Blue Smoke

Please, please, please, Reena. They have to know pretty quick. Look, look, we’ll have a yard.” She swept her arm out toward it. “We can plant flowers. Hell, we’ll grow our own vegetables and set up a stand. We’ll actually make money living here.”
    “Tell me how much, Gina.”
    “Let me get you a drink first—”
    “Spit it out,” Reena demanded. And winced when Gina blurted out the monthly rent.
    “But you have to factor in—”
    “Ssh, let me think.” Reena closed her eyes, calculated. It would be tight, she decided. But if they made their own meals, cut out some of the money they blew on movies, CDs, clothes. She could give up new clothes for the wonder of three bathrooms.
    “I’m in.”
    Gina let out a whoop, caught Reena in a hug that danced them both over the grass. “It’s going to be awesome! I can’t wait. Let’s go get some wine and drink to Scott Delauter’s academic failures.”
    “Seems mean, but oddly appropriate.” She swung around with Gina, then stopped dead. “Josh. Hi.”
    He closed the back door behind him then gave her that slow, shy smile that curled her toes. “Hi. Heard you were here.”
    “Yeah, I thought I’d take a break from studying. My brains were starting to leak out my ears.”
    “Got tomorrow for the final push.”
    “That’s what I told her.” Gina beamed at both of them. “Listen, youtwo get cozy. I’m going to go throw up now, in what will shortly be one of my own bathrooms.” She gave Reena a last boozy hug. “I’m so happy.”
    Josh watched the door slap shut behind Gina. “Should I ask why Gina’s so happy to puke?”
    “She’s happy because we’re going to move in here next semester.”
    “Really? That’s great.” He moved in a little, and with his hands still in his pockets dipped his head to kiss her. “Congratulations.”
    Nerves sizzled over her skin, a sensation she found fascinating and wonderfully adult. “I thought I’d like living in the dorm. The adventure. Me and Gina from the neighborhood, doing the coed thing. But some of the others on our floor make me crazy. One’s trying to destroy my brain with round-the-clock Mariah Carey.”
    “Insidious.”
    “I think it was starting to work.”
    “You look great. I’m glad you came. I was about to head out when I heard you were here.”
    “Oh.” Pleasure fizzled. “You’re leaving.”
    He smiled again, and took a hand out of his pocket to take one of hers. “Not anymore.”
    B o Goodnight wasn’t sure what he was doing in a strange house with a bunch of college types he didn’t know. Still, a party was a party, and he’d let Brad rope him into it.
    The music was okay, and there were plenty of girls. Tall ones, short ones, round ones, thin ones. It was like a smorgasbord of females.
    Including the one Brad was currently crazy about, and the reason they were here.
    She was a friend of a friend of one of the girls who lived in the house. And Bo liked her fine—in fact, he might have gone for her himself if Brad hadn’t seen her first.
    Rules of friendship meant he had to hang back there.
    At least Brad had lost the toss and had to serve as designated driver.Maybe neither of them should’ve been drinking as they were still shy of the legal age. But a party was a party, Bo thought again as he sipped his beer.
    Besides, he was earning his own living, paying his own rent, cooking his own meals—such as they were. He was as much, hell more of an adult than a lot of the college boys knocking them back.
    Considering his options, he scanned the room. He was a long, lanky boy of twenty with a wavy mop of black hair and eyes that were green and somewhat dreamy. His face was on the narrow side, like his build, but he thought he’d built up some pretty good biceps swinging a hammer and hauling lumber.
    He felt a bit out of place with the snippets of conversation he made out—bitching about finals, comments about poli sci and female studies. College hadn’t been for him. He’d never been happier than on the last day of high school. He’d been working summers up until then. First as a laborer, then an apprentice, and now, at twenty, he was a carpenter who made a decent wage.
    He loved making things out of wood, and he was good at it. Maybe he was good at it because he loved it. He’d gotten his education on the job, with the smell of sawdust and sweat.
    That’s how he liked it.
    And he made his own way. He didn’t have Daddy paying the bills like most of the