Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,185

know better, he would have thought she was trying to escape.

“No, I’m fine. Really,” Taylor said as she exited on the push of the door by someone else. “Really.”

“Oh, thank You, Jesus,” Yoli said. “I was up all night worried about you.”

Taylor ducked into the conversation as she went through the outer door into the sunshine. She went down the concrete steps and deliberately turned toward the housing office rather than taking their usual route. “Let me guess, the dream again?”

“I just knew something bad had happened. I just knew it. You were about to fall off that ledge, and they couldn’t get to you.”

“Yoli, I’m fine. Really. You worry too much.”

Greg stood at the top of the steps, watching her leave and wondering where she was going. He wanted to ask, to follow her, something. Instead, he put his head down and went the other way. Sometimes, she was just maddening to the core.

“We have found a room,” the lady at the housing office said, “but it will not be available until next Monday.”

“I’ll take it.”

“But there are a couple of issues with it.”

“Okay?”

“It’s in the senior apartments, and you are only a junior.”

Taylor was starting to get the feeling that if she moved a centimeter, this whole thing might crumble beneath her. Strangely, she suddenly felt like she was on that rocky ledge that Yoli kept talking about. “Okay.”

“So we are bending the rules for you here,” the lady said. “This is only for this semester, and you will have to pay the prorated amount for the time you are there.”

Taylor nodded, unsure of what she was signing up for. “Okay.”

“The senior apartments are at the top end of the expense spectrum of on-campus housing options.”

“Okay.”

“And if you want the room, you will have to sign the agreement today, and we will need payment immediately.”

Once more, Taylor nodded as her heart threatened to beat out of her chest. “Okay.”

“If you’re ready, I have the paperwork ready.”

“Okay.”

Foregoing the trip to the student center, Greg went home. He tried to get some homework done, but that was a lost cause. He wondered where she was and if she would show up, but that was worse. Before he knew it, it was time to go to work. If only he’d had a chance to talk to her…

Taylor knew Greg’s schedule better than he did, so she went to one of the dorms on campus to bury herself there during lunch. No one knew her there, and she knew no one. The number on the bottom of that agreement burned in her chest and made her want to cry. If her parents didn’t pay for it, how would she ever afford that?

Worse, now she had to get a laptop too. If she was moving out, she really couldn’t use Greg’s anymore, and if she didn’t have one, how was she going to write her papers or get anything else done? At just after two, she finally decided that she would have to bite the bullet and make the phone call. It took every ounce of willpower, and her head was swimming by the time his secretary put the call through.

“Taylor? Is everything all right?”

“Hi, Dad.”

Greg’s phone rang as he was walking into the hospital, and he did a double-take at the number. “Hello?”

“Yes, is this Greg Everett?” the lady on the other end asked.

“Yes, Ma’am, it is.”

“Mr. Everett, do you have some time today to come in and discuss the radiology tech position at University Hospital?”

“To… today?” he asked, striding through the sliding double doors.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Uhm, I’m here now,” he said. “I just came in the front doors for work.”

“Excellent.”

Her father had agreed on both counts, probably because there was no mention of her dropping out of pre-med. That was okay. Taylor had acclimated herself to the fact that she was going to go through with being a doctor whether she liked it or not.

She went to the computer store and really did wish she could have brought Ryan along. Not because she thought of him as anything other than a friend and really not even that, but because she was so very far out of her depth with these things.

The salesman was roughly just a little older than her, and he had no ring on the important finger. Maybe if she charmed him, he wouldn’t cheat her too badly.

“Hello,” he said, coming over. “Something I can help you with?”

“Oh, gosh, I hope so.”

“You will start training tomorrow,” Mrs. Hopkins said as