“Cello?” he asks.

“Yep. Why do you say it that way? Cello. Like it’s strange.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I just thought you’d be like your old man. Guitar. Or piano. Isn’t that what girls like you play? Piano?”

I arch a brow. “Girls like me?”

“God, I didn’t mean anything bad. Rich. Fancy. Pretty. Cello doesn’t seem like a pretty-girl thing.”

Leave it to Neil to combine an insult and a compliment. God, he’s a strange guy. Strange, and yet really likeable simultaneously somehow.

“I like the cello,” I say.

“Well, you don’t have to get defensive about it. I like the cello, too.”

I’m angry again because for some reason, this conversation reminds me that Alan said my talent would never make me more than third chair in a third rate orchestra.

“I’m second chair in a first rate orchestra,” I announce.

He frowns and his eyes narrow. “OK. Did I suggest that you weren’t good? I said the cello surprised me.”

My face covers in a burn. “Can we not talk about the cello please?”

I turn off onto a dark path that cuts through campus.

He stares at me. “Easy for you to say. You’re not lugging it. Are we turning?”

“Yes. It’s shorter. We’re going to cut through here.”

“You do this at night, alone?” He sounds surprised. A touch concerned.

I frown. “Of course. How do you think I get home?”

Neil shakes his head. “God, you have no common sense at all, do you?”

“Obviously not. I’m with you.”

I make a face at him and he tosses me a heavily exasperated look.

It’s a long walk back to the condo. I live off-campus, on a hill in an upscale, high-rise condo complex. I have a car in Berkeley, but I rarely take it since, even with my overpriced parking permit, the traffic is awful and it’s a hassle to find a vacant space in any of the campus lots. It’s faster just to walk everywhere.

It takes thirty minutes to get from the rehearsal building to my front door. Neil hands me my cello.

He stands there on the steps, silent, staring at me as if he’s waiting for something.

“Do you want to come up?” I ask.

Neil shakes his head. “No, that’s OK. I better cut out. I left my car on campus. I would have taken it if I’d known it was so far.”

He takes a step back from me.

I smile. “Thanks, Neil. You’ve been a really OK guy today.”

He shrugs. “You’re the only person here I know from home.” He smiles. “Remember, Berkeley is only as bad as we make it.”

I laugh. I sense that Neil feels the same way about Berkeley as I do. “It is kind of different here, isn’t it?”

“It’s what you make it. That’s Berkeley.”

I start to laugh. Neil’s stares at me and I can see that he doesn’t understand why I find that one so funny.

He frowns. “Am I missing the joke here?”

I shake my head and try to stop my laughter. “It’s just, you’ve got to know my dad. I swear to God, he said the exact same thing to me. ‘It’s what you make it. That’s Berkeley.’”

Neil starts to laugh. “See you, Chrissie.”

As he walks down the sidewalk I can hear him whistling one of my dad’s biggest hits from the 60s.

~~~

Inside the condo I find Rene huddled over the kitchen table; books, note pads, colored highlighters, post-it notes, and paperclips scattered everywhere.

I set down my cello case and drop my carry tote on the counter. “You’ll never guess who I had lunch with and who walked me home from symphony tonight.”

Rene shakes her head in aggravation, jerking on the ends of her dark brown hair, tightening the ponytail atop her head.

“I don’t have time to guess, Chrissie.”

I reach into the refrigerator for a Diet Coke. “Neil Stanton, from Santa Barbara. He’s working as a janitor in the music department, if you can believe that.”

Rene frowns. “Neil who?”

How could Rene not remember him? “That guy. That guy from that night at Peppers before we left for New York on spring break. The guy who did me a really, really big favor.”

Rene looks at me, eyes narrowing as though trying to remember.

I lift a brow. “You screwed his friend in my dad’s car. Josh something. That was his name I think.”

Comprehension floods the pretty lines of her face. Then she scrounges up her nose. “Josh! What an asshole. He never called. Why would you have coffee with Neil? Wasn’t he a jerk to you that night?”

“Well, not completely. He was kind of nice at times.” I sink down at the table across from her. “I’ve had a weird day. Lambert was all up in my face again and then Neil asked me to go for coffee and I just sort of went.”

Rene grabs for her pink highlighter. “Chrissie, can we talk later? I’m buried here. Organic Chemistry is kicking my ass and I have a test tomorrow.”

“Fine. I always listen to you talk about your guys. Your dates.”

“You’re studying music. You already have a PhD in that. I’m studying molecular cell biology. Trust me, Chrissie. You don’t get into medical school with courses like ‘The history of the Vietnam War Through Music.’”

I roll my eyes. She can be so rude at time. “It’s through film, not music, and I actually like that class.”

“Whatever!”

I grab my Diet Coke and head for my bedroom. Rene obsessed with her books and grades; I’ll never get used to that change in her.

I sink onto my bed and turn on the TV, then adjust the volume low. My thoughts drift back to my summer road-trip across country with Rene.

It was a weird trip, but Jack was right, it was good for me.  I think it was keeping busy, always having something new to see, that got me through everything that I needed to work through after my breakup with Alan.

Spring break in New York was some kind of strange pivot point for both Rene and me. Afterward, I was different. Rene was different. And our friendship was different. In May, when we left Santa Barbara for the East Coast, Rene was tamer and more serious about life. I wonder if that had anything to do with her father remarrying and her finally accepting that he isn’t ever coming back to her and her mother.  And I was less introverted. I know that has everything to do with me being with Alan.  We each left New York with good shit and bad. It made us both just sort of ready to have a really chill trip, enjoying that best friend thing.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we didn’t do a dumb thing or two.  I laugh as some of Rene’s antics dance in my memory. In every state Rene left behind a guy.  And me…I shake my head…I had my first, and what I hope will be my only, one night stand in August.

It just seemed like the right thing at the time. We were in New Orleans in a club, and the lead singer of the band was hot, and it just happened. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad. It was just sort of blank. It doesn’t belong in either section of my journal: good experience or regret.

Rene said it was just one of those things girls do after a painful breakup, but I don’t know. I think I just wanted to know what it would be like to have sex with someone other than Alan. It was weird. Not bad, just weird.

Rene had a readymade answer for that during my morning after of indifference over the entire experience: That’s the curse of having your first time be with a guy who cared about you, Chrissie. Once you’ve gone to bed with a guy who cares, it pretty much ruins every other type of sex.

Cared: past tense. Rene didn’t mean it that way, but it still hurt. I don’t like to admit it, but even after seven months I’m still emotionally, if not physically, involved with Alan. After the one night stand I called it quits on guys. I’m just not there yet, in the past tense emotionally with Alan, ready to start something with someone new, and since Berkeley I haven’t even tried the guy thing. Shit, I hardly go out.

I shake my head. It makes it so much stranger and confusing that I just went off with Neil today. I wonder why I did that. We didn’t exactly end as friends after our one night in Santa Barbara last spring and he’s definitely not my type. Still, I did have fun with him today, even though we traded verbal insults most of the time. He’s really cute.