Free The Charming Max by Desi Lang Page A

second years. They held their glass elegantly; they kept their hands in their pockets and laughed like adults. They wore Armani shirts, so unlike the torn Gap sweaters the first year boys usually sported. Cora and Sybille looked at the elegance around them with awe.
    “Hey,”
    They turned around and saw a group of cool, sexily dressed fourth year girls looking at them suspiciously. “Do we know you?”
    Crap. The fourth year bitches! Cora and Sybille quickly said their prayers. “Um, I don’t think so.” Sybille came up with some ideas. “We’re from Medicine.” These shallow vixens couldn’t be majoring in anything deeper than art history or English literature!
    “We are from Science and Dentistry. But we never saw you around the senior parties.” One of them replied, now even more suspiciously.
    Shit! Now the girls were finished! Some brilliant ideas you had , Cora scolded Sybille with her killing gaze.
    “Why aren’t you hanging with Deborah and the rest from Medicine?” they continued cornering the girls. “Are you actually seniors?”
    Just when Sybille wanted to disappear into the ground, someone came into the picture and broke the tension. “Sybille! Great to see you here!” Max beamed, full of friendliness. The other girls seemed surprised to see him so friendly with their suspects. Sybille didn’t waste the chance. “Max! How you doing, man!” she high-fived him, to his bewilderment. “Good party, yeah?” she drove him away from the suspicious vixens, and Cora quickly tagged along them.
    “Some nerves you have to crash senior parties!” Max laughed.
    “It’s Cora’s idea.” Sybille was about to introduce the two, but Cora was faster than her. She already grabbed Max’s hand. “Hi, I’m Cora, Sybille’s roommate and most trusted confidante.”
    “Have some champagne to celebrate your brevity.” Max handed out glasses of the bubbly to the girls. Then they toasted. “For the first years!”
    Sybille and Cora chuckled. They had a lot of fun. Just when they thought things wouldn’t get better, Max spotted a group of his guy friends nearby. “Hey, those are my classmates from the comp-engine.” He motioned the two to follow him. “Let me introduce you to them.”
    And Cora was having a ball with the senior guys she always dreamt about.
    “This Max guy rocks!”
    It was the next morning. Cora and Sybille were hanging out in their hall’s dining room, haggling cups of coffee to nurse their hangover. Sybille smiled triumphantly. “Isn’t he? You don’t expect I would have cool senior friends don’t you?”
    “He’s really cool! And he introduced us to all those cool senior guys. One of them already texted me this morning! I think I’m gonna have a date soon!” Cora ignored Sybille’s gloat.
    Sybille nodded and smiled. Max was indeed the coolest guy she ever met in school. Friendly and not sleazy. He’s a keeper. She’s so lucky to find a friend like him.
    The next time she met him was in the library. She wanted to pick a book placed on the highest shelves and he helped her. Then they decided to have lunch together and he treated her tonkatsu bento set from the popular Japanese food stall. They never ran out of conversation topics. They talked over the current news, gossiped about people in the campus, even tips on internship search. “It’s never too early to think about what you want to do after graduation.” He advised. “That would help you choose the right internship over the summer break. I think the most successful people are the ones who stay on their career path and move up the ranks.”
    “Have you bagged a job already?” she asked curiously.
    “I got two possibilities, junior analyst at Cap Gemini or engineer at an IT startup. I think I will pick the Cap Gemini one.”
    “Why? Isn’t engineering major job is supposed to be engineer?” Sybille asked innocently with her big puppy eyes.
    He smiled. “I didn’t know what I wanted first. Then I tried a few