Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Y ou Lucky Bitch

Charlotte

I wake with a startle. Finn is sleeping beside me. The sun is just starting to rise so it’s still dark out and the air is cool. I shiver and look for my phone, which I find on the end of the blanket close to the sand. I realize last night was not a dream or nightmare. I check my phone and it’s 5:00 a.m. Shit. I have tons of messages and missed calls from my best friend and roommate, Ruby. She’s probably wondering why I didn’t come home last night. I should have texted her but everything happened so fast and my head was spinning. I completely lost track of time, which is very unlike me. I scramble, looking for my underwear. Finn is sleeping strong. I take in his features, and memories of us together last night flood my mind. He is such a hottie. I can’t believe I came here with him, but he did manage to turn my mood around and for that I’m grateful. I consider waking him but then I feel like things will be awkward. He’s a fuckboy. He said he doesn’t spend the night with a girl. I should walk away, even though walking back to campus right now is not very appealing. I give him one last look, knowing I will probably never see him again. I lick my lips, thinking how hot last night was. I slip on my sandals and walk back to campus but my sandals are rubbing my skin. My internship starts in about two hours. I could continue walking but I call an Uber and get picked up down the road from the beach. When I get to my dorm, all chaos has ensued. Some waterpipe burst overnight and the building is flooded. While I should be panicking about the chaos of the flood, I am more worried about the fact I don’t know anything about hockey. Ryan led me to believe I was most likely going to get the basketball internship. My stomach is doing summersaults. I would have started panicking last night but those orgasms put me in a state of bliss, and after my shitty night that’s all I wanted to feel. Problem is, I know basketball like the back of my hand. I’ve never watched a hockey game in my life.

I head toward my dorm room. The lobby is very chaotic for so early in the morning, and I can’t imagine what is happening on our floor. As I walk down the hall to my room, guys are moving their suitcases through the hall but they are holding them over their heads. No one is really dressed; the guys are in shorts or boxers and girls in pj’s. They must have had a rude awakening with the burst pipes.

When I arrive to the dorm room I share with my four roommates, I see they are hysterical. The shared four-person dorm was the cheapest housing option at Riverside. As a member of Riverside U’s track and field team I got a full scholarship, but our department isn’t as well-funded as some of the other sports on campus. So I had to choose one of the cheaper housing options with the money I was given. My roommates are in their pajamas standing on their beds.

My sandals are soaked from walking in the halls. I’m pretty sure they are ruined.

“This is crazy,” I state.

“Where have you been? I was worried sick.” Ruby frowns, taking me in with the clothes I was wearing yesterday.

Now all of my roommates are staring at me. I’m not really friends with the other two, so I’d rather not say.

“Out,” I mutter, hoping she can understand I don’t want to talk about my night now.

“Out?” she questions. “Like you stayed with Raph?”

The mention of his name feels like a knife twisting in my gut.

“Not now.” I eye her.

She nods with understanding.

Each of us has a closet that contains our belongings beside each single bed. There are also two bathrooms in our unit and a small kitchenette we share.

“What do we do?” Ruby says when it looks like the water is rising.

“Pack up our stuff before it all gets wet,” I respond. The past twenty-four hours of my life have been a complete shitstorm. Raph cheating, me not getting the internship I want, and my dorm flooding. What else could possibly go wrong?

“The security guard downstairs informed everyone we have an hour to vacate the building,” Ruby says.

Girls scream in the hallway, as one of my roommates begins to cry.

I take my suitcase and place it on my bed because I am practical, and I don’t want all my stuff getting ruined.

“Ruby, we’ve got to move. You can’t just stand on the bed,” I urge because she seems frozen.

She blinks. “I’m still half asleep. Sprinklers went off and woke us up.”

I start to move my clothes off the shelves and throw all my stuff that is on hangers on top. Ruby goes to the main closet and grabs her suitcase.

“I got the hockey team for my internship,” I tell Ruby. I haven’t really processed this news with all the chaos ensuing around me.

“That’s amazing,” she says, sounding all excited.

“It’s terrible, I had so many ideas for the basketball team.”

“Nah, you’ll be great. The guys are awesome. I need to tell Hayden,” she says of her brother, who is on the hockey team. They are close, with Hayden being a sophomore and Ruby being in her junior year. They were both lucky enough to attend Riverside on scholarship. I’ve never hung out with them together. Ruby usually meets with him on her own so they can have family bonding time. I met Ruby in my sophomore year when she was a freshman on the track and field team. I was mentoring her and we became instant friends. We’ve both had each other’s backs since. We have also been roommates every year since she asked for special permission to move to this dorm her freshman year since she didn’t know anyone in her dorm.

We both continue to frantically pack up our things. Right now my clothes are dry. I don’t think the elevator will be working so I don’t know how I am getting two suitcases out of here using the stairs.

“I’m freaking the hell out, Ruby. I need to be at the sports complex by seven. I should’ve spent the night brainstorming but instead I was. . .” I pause, remembering we aren’t alone.

“You were what?” she asks with anticipation.

“Nothing,” I mutter.

“You suck right now,” she informs.

“Thanks, but excuse me if I think I am a terrible match for the hockey team.”

“You’re a lucky bitch is what you are,” my roommate, Nina, says, and I lift my head to see she is looking at me.

“Excuse me?” I am confused.

“Hockey players are way better looking than basketball players,” Nina explains. “Consider yourself lucky.”

I’m too riled up and working to pack to pay her words any attention. The internship is a job I plan to take very seriously, since it can lead to a full time job when I graduate.

Ruby rolls her eyes at Nina’s comment and we both smile to each other.

“Where the hell are we going to go with our stuff?” I ask Ruby. She is my person. I have friends in my program but they aren’t close. They are more like friends to have fun with or do a project with. They are also friends with Raph, which makes things complicated now.

“The university is going to have to give us different living arrangements,” she says, sounding sure.

“What am I going to do with my suitcases? I need to be at the arena. I really need a shower,” I mutter, feeling my nerves building. My hair is full of sand and my clothes are too.

Ruby walks over to me, her eyes narrowed on my hair. I’m sure I look awful after spending a night in the sand.

She touches the top of my head. “Is that sand?”

Shit.

My eyes pop.

“Now I’m damn curious,” she says. “Did Raphael have his way with you at the beach?”

Mention of Raphael’s name makes my stomach turn. Finn was right, he was very successful in making me forget him last night but in the light of day this whole situation is shitty, and I’m a big na?ve loser for believing Raphael’s lies.

“It’s a long story,” I reply instead.

“I have time,” she replies being typical Ruby.

“Rubes, my life is screwed. Where the hell am I going to shower? I’m never going to make it to the sports complex on time, and they’re going to have a horrible first impression of me. Everything is going to shit, and I should just accept that I am destined to fail,” I rant because my nerves are rising and so is my panic.

“You’re not going to talk about yourself that way. You, Charlotte Morgan, are kick-ass and we are going to figure everything out,” Ruby cheers. “And just tell the coaches the dorm flooded.”

“We both know that sports coaches don’t like to hear excuses. I need to be there,” I say to her.

“Let me call Hayden, maybe we can put our stuff in his place until we figure things out,” Ruby suggests, pulling out her cell. Hayden is on the hockey team and lives in a house close to campus. Ruby is lucky to have him.

She calls but there is no answer.

“Shit, I’m so screwed. See, I’m going to fail at the internship. I thought bad shit happened in threes, but I think this is the fourth bad thing.” I begin to panic.

“Relax, I still have the key he gave me,” she assures.

“I can’t exactly shower in their house,” I say to her. I don’t know the guy.

“You can,” she disagrees. “But I don’t think you’re going to have time. I’ll call an Uber and we can head there now.”

Each of us has two suitcases. I don’t know how we are getting them downstairs. “How are we getting our stuff out of here?”

Ruby looks wide-eyed. She’s fresh out of answers for me.

“I’m so fucked.” I palm my forehead and pull out my cell. “It’s six.” That means I have one hour to make it to the sports complex.

My roommates are scrambling in the room. I’m still in my skirt and cropped shirt I wore yesterday, so my walk of shame is clear to everyone.

“We’ll take one suitcase down at a time,” Ruby says. I know she’s trying to calm me but it isn’t working.

“We can’t even roll the suitcases because they’ll get wet, which means we have to lift them,” I say, since that is what I saw the guys doing when I walked in.

“We’re strong, we got this,” she says, pumping her arm and showing me her muscle.

She isn’t wrong, with the amount of time we workout and train, we are strong. But I don’t know that I am strong enough to hold a large suitcase above my head for an extended period of time.

I come to lift my first suitcase but it barely budges. Ruby is holding hers in front of her stomach and her face is turning beet red.

I lift again the way she is, “Okay, go,” I say. My steps are heavy as we trudge through water and head into the hall. “When it rains it pours.”

There are other girls using the stairs, trying to get their belongings out, so we find ourselves in a line. Most girls are rolling their suitcases through the water but I can’t afford for things to get wet.

We are on the stairs, heading down flight by flight, when one girl loses her balance. It leads to a chain reaction as two more fall after her. There are screams and everyone is complaining.

“It’s the whole building, not just the third and fourth floor,” the girl who lives across the hall from us says. She is about three people in front of us.

We finally make it downstairs, and we leave the building. When I finally put my suitcase down, I fall on top of it huffing.

“Fuck, we need to go back up there,” I whine to Ruby out of breath.

She’s breathing fast too. “Yeah.” She isn’t moving.

“Ruby, please. I really need to be on time,” I beg as she limply lies over her suitcase. “I need the internship and look at me, Ruby. I’m a mess.” I look down at my clothes. I’m sweating profusely because it seems that the air-conditioning is not working in our building, and my shirt has a black stain on it from holding my suitcase.

“We should call Briar,” she says, pushing herself up and pulling her phone out of her bra. Briar is our good friend, who lives off campus, and she also has a car.

She calls Briar and it goes to voicemail, probably because she is still sleeping, and doesn’t have to be up for a couple of hours.

She tries again.

Ruby has her on speaker. “Hello,” Briar answers, her voice groggy from sleep.

“Briar, thank fuck. A water pipe burst in our building and everything is getting flooded. Can you come to pick up Charlie and me?”

“Ah yeah, what. . .how?” she sounds confused.

“Briar, I need you awake,” Ruby snaps. “Charlie has to be at her internship in like fifty minutes. She can’t be late.” Her tone has changed to slow and deliberate. “Can you please come to get Charlie and me from our dorm?”

“Oh shit,” Briar says, sounding more alert. “Yeah, getting dressed.”

“No,” I shout. A bunch of heads turn my way. “Just come as you are. I don’t have minutes to waste.”

“On it,” Briar says, and the call ends.

Ruby and I are back in our dorm, the water on the floor is higher now. We each lift our second suitcase and go back to the line heading downstairs.

“What am I going to wear? I can’t show up to the internship looking like this,” I say to Ruby.

“That outfit was clearly a hit. Raphael couldn’t keep his hands off you,” she teases. She can’t see my face right now because she is walking in front of me, but if she could she would read my hurt.

“He cheated on me,” I blurt.

Ruby’s head whips back and then she is stumbling forward, and before I know it, I am stumbling too, along with a bunch of other girls. We end up in a heap on a landing between flights of stairs.

Tears finally prick my eyes as I begin to laugh and cry at the absurdity of this scene.

“Shit, Charlie, why didn’t you say anything last night?” she asks.

“I can’t do this now.” I move to get myself up. “I need to get to that internship on time.” I am breathing hard, but I am not a quitter. That’s how I’ve made it this far, despite all the obstacles my life has put in my way.

Ruby pushes herself up too. We are like two soldiers on a mission as we weave around girls who are still on the ground and descend another flight of stairs.

When we make it to the bottom, Briar is parked along the curb, her red Toyota Rav4 sparkling in the morning sun. She’s standing beside her car in a pair of pajama pants and an oversized T-shirt. Her blond long hair is unbrushed and sunglasses cover her eyes.

She waves on her tiptoes.

I wave back to let her know I see her.

Ruby and I roll our suitcases to her SUV and we get inside.

Both of us are breathless.

“Shit, you guys look like you’ve been through a war,” Briar observes.

“Tell me about it. Thanks so much for coming,” I say, trying to catch my breath. I check my phone to see we are down to thirty minutes until I need to be at the sports complex. Luckily that the hockey house is only a few minutes away.

“Can you take us to the hockey house?” Ruby asks. “I’m sure Hayden will be fine with us leaving our stuff there.”

Briar nods and heads that way.

According to Ruby, the hockey house is big and spacious.

We make it to the hockey house in minutes. I take one suitcase and Briar helps to roll the other one.

“Hello, anyone home?” Ruby shouts as she opens the front door. When no one answers she mutters, “They must all be at morning skate.”

“Where I am supposed to be.” I quickly open a suitcase and pull out a blue plaid skirt. I match it with a dark blue tank top and grab a pair of socks, underwear, and my combat boots. “Shit, this is a nice house,” I observe.

“I know,” Ruby says. “Good to be on the hockey team.”

“Where’s the bathroom?” I ask nervously. My heart is beating fast and I just know I will be late and make a bad impression.

Ruby points off to the side. I run into the bathroom and begin to strip. I wash my face. I don’t even have anything to brush my teeth with but I use hand soap to remove my smudged makeup. I look awful or, more like, I look like I had good sex. Not that I had sex with Finn but he did make me come multiple times, so that’s a first.

I put some water in my hair and use an elastic I have on my wrist to tie it back. It’s the best I can do and it hides the sand I have in my hair a little.

I pee quickly, wash my hands, and rinse my mouth with water. What I wouldn’t do for a cup of coffee.

I trudge back out to the hallway.

“I’ll just hang out here and shower,” Ruby says. “But I want to know what the hell happened with Raphael later.”

“Briar, can you please drive me to the sports complex?” I ask.

“Sure thing,” she agrees. “What happened with Raph?”

“Not now. Come please,” I beg Briar and she follows.

I don’t have an ounce of makeup on my face. I am hungry, thirsty, and tired, but dammit it is 6:54 and I have to make it on time.

We run out to her SUV and Briar speeds down the street. “I am such a mess.” I look into the mirror on the visor.

“You’re beautiful and you will be great,” she assures.

“I don’t know a thing about hockey,” I admit to her.

“The players are hot and they need to score goals. What else do you need to know?”

“Um, everything. This isn’t my passion but it’s a paid internship, and I have to somehow prove myself so I can land a job for next year,” I explain.

“You’ll be great. Just have some faith in yourself,” she says.

“That’s kind of hard,” I reply as she pulls up to the front of the sports complex. “I found out that Raphael has been cheating on me.”

She gasps. “Shit, Charlie.”

“And worst of all I think he was cheating the whole time. I’ve been such a fool,” I vent because I am stressed right now and I feel like I may implode.

“You’re not a fool,” she says.

“I have to run.” I kiss her cheek. “Thanks, babe.”

I get out of the SUV and run to the sidewalk.

Briar opens her window. “Wait. If you broke up with Raphael then who did you spend last night with?”

“Oh, just some good-looking asshole I’ll never see again. It was nothing. He was a player and just whatever.” I wave her off. “I need to run.”

She waves and drives off. I turn around and I want to take off in a sprint, but I see a guy who looks too familiar. However, with the sun shining in my eyes, I am not sure until Finn walks closer to me.

My stomach sinks.

“I’m the asshole? You’re the one who took off on me,” he spits, looking pissed.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“I-I-I’ve got to run,” I blurt. I take off, running away from him. It’s either explain to Finn I have an internship or make it on time and make a good impression. Right now I am one minute late, which already looks bad.

I run into the sports complex and I don’t look back.

I don’t know what this Finn guy is doing here, but he was definitely in good shape with all the muscles he had. I head over to the hockey offices and knock on Coach Bailey’s door. I inhale a deep cleansing breath, you’ve got this, Charlie. . .