“Uh, fine. Are you sure you’re okay?” We both sat down and she looked away and I thought she was going to cry.
“Um, not really. I got into grad school,” she said with a weak smile. “But they won’t give me enough financial aide, and you know how my parents are, and so I can’t go. I’m just having a hard time accepting it, I guess.” Her chin wobbled and one tear rolled down her cheek.
“Oh, Cara, I’m so sorry. Come here,” I got up to give her another hug just as our waitress came over to take our drink orders and tell us about the specials.
“Can you give us a minute?” I said, but Cara waved me off and sat back down.
“No, I’m fine.” She wiped her eyes and ran her fingers through her light brown hair.
I couldn’t think about ordering drinks, so I just got some tea and focused back on Cara.
“You can’t work and go to school?” She shook her head.
“They told us not to. Plus, I’m going to need to do clinicals, and that’s going to be unpaid.” Of course. It was no wonder our generation was broke as hell.
“Did you put in an appeal?” I was trying to think of anything I could think of to fix this.
“Yeah, I’ve tried everything. Unless I can pull like twenty grand out of my ass, I’m screwed.” Holy shit, that was a lot of money. “And that’s just for the first year.” She laughed a little and looked up at the ceiling, as if money was going to rain down on her.
“So there goes that dream. I don’t get to be a physician’s assistant after all. I can just go back to nursing, but...” she trailed off and wiped a few more tears. “It’s just hard. To give up on that.”
I could practically hear her heart shattering, and mine was breaking for her. I reached out and took her hand, squeezing it.
“We’ll figure something out, Cara. You’re not the only one who, uh, needs cash.” I definitely didn’t need that much, but I needed more than a few hundred dollars.
“I’m so sorry, I’ve been completely self-centered, what’s going on with you?” I shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t a competition.
“I just kinda lost my job. So I’m looking for another one and rent is due and I have a little bit of savings, but not enough to get me through if it takes a few months. So, I guess we’re both kinda fucked.” I raised my cup of tea and she raised her glass of cranberry juice.
“Here’s to being broke,” she said, and a little bit of the mood lightened. It was a huge relief to see her smile, and for it to be genuine.
“You can always get a job at the hospital with me and Ansel.” I added some more honey to my tea.
“Yeah, he already suggested that, but you know how I am with people. I swear, someone would come in with an injury and I’d either cry or throw up. I can’t do blood.” I shuddered at the thought.
“I know. One of us just needs to win the lottery. If I won, I’d give you what you needed.” I knew she would. And so would I.
“If only my grandmother hadn’t put that freaking clause on my inheritance. That would be more than enough to cover school for you and get me through a while without a job. I could make it stretch for years if I needed to. Ha, maybe we should get married.” The second the words were out of my mouth, everything made sense.
“Cara, we can get married.” Her brown eyes went as wide as I’d ever seen them go and her eyebrows almost disappeared into her hairline.
“We can what?!” She said it so loud that a few people turned and stared. I waited for them to go back to their French toast and hash browns.
“No, seriously, there’s no stipulation on whether we have to be in love or anything. Just have a marriage certificate. We could get it annulled right afterwards. It would be so easy. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, it’s brilliant.” I reached out and grabbed her hand as our waitress came back to take our orders. I didn’t want to be a bitch, but Cara and I had more important things to discuss right now.
I ordered pancakes and hash browns and ignored the waitress as she took our menus.