The Shameless Hour Read Online Free PDF

The furniture he’d bought for our dorm room had cost several times the value of everything in the tiny Manhattan apartment I shared with my mother.
    Alone in this opulence, I perched on the edge of the leather seat, unsure how to occupy my time. What does a guy do on the night he finds out his so-called girlfriend gave it up for some rich dude in a tent in Ecuador? Watch a little TV? Play a few video games?
    Ritual suicide?
    From our bedroom came the sound of moaning. Figures . It was just the soundtrack I needed tonight. Where was the universal remote, anyway? I needed that sucker, stat. I felt around between the couch cushions, but couldn’t find it.
    Then, from Mat’s bedroom, I heard grunting.
    No freaking way . Both my roommates were getting it on? Was the universe trying to tell me I would die a virgin?
    Frantic now, I got down on my hands and knees, peering under the couch, desperate for the remote. Bickley had set up his complicated video system in a way which required the remote and a NASA-style checklist of instructions he’d taped to the wood paneling on the wall.
    Unfortunately, the sexual soundtrack continued in stereo behind me. My frustration rose a hundredfold, until my hands were shaking with irritation at every fricking thing in the world.
    My foot connected with the stupid gift bag I’d been dragging around all night, almost toppling it. I gave up. Grabbing the bag, I stood and stomped out into the stairwell, letting the door close behind me. Not that I had any idea where I should go. I was pretty tired of walking around in the cold. So I sat right down on the stone staircase, like the loser that I was.
    All I had going for me was a bottle of overpriced wine. I lifted that puppy out of the bag. Owing to my lengthy walk, the champagne was cold. Or at least cold ish . I probably should have just tossed the whole gift bag into the first trash can I’d found. But what a waste, right?
    Welp . Time to get drunk on champagne. I trapped the bottle between my knees and tore the gold foil off the top.
    A little gust of cool air traveled up the stairs. Someone had come in the entryway door below me. Slow footsteps began the upward trudge. Whoever it was would soon appear, probably wondering why I was sitting there twisting the wire thingy off a champagne bottle in the freaking stairwell.
    See the World’s Biggest Loser right here, ladies and gentlemen! Step right up!
    I tossed the wire into the bag and put my hand over the cork. It wouldn’t do to put my own eye out. This night was pretty tweaked already, but if I’d learned anything, it was that things could always get worse.
    “Well hello there.”
    I looked up to see my favorite neighbor approaching me on the stairs. “Hey, Bella.” It figured that the sexiest resident of Entryway F would be the one to witness my pathetic little scene in the stairwell. Dios . What’s one more humiliation?
    To be fair, Bella had always been kind to me. Even now, she gave me a bright-eyed smile. Instead of continuing her climb toward her room on the fourth and highest floor, she took a seat beside me on the stair, folding her hands. “Throwing yourself a private party?”
    “Yeah. But if I can get this open, I’ll share.” I angled the bottle away from our faces, and slowly let up on the cork.
    Nothing happened.
    “Can I give you a hand?”
    Yet another embarrassment. Clearly, the kind of guy who knew how to uncork champagne was not the kind of guy whose girlfriend would cheat on him.
    Bella smiled at me, and that smile packed a punch. I’d always had a thing for Bella, not that I’d admit it out loud. I’d noticed her last year, when I was just a lowly freshman. There was something so lively about her. Bella had a perpetual sparkle in her eye, and color on her cheeks — the kind you get from laughing, not makeup.
    She and I didn’t get acquainted until move-in day this year, when I’d helped her carry a couple of boxes up the entryway stairs. She was a senior