Red Shoes, Black Coffee (Red & Black #2)

7 | A big, big mess

Ada

My mood is pretty much crushed for the rest of the evening.

I try my best to enjoy the night and focus on what Colin's saying but sometimes, I just lose the battle and let my mind drift off. I can't stop thinking of the bitterness I heard in Jed's voice when he told us to enjoy our date.

Was this what it really was? A date?

I didn't look at it that way. To me, Colin and I are just a pair of friends who went out to see a movie, then hang out at a coffee house. I'm not one of the girls who make a big deal out of something that was never so major in the first place. Never have been. Does this mean I'm also blind?

"You're awfully quiet today." Colin says. I glance at him from where I'm sitting in the passenger seat of his car. It's well past nine PM and we're heading back to the campus. Tomorrow it's Saturday but I know Colin has some extra senior classes in the morning and I plan on getting up early to practice playing, too. There's a concert-closing in that I need to get ready for. I don't really have much time to do it during the week so I try to catch up during the weekends.

"Are you okay?" Colin asks, concern lacing his voice.

I smile faintly, dropping my gaze to where my hands are laced together in my lap. I twist my fingers, thinking of a suitable answer.

"Yeah." I nod assuringly. "Just tired. It's been a busy week."

That's not a lie. The pre-concert stage in Julliard is always an intense time. Like every year in May, the freshmen are preparing a special performance to show off their talents. Only the best ones get to perform and I got a proposition to play a piece on the piano. I would have to lie if I said I wasn't super excited about it and didn't train every chance I got.

"I suppose so. I can remember my own freshman performance. I was nervous as hell. Happy, but nervous." He smiles at the memory. "God, it was such a long time ago."

"It's just three years." I tell him, smiling. "Could've been worse."

"Still." He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. "Feels like days."

I nod with understanding. It's horrifying how fast time seems to fly by once you graduate from high school. It seems like yesterday when I entered the Julliard campus for the first time, nervous and with my heart in my throat eight months ago. Now there was only a month left until the big freshman concert that was going to pretty much sum up my first year here.

"How is the practice going, by the way?" Colin asks. He interrupted my thoughts and I need a second to grasp his meaning.

"Good." I reply. "There's a lot going on at once but I manage somehow. I've got this piece ready that I'm hoping will blow everyone's minds but I need to practice it more, though. I was hoping that tomorrow one of the rooms would be empty so that I could sneak in and play."

"There's always some piano available." Colin says, nodding. "They've got millions of them on the campus."

"They do." I laugh.

I swear that before coming to Julliard, I had never seen so much music equipment gathered in one place in my life. This is heaven for all the musicians. Or at least, this is the closest thing to the heaven I have always imagined.

Heaven with so much work your head spins, but heaven all the same.

We enter the campus and Colin parks his car in the dorm parking. Again, he quickly gets out and rushes to open my door for me, at which I laugh, finding it amusing every single time. Together, we make out way to the girls' dorm. I expect Colin to leave me at the main entrance but when I open the door, he follows me in, not bothered in the slightest with the fact that he is a boy and this is an all girls' building.