Page 17 of The Very First Night

“Oh, McDowell.”

“That’s clear across campus.”

“It’s August, so it’s not like it’s cold. It’s a nice walk.”

“Isn’t Jenna your roommate?” he asks.

“Yeah…why?”

“Because she’s halfway down the street—I’m assuming walking with Marcus back to his apartment.”

My head jerks to the left, and what I see confirms that is exactly what she’s doing. Jenna’s hand is intertwined with Marcus’s as she laughs at something he says. They are disappearing down the road, but not toward campus.

“Shit,” I mumble as I pull out my phone. I see a text from Jenna from ten minutes ago.

Jenna

im going home with marcus. lmk when you get back to our room

I gnaw on my bottom lip, unsure of what to do. I’ve walked home by myself—hell, I did it last night—but I prefer not to. Not this late, and not when half the town is wasted. It’s not safe.

“Could you…”

“Take you home?” Elijah raises a brow.

“Yeah…”

“I would, but—” he holds up his empty can of beer, “this is my eighth Coors Light. It wouldn’t be safe for either of us for me to drive.”

“Oh.” I stare down at my hands in my lap, a pang of disappointment overtaking me.

“But I could walk you.”

Oh.

“Okay,” I say with a grin, trying desperately to hide just how excited I am.

EIGHT

KAT

As we head back inside the fraternity house, Elijah beelines for Tanner, presumably to tell him that he will be walking me home. Tanner responds, but I’m not close enough to hear him. However, I do notice the way he stares at me as Elijah walks toward me. He looks irritated—I wonder if it’s because Elijah is essentially leaving him to deal with the chaos of the party alone. It’s barely 1:00 AM and it will more than likely keep going for some time unless the cops show up.

When Elijah approaches me, I look away from Tanner and see an infectious grin plastered on his lips.

“Let’s go,” he says, placing his hand against the small of my back and guiding me toward the front door.

“You’re a junior, right?” he asks just as we’re making our way past the “K.” “Why do you stay in the dorms? I mean, you could live off campus.”

“We thought about it—we actually even looked at apartments…but the convenience of being on campus outweighed anything else, really.” Finances were the main reason living on campus made more sense, but I don’t mention that. Being the son of a governor, I can’t imagine Elijah has had a single financial struggle in his life, so I worry that my qualms might fall on deaf ears.

“That makes sense.” He nods, not prying any further.

We walk in comfortable silence until we finally reach Beall-McDowell, the middle section that houses the mailroom a ghost town save for the student employee sitting behind the counter.

“Hey, Kat!” Rochelle waves as we walk in, barely acknowledging Elijah as he trails by my side.

“Hey, Rochelle! Any chaos yet for welcome weekend?”

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