The Longest Ride Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasn’t about to embarrass herself on the dance floor, Sophia was glad she’d come. Unlike most of the college bars near campus – or any bar she’d been to, for that matter – here the people were genuinely nice. Ridiculously nice. She’d never heard so many strangers call out, “Excuse me,” or, “Sorry ’bout that,” accompanied by friendly grins as they moved out of her path. And Marcia had been right about another thing: Cute guys were everywhere, and Marcia – along with most of the other girls from the house – was taking full advantage of the situation. Since they’d arrived, none of them had had to buy a single drink.

It all felt like the kind of Saturday night she imagined occurring in Colorado or Wyoming or Montana, not that she’d ever been to any of those places. Who knew that there were so many cowboys in North Carolina? Surveying the crowd, she realized they probably weren’t real cowboys – most were there because they liked to watch the bull riding and drink beer on Saturday nights – but she’d never seen so many cowboy hats, boots, and belt buckles in one place before. And the women? They wore boots and hats, too, but between her sorority sisters and the rest of the women here, she noticed more short-shorts and bare midriffs than she’d ever seen in the campus quad on the first warm day of spring. It might as well have been a Daisy Duke convention. Marcia and the girls had gone shopping earlier that day, leaving Sophia feeling almost dowdy in her jeans and sleeveless blouse.

She sipped her drink, content to watch and listen and take it all in. Marcia had wandered off with Ashley a few minutes earlier, no doubt to talk to some guys she’d met. Most of the other girls were forming similar clusters, but Sophia didn’t feel the need to join them. She’d always been a bit of a loner, and unlike a lot of people in the house, she didn’t live and die by the rules of the sorority. Though she’d made some good friends, she was ready to move on. As scary as the prospect of real life seemed, she was excited at the thought of having her own place. She vaguely imagined a loft in some city, with bistros and coffeehouses and bars nearby, but who knew how realistic that was. The truth was that even living in a dumpy apartment off the highway in Omaha, Nebraska, would be preferable to her current situation. She was tired of living in the sorority house, and not just because Chi Omega and Sigma Chi were paired again. It was her third year in the house, and by now the drama of sorority life was wearing thin. No, scratch that. In a house with thirty-four girls, the drama was endless , and though she’d done her best to avoid it, she knew this year’s version was already under way. The new crop of sophomore girls fretted endlessly about what everyone else thought of them and how best to fit in as they vied for a higher place in the pecking order.

Even when she’d joined, Sophia hadn’t really cared about any of that stuff. She’d become a member of the sorority partly because she hadn’t gotten along with her freshman roommate and partly because all the other freshmen were rushing. She was curious to find out what it was all about, especially since the social life at Wake was defined largely by the Greek system. The next thing she knew, she was a Chi Omega and putting a deposit down on the room in the house.

She’d tried to get into the whole thing. Really. During her junior year, she’d briefly considered becoming an officer. Marcia had burst out laughing as soon as Sophia had mentioned it, and then Sophia had begun to laugh as well, and that had been the end of it. A good thing, too, because Sophia knew she would have made a lousy officer. Even though she’d attended every party, formal, and mandatory meeting, she couldn’t buy into the whole “sisterhood will change your life” ethos, nor did she believe that “being a Chi Omega will bestow lifelong benefits.”

Whenever she heard