Blast From The Past 1 Read Online Free Page B

on before hitting the more happening joints, where drinks are far more costly.
    I pre-gamed it with the rest of them for over an hour and threw back glass after glass of beer until we were ready to hit the next spot. The pub was pretty lame, for the most part, though it did claim one of our crew. A short brunette, whose name I can’t remember now, left our pack when she ran into a frat boy she’d hooked up with a few times before, and, judging from the way the rest of the girls giggled as we left, it hadn’t been the first time she’d strayed to get laid.
    The next spot we hit was a bar right in the middle of campus. Back then, the place was named after a legendary author, and I haven’t been back there since, but I’d like to think it’s still named after him. Call me crazy, but there are way too many bars with generic, run of the mill names out there, and I only hope this one didn’t give in to the trends.
    But, anyway, I digress… There we were, in a bar named after a legendary author. The drinks were definitely more expensive, but they were also more fun and palate-pleasing. They served these fruity shots in test tubes and had trays of Jell-O shots for sale, and the four of us each took turns buying rounds for each other.
    In no time, we all were pretty drunk, especially me, as I wasn’t that much of a drinker. So, when the bartender came over to us and threw down another round of fruity shots, we all just took them.
    “Whose turn is it?” one of the girls asked, looking to the rest of us to see who was going to pull out her wallet. Her name was Beth Carmichael, and she was wearing cat-eye glasses.
    “I got the last round,” Melanie Elroy said, shaking her blonde ponytail.
    “And I got the one before that,” Julie added.
    “Well, who ordered them?” Beth asked.
    We all looked at each other, dumbfounded.
    “I did,” a voice said from behind us. “They’re on me.”
    The man standing behind us was a cliché—tall, dark, and handsome. He had a mop of curly chestnut hair that was just long enough to look unkempt but short enough to be tidy. His eyes were steely gray, and he had a bit of stubble on his face. He definitely looked a little older than the rest of us, but not so much older that he shouldn’t have been in a college bar—and, he definitely was good-looking… err, make that “great-looking.”
    “Thanks,” Beth said, and Melanie echoed.
    “Yeah, thanks,” Julie said, taking the fellow in. “But what’s your game plan? You buy four girls a shot at the bar… What? Are you looking to bang one of us or all of us? Or are you just playing the odds here?”
    The man chuckled and leaned in closer to us. “It’s called an icebreaker,” he said, eyeing each of us in turn. “You ladies looked like you were having a fun time, and I’m here all alone tonight. I figured I’d try to work my way into your little party.”
    “Or work your way into our pants,” Julie shot back. Beth and Melanie just sat there, giggling like the school girls that they were. I, however, wasn’t laughing. I stared at my empty test tube shot glass and thought about ordering another.
    “It’s not like that,” the stranger continued. “Can’t a guy just be looking for conversation and company? What makes you think I’m trying to get any of you in the sack?”
    “Come on!” Julie exclaimed. She said it so loudly that it attracted attention from other bar patrons. “You don’t just go and drop $20 on shots for random girls at the bar without expecting something .” She turned back around to face the bar and motioned to the bartender for another round. “This one’s on me,” she said, looking to the rest of us, “to wash the bad taste of his shots out of our mouths.”
    The tall, dark, and handsome man just stared at Julie, obviously offended, maybe even hurt, by how she was treating him. The rest of us just went along with the flow, as she was obviously our alpha female.
    “Well, I’m sorry to have