"Sorry," The man shrugs as he hands back the jacket to Pete.
Pete grabs it, masking his disappointment. "It's okay, man."
The walk of shame back to Brendon is becoming more embarrassing with each rejection, and Brendon doesn't let him forget it.
"That's the, what, hundredth guy who has tried on the jacket?" Brendon frowns. "Face it, Pete, the campus is too big. There were four different grades at our party, there's no way you're going to find him."
"I can't give up," Pete groans. "He at least needs this thing back," He examines it for the millionth time. "It's expensive."
"Maybe he grew out of it," The taller shrugs. "That could be why he was so willing to give it up."
Pete deflates. The jacket itself was three hundred, Pete looked it up once the house was cleaned from last weekends rager. The specialized tailoring was another hundred. Even if it didn't fit, why would this guy ditch this priceless jacket he just could have re-tailored?
"No way. This thing was four hundred dollars."
"So was my math textbook," Brendon narrows his eyes. "But I'm giving the damn thing away the moment I'm done with it."
Pete ignores him. He's already craning his neck around the commons for another guy to test the jacket on.
"Can we at least go somewhere else to solicit men to try on the stupid jacket? I'm tired of seeing confused and pitiful looks."
"You're annoying," The older grumbles as he starts toward the exit. "Why did you even come along if you were just going to degrade me?"
"In hopes it'll talk you out of it."
Pete leads them outside and around the corner, eyeing each building one by one, brain working overtime to thing of where he'd catch the most students.
"While you decide where to panhandle, I'm heading to the park benches to talk about anything other than a random jean jacket."
Pete watches Brendon walk over to a familiar boy, who welcomes him with a smile. It's pitiful that Pete's first thought was asking him to try on the jacket. Doused in shame, he gives in to Brendon and follows behind, folding the jacket up in embarrassment.
Maybe he has been too stupid, too hopeful, too naive to believe he could actually find a needle in a haystack. There's not a chance he'll be able to find the owner of this jacket.
There's over fifty thousand students in attendance at the college, with over twenty thousand guys. At the rate he's going, he'll get to less than ten percent of them before he's set to graduate at the end of the month.
Brendon's right. He needs to just give up. Take the jacket to the lost and found, and leave the Cinderella stories to Disney.
"Hey, Pete," A brunette says with a kind smile.
"Hey, Ryan," Pete forces a smile back.
Ryan's been friends with Brendon since childhood, and with Pete since freshman year when Brendon introduced them. At first, Pete was worried that Ryan would be mad he wasn't Brendon's roommate. But Ryan assured him he wasn't, and was actually elated to learn they were separated, stating he'd probably end up on Dateline if he was stuck in a room with Brendon for four years.
"Finally come to your senses?" Brendon loops an arm around Pete's shoulders.
Pete's starting to understand why Ryan said that.
"Yeah," Whiskey eyes take a final look at the jacket before setting it beside him on the bench. "We can go to the lost and found."
"What did I miss?" Ryan looks between the two roommates.
