Sorority Sisters Read Online Free PDF Page A

of chivalry,” he says, his gaze on me, practically ignoring Missy. Missy doesn’t seem to mind.
    â€œI’m Ellen. This is Missy.”
    He nods and smiles. He’s got blue eyes and black hair and the sort of handsome bad-boy look that has always gotten on my nerves. I’m not interested in being a conquest for some bad boy.
    â€œWould you like to dance, Ellen?” he says.
    â€œWhat about my beer? I just got it,” I say.
    â€œYou could drink it,” he says, taking a full beer from a passing Rho Delt.
    â€œWith you crying, ‘Chug, chug, chug’?” I ask.
    â€œWould I do that to you?” he says, looking at me with a very naughty glint in his light blue eyes.
    â€œYou know you would,” I say, shaking my head at him. “But I will if you will.”
    His eyes widen; so does his grin. “You’re on.”
    Without any more stupid banter, we chug our beers. He wins, but just by a swallow. I let him win. What’s the harm? Guys love to think they can drink girls under the table, and I’m the kind of girl who loves to watch them try.
    I turn to Missy as Mike starts to lead me to the center of the room. “Go grab one of Diane Ryan’s extra guys. She can’t need them all.”
    â€œI don’t know,” Missy says, looking across the room to where Diane is standing. “She might.”

Diane
    â€“ Fall 1975 –
    Look, the reason I know so many guys is because I’m in ROTC. Sure, I knew plenty of guys before I signed on for ROTC, but that’s beside the point. Then again, maybe it’s the actual point. The thing is, I like guys and they like me, and that works out great. Or it should, but actually, no, it’s not so great, at least not all the time.
    It all started out with me having a great freshman year. In fact, it was so great that I almost flunked out. Needless to say, my dad was not pleased. Saying that my dad, a navy pilot, was not pleased is really saying something. Trust me on that.
    â€œDiane, what in the hell were you thinking?”
    That was what he said when I got home from school last summer. Naturally, Dad wasn’t expecting an answer since these rhetorical questions are part of the drill. My duty as his only child is to stand there and take it, without flinching and without whining. Any lame excuse is whining, and my dad is the one who determines what a lame excuse is. Pretty much, they’re all lame, and I base this on a lifetime of experience.
    So here’s what happened: my dad told me that he was done. He told me that if I wanted to return to ULA, then I’d have to find a way to make it happen because he sure as hell wasn’t going to throw any more money down the Diane well.
    I cried. I can admit it. I didn’t sob, but I cried.
    But Dad is not the kind of father who crumbles when faced with a few tears. Mom, having been married to him for twenty-two years, is not a crumbler either. If she’d been a crumbler, he would have chewed her up and spit her out a long time ago, like on their first date back in Meridian, the old home place. Mom and Dad met when Dad was stationed in Mississippi just before the Korean War. Mom is a true southern belle who grew up in a small-scale version of Tara, minus the slaves, the cotton, and the War Between the States, known to the rest of the world as the Civil War. It could be argued, but not by me, that Mom doesn’t understand the meaning of the term
civil war
. There’s no point in arguing it because while Mom didn’t have slaves, she did, and does, have plenty of southern bourbon. Never argue semantics with a woman clutching a highball glass. Nobody pushes a southern belle around, not even Dad. Scarlett O’Hara taught the world that, and Dad learned the lesson up close and personal from Mom. There are no scars to prove it. Southern belles have more finesse than to leave visible scars. The movies never get that part right.
    But