“Are you sure you’re all right moving our bags to the condo all by yourselves, Mom and Dad? I don’t want to be any trouble.”

My mom laughs as she always does when Marley calls her ‘mom’. “We’ll be fine Marley. You girls can walk down the street and rent some bikes and go to the beach, or do whatever you want. Colbi has her emergency credit card if you get hungry, right Colee?”

“Yeah, we’ll be fine, Mom. C’mon Marley, let’s go.” I grab her narrow wrist and forcefully drag her out the hotel room door.

“Be careful in the crosswalks!” My mom yells just as the door slams shut.

I turn to Marley and laugh. “How old does she think we are? Three? We should probably hold hands when we cross the street. And don’t get in any strange vans, even if they advertise candy!”

“You’re too hard on her,” She scolds, even though she’s trying not to laugh at my impersonation, “She loves you, be nice!”
***

Later, with our bikes rented, our beach bags packed, and our skin oiled to maximize tan-ability, we finally make our way to the beach. It’s about a two mile ride from the bike rental shop, so we sing Taylor Swift’s ‘We Are Never Getting Back Together’ at the top of our lungs while weaving all over the bike path.

I begin to sing, “I used to think that we were forever-ever…” when Marley weaves right into me, trying to knock me over. I don’t hear any cars on the road, so I jump into the crosswalk a couple feet early and turn back at her with a look of triumph on my face. She stares back at me with one of horror. That’s when the car hits me.

Marley screams and tires screech and all I can think is that my butt really hurts from landing on the asphalt and that I’d really like to get out from under my bike. Two doors open and slam shut and my bike is being lifted off of me by a boy who looks just like Harry Styles and I am in serious danger of having a fangirl attack. He sets it to the side and asks me (sadly, not in a British accent), “Are you all right? Did you hit your head or break anything?”

I’m about to tell him I’m okay, when my wonderful best friend starts to wail on him with her beach towel. “No she isn’t all right! Does she look all right? No! Your idiot friend over there hit her with his car!” I look over and see his idiot friend cowering on the side of the road where he had clearly been beaten into submission by Marley.

I reach up and intercept her towel. “Calm down. I’m fine. Just bruised my ass…and my pride. But other than that I’m fine.” I smile reassuringly. “It’s my fault anyway; I jumped out into the road.”

“I wasn’t going that fast... I was just about to stop…” The driver on the side of the road tries to speak, but Marley marches over and starts to beat him with the towel again.

“Shut. Up. You. No speaking.” And then she whacks him once more for good measure. She’s on a roll. There’s no stopping her.

The Harry Styles look-alike walks towards her and raises his hands in a conciliatory gesture when she raises her weapon against him. “Look, no harm, no foul, okay? I’m sorry he lightly tapped your friend, but she jumped out in the road, and you pushed her. We’re all a little at fault here. I’d like to make a peace offering.” He comes back to where I am still in the middle of the street, offers me his hand, and walks me over to Marley. “How would you ladies like to come to a party tonight? It’s at the Bancroft Mansion. Huge, gaudy thing, just take the last left before the causeway and it’s the last house on that street. I’m Spencer, and Jordan is the one that hit you with the car. Here, give me your phone and I’ll give you my number. Text me if you get lost or anybody gives you any problems. Local kids tend to not like tourists.”

I give him my phone. “So you aren’t like most locals then?”

He glances at Marley. “You both seem different. I’ll see you tonight. Let’s go Jordan, we have to pick Mason up from work.” With that they get back in the car and leave Marley and I on the side of the road with our bikes.

“We can’t go to that party. That guy hit you with a car. We can’t go.”

“Allow me to bring out the list of rules. If we are invited, we must go!”

“We also can’t go to any loser parties. Only losers hit people with cars, you know. Those guys were losers.”

“Those guys were not losers; those guys were hot. Spencer thinks you’re hot. Did you see the way he kept looking at you?”

She blushes and smiles. “Fine, we’ll go. If we can get you to the beach and back in one piece.”
***

Twelve hours later we are dressed in our smallest shorts and new crop tops to show off our tans from today, completely prepared to attend our first Florida party. The party starts with us climbing out the window of our shared condo bedroom to avoid waking my parents. When we hit the parking lot I take Marley’s phone, dial Spencer’s number and press it to her ear. She tries to hand it back to me, but I manage to make her hold on to it. When he answers I mouth, Ask for a ride! After she hangs up she informs me that she hates me.

“Maybe so, but now we don’t have to walk five miles to get there, and we’ll know somebody walking in…and I know you wanted to see Spencer again!” She shoves me, I shove her back, and headlights illuminate our fight. It’s a pickup truck with Spencer surfing in the back, Jordan riding shotgun, and somebody else driving.

“I figured Jordan shouldn’t drive since he ran you over, Colbi!” Spencer shouts over the engine. “To make up for that some more you get to ride up front, but Marley has to ride in the back with me.” I grin at her and she glares at me.

Jordan gets out of the passenger door to grant me access to the middle seat. He holds the door open for me and offers me a hand up. “Colbi, this is Mason Simmons, the owner of our fine transportation this evening. Mason, this is Colbi, the girl I ran over with my car this morning.”

“I’ve always said the Jordan shouldn’t have been allowed a driver’s license. It’s really nice to meet you, Colbi, especially in one piece and not broken.” He shakes my hand.

To put it lightly, Mason is attractive. Even sitting down I can tell that he’s at least 6’5”, so he has the tall, dark, and handsome thing down. Except instead of being mysterious and closed off, he has the open and happy demeanor of a puppy. It’s endearing and really cute.

We drive to the east end of the island and turn down a road marked ‘No Outlet’. It looks like an empty, dead end street to me, and I’m about to ask if we’re really going to right way when Mason drives around a bend and there it is. I immediately see what Spencer meant about the Bancroft Mansion being a “huge, gaudy thing”. It’s like an architect decided to take a traditional Mediterranean style house and enlarge it to epic proportions. Maybe it looks normal during the day, but lit up with floodlights like it is now, with deafening hip-hop music pouring out of every opening, and solo cups littering the lawn already, it looks a little strange.

“Guys, aren’t they worried about cops breaking this up? I know we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere, but I’ve heard the cops here are really strict…”

Jordan snickers. “Yeah, that’s only if your mom isn’t banging a cop on the side to bribe them. Mrs. B is a serious MILF.”

“Except Mrs. B isn’t the one banging the cop. She started that rumor herself to protect Liz. Liz bangs the cop. She thinks he’s sexy.”

“How do you even know that?”

“Irrelevant. But accurate, nonetheless. I’ve got this island on lockdown,” Mason says to me with a wink. He then helps me down from the truck and begins to pull me toward the party. I try to turn back, or at least wait for Marley, but he just keeps going.

“Mason, wait. I should really wait for Marley.”

He stops and turns back to me, smirking. “She’s a big girl, she can take care of herself,” he says, nodding in the direction of his truck. I look over my shoulder to see that she has Spencer backed up against the rear tire, and he leans down to kiss her.

Turning back to Mason, I laugh. “Yeah, I suppose she can. I would ask when the heck that happened, but honestly, I’m not even sure I want to know.”

“They’ve got the right idea, you know. What happens on the island stays on the island. Come on, we need to get some alcohol in you.” And with another wink, he takes my hand and leads me toward the front door.
***

To be completely honest, I don’t know exactly how much time passed and I don’t know exactly how much I drank, but know this: I have never been drunk before, and I weigh 110 pounds. I drank a lot more than I should. I should have protested when Mason took me away from the party and up a staircase, but I didn’t. Somewhere I knew it was a bad idea, but the alcohol in me told my subconscious to shut up and enjoy the party.

To be completely honest, although I knew that I shouldn’t want to follow Mason into an empty bedroom, I knew I shouldn’t want to fall on top on him onto the bed, I knew I shouldn’t want to be kissing him like this… I did want it. I think drunk or not, I would have wanted all of it.

I’ve never been kissed like this before. It’s amazing. His hands move under me to lift me to his level as his mouth moves from my lips, down my neck, along my collarbone, and the feeling that comes along with all this is just indescribable. When he lifts me up my hands are on his arms and his biceps are huge—he’s just so strong. Absently, I notice my phone isn’t in my back pocket where it should be, and I wonder if maybe it fell out onto the floor, but when my lips meet Mason’s again, I’m no longer capable of thought. There is only me, and him, and nothing else matters.

His hands move under my shirt, and I sit up to take it off. Just as it is about to pass over my head, a girl laughs in the hallway. Mason stiffens, with a look of horror on his face, and immediately pulls my top back down.

“We have to get out of here.” He pulls me off the bed. “The bathroom connects to the guest bedroom,” he explains as he pushes me through the door ahead of him. We get out of the guest bedroom just as the mystery giggling girl shuts the door to the room we were just in, and we escape down the service stairs we came up, where I lose him in the throngs of people. Thankfully I find Marley shortly.

“Where have you been? I’ve been texting you for like 20 minutes, I thought he killed you and fed you to the alligators or something!” She grabs me by my shoulders and shakes me.

“It’s okay, I lost my phone under the bed in the room we were in, then the owner of the room came upstairs so we had to leave really fast. My phones still there, so I’ll have some awkward explaining to do later. On the bright side, several objectives have already been accomplished. Tonight we’ve flirted with cute boys, made out with cute boys, attended an awesome party, and I’m on my way to being seriously drunk. Or maybe I already am seriously drunk. But for good measure…” I grab another beer, and Marley and I compare notes on tonight’s events so far.

Just then the music changes and the floodlights all go out except for one, which is trained on a girl standing at the top of the stairs…but to simply call her a girl doesn’t do her justice. She could be the queen of the Victoria’s Secret Angels—a Victoria’s Secret Goddess. She’s all tan legs that start in a microscopic skirt, go on for miles, and end in a pair of strappy stilettos. Her perfectly highlighted hair is curled just so, and her teeth sparkle as she smiles down at the peasants waiting for their queen. She begins to descend and the light follows her every move. She glows.

“Wow… If I were a lesbian I would totally do her,” Marley says, voicing my thoughts.

A hand reaches out of the masses to help her off the last step, and as a path clears I see the hand belongs to Mason. He’s such a nice guy! She then falls gracefully into his incredibly muscular arms—which I now have a very intimate knowledge of—as he dips her to the floor and kisses her deeply. It takes all of my strength to remain standing as my knees disappear and my legs turn to Jello. Marley’s jaw drops open and she turns to stare at me blankly. Even she is at a loss for words. Suddenly, Spencer is standing behind us with his arm around Marley’s shoulders.

“Enjoy the show? It’s gotten a little old for me. She does that at every party and those two are sickening to be around. You already know Mason, and that’s his girlfriend, Haley Bancroft.”

His girlfriend—Haley Bancroft. Bancroft Mansion. Then if occurs to me. This is her mansion, her party…and I’ve just been in her bedroom, making out with her boyfriend. And my cell phone is under her bed.