By Referral Only Read online

  By Referral Only

  a Whitman University novel

  Lyla Payne

  Praise for Broken at Love

  A USAToday Bestseller

  “If you like Abbi Glines, you'll love Lyla Payne…Broken at Love is a sexy new adult novel that will leave you breathless for more!” – Denise Grover Swank, bestselling author of The Chosen series.

  “Broken at Love is sexy, engaging and unputdownable! Emilie and Quinn sizzle on the page.” – Jennifer Iacopelli, author of Game. Set. Match (forthcoming from Coliloquy, May 2013).

  To every weird, accepting, creative, confident theatre kid I’ve ever known.

  Chapter 1

  I hadn’t had sex in months.

  Somehow my vagina had gotten the idea that Liam was the one we wanted, even if it meant waiting. After last summer’s run of As You Like It, we’d been cast opposite each other in a community production of West Side Story, which meant the two of us had spent the better part of three months mooning about and getting it on in front of an audience, but he still didn’t seem all that interested in moving the hanky-panky offstage.

  The ridiculous wig that came with the part of Maria probably wasn’t helping matters. My blonde-haired, blue-eyed Northern European genes would have earned me a special place in Hitler’s heart, but sadly, did not make me the best looking Puerto Rican on the block. Liam had playfully suggested that I’d need to stuff my bra and my ass, too.

  The performance had allowed me to test our chemistry, and Liam had already made it through the sexual cattle call audition and callbacks. And I was very interested in having him in for a cold reading.

  Or in this case, a hot one.

  I considered potential ways to make that happen as I steered my Acura into the Delta Epsilon parking lot, taking care to avoid anyone who might be stumbling home less than sober on a Saturday night. A few second-floor windows glowed and the front porch light illuminated the padded swing as it swayed gently in the late summer breeze. White columns and black shutters completed the classic antebellum look of my home away from home. Like the area my parents had moved after my dad’s company went public and the cash started rolling in, the pretentiousness of Whitman’s Greek Row was adorable.

  It all looked so inviting it made me want to hug a damn house, but the knowledge that Emilie wouldn’t be waiting in our room to chat about my night sank heaviness through my middle. There should be a word for that feeling when you’re so happy that your best friend has found the goddamn unicorn of men—hot, adoring, and amazingly attentive in the sack—but you’ll be forced to kill her if she doesn’t stop talking about how happy said unicorn makes her. Several times a day.

  Come to think of it, there should be a mitigated jail sentence, too.

  I got out of the car and grabbed my bag, light on the weekend before classes began for the fall semester, then slammed the door and headed up the steps. Emilie hadn’t spent the night here since Recruitment ended last week and I missed her. Even her absence reminded me she’d found something amazing, once in a lifetime, and it made it harder to pretend I didn’t want it, too.

  At least, not with anyone at Whitman.

  I’d learned my lesson about what I could expect from the guys at this school before Christmas break my freshman year. Looking back, it had been naïve of me to believe the kids here would be any different than the entitled brats at my private high school, but I had foolishly assumed that having money for ten years instead of five made me an insider.

  It didn’t.

  Michael Lawrence had taught me that, and pretty much ripped my heart into shreds in the process. A big part of Liam’s appeal was that he didn’t attend the college, and didn’t judge me because of how and when my parents made their fortunes. I might want to find a unicorn of my own, but for now, finding something safe and pleasant to ride in the interim would have to do.

  A figure on the porch caught my eye as my heavy legs trudged for the front door. She must have just gotten home, too, because she hadn’t been here when I parked. The short, straight blonde hair that ended in a bob at the nape of her neck was mussed all to hell, and she wore a tight, short black dress. A pair of four-inch expensive heels dangled from two fingers as she randomly stabbed at different room numbers on the intercom.

  “Motherfucking bitches, answer the goddamn buzzer!” She yelled the last part up toward the windows, none of which were open in the stuffy heat, then poked three more buttons in quick succession.

  “Um … Chaney?”

  She whirled at the sound of my voice, her eyes wide like she needed to dive for her rape whistle. Her lipstick was smudged and eye makeup smeared onto one cheek; her hair looked even worse from the front.

  I held up my hands in mock surrender, unable to hide my amusement at busting her obvious walk of shame. “Jesus, what does the other guy look like?”

  “Oh, Ruby, thank God. I don’t have my keys and no one’s answering.”

  I eyed her. She had nothing but her shoes, and concern edged my mirth. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fucking great.”

  “Didn’t want to spend the night with him, huh?”

  Chaney barked a laugh that sounded more like a curse. “That’s an understatement.”

  “Where were you?” I stepped past her to unlock the door and then held it so she could step into the foyer.

  The chandelier overhead diffused pale light on its overnight setting. An ornate rug spanned the length of the walnut floors, and a couple of terribly uncomfortable but expensive chairs crowded around a marble table covered in fliers. The midnight quiet in the house seemed to reprimand our intrusion, and we both lowered our voices.

  “Lambda Phi party.”

  “Oh, right. You’ve been out with that Scottish guy a few times. What’s his name again?”

  She glowered at the question. “Cole Fucking Stuart.”

  “Huh. Didn’t realize that was a popular middle name over there.” I paused, smiling, but she didn’t return it. “Guess we’re not seeing him anymore?”

  “No.” Chaney headed for the stairs that led to the second floor, waiting for me again because I had to swipe my student ID to get through the door that led to the resident rooms.

  “Date number three, huh?” I surveyed her hair and face again. “Bad in bed?”

  “Ruby, you have no idea. It was awful.” She rolled her eyes and went ahead of me. “Why can’t guys just ever be normal about sex?”

  “That is an excellent question.”

  After Michael, sex had become the only thing I was sure of anymore. It gave me the power, the upper hand, and even though I’d accepted I’d leave Whitman behind without meeting the future Mr. Ruby Cotton, it didn’t mean I wanted to give up fun altogether.

  Chaney sighed and slung her shoes over her shoulder, her heavy steps saying she wanted to find a bed to fall into worse than I did. “Thanks.”

  “Sure. I’m going to demand details sometime. My fee for playing the white knight.”

  She disappeared with a tired smile onto the second floor, where the majority of the older girls lived—she was a senior this year. Most of them didn’t live in the house, but Chaney had been elected as vice-president and didn’t have a choice. At least she got a single.

  The third floor was pretty quiet, as houses filled with girls went, with just the sound of a few televisions and muted conversation filtering into the carpeted hallway. Composite pictures of the classes of Delta Epsilons that came before us hung on the eggshell painted walls, and I wondered if all—or any—of them had managed to find guys who didn’t send them home a half-mangled, unsatisfied mess after dates.

  The door to the room across the hall from mine stood open, and voices caught my attention. In spite of being tired, the temptatio
n of a distraction from being down about Liam and sad over missing Em tugged me that direction.

  Three of my pledge sisters lounged around the room, dressed in pajamas, faces scrubbed clean. Ginny and Brooke, whose room it was, sat side-by-side and cross-legged on one bed and Larissa laid on the other, propped on her side with a beet red face.

  “Hey, y’all.”

  “Howdy, Ruby Sue,” Ginny drawled back.

  I hated when I forgot to lose my Louisiana accent. I’d fixed it by sixth grade, but fatigue sometimes made it reappear. Instead of showing them it bugged me, I smiled, then shoved Larissa’s feet out of the way and sat down. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Larissa was just telling us about the guy she slept with earlier. Er, tried to sleep with earlier.”

  “Which guy is this?” I tried to remember who people were dating, but honestly, unless it lasted long enough to span more than one sorority event, there wasn’t much point.

  “Beta Gam. Super nice body, baseball player.”

  “Ah, got it.” His dad had been a major leaguer, I thought. “What made you bail on the sexy times?”

  “She didn’t,” Ginny said helpfully.

  “Wait, what? Why did … what the hell is his name, Larissa?”

  “Let’s just call him Noodle Dick.” Her face turned even redder.

  “Wait, he couldn’t get it up? Was he drunk?”

  “No.”

  “Well, come on. Out with the details!” Ginny demanded.

  “Fine. So, we’d been out a few times, very nice but boring shit like movies and dinner, some kissing in the car and at the door, whatever. Then tonight he asks me to come in, and we’re losing clothes and inhibitions and he’s breathing heavy and like, into it, right?” She waited for us all to nod, the dove back in. “Except when I reach down to move things along, there’s nothing. I mean, I’m wondering if God suddenly decided to relocate his genitals, because I have never met a more disinterested penis. And he’s trying so hard, like grinding against me and moaning and squeezing the fuck out of my boobs, but none of it’s working.”

  “What did he say?” I managed, trying to swallow my giggles. It wasn’t funny, actually. That poor dude.

  Brooke stared, mesmerized by this ridiculous story, and Ginny had less control over her laughter than I did.

  “He stopped trying and asked me if I wanted to play tennis tomorrow.”

  We all erupted into laughter, because honestly, it was hard to feel bad for the guy after that. Medical issues were one thing, but letting a girl find out you had a non-functioning sex organ in real time was a bonehead move, and then refusing to address the elephant in the room was even worse.

  Larissa’s brown curls, perky boobs, and gorgeous coffee skin said it couldn’t have been her.

  “What happened afterward?” Brooke’s blue eyes were huge.

  “Aw, Larissa, you’re scaring the virgin.”

  “Shut up, Ruby.”

  I shrugged. Brooke needed to get laid worse than I did, and that was saying something.

  “You know what’s sad, is that I have a better story than that,” Ginny interrupted, rescuing her roommate from yet another lecture from me about the follies of saving herself for a someday guy who would not fucking appreciate it.

  “I do not see how that’s possible. I just made out with a twenty-one-year old guy whose penis doesn’t work.”

  “Hear me out. Freshman year I was having sex with this guy and he quit in the middle. Like, didn’t finish, just stopped, said he was really hungry, put his clothes on, and left.”

  “That is an unprecedented turn of events,” Larissa mused. “Did you hear from him again?”

  “He texted to tell me some dumbass story about the person in line in front of him at Taco Bell, but other than that, nope.” Ginny pulled her long, dark brown hair into a bun. “Like, what is that? He didn’t even finish.”

  “And it goes without saying that you didn’t either,” I observed dryly.

  Larissa snorted. “You do not even want to know how long it’s been since a guy coaxed an orgasm out of me. You’d think it was easier to wrestle a Coachella invite away from a Kappa.”

  “Where did you find this loser?” I wanted to make sure and steer clear, not that I hadn’t managed to find plenty of dick nuggets at Whitman on my own. Guys who slobbered, or came before I could even think about it, or thought it was cute to sneak out before dawn.

  “Frat party. Seemed totally normal until he ditched sex for fast food at one in the morning.”

  If I really thought about it, none of this seemed all that funny. Emilie and Quinn apparently had some kind of mind-blowing sexual connection that I needed to hire Gandalf to find. Guys had it so easy; they needed somewhere to stick it for five minutes and they got off, went home, and bragged to their friends over cheap beer or whatever. I would bet my mother’s entire fitness empire that they weren’t sitting around the frat house whining about how disappointing any of us were in bed.

  “I ran into Chaney doing the walk of shame a few minutes ago, and she looked like she’d been through a horror show at the hands of that Scottish Lambda Phi she’s been out with a few times.”

  “Cole Stuart?” Ginny nodded. “He’s hot, and that accent makes my panties just evaporate into thin air, but it seems like I’ve heard other girls complain, too.”

  Girls knew all the dirty secrets. If campus relationships were a stage production, we were definitely in charge of casting. We should be auditioning these idiots, or at least asking for resumes. “Life would be so much easier if guys had to wear nametags with their shortcomings printed on them so we all knew what we were getting into.”

  They all laughed at my suggestion, trying to one-up each other adding to my stupid idea.

  “Fucks like a rabbit.”

  “Doesn’t go down.”

  “Nipple abuser.”

  “Slobbers in ears.”

  Ginny shrieked. “That sounds like a Native American name!”

  The potential monikers grew sillier until none of us could talk over the sound of our laughter, only Brooke sitting quietly, gaping at us in horror. Clearly, the guys at Whitman were totally slacking in the bedroom pleasure department, probably because they were all rich and mostly good-looking, which meant they’d never had to work for it. I, for one, wasn’t interested in increasing my number or saying another twelve Hail Marys without some kind of assurance.

  That thought gave me an idea. It might have been as stupid as the nametags, but this one didn’t require a method for tackling boys and forcibly attaching stickers bearing their relationship failings. No one knew what belonged on those tags better than the girls who had been forced to endure their sloppy advances, and if I knew one thing about girls, it was that they loved gossip.

  If flings were what I had to look forward to, why not expect them to be decent?

  I said goodnight and wandered across the hall to my room, gears grinding in my brain as I brushed my teeth and slipped into my pajamas. The best approach seemed to be going with what I knew, which meant starting where I started every time an audition announcement went up for a new production, either in the school theatre or community—a résumé. Complete with referrals.

  Chapter 2

  “You want this one hundred percent anonymous, right?” Noah Waters pushed his horn-rimmed glasses back up his nose, looking for all the world like the sexy computer geek he was—the handsome kind who could hack bank accounts and steal millions of bucks, hide them away in the Cayman Islands, then run away with you and reveal his secret hot bod.

  The part of me that hadn’t had sex since last May wanted to tackle him, but I managed to contain myself. For now. He was a little too proud of his own brainpower for my taste. “Yes. I don’t want anyone to know I’m running the website. Half the guys at this school have some kind of mob connection and the other half have enough spare change in their cup holders to hire a hit man.”

  “Got it. The girls who log on to rate will al
l be assigned numbered screen names, so they’ll remain anonymous, too. The only real names will be the guys.”

  I nodded, then narrowed my eyes at the back of Noah’s head as he typed away, creating some mysterious code that set up my new ratings website. The way his thick brown hair curled at the nape of his neck distracted me and I had to shake my head to regain some focus. “Remember our deal. You keep your mouth shut about helping me set this up and I leave you off the site, no matter what kind of juicy gossip comes through the system.”

  “Say juicy again,” he said without turning around, the smile evident in his voice.

  “Noah,” I warned.

  He hit a few final keystrokes, then spun around in my desk chair and smirked. “I’m not worried, but yes. That was the deal. And you’re all set.”

  Noah spent the next hour explaining how the site worked, and how I could log in as an administrator to filter, delete, or flag information. It was hard to pay attention because he smelled really good, but after we sent out an anonymous e-mail blast with a link to every campus inbox, he left without attempting to take advantage of me.

  Maybe I was losing my touch.

  A glance in the mirror revealed messy hair and that most of the day’s makeup had worn off, but I still looked pretty good, even in a tank top and a pair of green shorts with Whitman U printed across the ass.

  I spent another hour running lines from West Side Story, studying my face to get the reactions and expressions exactly the way I wanted them, then sat back down at the laptop to copy my schedule for tomorrow. A notification for twenty new e-mails raised my eyebrows.

  Girls were already registering for my site. The Whitman Referral was live, and it appeared I wasn’t the only one interested in a little background checking.

  I clicked through the uploads, not surprised to see that both Chaney and Larissa had already signed up, along with a few other names I recognized. Using my administrator account, I input Matt Samuels, a guy I dated last spring. I wasn’t interested in airing specific dirty laundry, so users weren’t allowed to enter any written information or details, only give their encounter an overall experience rating between one and five stars, then answer Yes or No to the question, Would you write him a referral?