Every day, he picked her up from the café after work if he wasn’t already there waiting for her shift to end. Every evening, he cooked or bought her dinner. And every night, they slept together, alternating between making love in his luxurious king-sized bed or chastelycramming themselves into her tiny bottom bunk. Violet let them break the one roommate rule they had in place on the condition that Theo bought or made her dinner when he was there, which he was only too happy to do, and she’d nearly died laughing the first time she watched him squeeze his wide frame into Audrey’s twin bed.
Both of them were unwilling to sleep separately now that they knew how good it was together.
But they couldn’t keep this up forever. It was time for things to change.Reallychange.
And now Audrey was graduating.
She’d given notice at the café that morning.
She folded the corner of the note with her name scrawled on it back and forth, over and over, wearing a deep, frowning wrinkle into the thick cardstock.
One chapter closed, and another just beginning.
It was so strange to even contemplate leaving the place that had saved her five years ago when she failed her first semester and lost her precious scholarship. She hardly knew what to do if she wasn’t pulling espresso shots, and it hardly mattered that she’d had several interviews at reputable engineering firms and startups over the last few weeks—none of it seemed real.
Not even when she gave her capstone presentation in front of a bunch of industry people invited by her professor to critique her work while Theo grinned beneath his mask in the audience, his eyes crinkled the entire time he looked at her.
Not even when the representative from her dream company approached her afterward and asked to see her résumé.
Not even when she’d finally received a call with an offer to be a junior engineer at a green energy startup firm.
Not even when Josh squealed and grabbed her when she told him, twirling her around on the spot.
“I’m so proud of you, Audgepodge!” he cried. “Maybe I’m next, huh?”
“Next big Broadway star Josh Lemaire?” She waggled her eyebrows at him. “I think your big break is right around the corner.”
He beamed at her, wide and gleaming.
“Certainly doesn’t hurt that ya boy was cast inLes Mis!” He bounced her again. “Grantaire! Can you believe it!”
“Yes!” She buried her face in his neck and laughed. “I can! And so can Diego, I take it?” Theo’s best friend had been coming around to the coffee shop a lot more lately, leaning over the counter while he flirted with the cute barista with the flawless mahogany skin and the brilliant smile. These days, he was lingering over his coffee to write while glancing back up at the register. Frequently.
A lot like how Theo had.
“Oh, well…I—I don’t know.” Josh’s cheeks reddened.
That was a first.
She’d never been able to embarrass him about a crush before. Must’ve meant he really liked him.
It was nice to turn the tables a little for once.
“Erin Thalia Acosta, bachelor of arts in English, summa cum laude.”
The graduate a few places in front of her stepped onto the stage to raucous cheers and Audrey folded the corner of her card over one more time, barely stopping herself from ripping it off entirely. All these people with huge, loving families, gaggles of friends, and certainty about their futures, and here she was with none of that.
She peered anxiously out into the crowd from the wings of the stage, but the faces were drowned in shadows from this angle.
Theo was out there somewhere with Violet and Diego, that much she knew. Josh said he’d try to come if he could swap shifts. Some of her professors were gathered on the stage in their full academic regalia, their silly hats and tassels and garish robes withstriped hoods hanging down their backs like some strange relics of bygone institutions, broken out of dusty storage just for the occasion. But that was it. Audrey only had, what? Three or four people to her name?
More cheers for the next graduate erupted.
She looked down at her card again before handing it to a waiting staff member.
It didn’t matter that her section wouldn’t be as loud as the others.
The people shedidhave were the absolute best.
