Love on the Rocks Box Set

I’ll Take the Rain-1

I’ll Take the Rain

“I can do miracles, baby!” I cry to the crowded study room of the freshman dormitory. “Watch me turn water into wine.”

I hold aloft a two-liter bottle of what appears to be Sprite. It isn’t. It’s champagne, cleverly disguised to throw off anyone who might peek in and wonder what a bunch of crazy college kids are doing up this late at night.

A girl beside me giggles as I shake up the bottle, then unscrew the top. Bubbly liquid showers the front of her tight T-shirt, outlining a lace bra beneath it and stiffening her n*****s. “So cold!” she gasps, rubbing her breasts through the wet shirt. “My headlights are on!”

“I can do anything,” I say, turning to pour the champagne into paper cups other students stick out at me. “Hold your applause, ladies and gentlemen. There’s more to come.”

Laughter again, and someone claps as I produce another bottle of illicit alcohol. It isn’t allowed on campus, for one, and sure as hell not in the freshmen dorms, but I have connections. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the way everyone grins at me, already well on their way to getting s**t-faced. And who’ll be the Big Man on Campus then?

Hello.

But as the second bottle empties as quickly as the first, I catch a glimpse of him from the corner of my eye. He stands across the room with his arms crossed—no paper cup for him, no alcohol at all, and from the way he stares, no loving tonight, either. Silent, his disapproving mouth turned down, not quite a frown but enough to tell me I’m going to hear it later on.