Brandon was staring at the girl, grinning in a way that said . . . that said he was absolutely happy.

I swallowed my sigh.

And then he looked over at me, and before I could freak over the fact that he caught me staring at him like a stalker, his smile went up a blinding notch. “You haven’t gotten a chance to meet Tatiana yet.”

Damnit. I didn’t want to learn her name, but Tatiana was such a cool freaking name.

Tatiana shook her head as she turned brown eyes toward me. “No, we haven’t.”

“This is my friend, Calla Fritz,” he said, smoothing a hand up her back. “We had music class together last semester.”

That was who I was—Calla Fritz, always and forever the friend of the Hot Guy Brigade. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I blinked back the stupid sudden rush of tears as I wiggled my fingers in Tatiana’s direction. “It’s nice to meet you.”

That wasn’t a lie. Not really.

On Monday, I left my dorm early enough to head down to Ikenberry Hall, which was all the way down a huge hill my ass so did not appreciate. It was early May, but the temps were already cracking into the eighties, and even with my hair pulled up into a hasty knot, I could feel the humidity cloaking my skin and threading its annoying fingers through my hair.

Soon, before the end of my finals today, I’d look like a frizz ball.

I cut down the side path outside of Ikenberry and winced when I had to open the door and dip inside before a spiderweb of epic proportion dropped from the little roof over the door and onto my head.

Cold air was cranking in the building as I pushed my sunglasses onto my head and walked down the hall, entering the financial aid offices. After giving my name, the overworked and frazzled looking middle-aged woman motioned me to take a seat.

I only had to wait five minutes before a tall and slender older woman with silvery hair cut in a fashionable way came out to get me. We didn’t go into one of the cubicles where aid advisers worked. Oh no, she led back into one of the closed offices farther down the hall.

Then she closed the door behind us and walked behind her desk. “Please have a seat, Miss Fritz.”

Knots formed low in my belly as I sat.

This had never happened before. Usually, when I got called down here, it was due to information being missing from the file or a paper needing to be signed. After all, it couldn’t be a big deal. I only used financial aid for living expenses that weren’t covered by the crappy waitressing job I had, and it came in really handy when I quit at the beginning of the semester to focus more fully on my studies.

The nursing program was no joke.

I slowly placed my book bag on the floor beside my legs as I scanned her desk. Elaine Booth was on her nameplate, so unless she was pretending to be someone else, that’s who I was sitting in front of. There were also a lot of photos on her desk. Family photos—black-and-whites, colored, photos ranging from toddlers all the way up to my age, maybe even older.