Read Pulse (Contemporary new adult/college romance) (Club Grit Trilogy) for Free Online

but I kept smiling. Kim didn’t ask about what but she didn’t need to. Or maybe, she just didn’t care.
    It felt good to have my plans fall into place, even if it meant I had to see Skylar again.
    But in a way? It wasn’t a have to. It was a get to.

Chapter Three, #StarbucksFail:
    T HAT SUNDAY AFTERNOON, I got a text from Skylar saying we should meet at the Starbucks on campus in thirty minutes. Was he crazy or something? That was nowhere near enough time to put together a cute outfit, but somehow, I managed. I kept my makeup simple enough: dewey foundation with a bit of creme blush, some natural style eyeshadow from my Naked palette (I could finally afford the things that I’d seen on beauty sites and listed in magazines I’d read when waiting to check out at the grocery store), with some light pink lip gloss that made my already light lips even lighter, shinier, more plump and kissable. I felt the cinnamon oil sting but I knew that just meant it was working.
    Then, I slipped on a pair of my cut off shorts, which were ironically cute in Los Angeles but the kind of thing I would have worn all summer in Iowa, as well as one of the flannel shirts over a white spaghetti strap tank top, paired with a thin natural colored leather belt and a pair of strappy leather sandals that would have been super impractical anywhere but Cali.
    Before I left the house, I went to my not so secret stash of pills inside one of my purses. The pills inside glistened like sweets at a candy shop and I took out two I remembered Kim had told me were uppers and another that I used for studying. I wanted to be perky and at my most focused for the date with Skylar. I wasn’t going to rely on pills forever, just until I was ready to stop using them, just until things got easier, got better.
    I’d been saying that for three quarters now, almost a full school year.
    But hey, I was a freshman. It wasn’t like I’d be hooked for the next three years and relying on the pills for everything. I’d just take them when I partied, or when I was pulling all-nighters, or if I needed to study for tests, or if I needed a pick me up or a confidence boost or if I was bored, right?
    Luckily, Omega House was only a few minutes’ walk from the twenty-four hour Starbucks, to the point that the in kitchen espresso machine was barely ever used and the coffee grounds that were purchased for it were thrown away stale by the bagful.
    Skylar was dressed in another dark pair of jeans like he’d worn the past few nights as well as a flannel shirt like mine. He was wearing a plain black and white pair of Converse high tops as well as a leather messenger bag. His hair wasn’t styled with product, and it sort of fell on his face like bangs instead of rising in a pompadour style peak. The tattoo sleeves peeked out of his shirt sleeves but all I could really make out was the thick black X’s emblazoned on the back of his hands like two engraved shadows. As embarrassing as it was, I couldn’t tell you what his tats were yet. It’d been too dark in the club, that was my excuse, but really, I’d been too drunk to notice.
    “I guess we match,” I joked. “Twinsies!” I held up two fingers to make the number two, and realized I must look like a fucking dork making a peace sign. When Kim Lee pulled it off with her friends from South Korea who all wore designer clothes like her and pouted their lips perfectly, it looked cute. When I did it, I looked like a weird in an anime costume at a convention instead of a cute young lady. Obviously, it was a skill I needed to work on. I still wasn’t used to this new look, this way of life, even this body.
    He smiled for once, forming a dimple on his chiseled cheeks, the one soft point I’d found on him. “Yeah, it’s cute. I’m glad you like coffee. My treat, as usual,” he joked. I got the reference to the cab rides.
    “Ha. Ha, ha. Funny. You’re lucky you’re so cute, Skylar,” I said, wanting to ruffle his hair with my