Page 10 of What If We Break?
My eyes wandered down Rina’s body, taking note of her jeans overall that were covered in paint. She even had paint in her hair, on her hands, and a few splatters on her face.
Could’ve been a wild guess, but she was probably not here for ballet. But whatever, she could still show me to the classrooms, right?
“Do you know Brooke?” I asked.
Rina furrowed her eyebrows. “I know lots of Brooke’s. Well, okay, I only know three, but either way, you’ve got to be more specific, pretty face.”
“Brooklyn Desrosiers-King,” I answered, refraining from rolling my eyes. “Little blonde girl with a temper. She’s a ballet dancer, and she should be in class right now, I just don’t know where.”
Rina laughed, though I didn’t know why. “Do you even go to school here?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Looking for my girlfriend.”
“Ah.” She nodded, her grin widening. “You must be Reece, then. Brooke talks a lot about you.”
“She does?” I mean, I knew Brooke wasn’t hiding me, and it was pretty difficult to do when we hung around each other daily, so it shouldn’t have surprised me. However, ever since we’d been going to different schools, I barely knewanyone who was in her life anymore. I was going to meet her friends for the first time later at her birthday party.
“All the time.” Rina nodded for me to follow her, so I did. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. I used to think she was making you up because Brooke refused to show us a picture of you, and I didn’t want to believe someone could be as perfect as she’s been making you sound.”
“I’m not perfect.” Which was quite obvious, seeing as our relationship was slowly making its way down the drain.
I’d only come here because I needed to talk to Brooke. For some stupid reason, my friends’ comments affected me more than I wanted to admit. Neither of them knew what it was like to be genuinely in love with someone and how that affected everything you did. I shouldn’t have listened to them.
I shouldn’t have let their comment aboutmysex life shoot me down a black hole, spiraling about whether Brooke was feeling the way Ming and Fynn believed they would. Brooke and I had been together for almost seven years. We’d been friends for almost our entire lives. So I knew if something bothered her, she would’ve told me.
Still, I couldn’t help feeling like a piece of shit about the whole situation.
I was seconds away from pulling out my phone and giving my brother a call just to beg him to tell me how to stop those awful thoughts I was having. Colin would’ve been honest with me. I was sure about that. However, speaking to him about thiswas the last thing I wanted to do.
He gave me the talk at fourteen when I already knew most of the things I needed to know, and that was bad enough. For my own sake, I couldn’t have added another awkward conversation.
Before we rounded a corner, Rina stopped in her tracksand looked at me with guilt etched in her features. “I lied,” she said.
“About what?” If she lied about knowing Brooke, I was going to lose my mind.
“I knew you were Brooke’s boyfriend from the very first second.”
My head lifted and fell slowly in a nod. “Okay?”
“She posts a lot of pictures with you in them online, you know? It’s difficult not to know who you are.”
“Yes, I know. I follow mygirlfriendon her accounts.” It’d be strange if I didn’t.
Her smile returned. “Great. I just wanted to be honest.”
Truthfully, I hadn’t even thought about that until she just mentioned it. It didn’t matter, anyway. All I cared about was getting to Brooke.
Rina led me down a long hall and some of the classrooms we were passing by played music so loud that I was surprised the other professors weren’t complaining about the noise.
Suddenly, I remembered that Juilliard was supposed to be a performing arts school, so why the fuck was this girl covered in paint? Did they have art classes here?
“It’s fairly early, so Brooke should be in either ballet or modern. Unless she’s on a break, that is,” she told me. “I don’t know her exact schedule because I’m here for music, not dance, but I’ve picked up on a couple of things.”
We stopped in front of a door, and Rina told me to step aside before she quietly opened the door and peeked inside. A moment later, she pulled back and closed the door. “Yup, like I assumed. She’s in ballet.”
