#HookUp Read online

  Missing your favorite #family?

  This is your exclusive invitation back into their world.

  #HookUp is an explosion of the award-winning #Hashtag series by Cambria Hebert and makes the perfect collector’s item

  and addition to the series.

  This eBook version of #HookUp is full of bonus scenes that will rock your world!

  Four bonus scenes total—two of which are brand new!

  Find out what your favorite gang is up to these days.

  So what are you waiting for?

  Get the #HookUp!

  #HOOKUP Copyright © 2017 CAMBRIA HEBERT

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form without written permission except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published by: Cambria Hebert Books, LLC

  www.cambriahebert.com

  Interior design and typesetting by Sharon Kay of Amber Leaf Publishing

  Cover design by Cover Me Darling

  Edited by Cassie McCown of Gathering Leaves Editing

  Copyright 2017 by Cambria Hebert

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  An eBook of #Hashtag Series bonus scenes!

  Table of Contents

  Contents:

  Bonus Scene 1

  Bonus Scene 2

  Bonus Scene 3

  Bonus Scene 4

  Recipe 1

  Recipe 2

  Recipe 3

  About the Author

  Hashtag Series Bonus Scene #1

  Starring Rimmel & Ivy

  by Cambria Hebert

  This scene takes place the day Rimmel and Ivy first meet as roommates at the dorm at Alpha U.

  *previously published in the #Nerd hardback edition

  Rimmel

  I was already cold.

  Not even fifteen minutes after my flight from Florida landed here in Maryland and I was already asking myself why I chose a college up north when I was used to living in the South.

  It wasn’t quite September, but it already felt like autumn here. The second I stepped out onto the sidewalk to hopefully flag down a cab, I noticed. The air here was cooler, the breeze not as gentle. And the humidity?

  There wasn’t any.

  Not that I’d really miss the humidity.

  At least without it, my hair would be a little easier to manage.

  Like you even managed it before, a snarky voice in the back of my head reminded me. I snorted, and the man walking in front of me jerked and spun around like something was after him.

  My cheeks heated and I looked down at the sidewalk.

  The line for the cabs was long. As usual. So I waited toward the back of the crowd until most everyone had found a car. But eventually, I had to move up and wave my hand out to one so they would stop.

  The first two times, the cab drivers kept going.

  I swear I could hear them laughing as they passed.

  “Stupid cabbies,” I muttered.

  As another one came over the small hill toward me, I was determined to flag him down. Standing out here half the day was not my idea of a good time. I needed to unpack and then get to the bookstore. I didn’t want to end up with the crappy leftover picks of used textbooks.

  I stretched out my arm as far as I could and pushed back the sleeve of the too-big, brown sweater I was wearing so I could use my hand.

  The cab driver looked at me; our eyes met through the windshield. I knew that look. He was going to pass me, too.

  What was it about me that was so… so… easy to look over?

  That’s the way you wanted it, the voice in my head piped up again.

  Stupid voice.

  Even if it was right.

  I didn’t give up, though. Determination had me stretching my hand out just a little bit farther. My money was just as good as the next person's.

  Behind me, a loud whistle cut through the air, and I jerked and stumbled backward. I gasped and pressed a hand to my chest. My goodness!

  The cab driver who’d just started driving past slammed on his brakes and stopped at the curb just ahead of me.

  I grumbled to myself as I strong-armed my giant suitcase back up onto its wheels. I’d knocked the stupid thing over when I fell back. I don’t know how. It practically weighed more than me.

  A rich laugh floated over my head, and I looked up, pushing back the mop of dark hair hanging in my face.

  “Not your day, is it?” a man said to me.

  I looked around as if searching for the person he was talking to.

  His white teeth flashed, and he motioned at me with his chin. “Need a hand with that?”

  He was talking to me.

  I fought the urge to shrink back. Hadn’t I just been standing here wishing I wasn’t so unnoticeable? Now that someone actually saw me, my reaction was to hide.

  I was a hot mess.

  The guy, who seemed to maybe be a year or two older than me, had dark hair and dark eyes. He was taller than me, but that really wasn’t an accomplishment because everyone was, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a while.

  He was actually kind of good-looking. If a girl liked that sort of rumpled style.

  I had no idea what kind of “style” I liked when it came to men. I never bothered to ask myself. Still, as I stood here looking at him smiling, I realized he wasn’t it. There was something missing from this guy, something I wasn’t even sure about.

  He cleared his throat, and I realized he’d asked me a question.

  Good Lord, I’m standing here like a weirdo, gaping at him!

  “No thanks,” I finally replied, trying to keep my voice from squeaking. “I can handle it.”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners and he laughed. “Sweetheart, I hate to break it to you, but that suitcase is the one handling you.”

  I recoiled from his flirtatious tone. I didn’t flirt with men. I wasn’t interested in them.

  Well, I guess technically I was because I was heterosexual, but I wasn’t interested in dating.

  He laughed as I continued to stand there having a mental showdown with myself and came forward. “Having trouble getting a cab?”

  “Yeah,” I said. No point in lying. He likely saw me being passed up.

  “Take mine,” he said. “I’ll whistle down another one.”

  “Is that the secret?” I wondered. “Whistling really loud?”

  He chuckled and picked up my bag before I could stop him. “Doesn’t hurt.”

  The cab driver got out of his seat and came around to open the trunk. The stranger put my suitcase inside.

  “What do you have in there?” he drawled once it was in. “A hundred pairs of shoes?”

  Yeah, ‘cause I looked like a girl with a hundred pairs of shoes. “Books,” I replied.

  “Ah, a woman with a sexy mind.”

  Ew.

  How dare he think about my mind that way! Not that I should be surprised. That’s all men ever thought about.

  Sex.

  “Well, thanks for the cab,” I said and started forward, skirting around him so we didn’t get too close.

  He opened the door of the cab and held it for me. “Anytime.”

  Inside, I leaned forward and said, “Alpha University dorms.”

  When I sat back, the stranger was still holding open the door and looking at me. It made me uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed.

  “So what’s your name, girl with the sexy mind?”

  “I don’t have one,” I said, my voice h
igh pitched. Then I shot forward, grabbed the door, and slammed it closed.

  The shock on the guy’s face was almost funny.

  The cabbie laughed and pulled away from the corner.

  “Guess you weren’t interested,” he drawled.

  “No,” I said, then turned my face to stare out the window.

  I most certainly wasn’t interested in guys who tried to pick me up at the airport. I wasn’t interested in dating at all.

  There wasn’t one guy in this entire state that could change my mind on that fact.

  I wasn’t here at Alpha U to date. I was here to study.

  # # #

  Ivy

  By the time I made it to the second floor with every last bag, box, and suitcase I brought to campus with me, I was certain I’d completed my yearly quota for cardio.

  It made me regret not taking my brother up on his offer to drive behind me and help me get settled in.

  ‘Course, if I'd agreed to that, Drew would have spent the entire time bossing me around. Then he would’ve given me a lecture about the reasons I didn’t need so many clothes.

  As if there were any kind of logical argument for that.

  Besides, I was a big girl. A sophomore in college. I could handle move-in day all on my own. I thought about last year, my freshman year, when I first showed up here at the dorm. Both my parents and my brothers were with me.

  We looked like a herd of cattle moving across the campus. Even though it was embarrassing as hell, I’d still been grateful because I’d been so nervous. It was the first time I’d really been “on my own” without family hovering around me.

  I had no idea what to expect.

  It didn’t take long to figure out what everyone else expected. I was blond, blue-eyed, and liked clothes and makeup. That instantly gave people an impression. So naturally, I believed what everyone else thought, what everyone else assumed.

  It was fun to be the party girl. It was fun to be the one who got invited to everything. Parties I could actually go to because I didn’t have my annoying brothers following me around or my mom calling me every ten minutes to remind me of my curfew.

  After I dumped everything in the center of my assigned room, I looked around the small rectangle, deciding on which side I should take. My roommate wasn’t here yet, so that meant I got first dibs on the beds.

  Not like it was some big advantage, though. They were the exact same, just on opposite sides of the room.

  I decided on the one to my left, for no other reason than that’s the side I naturally gravitated toward. Using my feet, I pushed all my stuff over to that side of the room and then set the box with all my new bedding on the end of the mattress. It was all freshly washed and ready to be put on.

  Laughter floated into the empty room from out in the hall and distracted me. I pulled out my phone and texted my friend Missy to see if she was back on campus yet. We’d met freshman year and had become friends pretty quickly.

  Missy was here and was on the floor below mine. I abandoned my stuff and went down to her room. The door was propped open as her roommate moved in a few boxes. Missy’s stuff was already inside, and she was unpacking a bunch of yellow and gray bedding.

  “Hey, girl!” she chirped. “How was your summer?”

  “It was good. How about you?”

  “Same,” she replied, tossing some pillows on the bed. “So guess who knows of a really good party tonight?”

  “You’ve been on campus, what, like twenty minutes, and already you have the down low on a party? Where do you get your info?”

  Missy giggled. “I have my ways.”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said and started looking through a box of her clothes. She had some cute stuff in there.

  She sighed. “Fine. I heard some cheerleaders talking about it out in the hallway.”

  I laughed. “So where is this party?”

  “Out in the field.”

  I’d been to lots of parties out there last year. They were fun, and it was a popular place for the football players to party. So basically, that’s where the in crowd went.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Awesome! We need to let off some steam before the semester starts.”

  “Wear this,” I said and tossed her a black lacey top.

  She snatched it up and laid it out on her bed. “Now I just have to search for the pants that match.”

  “Speaking of, I better go unpack or I’m not gonna be able to find anything to wear either.”

  Missy waved her fingers at me and reached for another box. “I’ll come get you later and we can go to the party together.”

  I told her my room number and left, taking myself back up the stairs to unpack. When I arrived back on the second floor and stepped out of the stairwell into the hall, I noticed there was crap lying everywhere.

  Like it looked like some kind of stuff-nado ripped through and left the place littered with random crap. Pens, pencils, little notebooks, lip balm, gum…

  A couple girls walking down the hall snickered, looking in the direction of my room.

  I hurried down the hall, noticing the door to my room was open. The loud sound of things being dropped or spilled echoed out.

  I picked my way carefully over all the stuff as someone came rushing out the door and almost barreled into me.

  “Whoa!” I said and backed up, my foot snapping a pencil in half.

  “I’m sorry!” a girl said in a soft yet somehow squeaky voice. Then she dropped onto the floor and began picking up everything.

  “Is this your dorm room?” I asked, staring down at the top of her dark head.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, awesome. I’m Ivy. Your roomie.”

  The girl’s head snapped up and her eyes widened. She had on large, black-rimmed glasses and no makeup at all. Even though most of her wild hair covered half her face, I knew she was pretty. Well, if she combed her hair and maybe put on some lip-gloss.

  She stood up with stuff filling her hands and smiled at me kind of shyly. “I'm not usually this messy. My bag spilled when I was trying to find the room key.”

  “No worries,” I said and bent to pick up everything else. “If you have as much stuff as I do, then I don’t blame you for dropping half of it. Those stairs are a workout.”

  She turned and went back in the room, and I followed, letting the door close behind us. I dropped my handful of her things on the end of her bed, and she did the same.

  “I’m Rimmel,” she said, pushing her hair back over her shoulders.

  “Like the makeup,” I said.

  “What?”

  I gave her a bewildered look. “There's a makeup brand called Rimmel London. Haven’t you heard of it?”

  “I don’t wear makeup,” she said, shy, and ducked her head.

  “Well, you’re pretty enough without it,” I answered.

  She glanced up and smiled. Something told me this girl was the shiest person I’d ever meet. I knew just by looking at her she didn’t have very much confidence. I guess I understood her in that regard. I just handled my lack of it a lot different than her. For me, I tried too hard to get people to like me and I worried a lot about what other people thought. But Rimmel? I knew from just two minutes in her presence that she was the kind who didn’t try at all.

  And where was all her stuff? She literally had one huge suitcase and a bag. Where the hell were all her clothes?

  Speaking of… She was wearing an unfortunate brown sweater that looked like it came from the nineteen thirties and a pair of loose, dark-colored pants that probably had a drawstring waist.

  She needed a fashion intervention. STAT.

  She was standing there looking at me like she was either:

  A) Waiting for me to say something rude to her.

  Or

  B) Trying to come up with something to say to start a conversation.

  Both reasons made me feel kinda bad. Like it bothered me she expected people to be rude to her. ‘Course, I totally saw why
she would think that way. People were mean; women were vicious to other women.

  Hence, I did myself up every day and partied with the right crowd.

  Rimmel was small, socially awkward, and judging by the mess in the hall, she was clumsy. She’d probably been bullied half her life.

  “So,” I said conversationally, going over to my side of the room. “I picked this bed, but if you’d rather have it, I’m happy to trade.”

  “This side of the room is fine, thanks,” she said and wrestled her giant suitcase onto its side so she could unzip it.

  “Did you go here last year?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but I was in a different dorm.”

  “Cool. I was in this dorm last year, too. I was on the first floor, though. Let me tell you… Made moving in a lot easier. I have a couple friends in the building. Missy's going to stop by later. We’re going to a party on campus. You should come.”

  I was met with an odd kind of silence, so I looked away from the bedding I was stretching onto my mattress and turned to her.

  She was staring at me with shock in her eyes. “You’re inviting me to a party?”

  I shrugged. “Sure. You don’t like parties?”

  “No.”

  Oh boy. I hoped she wasn’t going to be the kind of roommate that went running to the floor advisor when I was late for curfew.

  “Parties aren’t my thing,” she said by way of explanation.

  “Do you care if parties are my thing?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Is bringing random guys back to our room your thing?”

  “Not at all.” I assured her.

  “I don’t care if you like parties.” She shrugged.

  “Whew.” I blew out a breath. “For a minute there I thought you were going to be a pain in my ass.”

  Rimmel’s eyes widened.

  “Kidding,” I said and laughed. She took everything so seriously. I glanced at her suitcase. It was filled with books.

  “I have lots of clothes. If you ever want to borrow anything, feel free.”

  “Thanks,” she mumbled. “Feel free to use some of the drawer space over here.”

  “Really? That’s awesome of you.”