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."

"You didn't have to," she said. "I know that look. Come on, Morgan, I know it's usually not your thing, but it's our first night of college. We can't stay in our room and not talk to anyone."

She was right, of course. It was one of many reasons why rooming with my best friend of eight years instead of opting for random allocation was such a good idea. A worthy contender for the world's biggest extrovert, Hanna had a knack for pushing me out of my comfort zone. While the thought of walking up to a total stranger and introducing myself filled me with utter dread, Hanna wouldn't think twice about it. We were perfectly matched polar opposites: she was exactly the kind of whirlwind force I needed, and I was always there to rein her in if necessary.

So partying with Marcus-down-the-hall it was. I knew going out and being sociable was what I was supposed to do—and certainly what my mom and dad and Vanessa would want. That made it easier to play along as Hanna began her elaborate getting-ready routine, finding her curling iron and make-up bag and favorite pair of heeled boots in record timing among her half-unpacked belongings. As I watched her sit cross-legged in front of our new shared mirror, sectioning out her shoulder-length blonde hair and twisting it into loose curls, I tried to stay focused on what was familiar, rather than all the things that felt so overwhelmingly different.

Then, it was my turn. I started to flick through the clothes Mom had hung in my new closet, in search of something that would make that all-important first impression, but Hanna's arm appeared across the door.

"Sit down," she said, her eyes twinkling like the gold ring in her nose. "I've got this."

"You don't have to—"

"I know I don't," she countered, touching my arm. "But where would be the fun in that?"

So I sat like a statue as she poked and painted and perfected, hoping the exterior transformation might change the inside too.

"There," she said after what had to be thirty minutes, stepping aside to award me my view of the mirror. "What do you think?"

I stared back at my reflection, assessing the situation. The smoky eyeshadow and dark lipstick were flawless as usual. The volume of my curly hair now looked purposeful instead of just out of control. And the black suede shoes she'd insisted I borrow did go well with the floaty shirt and jeans she'd picked out, even if my toes were squished up against the edge. This Morgan certainly looked like a girl who was ready to tackle her first night at college.

If only I could channel her on the inside, too.

"Hold the shower of compliments. I know I'm an angel," Hanna said, her back turned as she started picking up make-up from the floor. "But if you end up hitting it off with a cute college boy tonight, I'm taking at least some of the credit."

I shook my head and managed to smile. "Not likely, Han."

"Why not? First night of college, anything could happen."

She glanced back over her shoulder to catch my eye, and for some reason, I felt the jolt run all the way down my spine. Just nerves, I assumed—the anticipation of a night with so much riding on it. I didn't believe her. Because regardless of how perfect my eyeliner was, or how many extra inches Hanna's shoes gave me, I was still Morgan. The quiet one always who stuck to the sidelines, happy to let her best friend be the center of attention.

The type of anything she was talking about just didn't happen to people like me.

I didn't know that things would be different that night.

And if my anything hadn't turned out to be Josh, everything else could've been, too.

***

I wanted to go home.

Barely past midnight and already that was running through my mind, although I didn't dare admit it aloud. All night, I'd been working so hard to make sure that nothing except friendly and approachable showed on my face that it now felt ready to shatter into pieces. I couldn't hold it together much longer.

At first, things hadn't been so bad. The welcome party was exactly the kind of enforced fun I usually dreaded, but that actually felt like a relief in this new setting. When we got to the lounge, Hanna marched straight up to Marcus-down-the-hall's table, greeting him like they'd known each other forever, which saved us the awkwardness of finding people to sit with. His friends seemed nice, and most of them lived on the same floor. My stomach even felt settled enough to manage a couple of slices of the free pizza. By the time the RAs took their place at the front to kick off the icebreakers, I was hit by a surge of relief.

Maybe I could handle this after all.

But a few hours later, when the official party started winding down, and we were swept away by a group of upperclassmen to a very much unofficial one in an apartment off campus, things went downhill.

It was everything that made me nervous about college, all thrown together in one dark, smoky apartment. We could barely move for the amount of people packed inside, most of them way too old to be freshmen. Sweaty bodies kept pressing up against me as they squeezed past, several lingering long enough to make me shudder, and I jumped in surprise when a knock sent someone's warm beer trickling down my back. By the time I spun around, the culprit had vanished into the crowd, leaving me alone with the sound of someone else's laugh.

One thing was clear: drinking wasn't optional here. Even Hanna—who by now was in a giggly, tipsy state—was miles behind the most sober, though she certainly wasn't shy about catching up. My own sobriety felt like a flashing neon sign above me. People could sense it in the way I avoided eye contact, shrugged away arms that tried to loop around my shoulders, shut down conversations with leering guys before they could even begin. If anything, it encouraged them. I was a walking party challenge—five points to whoever can get the quiet girl trashed.

They didn't know that kind of mindset had caused untold damage before.

So I did what I did best: looking for Hanna, who'd disappeared amidst the chaos. I was all set to tell her I was going home and that she couldn't talk me out of it. If only finding her was as easily said as done. Each time I saw a flash of blonde, it vanished by the time I elbowed my way through the crowd. When I spotted her again, heading for the kitchen with a tall, curly-haired girl, I moved to follow—but was stopped in my tracks by a hand that caught my arm.

"Whoa, what's the rush, babe?" I turned to see a short, stocky guy who'd sidled up beside me. He had closely-shaved hair and beady eyes that immediately put me on edge. "Where are you trying to sneak away to?"

"Nowhere," I said, trying to shrug his hand from my arm. "Look, sorry, but I really need to—"

"How about a drink?" he asked, with an uncomfortable smirk. "You look like you could do with livening up."

The leering way he was looking at me, the feel of his stubby fingers curled around my arm like a vice—I couldn't take it any longer. For the whole night, being inside this apartment had felt like having my head underwater, and sooner or later I was going to have to gasp for breath.

"Get off me," I snapped, snatching my arm away. And before the guy had a chance to react, I'd taken off, pushing my way through the crowd toward the door. Emerging in the stairwell, I tore straight down the two flights of stairs and steadied myself against the railing at the bottom.

For a few seconds, I could breathe easy again.

But only a few seconds.

--------------------------------

Hello, everyone! I'm aware it's been a long, LONG time since I was last truly active on Wattpad... but as you can probably tell, I've been busy working away in the background.

Since you last saw me, I've had the crazy experience of becoming a published author (check out TRAPEZE in bookstores and online across the world, as well as the ebook right here on Wattpad!), but alongside that I've been frantically planning a new book and writing 50,000 words of it during NaNoWriMo.

And this is the end product.

A leap into the world of new adult, college-age, mysterious dark romance with a brand new story: REMEMBER ME NOT.

This isn't a book I've started on a whim. This has been on my mind for months, and I'm ready to commit myself. So ready, in fact, that from here on out I'll be uploading a chapter TWICE WEEKLY, on Mondays and Fridays.

So please: stick around, drop a comment, add this book to a public reading list, recommend it to a friend -- all of that is so, so helpful to me and this entire process. I'm really proud of this one, so I want to give it as much love as possible.

Hope you're ready for the next adventure, because I definitely am.

- Leigh