contents of the bottle in my mouth, gulping way too many times by the time he’s done.
    “Shit.” I shudder and step away so Eric can take his turn.
    I hold my hand up with a shake of my head when Eric offers me a beer from their cooler. “I’m done.” He gives it to me anyway, but I don’t open it. I’m sure I’ll be feeling whatever I just did an upside down shot of soon enough. Besides, hangovers are not my friend. “Really. I need to drive. Are you staying here tonight or coming back to the apartment with me?”
    He takes the beer from me and double fists it. “Depends on how the night goes,” he says, eyeing a blonde walking by.
    I don’t know when I lose him. But somewhere on the second floor, when I catch myself looking around for Nyelle again, I realize Eric’s gone. Which probably means he’s going to be crashing here tonight.
    I stay upstairs for a while, watching people annihilate themselves as they go from room to room taking shots. Each room offers a different flavor and some asinine way of drinking it—whether through a beer funnel, hanging upside down on a bar suspended from the ceiling, or by dunking their head into a pool filled with vodka-infused Jell-O. It’s entertaining, at least until I sober up.
    “Hi.”
    I slowly turn around.
    “Want to get a drink?”
    I grin at the cute girl with long black hair and big brown eyes smiling up at me.
    “Uh, sure.” I can handle one more drink… for her. I’d be stupid to say no.
    I lead the way to the basement, where the official bar is set up. She grabs my hand so we don’t get separated, and I walk closer to her to make sure we’re not pulled apart.
    “What would you like?” I bend down and ask in her ear. She smells sweet, like strawberries.
    “They have this blue drink that’s good.”
    I order for her and take a beer for myself.
    “I’m Cal,” I holler over the deafening music.
    “Jade.” She smiles, exposing deep dimples that make her ten times cuter. “Are you with the house?”
    “My roommate is.”
    A laugh cuts through the crowd, and I instinctively turn my head. I search the underlit room but don’t see her.
    “You okay?” Jade asks, appearing concerned.
    “Uh, yeah. Sorry. I thought I heard someone I know.” I need to quit being an idiot and stop looking for Nyelle. She didn’t want to be here with me or else she would’ve shown. But there’s a girl who
is
interested right in front of me.
    “An ex?” She scrunches her nose.
    I shake my head. “No. Not an ex.” Although bumping into one of them is a probability that I’d rather not think about.
    I try to have a conversation with Jade. It’s not working. This isn’t the