Aurora Mendez sucked in a breath. She turned to her best friend, Melanie Potter, with a look of shock.
"You didn't tell me some of the guys were coming too," she said. They were on a flight from Pittsburgh to Las Vegas and she'd just spied several guys from their college campus on the same flight.
"I was afraid if you knew Drew was coming, you'd bail," she said. They had just finished two years at the Evergreen Gap branch of Western Pennsylvania University. The trip to Vegas a last hurrah for their group of friends, some of whom were moving on to the main campus.
"Why?" Aurora whispered, glancing back anxiously to make sure the guys were not seated anywhere near them and therefore couldn't hear her. "You thought I wouldn't want to see Drew and Mary Beth together?" Aurora sighed. Only Melanie knew of the crush she'd harbored on Drew, which had started soon after they started college. Drew, to Aurora's dismay, was still dating his high school girlfriend. The Evergreen Gap campus was so small that Aurora had yet to find someone else she really liked.
"I can see why you'd think that, but I'm fine," Aurora said. "I fought too hard to go on this little sojourn of freedom."
Aurora had fought long and hard with her parents to go on this trip. They'd peppered her with a thousand questions. In fact, whether boys were traveling with them had been one of their first questions. Was she going to gamble? Was she going to drink? It went on and on. They acted as if she were sixteen instead of twenty-one! And she saved all her own money for this. She hadn't asked them for a penny.
"We just think you should save your money for school next year," her mother said.
"I'm a legal adult! I'm not asking you if I can go. I'm telling you that I'm going!" Aurora had shouted and slammed a fist onto her mother's dining room table.
"I'll be fine," she told Melanie and settled in for the flight.
They had a connection at the Atlanta airport. It was a huge airport with dazzling stores that Aurora longed to explore, but they needed to catch their connecting flight. Aurora hadn't flown since she was five years old and thought she'd be overwhelmed by trying to navigate the large airport, but she found that wasn't so. She and Melanie found the gate for their connecting flight on one of the screens, and after that it was just a matter of following signs to the lettered concourse and then the numbered gate. Piece of cake!
Aurora and Melanie checked in at their gate, visited the restroom, and found some empty seats to wait for their boarding call.
"Hey, guys!" a voice said and two girls from Western Penn at EG flopped into seats opposite them. It was Mary Beth and her friend Claire.
"I just broke up with Drew," Mary Beth announced, looking pleased. Aurora sucked in her second deep breath of the day and did her best to make her face look neutral.
"So, you're happy about that?" Melanie said.
"I was so sick of being tied down," Mary Beth said. Aurora knew Drew and Mary Beth had been dating since high school, but she wasn't sure how long before college they actually began dating. "And I'm going to Western Penn main, and he's staying here."
Aurora was dying to hear more details, but the boarding calls began, and they all became quiet and checked their seat assignments.
"That's us," Claire said. She and Mary Beth jumped up and waved as they went off to board. "See you in Vegas," they called.
Melanie nudged Aurora and have her a sly grin. "I guess we know who your new boyfriend is going to be next year," she said.
"Yeah, we'll see," Aurora muttered.
"You don't even sound excited," Melanie said. "I swear you've been crazy about him since they day we started school. Now you act like it's no big deal that he's free."
"I'm having second thoughts about going back in the fall."
"What? No way your parents will let you go to main."
"I'm not talking about going to main, either," Aurora said.
"So, what, you want to take time off? I don't see your parents going for that, either."
"But I'm twenty-one. They can't stop me." Just then, their seats were called and they dropped the discussion.
The last night of the Vegas trip, Aurora and Melanie were dancing at a club. Aurora went to the bar to get another appletini. She saw Melanie flirting with a cute guy on the dance floor, and decided to go out for some air. The club had an outdoor patio, and it was a huge relief to get out of the stuffy, loud club.
"Hey, Aurora. Come sit." Aurora turned at the sound of the voice and saw Drew, sitting at a table. He was alone.
"Where are your friends?" Aurora asked. She sat down.
"They got invited to a hot poker game. I wasn't feeling it, and I heard some of you were coming here."
Aurora nodded. "They'd better be careful who they play poker with. Melanie seems to have found a guy to dance with and I'd like for my ears to stop ringing." Oh, no. Did she sound like a whiner for saying that?
"This isn't really my kind of music," Drew said. Aurora nodded, glad they had that, at least, in common. She felt pathetic, really. She'd had two whole boyfriends to speak of. Her parents lived in Evergreen Gap, but instead of sending her to Evergreen Gap High School, she had gone to St. Bernadette's Catholic, which was a girls only school. In high school she'd briefly dated a family friend. Then at WPEG she had gone out with a guy after one of her friends set them up. When he realized she lived with her parents and he was going to get laid anytime soon, he'd done a disappearing act. Aurora hadn't been too sad about it. She had feelings for Drew, and her heart wasn't in it anyway.
Drew couldn't believe his luck. He thought his friends were crazy, playing poker with some people who were probably thugs who would shoot them after, that was true. But he heard the girls were going to be at this club and he was hoping to hang out with Aurora a bit. To find her alone was, well, hitting the jackpot. Who needed slots?
He and Mary Beth talked about seeing other people when they went to separate campuses in the fall. He'd been a little surprised when she broke up with him before the Vegas trip. He figured she wanted to make sure she didn't have a boyfriend to worry about if she met someone else in Vegas.
Drew's thought had been drawn to Aurora minutes after Mary Beth dumped him. His thoughts had been going to Aurora for awhile, and more than he cared to admit. She was beautiful, half Puerto Rican and half Italian. She had long dark hair that curled just a bit on the ends. Her eyes were dark liquid fringed with thick lashes. She had high cheekbones and a full mouth. Drew found himself wondering what it would be like to kiss that mouth. Her smooth skin was a few shades deeper from a week in the sun, which contrasted with the white of her strapless sundress. Her curves filled out the top of the sundress in a way that made his mouth water. Did she even have a clue what she did to him?
Aurora admired Drew's eyes over the rim of her martini glass. They were a gray green shade, and with his dark hair and dimples he was incredibly hot.
*****
Melanie fumbled with her key card for a moment and let herself into the hotel room. Aurora's bed was rumpled but she wasn't in it. That was odd. She had seen Aurora leave the club with Drew and it wasn't unthinkable that she'd been out all night with him. But why would Aurora come back to the room and leave again?
She turned the lights on in the bathroom and got her answer. Aurora was asleep on the floor of the bathroom.
"Ror, get up. You’re on the bathroom floor.”
Aurora blinked and looked up at her friend.
“What am I doing here?”
“How should I know? I just got back to the room and found you here.”
“My head hurts. I think I may have hit my head.”
“Are you okay? Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“No, no, it’s not that bad. Maybe too many appletinis.”
“What did you do last night? I saw you talking to Drew and you two left.” Melanie helped Aurora stand up and they sat across from one another on the beds.
Aurora looked confused. “We were talking outside of that club and...I can’t remember anything after that.”
“No one else had access to your drink, right?” Melanie looked alarmed.
“No, of course not,” Aurora said. She looked around the room. There were some flowers on the table beside the bed.
“Where did these come from?”
“I didn’t bring them. Do you think Drew gave them to you?” Melanie said.
“I don’t know. Did I bring anything else back with me?” Aurora said.
“I don’t see anything. We have to get ready to go to the airport. We’ll probably see the guy at the airport or on the plane, and maybe Drew can help fill in the blanks.”
“ I hope so. ‘Cause right now, it’s all one big blank.”
*****
“There you are, man. What are you doing? We gotta get to the airport, like, yesterday,” Hal Beatty shook Drew vigorously. Drew was asleep on a chair in their hotel lobby.
Drew woke with a start. “Where am I? Oh, no, I was supposed to meet her, and I fell asleep and why didn’t she come get me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but we’re going to miss the plane.”
“Alright! I’m coming.” Drew stood up. The white shawl Aurora had purchased the night before lay on the chair. He took it with him and hustled up to his room.
*****
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