This Love

Chapter One- Suit Guys and Shiny Cars

Chapter One- Suit Guys and Shiny Cars

Summer for most students meant school break, beach getaways and lazy days. Well, not for me.

I could only wish for the time I could keep all my textbooks buried under all those novels on my reading list. For the time I could feel the water on my toes as I sat on the sand watching the sun set. For the time I could binge watch TV shows and movies I only get to watch trailers.

Wishful thinking.

My summer was just like any other season of the year. School and work. Work and school. That was it. Lame, I know but I had no choice. If I wanted to survive this world, I had to live my life the way I'm living it now.

A glance at the window told me that it was still dark outside but I have to get up if I want to be in school on time. I climbed down from the double deck. My best friend and roommate, Kyla was still sleeping soundly on the bottom bed. After combing my hair, I patted and shook her shoulder lightly to wake her up. She moaned in protest and asked for five more minutes.

When I got out of the room, the boarding house was still silent. As always, I was the first one to wake up. I've always been an early riser. The idea of rushing in the morning along with my boardmates was unappealing so I set my alarm earlier than others. By 6:30, most of them are awake and falling in line in front of the bathroom while I'm on my way out of the house.

I took a quick bath. Kyla just came out of our room stretching and rubbing her eyes.

"Morning, bes. You really are one of a kind. It's summer term and we still have to wake up early." she said with a yawn.

"Yeah. Yeah. Just go take a bath." I pointed to the bathroom. I told her I'll make coffee as soon as I'm dressed.

I wore my usual attire, a tank top under a plaid shirt, skinny jeans and white Converse. All courtesy of the ukay-ukay. Everywhere you go around the city, there's an ukay-ukay. It's where one can buy second-hand clothes, shoes, bags and other things. Most of my things came from ukay-ukay and over the years, I've mastered expertise in shopping in there. With luck and patience, I had a lot of good finds in cheap prices.

I headed to the kitchen to make coffee for Kyla and I. Some of our boardmates were already up. Lisa and Ali, the roommates two doors from us offered me one of the sandwiches they we're making. I refused to take one because I only have coffee for breakfast.

Both Lisa and Ali were Tourism students in their third year and both dreaming to be flight attendants someday. Lisa stood tall at five foot eight while Ali was Kyla's height, an inch shorter than Lisa. When the four of us are together, I look like their younger sister because of my height.

Ali had shoulder-length hair, big hooded eyes and pointed ears which she was insecure about. She never wore a ponytail to hide it. Lisa, on the other hand, was a bombshell. Long wavy hair? Check. High arc brow? Check. Full lips? Check. Resting bitch face? All check.

Lisa and Ali both have slender frame but Ali had the athletic body. She's part of the volleyball varsity with Kyla and I see them go for a run every weekend. I admired their determination and perseverance to stay fit. Exercising was probably the only thing I'm lazy at.

Kyla and I arrived at campus at exactly 7:15. There were lesser students because it's the summer term. Taking the summer was required in our program so Kyla and I had no choice but to enroll. We headed to our classroom immediately for our first class. It was a one hour and half major subject that we missed last year.

We were supposed to graduate last April but we still had a lot back subjects. It was quite depressing to see all our batchmates attend their commencement without us but we had to look at it in a different way. That's going to be us marching in the stage next April. Only one more year. I remembered saying to ourselves when we volunteered as usherettes during the grad program.