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Sweet Filthy Boy

Wild Seasons - 1

Christina Lauren

Chapter ONE

Mia

THE DAY WE officially graduate from college is nothing like how it’s depicted in movies. I throw my cap in the air and it comes down and cracks someone in the forehead. The keynote speaker loses his notes in a gust of wind and decides to wing it, delivering a thoroughly uninspired commencement address on turning mistakes into the building blocks for a brighter tomorrow, complete with awkward stories about his recent divorce. No one on film ever looks like they’re going to die of heatstroke in their polyester gown .  .  . I’d pay someone a lot of money to burn all the pictures that were taken of me today.

But it still manages to be perfect.

Because holy shit, we’re done.

Outside the restaurant after lunch, Lorelei—or Lola for the rare few who make it to her inner circle—pulls her keys from her purse and shakes them at me with a celebratory shimmy. Her dad kisses her forehead and tries to pretend he’s not a little misty-eyed. Harlow’s entire family forms a circle around her, hugging and talking over each other, reliving the Top Ten Moments of When Harlow Walked Across the Stage and Graduated from College before pulling me close and doing the same rehash of my own fifteen seconds of fame. When they release me, I smile, watching them finish their sweet, familiar rituals.

Call me as soon as you get there safely.

Use the credit card, Harlow. No, the American Express.

I love you, Lola. Drive safe.

We shed our sweltering gowns, tumble into Lola’s old beater Chevy, and escape San Diego in a plume of exhaust and giddy catcalls for the music and booze and madness that await us this weekend. Harlow pulls up the playlist she made for the trip—Britney Spears from our first concert when we were eight. The completely inappropriate 50 Cent song our class somehow negotiated to be the theme for our junior homecoming. The bass-heavy hair metal anthem Lola swears is the best sex song ever, and about fifty others that somehow build our collective story. Harlow cranks the stereo loud enough for us all to scream-sing above the hot, dusty air blasting in through all four windows.

Lola pulls her long dark hair off her neck and hands me a rubber band, begging me to tie it back for her.

“God, why is it so damn hot?” she yells from the driver’s seat.

“Because we’re hurtling through the desert at sixty-five miles an hour in a late-eighties Chevy with no air-conditioning,” Harlow answers, fanning herself with a program from the ceremony. “Remind me why we didn’t take my car again?”

“Because it smells like Coppertone and dubious choices?” I reply and shriek when she lunges for me from the front seat.

“We’re taking my car,” Lola reminds her as she turns down the volume on Eminem, “because you nearly wrapped yours around a telephone pole trying to get away from a bug on your seat. I don’t trust your judgment behind the wheel. ”