❝𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗮❞ [✓]

𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙄

M I N A

I sat on the couch waiting to hear the tell tale creak of the stairs signaling my landlords inevitable visit. Toying with the locket my mother had given me four years ago on my sixteenth birthday; I stared at the two suitcases on the floor, hoping I wouldn't need them. I shouldn't have to; after all I was a big believer in my namesake and had been doing all the right things. I was a full time student; worked four mornings a week at the diner, didn't party like many of my girlfriends, and was proud to be referred to as a prude rather than a slut by the asshole frat boys at school.

My grades were good; I was responsible, reliable and had my own place. Well now it was my own place, which was the problem. Up until two weeks ago, I had shared the cute little two-bedroom apartment with my former best friend Solar. Former because she had dropped the bomb on me she was moving out to go live with her girlfriend. Not so bad, if she hadn't meant that night, and worse, stiffed me her half of the rent due the next day.

Because wait staff received tips, state law only required we be paid two fifty an hour. Jin, the owner of Kim's Kitchen, was a sport and paid us an extra dollar an hour so between hourly and tips I had been able to pay my half of the five hundred dollar a month rent. I had given Jaemin my half on the first and told him the story, but he was unsympathetic and started on about how easy he could get somebody else to take the apartment seeing it was only two blocks from the university.

I had to all but beg him to give me a little time and he said he would give me a week to get the other half or get a roommate. I'd put an ad on every bulletin board at school, but had no takers and I'd had to buy books for the semester with the last of my savings. The money accessible money I had left from mom's life insurance had been used to fix the transmission in my car only to have the motor blow a month later. Per mom's will, her attorney would use the rest of the money only to pay my tuition each year.

I had tried to get some of it to get a cheap used car and he seemed to sincerely feel bad for me, but said his hands were tied. It would be a waste of time to ask for help with the rent. My stomach twisted at the sound of the steps creaking from beyond my front door. I held my breath then released it when the footsteps passed my room and headed down the hallway. I had no idea what to tell Jaemin and truth was he could have the place rented before my bed grew cold.

Jaemin had a deal with the school that students received a discount from him and the school paid the rest, which was covered in my tuition. This allowed him to charge close to a thousand dollars a month for what really was only worth what we paid. But the lease stated in order to get that discounted rate the rent could not be more than three days late. If this had happened early in the semester I could have found a roomie easily, but this far in everyone was settled in.

I looked down at the locket I'd been fondling and felt that all too familiar burning sensation in my eyes, I glanced over at the cheap end table I had bought at a yard sale and looked at the picture of mom and I taken at my high school graduation.

Mom hadn't come from the best of stock as she'd put it and I was the first in her family to finish high school. The fact I'd graduated with honors and was now in college was a source of great pride for her and she would tell anyone who would stand still long enough about it. Mom had quit school, but when I was barely a year old earned her GED and through a state program to help young mother's received a bachelor of science in hospitality, which had led to her running a local Marriott.

Mom was making good money, but tended to spend it, mostly on spoiling me and going on cruises. She had some money put away, but not much. After all she probably figured she had plenty of time to do that. She certainly hadn't planned on being diagnosed with stage four liver cancer at the age of thirty five. She had passed away six months later, mercifully quick according to the doctors who said she suffered much less that way.