Southern Comfort - Fern Michaels [93]
Although tomorrow was the first day of spring break, she still had to work at her other jobs. The Pony Keg, where she served pizzas and beer three nights a week, and The Book Exchange, which was her favorite job of the three. She had a great love of reading. Her major was library science, so it was her hope to someday work in a grand library, maybe the esteemed New York Public Library. This was her senior year, and she was looking forward to beginning her life in the real world. She’d spent her entire life in Florida, in the small town of Crest, where the most exciting things that happened were weddings and funerals. She never knew her parents as her mother had died in childbirth and, immediately after, her father had committed suicide. She had spent her entire life with her father’s spinster sister. Hardly a day passed that Aunt Evelyn failed to remind her of the sacrifices she’d made in order to raise her. Personally, Elizabeth had never figured out just exactly what those sacrifices were, especially as so much of what they lived on came from her social security survivor’s benefits.
She was motivated to make something of her life, and she knew that the first step was getting an education. She’d studied hard in high school, earned a partial scholarship to Florida State University in Tallahassee, and never looked back. Out of respect, she wrote Aunt Evelyn twice a month, and if her work schedule permitted, she returned to Crest for the holidays.
Her only real friend, Marlene Janus, who was basically in the same boat as she—no family money and no relatives to speak of—had invited her to a party that night given by Chi Phi, the oldest and currently the most popular fraternity on campus. Elizabeth didn’t ask how she’d managed to get an invitation, but she knew Marlene wouldn’t go if she didn’t agree to go with her, so she’d said yes and was now looking forward to an evening out, an evening away from studying and her day-to-day responsibilities.
When her shift in the student lounge was over, Elizabeth hurried back to her dorm room, where she dressed in the only decent dress she owned. A simple sleeveless black dress with a small leather belt. She’d found the dress stored in the back of Aunt Evelyn’s closet on one of her visits home. Later, she learned it was the dress Aunt Evelyn had worn to both Elizabeth’s mother’s and father’s funerals. Her aunt told her she’d thought about throwing it out but decided not to, as it was quite expensive. Though certainly not an expert where clothes were concerned, Elizabeth had an eye for quality and knew this dress was very well made and wouldn’t go out of style anytime soon. She’d asked her aunt if she could borrow the dress, and of course Aunt Evelyn had gone on and on about how much it cost, it was the only memory she had left of her brother’s funeral, and made Elizabeth promise to have the dress dry-cleaned before returning it. Apparently, Aunt Evelyn had forgotten about the dress. Now Elizabeth considered it her one and only decent article of clothing.
She’d arranged to meet Marlene at The Pony Keg for pizza. From there they would take a taxi to the party on campus. Both had agreed that if the party turned out to be a bust, they would go to the movies to see Elvis Presley’s Blue Hawaii. Elizabeth would have preferred simply to have pizza and go to the movies, but Marlene was adamant