Bloom of Love (Long Valley #10) - Erin Wright Page 0,25
show her the world on his arm, or at least the inside of a nice restaurant.
Why now?
“It’s an extra two thousand in tuition,” Yesenia said, her voice dull and broken, and he was sure – absolutely sure – that he didn’t want to hear the rest of the sentence, “and I also have lab fees this semester. It’s another $1500 on top of it all.”
Christian dropped to the couch next to his sister, his legs no longer able to hold him up. An additional $3500? He couldn’t. He didn’t have—
Yesenia turned into him, burying her face in his chest as she sobbed. He held her, stroking her hair back as he tried to wrap his arms around the enormity of the problem.
If he could just convince his parents to help out…but even as the thought crossed his mind, he shoved it away. Yesenia was a girl. Yesenia was supposed to get married and pop out kids and let her husband take care of everything. She was not supposed to go to college and have a career.
It did not matter how smart she was; Yesenia’d had the bad luck of being born a girl.
His parents were willing to splash out stupid amounts of money on things that did not matter –quinceañeras that were fit for a princess – but Yesenia hadn’t wanted a quinceañera fit for a princess.
She’d wanted to go to college.
“I’ll just borrow the money,” she said, straightening up and wiping the tears from her eyes. “Everyone borrows money. It’ll be—”
“You are not going to leave college in debt!” Christian snapped, and immediately regretted his tone. She shrank away from him, and he blew out a frustrated breath. “I’m sorry.” He closed his eyes and breathed in slowly. “I didn’t mean to be so…” He waved his hand in the air, brushing it away. “We’ll figure it out. We always have. You’re already working during the semester and that slows you down, so it isn’t like you can take on another job during the school year.”
They had seven semesters of this left. Not, of course, that he was counting or anything. But in his not-so-humble opinion, May of 2024 couldn’t come fast enough.
He’d never, ever say that to Yesenia, of course.
She sighed, her long, dark hair a tangled mess, her mascara smeared across her face. She was normally so particular about her appearance. If she looked in the mirror, he was sure she’d let out a shriek of horror.
“I wish I could find a second job this summer,” she said miserably. “Danyard’s is always so good about taking me back, but I need to find something for the evenings and weekends.”
Danyard’s, a local office furniture company, was always so good about rehiring Yesenia every summer because she was the hardest worker they had, and they knew it. They paid her minimum wage – a crime in Christian’s book – but Yesenia said she liked the fact that it started so early in the morning and gave her from three o’clock on to work somewhere else.
Not, of course, that this gap in her schedule had done her any good this summer.
“Your shift down there already starts at 6:30 in the morning,” he reminded her. “You can’t work too late into the evenings.”
She shrugged. “I can sleep when I’m dead,” she quipped, trying to smile.
And I’ll eat when I’m dead. But he didn’t say it out loud. Yesenia already worried about how often he ate macaroni and cheese – aka, the Yellow Death – for dinner. He refused to make her worry more.
Finally, she slipped out the front door when she realized how late it was. “I know Stetson has you cutting hay right now, which means you’ll need to get up in just a couple of hours. I’ll let you sleep.” And then she was gone into the night.
Christian forced his weary body to bed, staring up at the ceiling as he tried to figure out what to do. What’d he been thinking, dating Carla? Here she was, this successful businesswoman. She had employees. She’d been running Happy Petals for years. She even had her own house, unlike him, who lived in a single-wide trailer for free as part of his pay package from Stetson.
Huh. Actually, come to think of it, he’d only ever seen Carla come down the stairs of the florist shop and greet him there. Where was her house? He needed to ask her on their next date.