Broken Souls Don't Cry

Chapter 8

Sara

Sara thanked the Jamba Juice employee for her smoothie and then went to find a place to sit since she was the first to arrive. Thankfully she found a table that was just being vacated. The place was packed with students grabbing a quick bite before heading to their next class. She took a few sips of her smoothie and kept an eye on the Jamba line looking for Kai.

Ten minutes later she still hadn't seen him. She wondered if she should send him a text. After a couple more minutes of anxiously waiting her phone buzzed.

Kai: "Hey, sorry I'm late. I'm just parking and will be there in a few minutes."

Her finger tapped on the table as she read the message. She didn't really know what his schedule was like, so it made some sense to her. She just hoped this wasn't an example of what the rest of the semester was going to look like with their project.

Sara: "No problem. I snagged us a table by the window. Do you need to grab a bite to eat?"

She saw that the message had been read but he didn't respond. Five minutes later Kai took the seat across from her and apologized again.

"Sorry, I had a work call that took longer than expected." Kai sighed.

"That's ok." Sara glanced at him with a curious expression, "Where do you work?"

"I started at an outsourced IT company yesterday. So, I help clients with their IT needs, network administration, setting up computers, dealing with viruses, that type of thing"

She nodded as she glanced at him. From what she knew of Kai she was surprised he had a job. In high school his family had been very wealthy, and she figured he would live on his trust fund like most of her classmates did.

"I'm honestly surprised you have a job. Don't you have a trust fund to live off of?" She wasn't sure what made her ask him that, it wasn't really any of her business, nor did it have anything to do with their purpose for meeting. However, she decided to get to know him a little bit, maybe it would make working with him easier.

"I do have a trust fund" he looked straight at her as she took another sip of her smoothie, "but I don't want to rely on my family's money to get by. I want to make my own way. I'm going to school to get my network administration degree so that I can open my own IT company."

His gaze was still on her, and she could feel heat rising to her cheeks. "Oh" was all she could muster out.

"What about you?" He asked and a smirk fell across his face "You kind of took off in the middle of the school year and disappeared." His phone vibrated on the table, but he didn't reach for it. "I was really surprised to see your name on the board. What brought you to the Rockies?"

Here was the conversation she didn't want to have. Thanks to the run she had taken with Casey last night they were able to come up with a vague answer and a plan on how to steer the conversation to get back on topic.

"Well, my parents took us out of school to home school us. My younger sister was having a hard time with school and my parents thought it would be best to take her, and the rest of us, out" It was a small lie but one she felt comfortable making in this circumstance. She continued to answer his other question, "I never really liked California but don't want to live on the East Coast or in a tornado zone, so I settled on Colorado. They have a great program here for social workers, which is what I want to do. It made sense."

She hoped that this would satisfy him enough and they could get working on their project. They only had thirty minutes until class started.

Kai smiled at her with a wide mischievous looking grin. She didn't know why he was smiling, had she said something funny? Crud, did he know I lied? That smile though, it had only matured since high school. She fidgeted, feeling uncomfortable under his gaze.

"I can understand that. I'm not too fond of California either, mostly because that's where my family is, and we don't get along all that well. Well, mostly I don't get along with my parents. When my friend was looking for a roommate I decided to transfer here. I'd been going to Stanford"

"That's a big change. Going from a prestigious school to a regular state university"

"Eh, it hasn't been that bad." He shrugged, "All but one of my credits transferred over. I'm kind of glad it didn't though because now I get to work with you."

"You've taken Philosophy before?" she asked him, trying not to think of that last part he said. Normally your general education credits transferred smoothly from school to school.

"Yeah," His hand went through his hair, "I don't know why that credit didn't transfer, but it's ok" He looked over at her again and her insides started to squirm. His ocean like eyes seemed to bore into her. "So, tell me Sara..."

Uh oh.

"Do you keep in contact with anyone from school?"

Phew Sara let out a breath. This wasn't the worst question he could have asked.

"No, I don't. By the time I left none of my friends were speaking to me anymore, so I have had no one to follow or keep in contact with."

"That's sad" He seemed sincere with his response.

"It is what it is" she said cautiously. She hoped he didn't expect her to reciprocate the question. She really didn't want to know who he still kept in contact with. "Well, why don't we work on the project some. We'll need to leave in about 20 minutes to get to class."

"Sure" he said and pulled out a laptop from his bag.

They worked until it was time to head to class, discussing a few possible service projects they could do and what each other's schedules looked like so they could meet up and work on project details.

Sara felt relieved that he seemed to be one who would follow through on group projects so that would make things easier.