College senior Jake Mallory cares more about his reputation as a former high school jock turned party animal than his grade point average. His time in class is spent counting down to the weekend, when he'll hit the gay club scene with his roommate Holly, who doubles as his designated driver. To celebrate being back at school after summer break, Jake parties so hard, he wakes up Sunday morning with blurred memories of the past two days. Worse than his hangover, though, is the fact that he can’t find his iPhone. Holly's best friend Evan Williams is a grade A nerd, complete with slicked-back hair and thick, dorky glasses. Jake can't stand Evan on principle, though it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that Evan has a major crush on Jake. No matter how mean Jake is to him, Evan just won't take a hint. He might even know something about the missing phone, but Jake won't give him the time of day to hear what he has to say. When Jake logs into the cloud online to access his homework, he finds photos uploaded from his phone that he doesn’t remember taking over the weekend. In them is a hot, sexy guy he hooked up with in the back seat of Holly’s car. Soon he realizes the guy must have his phone, and has begun taking explicit photos with it as if to tease Jake. Holly knows who the guy is but she isn't telling, so Jake begs her to arrange a meeting. He wants his phone back, but more than that, he wants a chance to take things further with the hot stranger. She agrees to throw a house party and invite the guy over. At first, Jake is pissed when he doesn’t show up. Jake doesn't even know who he is. But as the night progresses, he gets his phone back ... and so much more.

Head in the Cloud

Jake himself would have liked to run into the guy again, this time without alcohol clouding his brain, but unless he found his phone, he’d probably never get to go a second round. That was, if the guy had even given Jake his number in the first place. He must’ve, Jake was sure of it. How could someone notwant another piece of him?


So where’d he leave the damn phone, anyway?


Jake met Holly at the end of his second year at college, through an ad she’d placed in the school newspaper looking for a roommate. She had a two-story, single-family home off-campus, but couldn’t manage the rent by herself. There were three bedrooms, and one of her roommates graduated that year. The other had no plans to return to school. Jake, tired of dorm life, was looking for something close by because he had no source of transportation. Holly wasn’t exactly down the street, really, but she was on the bus route, and her ad said she was willing to carpool.


Chapter 7