Birthday Girl (The Student Union Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the table to kiss Zach Hutchison, sliding my chair next to his, easing myself over onto his lap, right there in the middle of the snack bar. Hmm. Maybe Sierra had a point. What constituted “dating,” anyway? I didn’t have to go steady with Zach. Maybe we could just have some harmless fun.
    Maybe I’d already blown my chance, though. I smiled at Zach. “So what’s your story, anyway?”
    Zach’s eyes narrowed, and he sighed. “My dad’s retired. He and my mom used to run a feed store in town, until Mom passed away.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It was a couple of years ago. But my dad’s a lot older than she is.” He shook his head. “Was. And I knew already that he was starting to forget things, but I didn’t realize he couldn’t look after himself. So I took some time off from school. He finally convinced me to come back and finish, so here I am.”
    “So what’s up with the clothes?” I asked. “And the briefcase?”
    Zach laughed again. “Hell, you don’t mince words, do you?” He hoisted his briefcase onto the table and opened it. “Backpacks are a scam. They’re fine if you’re going out into the woods and need to carry clothes, and a tent, and other stuff that’s fine if it gets smashed together like Play-Doh. If you spend most of your time hiking around a college campus carrying papers, a briefcase is just practical.”
    I looked down at my red Jansport backpack and silently cursed the way it roughed up the corners of folders, books, and papers. I’d promised myself a million times to stop jamming papers into the main pocket, because they always got crumpled down to nothing, but I knew I’d do it again within the week.
    “You may have a point about the briefcase,” I said, “but that doesn’t explain why you wear a fucking tie. ”
    “I figured if I was going to be a business major, I might as well look the part.”
    “Why business, then?”
    “To make money,” Zach said quickly. “Which I know is a crazy concept to you, but I think we have something in common anyway.”
    “What’s that?”
    “We both need to pass Geology if we’re going to make it out of here. So how about if we study a little?”

9
    When I need to let off some steam, I swim.
    When my mind feels like it’s been turned up to ten and I can’t figure out how to turn it down, I swim.
    When I can’t stop thinking about a guy who I have no intention of dating , well, swimming probably couldn’t hurt.
    Sierra figured this out about me last year. I was telling her about my history class, and cursing left and right about the idiot professor and his stupid, irrelevant assignments, and she interrupted me to say, “When was the last time you went for a swim?”
    She had a point. I went to the gym, put in a thousand meters, and went back to my room and wrote the paper. Even my roommate Ashley hanging around and playing country music couldn’t bother me.
    Since then, I try not to go more than a few days without getting into the pool.
    So after dinner, still buzzed from the Depth Charge and from Zach telling me he wanted to date me, I changed into my blue one-piece and dove in. When I visited Cascade as a prospective, the perky campus tour guide told us that the pool was donated by a wealthy alum whose son drowned because he didn’t know how to swim, and they used to make every student pass a swim test. I found the story beautiful and sad, until I mentioned it to my friend Chelsea at Mills and learned that their campus had the same rumor, and it was probably just one of those urban legends.
    While I pulled myself through the water, I thought about Zach. He hadn’t actually said he wanted to date me, just that he was asking me on a date. Not the same thing. Presumably he’d changed his mind once he realized what a freak I was, forcing him to drink weird coffee and pestering him with questions about parts of his life that he clearly didn’t want to talk about.
    I finished the first hundred meters and switched to breast