The One Who Got Away is Back

Memory 3 ♡ The Not Meet Cute

I was the proud carrier of two, brand new student loans.

As I finished that semester, I realized very quickly that I was not on the right track on a couple of very important topics. The first one being that the cafe was going to pay enough to get by on my bills, but definitely nowhere near covering tuition. So that was loan number one. With the end of that semester looming over me, I made math like I'd never done before in my life and calculated that as a matter of fact, I was very tight on funds for books, materials or health insurance.

Then the other thing I realized was that without my father's financial backing or connections, I was also completely on my own when it came to life post graduation. I'd been counting on starting my career out in one of his retail businesses abroad. With that out of the picture, I figured I'd have to get in on someone else's company or start my own. In either case, it would help if I knew something about business.

What little business acumen I had, I acquired from opening Casual Friday Funeral's first online shop, before they signed with their label and took the rights away from me. I'd designed the pieces of clothes and sewn them myself, subcontracted print shops to mass produce stickers, keychains and wristbands and had barely got any sleep for the remainder of our high school senior year or my college freshman. It had frankly been a relief when the label took over and rebranded the band with a new logo and official merchandise. I missed the chaos at times, but there was no way I'd have been able to keep up by myself. This experience was great, but not enough for what my future now looked like.

I mentioned this to Ayrton, my new roommate, on the afternoon we finished unpacking all our junk into our new apartment. He shrugged and said, "Why don't you take business classes then?"

The box I'd been carrying grew too heavy for my arms, so I put it on the secondhand coffee table we got at Goodwill and wiped the sweat from my forehead. I mulled it over, and there was one problem.

"I'd have to change major, or take it as a minor."

Seeing the reluctance in my face, Ayr rolled his eyes. "What's the problem, honey?"

I squeezed my lips into a tiny smile.

What wasn't the problem?

"Well, I'm a sophomore. It'd be like starting over..."

"And?" His eyebrows went up. "Because that bullshit excuse can't be it."

"And my life's already derailed. I just feel like—stop looking at me like I'm an idiot. It's a lot, okay?" He kept looking at me like I was a dumdum so I sighed. "Life is all about changes and all that jazz, but you can only roll with certain of them if your bank account's not hungry."

Ayrton put his hands on his hips. "You know what non-rich people, like we now are, do in cases like those?"

I cringed at his wording but still asked, "What?"

"Get a fucking loan."

My hands threw up in the air. "I already took one."

"Well, take another one."

Surprise. Loan number two.

The most complicated part after that had been to convince the school that I would make a good fit in the business school. Nay, a great fit. There was a rigorous application system, since it was one of the most coveted programs in all the state and they didn't even care that I was already a student at the same institution. It was only when I remembered my aforementioned business credentials and the fact that my online shop had been profitable that they were convinced I could survive in the program.

That was how, when the next semester rolled in, my third year of college was split between a fashion major and a business minor. I felt like a fish out of the water when I left the arts buildings behind, with its flamboyantly dressed fauna, and transitioned to the halls of corduroy clad students. Even though it was a million degrees out. I admired them for their fashion statements if not for their creativity. I sat in my first class, an elective called The Business Plan, surrounded by blacks, grey and browns.