Page 2 of No Safe Place

“And it’s okay. I’ll live,” Olivia said. “You can go. I get it. Duty calls.”

“Oh, screw you. Duty calls,” Naomi said, sticking her tongue out. “And why don’t you rush with me already? There’s still time. We could still be roomies next year and there’s a cook at the sorority house. And as a bonus, there’ll be no more easy listening to the pleasant tones of that mysterious guy down the hall who hacks up a lung every morning. It’ll be a total win-win!”

“I can’t,” Olivia said.

“Why not?” Naomi said.

Olivia had put some thought to the very same question and the answer was twofold.

The first part was obvious. She was intimidated. Some rich kids like Naomi couldn’t be cooler, but she was the exception not the rule. Most of the sorority kids were pretty snotty toward scholarship kids who had only learned to eat with the one fork and didn’t really know how to treat the help as they actually had to clean up after themselves.

And the second answer was, what was the motivation? A social connection for a better job after graduation? Olivia didn’t want to kiss ass. No way. Or even need to. Not her. She had talent.

She’d rather just do what she’d always done. Put her nose to the grindstone and outwork and outdo the rest.

“Well, well. How do you like that?” Naomi finally said. “Olivia Ramos is at a loss for words. A first. Maybe that’s because there is no real reason. Please just think about it, okay? Some of the girls are really cool.”

“I will,” Olivia lied as she hugged her roomie bestie and then waved goodbye.

3

Naomi had been gone for about a quarter of an hour when Olivia noticed that none other than Dylan Rimmer had come in with a bunch of his bros.

One of them was wearing a traffic cone on his head like a witch’s hat and the rest of them were cracking up.

Dylan, a fellow sophomore, was in Olivia’s honors creative writing class and was known as kind of a stoner. But a pretty gorgeous one, she thought as she looked at him grinning at something his friend was telling him. Fair-haired and scruffy, he looked a bit like Bradley Cooper.

And wait a second, Olivia thought, watching Dylan as he knocked his buddy’s orange witch hat cone off his head and put him in a fake headlock.

Isn’t his current girlfriend, Kimberly Peck, the Lamb Duh Society chapter co-president?

She watched Dylan belly up to the bar a moment later. Why was she watching him? she thought. She wasn’t even into him.

Or was she?

When he was done ordering his drink, he turned and then suddenly smiled as their eyes met.

“Hey, Olivia, what’s up?” he said as he came over. “I was working on a William Carlos Williams–style poem this afternoon. You ready? It goes, ‘I’m so very terribly sorry I drank all the beer you were hiding in the back of your grandmother’s old hippie van. I was thirsty and well, I really, really wanted to get drunk.’”

Olivia laughed politely.

“Needs work,” she said, mimicking their droll writing teacher, Professor Riboni.

Dylan laughed back at that. He played the trumpet in the school band and did really stupid and funny dance moves with it at the basketball games during time-outs. Some good-looking guys could be jerky jackasses but he was fun. And he was a good writer actually.

“I didn’t know you came here, too,” Dylan said. “Wow, you look, ummm...”

She gave him an innocent, fake puzzled look. She knew how she looked. During the day, she wore her glasses and was all business but Thursday nights, the contacts were put in as she went all out.

“You look pretty ummm yourself,” she found herself saying over the music before she could stop herself.

His big blue eyes went wide. They both looked over at the DJ booth as the Black Eyed Peas standard “I Gotta Feeling” started up.

“What are you drinking there, Olivia? You’re looking a little low,” he said as the bartender came over.

The crash of glass—a dropped bottle of beer or something down the bar—made them both turn.

Now to make my hasty retreat, Olivia thought.

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