"I can't remember what happened that night. I'm not talking slippery details or fuzzy-edged visions; I mean a complete and utter blackout. Like I wasn't even there. Except... I know I was."
Since the death of her boyfriend six months ago, Morgan Cai...
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I'll never forget the night I met him.
Granted, it was also the first night of college, which tends to be something that either stays with you for the rest of your life or gets lost overnight to an alcohol-induced blackout. It's the night that—when you're in your forties, married to both a partner and a whole load of inescapable adult responsibilities—becomes either the defining memory of the good old days, full of fun and freedom and friends, or your go-to embarrassing dinner party story about a time when you couldn't handle your liquor.
For me, though, I wasn't sure it would be any of those things.
Firstly, getting wasted wasn't exactly my style. And this was a big night: the culmination of two years of anticipation, of agonizing over applications and GPAs and dorm allocations. The start of a new chapter—four years at Davidson University, Massachusetts—after months of discussion, preparation and hard work. That amount of pressure heaped on my shoulders meant I was not going to be on top form.
Then, there was Josh.
And everything that came after.
Despite my hopes, the summer before college hadn't seen me metamorphose into a social butterfly, so regular old introverted me was going to have to do her best. And I knew I had to make an effort. Even if I hadn't been grudgingly aware, there were plenty of people around me who weren't about to let me forget it.
Those first few weeks make all the difference, Mom had said, more times than I could count.
You won't get a second chance to make a first impression was my dad's cliché-topped wisdom.
And from my older sister, Vanessa, who of course had sailed through her years at the very same college with a perfect work-life balance: You've got to put yourself out there and let people get to know the real Morgan.
Still, none of them got the message through as effectively as my best friend, Hanna.
"Marcus down the hall said there's a welcome party downstairs tonight," she said, as we stood in our half-unpacked dorm room, the contents of our lives strewn all over the floor. We'd been at Davidson all of two hours, and somehow Hanna had already got a head start on the making-an-effort thing; while I'd been helping my parents carry the boxes up to our room, and trying to swallow over the lump in my throat at the thought of them leaving for good, she'd apparently been getting on first-name terms with our new neighbors. Marcus-down-the-hall was likely one of many new acquaintances. "Sounds like it's a bit of a PG-rated, RA-organized thing, but the after party should be fun. We're going."
"We are?" I asked. An innocent enough question, but Hanna could sniff out my apprehensiveness from a mile away. She raised her eyebrows. "What? I didn't say anything."
