“You think you’re going to have to do what?” Hadley walked up behind them, intercepting the end of the conversation.
“Hadley!” Devon turned around to greet her friend with a smile.
“Hey, good to see Brennan is taking care of you for me. I see he’s feeding you the burger,” she said with a shake of her head. “He thinks it’s the best thing on the menu. He’s wrong. It’s the chicken.”
“Hadley, always so opinionated,” Brennan said, straightening as she approached. He started pouring her a drink.
“Is it really opinion when it’s obviously fact?” Hadley asked, taking the seat next to Devon.
“She thinks all of her opinions are facts,” Brennan told Devon, pushing the drink toward Hadley.
“Aren’t they?” Devon asked with a smirk.
“Oh, so you’re on her side then?”
“Was there ever a doubt?” Hadley asked.
“I tend to doubt everything.”
“And I tend to disagree with everything you doubt,” Hadley told him with a shrug.
“Just drink up and stop disagreeing with me,” he said with a smile.
Hadley shrugged again, sipped on her drink, and turned to face Devon. “So, how was your day? Did Garrett show you around the city?”
“Yeah. We had a great time before he had to go to work. The city is beautiful. Why haven’t I been here before?” Devon asked.
“I don’t know. It’s not like I haven’t asked you to visit.”
“Just had that little thing called school,” Devon told her.
“School. Psh! Who needs that?” Hadley’s lips quirked up. She glanced down at Devon’s notebook and tapped it twice. “You still writing?”
“I haven’t changed that much since you left,” Devon said.
“Can I read your latest?” Hadley reached for the notebook with a knowing smile.
“No,” Devon responded quickly, pulling the notebook off the bar and stuffing it back into her bag. She picked up the pen again and began flipping it between her fingers absentmindedly.
Hadley laughed and shook her head. “You really haven’t changed. You should let more people read your songs. They’re really good, Dev.”
Devon blushed and looked back down at her food. She didn’t want to have this conversation, especially not in public. She had too many emotions locked in her notebook. There was no way she was just going to open it up.
“Brennan could even play guitar for your lyrics,” Hadley offered without Brennan’s approval.
“What’s that?” he asked, leaning forward.
Hadley glanced at Devon as if asking for permission to continue. Devon rolled her eyes, knowing she didn’t have much choice now that Hadley had already started.
“You play guitar?” Devon asked, being quicker on the draw.
Brennan seemed artsy enough, but she wasn’t sure if he actually fit the bill. She had grown up around musicians, and while he seemed to have the whole desperate bartending routine down, there seemed to be something more to him. Her distaste for her own lyrics bled over to people who thought they could play instruments. She was too accustomed to how musicians acted and how they thought they ruled the world. They weren’t exactly her speed.
“Devon writes lyrics,” Hadley interrupted.
“Yeah, I play,” he said, locking eyes with Devon. “You write? I wouldn’t have pegged you.”
“A little,” she said with a shrug. She liked proving his judgments wrong. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a musician.”
“I’m a struggling musician.”
“What are you doing in Chicago if you’re a musician?”
“I said I was struggling.”
“And by struggling, you mean you have no talent?” Devon asked arching an eyebrow.
“I have talent,” he said, off hand like it didn’t matter what she thought. It likely didn’t. “I just find I should spend more time on my bartending talent while I continue to fail the entrance exams to get into med school.”
Devon swallowed, her mind immediately going to Reid. She felt really bad that she hadn’t told him the truth. He was going through such a hard time, applying to medical school himself, and she had just left him to go through it alone.
Maybe she should call him.
No.
She couldn’t do that without telling him that she had lied, without telling him that she wasn’t in Paris for the summer. Then, she would have to go back to St. Louis, and she just wasn’t ready for that.
“He has talent,” Hadley said as if it were the most painful thing for her to admit. “I’ve heard him play. Do you have an open mic gig this week? We could stop by.”
“Nah,” Brennan said, shaking his head as a large group walked into the bar. “I don’t have anything for a couple weeks.”
“Bummer,” Hadley muttered. “They’re so much fun. We’ll have to take you up to the bar at the John Hancock building before you leave. That will be fun. I was up there once. It was snowing on the ninety-ninth floor, but it wasn’t even raining on the bottom floor. When are you off, Brennan? You could come with?”
“You want me to go to an overpriced bar over a thousand feet off the ground when I work at a bar?” he asked.
“Yep!” Hadley said with a big smile.
“I have Monday off, but I’m busy. What about next Sunday?”
“Are you going to be here next Sunday?” Hadley asked Devon.
“Uh…yeah. Next Sunday works for me.”
“Great! Next Sunday it is then,” Hadley said. “It can be Devon’s going-away party.”
“Yeah,” Devon said dejectedly.
She didn’t want to spend only one week in the city. She would need to find a place to stay for the rest of the summer or else she would have to fess up to Reid and her family sooner rather than later.
And that was something she just couldn’t do.
Chapter Five - School
DEVON WALKED ACROSS Brookings Quad in the early summer air mingled with the scent of blooming flowers. The Quad at Wash U was surrounded on all sides by Gothic-style buildings. The one directly in front of her was Brookings Hall, and it served as the face of the campus. It primarily housed high-ranking university officials as well as the big colleges, so she rarely visited the building, but the walkways surrounding it were pretty. Devon much preferred the openness of the area to the other parts of campus. She was probably biased though because the social work building, Brown Hall, was right next door to Brookings.