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  Again

  Lisa Burstein

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is

  coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Lisa Burstein. All rights reserved, including

  the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any

  means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the

  Publisher, Lisa Burstein.

  Visit my website at www.lisaburstein.com.

  Edited by Bev Katz Rosenbaum

  Copy Edited by Nancy Cantor

  Cover design by Najla Qamber

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition September 2014

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  To You,

  Yes, You!

  You took a chance on me by reading this, it’s the least I can do.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  OTHER BOOKS BY LISA BURSTEIN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Chapter One

  Kate

  College-take-two started with me hiding in the dorm lobby men’s bathroom. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the urinals until after I ran inside.

  I stood with my back tight against the door gulping air like it was Riesling and I was at an all you can drink happy hour.

  How the hell did I think I’d ever pull this off? Pretend to be a nineteen-year-old freshman at twenty-nine years old?

  Going back to college might not have been one of my best ideas—but it was the only one that might finally change my life. I wanted to change my life. I needed to. It was just hard to convince myself of that once I was actually on campus with tons of real freshman all around me.

  I guess it’s a lot easier to fantasize about living your life over again than to actually go through with it.

  “Are you lost?”

  I turned and found a built, blond-haired hottie washing his hands. He dried them quickly, crossed his arms over his broad chest, and leaned against the sink.

  That was the moment I realized I was in the men’s bathroom. The moment my breathing switched from gulping Riesling at an all you can drink happy hour to puking it up into the disgusting toilet at the back of the bar when drinks switched back to full price.

  My knees went wobbly. My mouth was dry; my head seemingly floating on top of my neck. I couldn’t tell if I was suddenly unbalanced because of how handsome he was, or the realization that I clearly was lost.

  Minus a penis lost.

  “Shit,” I reached for the door handle with sweaty palms. At least I was making the kind of stupid mistake a real freshman would.

  My wide, wild eyes probably made me look as confused by my surroundings as any other student arriving, but honestly, I was terrified and not because I’d almost caught this guy with his pants down, but because this whole idea was insane.

  “It’s okay,” he said, walking toward me, waving his large hands to calm me. “This is definitely not the worst thing I’ve seen someone do the first day back.” He smiled, showing teeth that reminded me of toothpaste commercials. It brought out the sweetest dimple the size of an M&M on his chin.

  Fuck me. I smiled back.

  He paused, eyeing me up and down, perhaps noticing the tight body I was showing off in a desperate attempt to appear nineteen.

  “What makes you an expert?” I asked, hoping to change his focus. Maybe he wasn’t regarding me for the reason I thought; tight body or not, I wasn’t nineteen. I was twenty-nine. Why the hell would anyone believe any different?

  He pointed to his red polo shirt.

  Turns out he was doing his job.

  The area above his right pectoral muscle read Resident Advisor, Hudson University. There was something I couldn’t identify in his sea-glass blue eyes—almost like he was holding back, putting up a good front.

  I knew his look well. It was one I’d mastered. When it got too hard to wear my own everything-is-fine mask I doused it in alcohol and sex and bad choices, but that wasn’t a solution anymore.

  And clearly, everything wasn’t fine.

  “I need to get out of here.” I grasped for the door latch again, trying to put out the fire blazing in my neck and face.

  He reached from behind me and also went for the latch. His hand brushed against mine, blistering enough to brand my skin.

  My pulse popped like the last minute of popcorn in a microwave. I needed to get away from him. I would have usually chastised myself for even glancing in his direction. Not that I had much choice considering I’d been the one who put us in such close and uncomfortable quarters.

  Twenty-nine-year-olds didn’t spontaneously combust from a college kid’s accidental touch. But damn, this guy was fine. My RA back in college-take-one was nothing like this. If he had been I might have made it past the first semester.

  I might have passed my actual college-take-one classes.

  Of course, I also might have spent it studying what was under his khakis.

  “Let me help you,” he said, pushing on the latch as I continued to pull. His voice was a deep vibrato, as deep as his blue eyes seemed.

  “I can open a door,” I said, pulling as hard as I could. Nothing happened.

  Apparently I couldn’t.

  He lifted his arms I-surrender-style and stood back, stifling a laugh. “It’s a push.”

  “I knew that,” I looked down as I finally pushed the door open and we exited the bathroom. Not because I was embarrassed, though who was I kidding?

  I kept my eyes down. I didn’t want to show him my face. Have him laugh and say, what the hell are you doing here, old lady? Or even worse, are you here helping your daughter or son move in?

  It was one thing to be told you had a baby face your entire life. It was another to put it to the test next to actu
al babies!

  That was why I’d run into the bathroom. Too bad my early-onset cataracts had obscured the mammoth M and stick figure dude.

  We stood in front of the door, the dorm lobby brimming with students and their parents. I should have just walked away, but I liked the way he was checking me out, his gaze sliding from my just purchased Uggs to my just purchased white winter hat with cat ears smashed over my recently highlighted blond hair. I had been doing my best to look student-like.

  But I was pretty sure I looked like Hannah Montana.

  It had been easy to photoshop my high school transcript so it seemed like I graduated a year ago. Simple to change my one semester of F’s to A’s, to take the SATs again, to get a fake ID, to dress like any other nineteen-year-old. It took an hour to sublet my rent-controlled New York City apartment.

  Being here and acting like a college freshman would clearly be a lot harder.

  I took a deep breath, focusing on the chaos of the lobby. The bulletin board on the far wall was adorned with rainbow-colored construction paper that read “Welcome Back.”

  Was I seriously doing this? Damn if I didn’t wish I was at an all-you-can-drink happy hour to give me a little of my tried and true liquid courage.

  I could walk out now and forget this crazy scheme, but what did I have to go back to?

  I’d been fired and dumped by David on the same blackout of a night and was a year away from thirty with no prospects for anything better. Considering I lived paycheck to paycheck when I had a job, it meant if I didn’t succeed here I literally had nothing.

  This was my only choice. It was start over where I fucked up and flunked out last time, or give up.

  I had giving up to look forward to once I hit forty. It was time to make college-take-two my bitch.

  “Sorry about that, next time I’ll ask for directions,” I said, forcing a smile.

  “There’s a whole class here on how to work doors. You might want to enroll,” he said, lobbing back a devastating grin.

  Warmth flooded up from my stomach. I tamped it down. “I guess you already passed Smart Ass 101 with flying colors.”

  His face changed and he stepped back, like he was resetting himself, remembering himself. He scanned to the duffle on my shoulder, the rolling trunk suitcase in my hand. “Didn’t your parents come to help you today?”

  “I don’t have parents,” I said, blurting out my first lie without even thinking. Really, my mother was very much alive and very much my mother. Being the only child to a woman who was artificially inseminated meant she had wanted me desperately. The fact that I never asked to be born didn’t seem to matter to her at all.

  “Wow, sorry,” he said, his face downcast, his dimple hidden by his sunken chin. “That’s terrible.”

  Shit, what a stupid lie. I should have had a backstory ready. I was more worried about convincing everyone in my current life about where I’d be for the next four years—the Peace Corps—than remembering I’d have a whole new group of people to convince about more than my age.

  As penance, I’d made a donation. I wasn’t sure how many dams my small gift would build, but I figured it would do more for Senegalese farming than I could.

  “It’s okay, they’ve been dead a long time,” I said, thinking quickly, but saying the words made me feel like crap. My mom drove me crazy, but I loved her. She’d sacrificed a whole hell of a lot to have me. She was a working single mom by choice.

  My father was a sperm donor I’d never met, but apparently he had an immaculate background: handsome, a doctor, no mental illness in his immediate family tree.

  When I’d been caught doing something my mother couldn’t understand: sneaking alcohol at twelve, having sex on our basement couch at fourteen, flunking out of college at eighteen, she would always tell me my genetics did not align with the person I was becoming. Every time she gave me her speech about what a mess I was compared to the stock I came from, I couldn’t help but wonder if my real “father” wasn’t the hotshot in the listing at the sperm bank, but was just some homeless guy jizzing in a cup to get money for a fix.

  “I’m not sure what to say,” he replied finally. He stared at the floor, clearly uncomfortable that the wrong girl in the cute cat ears hat had wandered into his bathroom.

  It was good I couldn’t ever touch this guy because I was seriously blowing it. I was a dolt who couldn’t open doors and talked about her dead parents. I mean, legally, I could touch him, but rule number one for college-take-two was: no guys

  No wait—that was rule number two.

  Rule number one was: no alcohol which, if broken, meant I would break rule number two anyway.

  Noticing the way the sleeves of his polo shirt tightened against his biceps as he shoved his hands in his pockets demonstrated he was as good a specimen as any to break rule number two with. I shook away his superbly toned arms and what the hands attached to them could accomplish. I was doing everything differently now. School came first, middle, and last. There was no way that was happening by indulging in fantasies like this on day one.

  “What I mean is…” I paused, “…it’s been long enough that it’s not on my mind all the time.” I needed to stop talking about my fake dead parents. I needed to get onto the elevator across the lobby and get up to my dorm room.

  I understood that without alcohol I’d need a new addiction. It couldn’t be sex. Maybe I could fool my brain into making it studying. Could you get high from library fumes?

  “I get it,” he said, his face softening. “Sometimes I wonder why the past doesn’t come with an expiration date.”

  Hot and thoughtful, wasn’t that just my luck?

  “It does,” I said, swallowing hard, “but you’re the one who has to enforce it.”

  That was what I was doing, wasn’t it? My old life was over, expired. My new life had four hopefully productive years ahead.

  He didn’t reply, just watched me in a way that made my heart whack against my chest like a dog’s wagging tail. His eyes were on me and at the same time far away, clearly thinking of something else.

  This was a heavy conversation to have with someone whose name you didn’t even know, but it wasn’t likely I’d ever see him again. One good thing about a college campus was anonymity.

  “Not that I’m an expert or anything,” I said, hoping to terminate his trance.

  “It’s easier said than done,” he said, finally shaking his head like he was waking himself from a nightmare. He cleared his throat. “Sometimes I wish my parents were dead.” His lips tipped up at the corners but then, realizing it was a terrible joke, he closed his mouth tight.

  “Everyone does,” I said, “sometimes.”

  I thought about my mother. She’d called me a month ago on the morning I turned twenty-nine at the precise moment I’d shot out of her vagina, per usual. As she sang “Happy Birthday,” the memory of the night before came into excruciating focus: getting exceptionally drunk (even for me) at the Franklin Law Group holiday party, a shouting match in the elevator with David, my married fuck-buddy and boss of the past year. It wasn’t the first birthday where reliving my mother’s sacrifice, I wished I could have been shoved back in.

  That was what college-take-two was supposed to be about. Starting over literally as someone who would never do the things I’d done that led me to be who I was at twenty-nine—finally understanding my life could be more than just a series of bad decisions.

  He ran his fingers through his curly blond hair, “I’m not usually so stupid.”

  I wished I could have said that but, if my past was any indication, I always was. Never mind—it was time to climb on and ride the high that I was passing as a freshman. He might be sticking his foot right in his mouth again and again, but he was buying that I belonged here.

  “How are you usually?” It was a rush. My whole body was seemingly teeming with the number nineteen, becoming nineteen. It was bubbling out of my pores like a spell being granted in a fairy tale. Maybe lying could be my new
addiction.

  He laughed, “Actually, probably this stupid.”

  “At least you know how to open a door.”

  He exhaled, his eyes focused on mine. “It must be hard to be all alone.”

  My body chilled, seemed to fold in on itself. He understood, truly understood, loneliness. It was something I fought against. It was, if I had to admit it, one of the main reasons I drank. You could cover up anything with enough booze, even the wailing of your heart, even never knowing where half of you came from.

  “I’m used to it now,” I said, but my voice was hollow. I wasn’t alone for the reason I’d given, but I was now. With no past and no alcohol, I had been reborn by choice into someone completely new. I had no attachments, but also no safety net.

  His toothpaste commercial smile came out again. “You probably don’t want to think about all this stuff. Let’s start over.” He bit his lip and readjusted his stance. “Welcome to Nixon Hall.”

  His saying it out loud reminded me: Nixon. Of course, irony assigned me to a dorm named after a liar. Hopefully, I wouldn’t end up leaving in disgrace too.

  “My name is Carter, but you can call me Chazz.” He put his right hand on his shirt where Resident Advisor was embroidered.

  I couldn’t help wanting to know what his pectoral muscle felt like under his shirt, but I definitely did not want to call him Chazz.

  I cocked my eyebrow. “No thanks,” I said.

  He smirked, a people usually do what I tell them to do and why aren’t you, smirk. “Don’t like Chazz, huh?”

  “No offense,” I said, trying to forget my own cat ears hat, “but it’s a little douchey.”

  “A little?” he laughed with his whole perfect body. “Fine, Carter for you then.”

  “Carter,” I said, with a small wave, “I’m Kate.”

  “I don’t remember you from last semester. Did you switch dorms?”

  “Just transferred,” I said, reciting the lie that had already been planned.

  That part of my backstory was kind of true. I should have transferred after I’d flunked out of college-take-one first semester, but instead I’d moved back to New York City. College didn’t want me, so I didn’t want it either.