Hopelessly Romantic

Part 26

I want to be a baker. I've always wanted to be a baker. I think it's ironic my major is in business when I want to be a baker. They both start with b's yet have completely different connotations. When I think of a business person, I think of someone like my mother. I think of someone blunt, someone who's willing to put their morals aside if it means there's more of a profit margin, someone who just has kids because there's a legacy to protect. Now a baker is someone empathetic, considerate, loving- their oven is always warm, they always smell of cinnamon, and their legacy isn't money or children, it's just a home where no one holds their breath, no one walks on eggshells, no one has ever heard of the word anger.

I think I get that for my uncle Erwin. He's my cousin's, Levi's, spouse, but I oddly spent more time with him than Levi. I only spent time with him actually. Most of the time my mother and father fought, my mother winning because she runs the company, and when Levi was over, he'd never talk to me. He doesn't now, either. I do remember talking to my uncle though, and even now, we still talk. Even now, he gives me baking tips for cupcakes and breads that I can't make because I don't have access to an oven, that I can't make because I'm a business major. So, I've always wanted to be a baker, and because of that, I can't be.

No one in my family does what they want, I'm not an exception. We have money to spend on what we want, and we rarely get denied when we want something, but when it comes to jobs, the path of life we want to take, the happiness that could come from doing what we want this one specific thing, we don't get what we want. My uncle Levi doesn't even get what he wants. He wants to be with Erwin, to go own a cafe down in Marley and never see anyone but his husband, strangers, and maybe regular customers. That's what he wants, which I find oddly similar to my want, and he gets a teaching position in a school known for our family's legacy.

I don't really know what my mother wanted, same with my father, but I do know Erwin also wanted to run the cafe with Levi, he used to say he'd take me with him to the cafe, give me the best education in Marley. Now, he says I'd run the cafe with him- Actually, he's stopped saying that since I came to college, but he did say it a lot right before I came here. Actually, he said a lot of empty promises before I came here. It honestly feels like being here just solidifies that there's no way out anymore.

I thought that a lot the first month here. I came in the summer because it was either summer classes or another couple months with my mother. Also, college women. But then my thoughts changed after everyone was here. Armin, Eren, Sasha, Connie- It felt like everything could work out for once. Eren kept saying the dumb shit he usually does about merging companies, Connie kept talking about him not having a daddy kink and his flings thinking otherwise, Sasha would steal his food to interrupt him, and Armin would just read off something about merging companies to Eren. It all felt like things were okay.

Y/n came along right then. I didn't know who was really coming to this college besides my friends, and my mother didn't care to tell me about anyone besides Reiner because he's becoming an architect. So, when I saw the woman I was crushing on since history, in the college halls, I panicked. I thought she didn't know me; I thought that when I saw her later, she was bitter because I was a stranger who bumped into her; I thought that I could only every be her friend- I thought that I was her childish crush until she kissed. And I ruined it all because of that. I looked her in her eyes and told her I didn't want to be with her in public because she deserves a baker, not a business person.

I don't know what I was thinking if all I've ever wanted was to smell of cinnamon and never have her walk on eggshells around me. I don't know what I was thinking when she confessed. I was going to pull her into a room and tell her that I felt the same, that I'd be a baker to her journalism- I was going to do so much with her in the fucking minutes of lunch left if she just stayed- If I had chased her, I would have done so much more with our future. I would've been her girlfriend already, been okay with being her girlfriend, I would've taken her on dumb dates around my hometown and then here where she's never been. I would've called it quits with Hitch before I officially came here. I would've been so much more for her, but now I'm left standing in- not my dorm.