Chapter One

When I first met Luke Thayer, I hated him.

If this were a movie, that would have meant I was destined to fall desperately in love with

him. That’s how it always goes in the movies: first comes hate, then comes a bunch of

misunderstandings, then we’d fall hopelessly in love, get married, and have lots of babies. In real

life, it doesn’t happen that way.

Luke and I met during my first semester as an undergraduate at Harvard University. Yes,

the Harvard University. It’s a real school and people really do get educated there, other than

future presidents. You should know that there are two kinds of people who go to Harvard:

1) Smart and poor

2) Rich and dumb

I fell squarely in the first category. I’ll be blunt: I was the biggest nerd in my high school.

My many achievements included being valedictorian, captain of the math team, captain of the

chess team, and captain of the debate team. In my valedictorian speech, I talked about how we

were “the leaders of tomorrow.” You can imagine that I was super-popular with the opposite sex

when I was in high school. (Not really. I never had a date in the whole four years.)

When I got to college, I quickly declared my major: computer science. It seemed really

practical, and also turned out to be a great way to avoid the rich/dumb kids. The rich/dumb kids

were mostly business or government majors. I had no idea what kind of major “government”

was, but apparently it was wicked easy. If you wanted to spend your nights partying and picking

up chicks yet still end up with a 3.7 GPA, then government was the major for you.

So really, the poor/smart kids and the rich/dumb kids at Harvard never even had to

interact at all. With one exception:

Expository Writing.

Expository Writing (a.k.a. “expos”) was a required freshman class for every single

student at Harvard. We were forced into tiny groups of 10-12 students, in order to discuss and

write essays about gothic fiction or 18th-century poetry. It was torture, it was a rite of passage,

and it was also how I first met Luke.

My expos class was titled “The Interpretation of Short Stories.” I was lucky in that my

roommate, Delia Mendez, was in the class with me. I liked Delia, and she was hopelessly poor

just like me, so we agreed to share the considerable cost of the course reading material. Everyone

else in the class was unfamiliar to me, the usual mix of slightly awkward post-adolescents. But I

couldn’t help but notice the boy sitting across from me. I would have had to be blind not to.

This guy was possibly the best-looking guy I had ever seen in real life. He had it all: the

perfectly chiseled features, the straw-colored hair streaked with sun, the muscles barely

concealed by his expensive-looking sweater. He even had a freaking chin cleft! Even though I

hated myself for it, it was very hard not to stare. Let me tell you, they didn’t make ’em like that

at my public high school in Jersey.

We went around the room and had to introduce ourselves, and give three facts about

ourselves, two of which were true and the one of which was false. Then everyone had to guess

which was which.“My name is Ellie Jenson,” I said, when it was my turn. I offered my three “facts”: “I

was born with six fingers on each hand and had the extra two removed when I was a baby. I have

never read any of the works of William Shakespeare. And I’ve never left the United States.”

I could see everyone in the class looking at me, from my frizzy hair to my hopelessly

unfashionable T-shirt and shapeless jeans, trying to work it out. One kid piped up, “Does that

even include Shakespeare’s sonnets?”

“Yes,” I said, because that was one of the true ones. In a true testament to the public

schools of New Jersey, I somehow made it through fifteen years of schooling without once being

forced to read anything in Old English. I wondered if I’d be as lucky at Harvard. I doubted it.

“It must be the extra-finger thing,” another kid said, craning his neck to get a better look

at my hands.

I glanced up at the extremely good-looking boy, who was silently studying me. Finally,

he smiled smugly. “I bet she’s been out of the country at some point. Everyone’s at least been to

Canada.”

And that was the first time I hated Luke Thayer. Because he was absolutely right. I’d

been out of the country just once and it was during a drive to Canada. I didn’t even need a

passport.

The class voted and mostly thought that I had been born with ten fingers. When I held up

my hands to show off my tiny scars, Delia cried out, “Ew!”

Luke’s turn came soon after mine. “My name is Lucas Thayer the third but everyone calls

me Luke,” he said. I had never met someone with a roman numeral before and I couldn’t help

but feel intimidated. “I have spent every summer in Greece since I was an infant. I have seven

brothers and sisters. And I speak four languages fluently.”

The Greece thing was surely true, as evidenced by his glowing tan and the natural￾looking blond streaks in his hair. I found it very hard to believe that Luke could speak any

languages other than English fluently, and I even had my doubts about English. Then again,

something about Luke screamed out “only child.” But maybe in the huge mansion that was

surely his home, seven siblings wouldn’t be that noticeable.

We voted and it turned out that Luke was, in fact, fluent in Greek, French, and German

aside from English. His parents, while Anglo, loved Greece and had a summer home out there.

(Actually, he called it “a villa.” Arrogant jerk.) He was an only child.

On the way back to our dorm, Delia lectured me on how I needed to never tell anyone

about my little twelve-fingered secret because it was “gross” and I’d never get a date. I acted like

I didn’t care, but the truth was, I was a little worried. I was 18, after all. I didn’t want to go

through all of college without a boyfriend.

“By the way,” Delia said, “you know we have a small celebrity in our class, don’t you?”

“Really?” I asked eagerly. “Who?”

“Lucas Thayer the third,” she said in the falsely haughty voice that such a name

demanded. She giggled. “You know Thayer House?”

“Yeah…”

Delia raised her eyebrows.

“Oh no,” I groaned. “We have Thayer House in our expos class. Fantastic.”

“I know,” Delia said. “He does seem like an arrogant prick, doesn’t he?” She paused

thoughtfully. “But you have to admit, he’s awfully cute.”

“Ugh,” I said, despite secretly thinking the same thing myself. The story was Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Somehow, I always

thought that story was about finding a husband. Apparently, it’s not. It’s about a family that has

an unfortunate run-in with a bandit named The Misfit. I don’t want to give away the ending in

case you haven’t read it, but just so you know, the bandit was neither a good man nor hard to

find.

Except Luke Thayer seemed to think The Misfit was in the right. He would not let this

go.

“The Misfit has a consistent moral code,” Luke kept insisting. “He may be violent, but

his moral code never wavers. The grandmother, on the hand… she’s completely superficial! She

only cares about appearances and what people think of her.”

“So being superficial is worse than being a murderer?” I challenged him. “Maybe the

grandmother is misguided, but at least she lives her life under the confines of the law.”

Luke got this glint in his eyes and I knew exactly what he was about to say. “See,” he

began. “If you had read Hamlet, you’d know that—”

I had made a massive mistake when I admitted to the class on the first day that I’d never

read Shakespeare. From that day forth, any time Luke was struggling in an argument with me,

he’d bring up some play from Shakespeare. It was incredibly irritating.

“Oh, please!” I interrupted him. “There are no similarities between this story and

Hamlet!”

“Actually,” our professor, Dr. Cole, said. “There are some similarities between Hamlet

and this story. Luke, would you like to elaborate?”

Have I mentioned that the professor always took Luke’s side?

Luke then launched into a spontaneous speech that I was certain he knew was pure

bullshit about how O’Connor’s story mirrored Hamlet. It was a little bit amazing how he

managed to come up with all that on the spot, considering I was 99 percent sure there were no

actual similarities between the two stories. But of course, I couldn’t say for sure, considering I

never read Hamlet and everyone in the class knew it. Anyway, he sure managed to shut me up.

When we got out of class that day, I was absolutely fuming. My hands were balled up

into fists and I was grinding my teeth. I couldn’t wait to start ranting about Luke to Delia.

“My God,” Delia said, shaking her head at me. “Why don’t you and Luke just skip the

******** and have sex already?”

“What?!” Did she really think that there was even a hint of sexual tension between me

and that self-involved prick?

“It’s so obvious you two like each other,” Delia said.

“I do not like Luke!” I shuddered. “He’s horrible… he’s so self-entitled… and arrogant…

and… and…”

“Really sexy?”

No. Not really sexy. Not at all.

And even if I did think so, there was no way in hell he was thinking the same thing about

me.

Chapter Two

Let’s be clear about one thing:

Lucas Thayer the third, heir of Thayer House, was obnoxious but also extremely good￾looking. Eleanor Jenson, of Hoboken, New Jersey, heir of Mike and Susan Jenson, was not.

I wasn’t ugly. That’s probably the best I could say for myself. My face was plain and I

was far too skinny, to the point of being bony. I wore the best clothes Walmart had to offer, and

even though I’d heard of make-up, I’d really never seen it up close and personal. But the worst of

it was my hair.

Up until I was about six or seven, there was nothing wrong with my hair. Then when I hit

pre-adolescence, my hair just exploded into a huge mass of frizz. It went everywhere, did

whatever it wanted, said whatever it wanted. God forbid it rained—I’d need an extra seat for my

curls on the T.

I had no clue how to tame it. Truthfully, I didn’t try too hard. When you’re working hard

to be valedictorian of your high school, there just isn’t time for hair maintenance. But lately, I

was beginning to worry my hair was becoming a major liability.

“You know who you look like?” Delia said to me once.

“Who?”

Roseanne Roseannadanna,” she said. When I looked at her blankly, she explained, “She’s

this character Gilda Radner played on Saturday Night Live. She had this huge pouf of hair.”

We looked up a photo of her online, and as it turned out, this was not a compliment.

“Let me try using a curling iron on it,” Delia begged me.

Delia was obsessed with her curling iron. I already had one run-in with it, when she

inexplicably left it on my desk, heated up. Why, Delia? I spent the night nursing a huge burn on

my finger.

“No,” I said.

“Please?”

“No!”

“Fine,” Delia grumbled. “But Luke isn’t going to like you if you look like Roseanne

Roseannadanna.”

“Good!” I shot back.

“Oh, come on,” Delia said. “You two would be great together.”

“That is definitely not true,” I said. It really wasn’t. “We have absolutely nothing in

common. He’s a rich asshole and I’m poor as dirt.”

“Exactly!” Delia cried, clasping her hands together as she got a dreamy expression on her

face. “He’s rich and you’re poor, but he’ll love you anyway. But his parents won’t approve so

they’ll disinherit him. Then you’ll have to work to support him through law school, but your love

will carry you through. Except one of you will die young and tragically.”

I rolled my eyes. “Delia, I’m pretty sure that’s the plot of Love Story.”

“Oh yeah, you’re right,” Delia said. Love Story is the ultimate Harvard movie, which they

showed to us about a million times during orientation week, because apparently it’s also the only

Harvard movie. “I think I’ve seen that movie too many times. But still, that doesn’t mean you

and Luke aren’t meant to be.”

Truthfully, even if I liked him (which I didn’t), I knew there was no way Luke would

ever like me, even if I scalded my hair with Delia’s curling iron. After the first week of school,

I’d seen Luke walking hand in hand with a very pretty blonde-haired girl. Not only was she beautiful, but she seemed to have been perfectly constructed to compliment his own looks. Even I had to admire how good they looked as a couple. If I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Luke holding hands with someone like me, the image just seemed laughable. Lucas Thayer the third

not E.ih EIlie lenson That was an immutable fact

***

Aside from choice of majors, the other thing that separated the poor/smart kids from the rich/dumb kids was how we paid for our education. I'm sure Luke Thayer's dad (also named Luke, I guess) just withdrew his petty change from one of his Swiss bank accounts to pay Luke's tuition, but my grade school teacher parents didn't have enough money to afford their third child's private college tuition. So I ended up with loans and work scholarships. The work scholarships meant that I got to pay off some of my tuition by scrubbing the toilets of my classmates.

It was the ultimate humiliation to have to clean the bathrooms of the students I had just

tecture hall

been sharing a l h hours earlier. I preferred it when I was assigned the upperclassman dorms because it meant I at least wouldn't recognize them. But because all the freshman dorms were in Harvard Yard and that was where I lived as well, my assignments were almost invariably to the freshman rooms.

Whenever I got assigned to clean bathrooms in Thayer House, I'd think about Luke. It seemed like every day, Dr. Cole let him dominate the class discussions, and no matter how valiantlyI fought against him, I always left class feeling like he'd gotten the better of me. Worst of all, he always argued on the side of the most despicable character in the story, as if they were a personal friend of his. It was so blatantly obnoxious, there were times when I wanted to get up

20 off

and punch him in the face. But then I'd go off to my Computation Theory class and he'd go o to his Macroeconomics class and we'd never be forced to talk again, thank God.

It was good to think about Luke as I scrubbed toilets. I'd think about our most recent class discussion, the things I said, and the things I wished I could have said if the professor wasn't there. Then I could take out my anger on the Thayer toilets.

One day in October, I was scrubbing a particularly filthy bathroom in Thayer. Most bathrooms were just grimy, but this one had dirty towels tossed all over the floor and boxer shorts hanging off the sink. I picked them off and threw them into the living room, trying my best not to inhale. What a bunch of slobs. You just knew this bathroom belonged to a bunch of rich brats who had no experience cleaning up after themselves.

"Hey!" a voice interrupted my thoughts. It's the twelve-fingered girl who never read

Shakespearet"

I looked up and there he was: Luke Thayer. I guess it made sense he'd live in Thayer House. He was watching me with an amused expression on his face. I really, really wished I hadn't admitted I'd never read Shakespeare.

"Aren't you going to say hello?" Luke pressed me. I gave him a dirty look.

"I guess they didn't teach you manners in school either," he said with a shrug. My blood boiled. I grabbed a dirty, moldy towel from the floor and hurled it in his direction. I had wicked aim and it nailed him right in the head. He pulled it from his face,

looking ple

of. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he snapped. "You know, I could get you

aelye Fingers.

in a lot for that, Twelve

"My name is Ellie," I said through my teeth. “And it's your goddamn towel, douchebag."* "Actually, it's Steve's towel," Luke said. "He's the slob around here."

"Sure, whatever you say."

Luke watched me for a second. The towel had mussed his yellow hair and as much as I hated to admit it, he looked very sexy like that. It was frustrating that someone I hated so much could be so physically attractive.

"So tell me, Ellie," he said. "What's the trick to getting a toilet so spotless and clean?" "Go to hel" I replied.

"If you're not going to tell me," he said, "maybe I should watch."

The thought of Luke watching me clean his bathroom was almost too humiliating for Words.

You can't watch me," I said.

Then how will I know you didn't dunk my toothbrush in the toilet?" he said. I would never do that!" I was totally planning to do that.

"I bet you wish you had kept those other fingers," he mused. "You'd probably be much faster at scrubbing toilets."

That did it. I struggled to my feet, using the toilet brush for support. I poked him in the chest with the brush. Hard. "Hey!" he cried, looking down at the splotch the brush left on his chest. "You got toilet water on my shirt!"

"Listen, Thayer House," I said. "You can't talk to me that way, just because your great great-great-grandfather was some rich asshole who gave the college a bunch of money.

Geez, you're touchy, Twelve Fingers," he said. “Are you on your period or something?" I swear to god, I nearly decked him. "That's it!" I snapped. You can clean your own goddamn toilets!" And I stormed out in a huff. Unfortunately, I left all my cleaning supplies

behind and had to sneak back later and get them.

***

A week later, we got our grades back from our first paper. Dr. Cole handed them out in the last five minutes of class, and I was horrified to find a big red B on the to

top.

I never got Bs in high school. Never. Maybe an A-, if l'd been battling the flu or something. But a B? How could I get a B? My paper was brilliant! I could argue any point expertly didn't Dr. Cole know that I was captain of the debate team?

I felt something kick me in the ankle. Hard. I looked up and saw Luke's brown eyes staring into mine. "Hey, Twelve Fingers," he said. "What did you get?"

"None of your business," I snapped at him. I eyed the paper in his hands. "What did you get?"

He turned his paper over to show me the red A at the top. Even though I tried to check my reaction, I have to admit that my jaw dropped open. This was patently unfair. Luke wasn't even smart! He was just a jerk with a big mouth. There was no way his paper was better than mine.

You could read it if you'd like," he said, grinning as he slid the paper towards me. "Maybe you could learn something for your next assignment.

really wanted to punch him in his smug face. Instead, I yanked the paper out of his hand, and actually read a few paragraphs of it. And just as I thought it was awful.

Well, not completely awful. He wasn't entirely illiterate. And he did make some good points about Raymond Carver. But it wasn't better than mine. Clearly Dr. Cole was blinded by his good looks and inflated his grade. That was the only thing I could think of.

"Too bad they didn't teach you to write back in Jersey," Luke said, still grinning at me.

I didn't punch him, but I threw his essay back in his face. He blinked at me, surprised but still clearly very amused. "Violence is your answer to everything, isn't it?" he said. He held up his hand and bent it into a fist. "Too bad you didn't keep those extra fingers. I bet you could pack much more of a punch."

I was so distracted by my rage that Luke took this opportunity to yank my own essay paper out from below my left hand. He raised his eyebrows at me when he saw the B. Even though I should have grabbed it back from him, I didn't. I wanted him to read it and realize how much better it was than his own essay. That I was the one who deserved the A, not him.

"Wow," Luke said, as he lifted the first page and glanced at the second. You're certainly heavy-handed in your metaphors."

I stared at him. That was exactly the same criticism Dr. Cole had made in her critique of my initial draft of the paper.

He lifted his eyes and grinned at me. "Maybe you should stick to cleaning toilets, Twelve Fingers."

I snapped out of my trance and ripped my papers out of his hands. Luke still looked deeply amused, and I wanted to say something to wipe the smile off his face. I stuck my finger in his face, which surprised him, if nothing else. “At least I got in here fair and square," I said. “And not just because my father went here and gave the college a bunch of m

Luke looked like he had an answer to that, but before he could give it, I jumped out of my seat and marched right out of the classroom.

After that, I went from disliking Luke Thayer to downright despising him. The conversations in expos class became dominated by Luke and me throwing back and forth arguments. Whatever he said, I disagreed with. Whatever I said, he disagreed with.

But in a way, it paid off. I worked so hard studying the stories to come up with perfect arguments to shoot him down, I earned an easy A on my next paper.

Delia was celebrating too, because she brought up her tragic C on the first paper to a solid B+. We decided to rent a movie to watch in the common room of our dorm together. We lived in Weld, a dorm once inhabited by none other than John F. Kennedy himself. It seemed a bit of a travesty that a nerdy computer science girl and a nerdy pre-med should occupy the same space as such a great man, but like I said to Luke that day, at least we got in here fair and square. Even JFK probably got in at least partially because of nepotism.

It was a Thursday night, so the common room was empty. On Fridays and Saturdays, you could usually count on a bunch of drunk kids in there making out. I hadn't been drunk ever before and I'd never made out with a boy, so I generally avoided the common room on weekends. But Thursday night was safe.

Delia had a bag of popcorn, but when we went to pop it in the microwave, we found a big "out of order" sign taped to the door. "Lame!" Delia whined.

"There's a microwave in the Thayer common room," I recalled. I knew because I'd cleaned the bathroom in there.

"Great." Delia shoved the popcorn bag into my hands TIl see you in five," "Me?" I cried. "Why do I have to go?"

"Because I'm wearing my fuzzy slippers!" Delia said, pointing down at her feet, which were indeed cloaked in bunny slippers. Why did I wear my sneakers?

I didn't want to admit the real reason for not wanting to go to Thayer, which was that I was scared of running into Luke. Well, not scared, exactly. But he wasn't my favorite person

These days and I knew seeing him would put a crimp in my night. Then again, if I slipped in and

out of Thayer real fast, the chances of running into him were pretty slim.

I trekked out of my dorm into the yard. I was only wearing a sweater and it was freaking

cold, although at least I had my hair to keep me warm. New England was colder than Jersey by a

noticeable margin. I heard on the radio that it was supposed to snow soon.

I was shivering pretty violently by the time I reached Thayer House. Gripping my bag of

popcorn in my raw, red fingers, I raced in the direction of the common room. I noticed there was

a couple making out on the couch, but I figured I wouldn’t disturb them if I slipped in there and

popped some corn real quickly.

Except just my luck: half of the couple was Luke Thayer.

I cursed to myself. I should have known when I saw all that damned blond hair. He

looked up when I entered the room, as did the girl he was kissing. I didn’t know who she was but

she was really beautiful, and I was pretty sure it was a different girl than the last one I’d see him

with. But really, who the hell knew?

“Twelve Fingers!” Luke exclaimed, his face lighting up when he identified me.

I didn’t even look at him. I marched right to the microwave and shoved the bag inside.

Unfortunately, I had no idea how long it was supposed to go in for or how to work the controls

on this stupid microwave.

Luke noticed me struggling. He climbed over the back of the couch and landed

practically right at my feet. “Get away from me, Thayer House,” I snapped.

But Luke didn’t budge. “Can’t even work the microwave?” He clucked his tongue. “This

is kind of a disgrace. How’d you get in here anyway? Maybe they needed to fill their New

Jersey quota.”

“Well, they definitely filled up their arrogant rich asshole quota,” I replied. Stupid

microwave. If Luke wasn’t staring at me, I would have been done with the popcorn ten minutes

ago.

“What did you get on the SATs?” Luke asked me.

“I got a 1600,” I replied honestly, lifting my chin to him. A perfect score. Beat that,

Thayer House.

“Oh yeah? Me too.” He grinned at me, then pressed a button on the microwave, which

whirred into action. “I guess working microwaves wasn’t on the test.”

I stared into the microwave, willing the popcorn to pop faster. “What are you doing here,

anyway?” he said. “Don’t you live in Weld?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. How did he know that? “Yeah, so?”

“So you can’t use our microwave,” Luke said. “That’s illegal. The popcorn is rightfully

ours if you pop it here.”

“My keycard works here, so that means I am allowed,” I argued.

“Nuh-uh,” Luke said. He turned to his date, who was studying her nails. “Hey Lindsay,

we’ve got some popcorn here. Ellie here is donating it to us.”

Lindsay lifted her vivid blue eyes. God, she was really beautiful. “I don’t want it. I’m on

a diet,” she said. Even though she probably weighed about as much as that bag of popcorn.

“Lindsay doesn’t want the popcorn,” Luke reported back to me, like I wasn’t standing

right there. “She’s on a diet, apparently. So I guess I’ll let you keep your popcorn.”

I gave him a dirty look. “Wow. How gracious of you, your majesty.” He leaned in close to me and I could smell his aftershave. It occurred to me that I’d never

been so close to a man who wore aftershave before. He smelled… nice, actually. “But you have

to give me a handful,” he said.

I shook my head, clearing it of the intoxicating aroma of aftershave. “No way.”

“You’re not leaving this room if you don’t give me some popcorn,” he informed me.

“Watch me.”

The microwave dinged and we both jumped. I reached for the door, and Luke grabbed

my wrist. His grip was strong, his hand warm, and he might have hurt me if I was trying to resist,

but for some reason I wasn’t trying. I hated the fact that at that moment, I would have given him

popcorn or pretty much anything else he wanted from me.

“Luke?” Lindsay’s voice interrupted our little face-off. “What are you doing over there?”

She didn’t sound angry, only terribly bored. I wasn’t a threat to her, obviously. It was

pretty clear someone who looked like me wasn’t stealing Luke away from someone who looked

like her.

Luke dropped my wrist. “You got off easy this time, Twelve Fingers,” he said to me. His

brown eyes met mine. “But trust me, sooner or later, I’m going to get that popcorn.”

Not if I had anything to do with it.

Chapter Three

Let me tell you about Primal Scream:

This is a semiannual Harvard tradition that occurs on the night before final exams. It’s a

way to relieve stress. Basically, the students (most of the male variety) run a lap around Harvard

Yard screaming at the top of their lungs. Also, they’re completely *****.

I wasn’t planning on running Primal Scream. First, I was a girl. Nice girls don’t run

around campus *****, even on nights when it’s socially acceptable. Especially when they’re

mostly skin and bones. Second, we were in the throes of a New England winter. The temperature

was currently 16 degrees. There was ice on the ground.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to watch. Delia and I bundled up in our down-laced

winter coats, put on our warmest hats, and perched on the steps of our dorm to see the boys run

past. Even with all that padding, we were hugging ourselves and bouncing up and down to keep

warm. “I’m freezing,” Delia said. “My teeth are chattering. Look!” She showed me her quivering

jawline.

“We just need to put on more weight,” I said. “The warmest shape is spherical.”

“You’re such a nerd,” Delia said.

“Look who’s talking, pre-med.”

We were near the end of the circle so we got to watch as the herd of ***** students made

their way toward us, desperate to find their friends with clothing. I heard in the spring, they run

pretty fast, but right now there was so much ice on the ground that the boys were moving almost

in slow-motion in order to avoid falling on their bare asses. I could pick out each individual

body, each individual set of genitals. Even as I tried not to look, it was impossible not to.

“Hey, there’s Luke!” Delia said.

And then I saw him. Luke Thayer, completely *****. And… oh. My. God. If I thought he

looked good dressed, he looked incredible *****. He had such a perfect body—slim yet well￾defined muscles in his arms and legs and chest, his limbs covered with a healthy layer of golden

hair. I felt my jaw fall open. I’d heard he rowed for crew, and clearly it had paid off. I was so

mesmerized that I barely even noticed he was walking towards me.

“Hey, Twelve Fingers!” he cried.

He was standing about three feet away from me, completely *****. Considering I was

cold in my coat, he must have been freezing, but he seemed totally comfortable. I, on the other

hand, was having some difficulty taking deep breaths. I couldn’t look him in the eyes, but then

again, where the hell was I supposed to look?

“Hi,” I finally said.

“I hope you realize how cold it is,” Luke said. He grinned. “I wouldn’t want you to think

that this is all there is.”

“Uh…” I said. I didn’t know what he was talking about at the time, but Delia later

explained to me that he was referring to his *****. Although if he was apologizing for that, he

really didn’t have anything to apologize for. Not that I looked or anything. Heaven forbid.

“I guess I’ll see you around,” he said, and gave me one last wave before jogging off.

Delia took one look at my face. “So you don’t like him, huh?” she teased me.

“Suuuure….”

I believed in my heart that Delia was wrong, that I didn’t like Luke, that I could never

like someone who was such an asshole. That I would never be so superficial as to fall for

someone just based on looks, even if he did happen to have the body of a Greek god.

Yet after that night, I found myself having dreams about him. Dreams of him *****, in

bed with me, kissing me. And when I awoke, I’d always feel a touch of disappointment that it

had all just been a dream.

***

Final exams were really rough. I barely slept for almost a week, surviving on catnaps and

coffee. On the night of my last exam, all I wanted to do was crash in bed, but Delia wouldn’t

hear of it. She pointed out that I hadn’t gotten drunk once all semester and I deserved to unwind.

“We’re only eighteen,” I pointed out. “We’re too young to drink.”

Delia groaned. “I’m going to smack you, Ellie. Seriously.”

Delia had leads on a few parties, but the first one we tried wouldn’t let us in because we

were freshman. That is, we were freshman and we weren’t hot enough. We tried a second party

though and nobody was guarding the door, so we walked right in.

Despite how cold it was outside, the party felt like a sauna. It was so hot that steam

immediately filled my glasses and I had to take them off to clean them. I could feel my hair

curling. The place was dimly lit and there was loud music playing the background. I took off my

coat and tossed it onto a sticky pile on the floor.

“Hey! Twelve Fingers!” I nearly groaned when I heard the voice coming from behind

me. I didn’t want to turn around, but Delia had mysteriously disappeared and we were packed

into the room like sardines. I took a deep breath and came face to face with Luke Thayer.

“Thayer House,” I said, forcing a smile. “How are you?”

“Fan-*******-tastic,” Luke said, with a grin to show that he wasn’t on his first drink of

the evening. He ****** a tiny paper cup into my hand, like the kind you put ketchup in.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Jello shot,” Luke said. He had one in his other hand, and he popped the contents into his

mouth, then tossed the cup onto a nearby table. “Go ahead.”

“I don’t really drink,” I mumbled.

“Of course you do,” Luke said. “This is college.”

I looked down doubtfully at the green jello. It looked innocent enough, I guess. Anyway,

how much alcohol could it possibly have? I took a deep breath and popped it in my mouth,

nearly choking on the taste of rum.

“They’re strong, huh?” Luke said.

I nodded, still coughing a bit. I noticed Luke was standing very close to me. He sort of

had to be because the room was so packed, but he was even closer than he had to be. His

shoulder was touching mine.

“You were a worthy adversary this semester, Twelve Fingers,” Luke said. “I’ll miss

you.”

I laughed. “You’ll miss me? Really?”

“Of course,” he said. His golden hair was kind of damp from the heat in the room and

looked darker than it usually did. “Won’t you miss me?”

“Um.” I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. “I sort of thought you… hated me?”

“Hated you?” Luke gave me a confused look. “I don’t hate you, Ellie. In fact…” He

moved a bit closer. “I really like you.”

This was the first time a boy had ever told me that he liked me and I couldn’t believe it

was Luke Thayer. I considered pinching myself, convinced this had to be another of my crazy

dreams. “You do?”

Luke didn’t answer my question, but instead took this opportunity to press his lips against

mine. After a split second, his tongue slipped in between my lips and my mouth tingled as it

massaged my own. His breath tasted like rum and cigarettes, which to this day is a combination

that never fails to turn me on.

I allowed Luke to kiss me for probably thirty seconds too long before I pushed him away.

He grinned at me. “Was that your first kiss?”

“What?” I cried. It totally was. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” he said. “It was great. You just… I got that feeling.”

I wasn’t about to admit he was right. “Look, Luke, I can’t do this.”

His face fell. “Why not?”

“I’m not your type.”

“My type?” Luke shook his head. “What’s my type?”

“You know…” Lindsay was his type. Or any of the other identical blond beauties I’d

seen him with around campus. I was about as far from that as you could get and still be of the

same species.

“No, I don’t know.”

I sighed. “Also, we have nothing in common.”

“So?”

“So…” I was at a loss. All I knew was that being with Luke would compromise

everything I believed in. I hated him. Well, I didn’t hate him. But I hated everything about him.

He was the absolute worst kind of person. I had already given him my first kiss—I couldn’t give

him my first anything else. It would be like compromising my soul. “I just can’t, Luke.”

He looked like he was going to argue with me more, but then his shoulders sagged and he

seemed resigned to the fact that this wasn’t going to happen. “It’s too bad,” he said. “We would

have made a great team. Twelve Fingers and Thayer House.”

As Luke walked away, I felt a moment of regret. Luke was sexy as all hell and the rum

was starting to hit me. But no, I couldn’t fall for Luke Thayer. He was an arrogant asshole and I

knew he was just going to get worse as he discovered that everything in life could be his with

just a snap of the fingers. Luke was never going to know a moment of hardship. He was always

going to be a spoiled brat.