Halfway to Love | A Joanne Fanfiction

Ten

Since receiving the note from the mysterious girl holding onto his camera, Joe had been racking his brains for anything that may lead to her identity. He found himself becoming less and less concerned with the camera, which admittedly was partially due to the new one sitting next to him on his desk, and more preoccupied with why the reasons why she had kept it. Sighing, he realised that he had lost complete focus in his editing, so he settled on the idea of having a ten minute break to get his thoughts on the right track. Absentmindedly, he scrolled through Instagram as he waited for the kettle to boil, tapping through Instagram story after story. His fingers stopped at the red-headed dancer that he had followed the other day's story. "Reddo and Revo back together again" the caption of the smiling selfie of her and Reverend Richard Coles read.

"Byron," he called immediately, his eyes not leaving the phone. "Can you come here for a second please?"

To his credit, his roommate appeared in the doorway almost instantaneously. "Yeah bru, what's going on?"

"Do you recall anyone with the nickname Reddo by any chance? I heard it the other day but I have no idea why I recognise it." He explained, his roommate shaking his head apologetically in response.

"No, sorry. Maybe someone you met the other day?"

Byron watched amusedly as his roommate's eyes widened and he rushed off, murmuring something undetectable to him under his breath.

Joe raced into the office, immediately flicking his fingers through the neatly stacked notes and letters that he had decided to keep. The note that came from the girl with the camera was signed Reddo too, and now that he thought about it, the girl he was following on Instagram had distinctive similarities to the girl from the tube. Admittedly, bright red hair and being Australian weren't the most random combination of characteristics, but he was sure they were enough. He smiled in satisfaction at his discovery, and re-entered the kitchen to gain his roommates advice. His laptop stood forgotten on the desk, with his rough edit of his latest video still open.

"Did you find out who the Reddo was?" Byron asked, at Joe's unceremonious entrance.

"Yeah. Yeah I think I have."

"Care to elaborate?"

He smiled. "Do you remember a couple months ago when I lost my camera on the tube?"

"Oh yeah you said that someone tried to give it back but didn't give it into lost property or something?"

"Yeah well at the event the other day, the woman that had tried to give it back and left me a note at my meet-up, giving me advice on Chippy and saying that she'd give me it back at some point. She signed it with Reddo."

"Ah so that's the Reddo you remembered just now. Who is the other one?"

Rather than speak, Joe simply brought up the dancer that he could now identify as Dianne Buswell's Instagram story up on his phone. "So that's the other Reddo. You didn't mention that she was so pretty when you mentioned the camera incident a couple months ago."

He rolled his eyes. "That wasn't really my priority at the time, besides her hair was covering her face if I remember right."

Byron tapped onto her profile, curiously, the fact that the pair were already following each other planting a seed of an idea in his head. "Well now you've figured out that they're the same girl, why don't you message her and see why she didn't just drop the camera into lost property?"

"That's the problem. What an earth do I say?"

"Joe you've slid into girls' dms before, what's the difference?"