by Carrie Quest
Dropping In
Carrie Quest
To everyone who has ever lived and loved in Boulder.
Contents
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Prologue
1. Natalie
2. Ben
3. Natalie
4. Ben
5. Natalie
6. Ben
7. Natalie
8. Ben
9. Natalie
10. Ben
11. Natalie
12. Ben
13. Natalie
14. Ben
15. Natalie
16. Ben
17. Natalie
18. Ben
19. Natalie
20. Ben
21. Natalie
22. Ben
23. Natalie
24. Ben
25. Natalie
26. Ben
27. Natalie
28. Ben
29. Natalie
30. Ben
31. Natalie
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Wiping Out
Prologue
Piper
Adam
Bailing Out
Also by Carrie Quest
About the Author
Acknowledgments
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Prologue
Nine Months Ago
The earth moved sixty seconds after I grabbed the Australian surf god’s cock.
I mean, I was expecting it to be good. You don’t drag a twenty-five-year-old Australian surf god back to your shitty hostel room expecting the experience to suck, right? Shane had everything I was looking for on the last night of my New Zealand escape: abs flatter than his surfboard; a naughty glint in his eye; and a slow, deep drawl that made my toes curl. He was perfect.
We’d both been at the hostel in Christchurch for three days. On the first night, we chatted in the kitchen while our ramen noodles simmered. On the second night, we went out with a bunch of British students and ended up drunk and dirty dancing in a bar. I would have hooked up with him then, but he walked me back to the hostel at four a.m. and took off with his friends to surf. Waves before babes, I guess. Plus, we were both sleeping in the group dorm room and silent bunk-bed sex, while it can be kind of kinky, wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
For my last night I upgraded to a double room (still had the bunk beds, but at least we’d be the only ones in there), dumped our cheap-ass noodles into the same pot, and we ate outside under the stars. I brought the wine and he brought the condoms. It was backpacker romance at its finest. We laughed, we drank, we stumbled back to my room in a lip lock, and at exactly 9:47 p.m. I snaked my hand down the front of his pants to find out what Shane the Australian surfer was packing down there.
The good news? It was like a sea serpent on steroids. (In a good way.)
The bad news? At 9:48 a massive earthquake rocked Christchurch. The earth moved, all right, but his dick never even made it out of his pants.
The sound came first. A deep rumbling, like a train passing by, which was weird since I knew damn well there were no trains anywhere near this hostel. So I noticed it, sort of, but then my fingers brushed the tip of Shane’s dick and he groaned in my ear, pushing out all other noises and thoughts.
Then the shaking started, just a little rocking at first, nothing serious. The cheap metal bunk bed hopped, like someone was bouncing on the top bunk, and scooted an inch or two across the floor.
“What the fuck?” Shane removed his lips from my neck and glanced up at me, his mouth hanging open. “Is that…?”
Then shit got serious. The bed jumped into the air, crashed down, and jumped again. The metal frame vibrated, and the rumbling noise was drowned out by glass smashing as the TV rocked off the table across the room and hit the floor. I tried to sit up, but Shane lost his balance and fell across me, trapping me on the bed as it bucked up and down. The windows shattered, sending slivers of glass flying, and he swore in my ear as they bit into his bare back. My face stung and I buried it in his shoulder, then screamed and grabbed onto the first thing I could find.
Which happened to be his rapidly shrinking penis.
“Fuck!” he screamed. “FUCK FUCK FUCK!”
He tried to roll off me, but the bed was rocking so hard it skidded all the way across the room, before slamming into the door, trapping us inside. The lights flickered a few times and went out, leaving us in total darkness. I let go of Shane’s mangled love stick and grabbed his shoulder instead, pulling him into me, needing to feel something solid, even if it was 220 pounds of surfer crushing the breath out of my lungs.
His back and shoulders were slippery, and it was too dark to tell if it was sweat or blood from the shattered windows. My hands slid over his skin, desperately searching for purchase, desperately hoping for at least the illusion of safety.
The ratty wooden dresser crashed to the floor, sending my books and toiletries flying. Shane grunted and tried to roll off me again, maybe to avoid squashing me, maybe to save what was left of his manhood, but the earth bucked underneath us, and he ended up right back where he started.
It was hopeless. We were totally helpless. We couldn’t move, couldn’t escape, couldn’t control anything at all.
Adrenaline flooded through me, hitting my system so fast I felt nauseous. My heart tried to punch its way out of my chest, and I swear I could hear the blood racing through me, swooshing in time with my insane heartbeat and drowning out the “shit shit shit” that Shane was chanting in my ear.
The building creaked and plaster from the ceiling crashed down around us. The bed slid back across the room, metal legs squealing across the floor, and we hit the wall so hard I heard a crack.
I was going to die. The building was ancient and neglected and there was no way it would hold up. It would collapse, crushing the flimsy bunk bed like a tin can, and I would die. They’d find me, half-naked and entwined with an Australian surfer. We’d probably be so flattened and deeply fused together they’d have to cut us apart and wouldn’t be able to tell which parts were his and which were mine. My parents would bury his arm in Boston and my legs would turn to dust in the Australian outback, or wherever the fuck he was from.
I was going to die, and all I had to show for my life was a long line of fuck-ups. Classes I failed because I was too hungover to get my ass out of bed. Guys I dumped after one semester and then promptly erased from my phone and my mind. A closet full of half-finished craft projects at my parents’ house.
Hell, I was supposed to be on a plane home tomorrow to start the fall semester at the University of Colorado, but I’d decided sometime between the first pot of ramen noodles and Shane feeling me up in the bar that I was going to change my ticket at the airport and fly to Bali instead. I had enough money in my bank account to last another few months, and there wasn’t anything waiting for me at home except my roommate, Piper, and her psycho cat.
I was a college dropout on the fast track to sad cat lady, and it wasn’t even my fucking cat. And now I was going to die.
I closed my eyes, clutched Shane as hard as I could, and tried to block out the noise and the rocking and the fear. I tried to focus on something good: summer at the Cape with my sister when we were little, staying up way too late and laughing with Piper in the dorms our freshman year, sitting on a rooftop deck with a cold beer and watching the sun set over the Flatirons in Boulder. I held onto the vision, praying to whoever was listening that I’d be back there soon. That I’d
get another chance to do things better.
And then, suddenly, there was silence. The earth stopped moving. One last clump of plaster hit the floor, and Shane stopped swearing in my ear. He lifted his head and looked around, still holding onto me, neither of us quite able to believe we might actually be back in control of our own bodies.
We listened hard for ten, twenty, thirty seconds. Nothing.
Shane groaned and pushed himself off me. He sat and put his head in his hands, rubbing his face like he was trying to wake himself. I pulled myself up, hands shaking as I fumbled with the zipper on my hoody, and peered through the gloom. Our room was trashed. The floor was covered in plaster, splintered pieces of the dresser, and glittering pieces of glass. Shane started to get up.
“Careful of your feet,” I said.
He grunted and grabbed a blanket that was hanging off the top bunk, folding it a few times and putting it on the ground so he had something to stand on.
“You okay?” he asked. His voice was hoarse and distant.
I cleared my throat. “I think so.”
“Cool.” He surveyed the room and shook his head. “Fuck, man. I should go check on my boys. You’ll be all right?”
I fought the panic clawing its way through my chest and the urge to beg him to stay, because what did I expect? That a guy I’d known three days was going to stick around and take care of me, just because we’d almost made each other come?
“I’ll be fine,” I said.
“Nice,” he said. “You’re a cool girl, Natasha. Maybe see you later.”
“It’s Natalie,” I whispered, but he was too busy shuffling across the room on his blanket to hear me. And then he was gone.
I huddled on the bunk, hoping the lights would come back on, and I made myself a promise. I was going to be on that plane when it left tomorrow. I was going back to Boulder, back to school, and I was going to kick life in the ass. No more hangovers, no more hook-ups, and no more unfinished business. It was time to figure out my purpose in life and get my shit together.
I’d been given a second chance, and I was going to make it count.
1
Natalie
Today
“You need to think about your future, Natalie.”
My mother’s voice echoes through my laptop speakers. The connection isn’t great, so she sounds a little tinny, but the tone of disappointment and weariness comes through fine, and it’s depressingly familiar, even if I haven’t heard it for nearly a year.
I drop my eyes, feigning shame and repentance, and scan the Parental Disappointment Bingo card that my roommate, Piper, made me. You Need to Think About Your Future… Ah, yes, there it is, nestled between You Need to Apply Yourself and We Thought You’d Outgrown this Nonsense. I get to tick a box every time my parents say one of the phrases listed on the card, and Piper promised me a shot for every single box I tick, but only if I stay strong and don’t give into their demands.
My hangover tomorrow is going to be epic.
The card is nearly full. All I need now is a good old-fashioned "Why Can’t You Be More Like Your Sister?" and I’ll be a winner!
Or a complete loser, if you ask the people who created me.
“We thought you were finally on track,” my mother continues. “You’ve been taking all the right classes…”
All the classes you wanted me to take.
“…getting halfway decent grades for once…”
Studying my ass off to learn stuff I can’t imagine ever using in my life.
“…and keeping your head out of the clouds.”
Ignoring my own dreams.
“We’ve been so proud of you,” she finishes.
I drop my pen and dig the heels of my hands into my eyes so hard that I see stars. Because this is the one thing she can say that might get me to give in. My parents have been proud of me. Ridiculously proud. Loudly proud. For the first time in my entire life I beat my sister, Allie, to the top spot in the family Christmas letter. My dad requested the syllabus for my biology class emailed me relevant journal articles for each unit, so I could impress my professors. My mom made time to call me every week, which means I talk to her more now than I probably did when we lived in the same house during my high school years. I have relaxed into their approval like it was a warm, security-scented bubble bath, and the thought of climbing out and facing the cold world on my own again scares the shit out of me.
The problem is that I can’t stay in the water. I’m drowning.
“I thought you liked that physics class,” my dad says. “I sent you that article about internships, remember? A physics major would give you a lot of options in today’s world.”
Yeah, so I’ve been told. Too bad I hate physics with the fiery power of a thousand burning suns.
(Not that I’d ever calculate that power in actual numbers, because I. Fucking. Hate. Physics.)
“I don’t think it’s for me,” I say, pasting on a smile and keeping my tone bright. A quick glance at my image in the corner of the screen makes me cringe. I look manic, like one of the Wiggles on acid. Maybe I need to tone it down. Or invest in a Big Red Car.
“You’re running out of time,” Mom says. “You’re twenty-two and you haven’t even declared a major. You’ve already lost enough time: the semester you took off after freshman year to ‘find yourself,’ the year you spent gallivanting aimlessly around the world after high school graduation… The last thing you need is to waste your entire summer in a writing class.”
She whispers writing like it’s a dirty word she can’t bring herself to say out loud.
“I don’t understand why you can’t be more like your sister,” she says.
Boom! I tick off my last Bingo square but there’s no feeling of triumph. I should be used to disappointing my parents by now. I pretty much spent the first twenty-one years of my life turning it into an art form. Allie was the perfect daughter who decided she wanted to be a doctor in third grade. My parents special ordered her a pink enameled stethoscope with her name engraved on it. She wore it to school every day for years.
I was the other daughter: the wild one who fought with the boys in elementary school and got caught drinking with them as soon as I turned thirteen. I figured there was no way I’d ever live up to Allie, so what was the point in trying? The only thing I could ever beat her at was being me: pure, unadulterated Natalie. So that’s what I did.
It wasn’t like I was a total delinquent. I won prizes at school for writing. I joined the Model U.N. and submitted crap poetry to the school journal. I didn’t fly high, but I wasn’t dragging my knuckles along the ground, either. Any other parents probably would have been proud enough. Not mine.
“Allison got accepted to every single med school she applied to,” Mom reminds me. As if I need it. As if my sister’s academic perfection wasn’t burned into my brain years ago.
“She has such focus,” Mom continues. “And you keep bouncing back and forth between these crazy ideas. I thought this was over, Natalie. You’ve shown such promise this year.”
“Allie is amazing,” I agree through gritted teeth. “But I’m not her. I’m sorry to surprise you, but I’ll be staying in Boulder and taking my writing class. I’ve already paid for it.”
My mother’s eyes narrow and my father drops the medical journal he was skimming and clears his throat.
“You already paid for it?” he asks.
I nod. My heart is beating against my chest and I have the crazy thought that my parents, who are both doctors, will somehow be able to hear it with their fine-tuned stethoscope ears and realize how scared I am. Because this is it. I’m throwing down the final gauntlet.
My parents can’t actually force me to drop the class. I have enough money saved to pay for it and to get through the summer. I’m going rogue, totally outside their control, and the angry looks on their faces tell me they don’t like it.
“And what about your rent this summer?” my dad asks.
“It’s covered,�
� I say, then try to swallow. Why is my throat so frickin’ dry? I’m face-to-screen with two of the finest medical minds in the country (according to Time magazine), but I’m not about to ask them.
We stare at each other, trapped in the world’s most awkward game of Skype Chicken. First person to look away loses control of Natalie’s future. The moment stretches on and I dig my fingernails into my palms, determined that I’m not going to break eye contact first. Not this time.
“We’re trying to keep you from getting yourself stuck in a situation you’ll regret,” my mom says. “You have a habit of starting things and never finishing them, Natalie. Remember when you wanted to be a runner? You dropped out of the race and we found you hiding in the bushes.”
“That was in second grade,” I say.
“It was the start of a pattern,” she says. “A pattern that has continued for your entire life. Admit it. You know it’s true.”
I stay silent, admitting nothing, but I can feel doubt creeping in. What the hell is wrong with me? Why can’t I pick a science to major in, start researching Ivy League grad schools, make a ten-year plan, and fall into line? It’s not like I’m anything special, even my parents don’t seem to think so. Why do I think I have a right to any kind of extraordinary life?
