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“I mean—” Oh good, Bea, great start. “As a friend. Moral support. I just thought—” I push my hair back. “Being pre-med, it would actually be useful for me. Networking. Possibly finding a mentor. It would work for both of us, is all.”

He considers me.

“My parents would love a future doctor,” he says slowly.

“And I would love free food and alcohol.”

“Then it’s settled.” He grins at me. “It’s a date.”

* * *

When we’re done, we head to the café and work through the rest of the session.

Afterwards, I slip down the street to Elliot’s Books & Oddities, which smells like old paper and coffee and something faintly botanical, like someone is always in the middle of pressing flowers somewhere in the back.

My replacement MCAT book is on the shelf, I pay for it.

I put the book in my bag and I go home.

Here is what I know about musicians: they leave. They get restless and they get offered something better and they go, and the people who love them are forced to follow them or leave.

And I’ve just agreed to a date with the only musician I know.

Chapter Sixteen

Cal

“You know, the offer to join still stands.”

Oliver says it between breaths as we climb the last hill toward campus.

“Your fraternity?”

“My brotherhood,” he corrects.

I scoff. “You live with fifteen men who share two bathrooms.”

“Sixteen men. We gained a transfer from Oadby U.”

“Congratulations.”

Oliver flips me off without breaking stride.

We met during freshman week, when he spotted me at a party and decided having the front man of Atlas Falling in his fraternity would secure his legacy. He spent the entire night trying to recruit me. Drinks appeared in my hand. Women were introduced. At one point, someone started chanting my name while Oliver stood beside them wearing the satisfied expression of a man who believed his sales strategy was working.

It didn’t.

I do, however, like Oliver.

He’s a junior, studies political science, and possesses the sort of friendliness that should be exhausting but somehow isn’t. He also runs whenever the collective fraternity energy becomes too much. It’s often enough that we now do this two or three mornings a week.

“You’d be good for morale,” he says.

“I’m twenty-three.” I shake my head.

“We believe brotherhood transcends age. You can be the wise old man.”

“No, you believe putting me on the recruitment poster would increase applications.”