Winter Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 2) Read Free Page A

another grand prix rider, when it ended he would have still had to see her every day. But with me, it could be over and he’d never have to see me again. It wasn’t like I had a role in the sport. So maybe he was coming to Boston to tell me that he didn’t see any future for us. Maybe he wanted to do it in person so he didn’t feel like an asshole for dumping me over the phone. He could clear his conscience and head to Florida ready to get back together with Mary Beth.
    My roommate Van startled me out of my stalker-depressive behavior when she opened the door and pretty much fell onto her bed. It was eleven o’clock in the morning—she’d been out all night.
    Without sitting up she said, “You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”
    “Doing what?”
    “Looking at her page. You’re sitting there, sucked into the vortex of jealousy over someone he’s not even dating. You are obsessing over a self-created non-drama. I can feel the vibe in the room and it’s toxic.”
    Van and I got along well, even though we led completely different lifestyles and she probably thought mine pathetic. But she was never mean about it. She seemed to have a soft spot for me, like I was an injured creature she’d found out in the woods but didn’t quite know how to care for.
    It seemed to me that there were two kinds of kids at Tufts—the kind that never left campus and formed their college life around frat parties and the dining hall and at the very most ventured into Davis Square for dinners out or frozen yogurt. Then there was the kind like Van, who spent as much of their time as possible off campus. Van attended what classes she had to and then rode the subway all over Boston, mostly to hang out in cool coffee shops and hear indie bands. Van wasn’t exactly a groupie because she didn’t follow just one group, but she did spend all her time seeing indie shows. The less discovered the band, the better. Secret shows were her Holy Grail and if she wasn’t in Boston she could be found hopping on the train, the Chinese Bus, or into the dilapidated incense-smelling car of a near stranger to Providence, Portland, or Manhattan to catch a show. She had dated a lead singer in a band but from what I could tell that had ended.
    “You’re right. I’m obsessing,” I told Van. She was perhaps the only one I could tell the truth to. I had nothing at stake with her. It didn’t matter what she thought of me and I also knew she wouldn’t judge me. She didn’t care what people did, as long as it made them happy. But it didn’t take a genius to see that I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t even tell Dr. S exactly how bad things had gotten because I was worried she might do something extreme like insist on calling my parents.
    Van sat up and surveyed me with bleary eyes. She’d probably only slept a few hours on a friend’s couch, if at all. She had a short haircut—probably chopped by another friend who professed to have experience with hair cutting. It was uneven in places and a part of it was dyed blue. It would have looked awful on someone else but it worked on Van.
    “Okay, you’ve got to stop. Put down the iPad. We need to save you from yourself.”
    I did what she said and placed the iPad next to me. “He’s coming, actually.”
    “Chris? Here?”
    “Well, not here, not like to our room. But he’s coming to Boston. He’s giving a clinic nearby—a clinic’s kind of like a master class or something like that. He got us a hotel room in Cambridge.”
    “That’s so great,” Van said. “But—” She stopped herself.
    “What?”
    “You kind of look like shit.”
    “What about you?” I said. “You probably haven’t slept in days.”
    Van tossed back her head, shaking her angular pixie cut. “But it kind of works for me, you know? You, not so much. You need to clean up. Get your shit together before you see him.”
    “You’re right.” Of course she was right. I had been able to pretend to Chris on the phone but I wouldn’t