“Okay,” she relented. “I guess one night out isn’t going to kill me.”
An hour later, Jenna stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. “I look ridiculous.”
“You look hot,” Kate shot back. “Doesn’t she, girls?”
Her sorority sisters answered in unison.
“Absolutely!”
“I wish my jeans looked as good on me as they did on you!”
“I would kill for your hair!”
Kate and her friends had raided their closets and makeup bags to polish, straighten, and squeeze Jenna into someone she hardly recognized. Her jeans were tight, her shoes with the four-inch heels were uncomfortable, and her eyes itched from all the liner and mascara. Her hair, she had to admit, did look good. Kate had flat-ironed it until it lay smooth and shiny down her back.
Her boobs, however, were a serious source of contention. Someone had come up with a push up bra, and while it did incredible things for her otherwise pitiful thirty-four B’s, they’d paired it with a slinky, lime green shirt that left almost nothing to the imagination.
“I can’t go out wearing this.”
“You can and you will,” Kate said firmly. “Trust me, where we’re going you’ll completely fit in.”
Give Kate credit. She knew what she was talking about. Except she was wrong about the blending in part because most of the women on South Beach wore so little it made Jenna look like a nun.
“See?” Kate said as they walked down the busy sidewalk. “I told you.”
“Okay, so you were kind of right.”
“Kind of right? I’ll take it, but only if I can remind you of that for the rest of our lives.”
For the first time in nearly a week, Jenna smiled. No doubt about it, she’d hit the roommate jackpot. Kate was right about another thing, too. Using the fake ID was frighteningly easy. The bouncer at the first bar barely glanced at it before letting her through the door. After a couple of tequila sunrises that she didn’t remember paying for, they spent the next hour dancing, mostly with each other, but every once in a while a guy would cut in, and Jenna let herself go with the flow.
“Isn’t this fun!” Kate shouted over the loud music.
“I’d say yes, but then your head would get so big it wouldn’t fit through the door!” Jenna yelled back. They laughed and danced some more and she tried her hardest not to think of Ben.
They hit two more clubs, and although Jenna was grateful to Kate and her friends, she was also exhausted and her head was throbbing. Besides a nasty hangover, she was pretty sure she was going to wake up with a couple of blisters from the ridiculous heels she was wearing.
They left the fourth club (or was it the fifth?). The cool, early December night air felt refreshing against her overheated skin but she still felt as if she was going to be sick.
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
Kate looked at her with concern. “Maybe we should get a cab and head back to campus.”
“Just one more club,” one of Kate’s sorority sisters pleaded. “It opened last week and it’s already the it place on South Beach. We’ll just take a look inside and then we’ll go.”
“I don’t know…” Was she slurring her words?
“One more club! One more club!” The other girls began chanting.
Kate put her arm around Jenna. “I’m sorry about them. Let’s go inside and get some water. Then we’ll call a cab, okay?”
The thought of going into yet one more club made her feet hurt even more, but Kate and her friends had been so nice to her and she didn’t want to be a spoilsport. “Okay,” Jenna agreed.
From the outside, South Beach’s new “it” club looked exactly like the rest of the clubs they’d gone to tonight. They waited in line outside the door along with a few dozen other people. The men were older, in their thirties and forties, the women in their twenties and barely dressed.
She took a deep breath and wiggled the fake ID out of the front pocket of the too-tight jeans. The bouncer at the door was young and heavily muscled. He barely glanced at their IDs as he waved them into the bar. From the entryway, the sound of pounding music made Jenna’s head feel like it was going to explode.
“Hold on,” said a familiar male voice.