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“He’s not here, sweetheart.” He steps aside, makes a sweeping gesture with his arm. “Feel free to check if you like. Make sure to look under the bed and inside the closet, too.”
He’s making fun of me, but I don’t care. I brush past him and enter Fred’s room. It’s exactly as I remember it. The narrow bed, the window with the gray curtains, the small desk with his laptop resting on it.
Fred is nowhere to be seen.
“See?” Brandon is lounging against the doorjamb, arms folded over his chest. Dressed in faded jeans and a button-down blue shirt, with his crazy afro hair and cinnamon skin, he looks every part the musician he is. Same thin shoulders like Fred. Same bright gaze. Same long, thin hands.
I shake my head to stop myself from getting caught in that crazy loop again. “Any idea where he might be, then?”
“Probably at Mondays.” At my wide stare, he laughs and says, “the bar? Off State Street. That’s where he usually hangs out.”
He does? He has a place where he usually hangs out?
Do I even know Fred at all?
“Thanks,” I say, giving Fred’s room one last glance, hoping that somehow he’ll appear from behind the curtain and say “surprise” and we all laugh together.
Because it does seem like a big joke.
But he doesn’t, and I turn to go.
“You’re Madeline, right?”
I stop and look at him. “You know me?”
“Not really. He’s talked about you. Only good things, I promise.”
“Like?” I ask. I can’t help it. I’m so curious to know what he’s been saying to his friends about me.
“You’re a ballerina. A classy, sweet, nice girl.” Brandon lifts a dark brow at me. “Not what you expected to hear?”
“Yeah,” I stammer. “I mean, not really. That all he said?”
“What else?”
The tips of my ears are burning. “Nothing.”
What else did I expect? That he’d tell everyone he thinks I’m hot, I guess. That he’s with me. Something like that.
“You’re exactly as I pictured you,” he says. “I can imagine you dancing on stage, pirouetting on your tiptoes.”
“Um, thanks?” I manage a weak smile, because he obviously doesn’t know I’ll never be a ballerina, and besides, this mess isn’t his fault. “I think I’ll swing by Mondays, see if I can find Fred. Need to talk to him.”
“Uh, sure.” He winces. “Listen, why don’t you call him first or something? Before you swing by.”
“Why?”
The alarm bells in my head start ringing before he even opens his mouth to reply, and through them I faintly hear the words.
“He had a fight with his girlfriend this morning. He might need some space.”
Girlfriend.
The word settles at the bottom of my mind like a rock.
r /> Muttering something – goodbye, I guess – I stumble out of the room. I can’t remember getting out of the dorms and into my car, but here I am, and I know exactly where I’m heading.
***
