Unexpected Arrivals(16)
Before I could make the situation any worse, Cora had managed to get dressed—minus the bra—and took her spot next to me. When she tucked her dark hair behind her ear and righted herself as if she hadn’t just been caught naked in the kitchen, I burst out laughing again. I couldn’t stop, and Hannah’s giggles just kept me going.
Cora finally glared at me, shutting me down. That was, until her bra came soaring past my face. I wasn’t sure who’d shot it back to her, Hannah or Neil—they both looked guilty.
“You three are impossible.” She huffed out a loud breath, and I noticed how rosy her cheeks had become when she stepped around me and plopped down at the breakfast table.
When I tried to hug and comfort her, she pushed me off with a fake frown.
Neil sat down, followed by Hannah and myself. “Time for a family pow-wow.”
Cora thought it was adorable that Neil tried to have communal rap sessions between the four of us. Personally, I thought he was a dork who’d lost his cool factor between Geneva Key and Chapel Hill, and we’d never managed to find it again. That first year we were here, he’d become the old man to our youthful antics. When we added Hannah to the mix, it was all downhill. She was the perfect complement to his anal-retentive ways. Yet somehow, together, we all worked flawlessly.
“Cora…” Neil tried to be the voice of reason while Hannah and I continued to giggle like school girls. “You need to give us some idea of what school you plan to attend, so we can make plans with you.”
I didn’t give her the chance to respond before adding, “We’re only like six weeks from graduation. You’ve applied to grad schools. Just tell us which ones you’ve heard from.” I had tried this before and gotten nowhere.
She stared at us like a mute.
“Don’t make me tell them, Cora.” Hannah hated to betray her friend; however, she also wanted me to be happy, and without Cora in my life daily, I wouldn’t be. That, in turn, would make Neil unhappy, which led back to her. It was the circle of life, the days of our lives, as the world turned.
Cora’s shoulders slumped. There was a reason she’d kept this a secret, although, I had no idea what it was until she opened her mouth. “The top two possibilities are both on the West Coast.”
And the Financial District was northeast.
She intentionally waited as long as she could so she wouldn’t have to break the news to me that what she wanted was on the opposite side of the country from what we’d been planning for. Her eyes filled with tears. “It’s like my parents dying all over again.”
Her words crushed me. She’d told me countless times that we were her only family. She’d welcomed Hannah like a sister, and she adored Neil. The truth was, we were all tightly knit. During our sophomore year, her grandfather had passed away from cancer, leaving her grandmother—whom she never spoke to—as her only living relative. I felt sorry for Gwendolyn. She was lost without Owen and often tried to connect with Cora, but Cora was unable to forgive whatever grudge her dad had passed down as a family heirloom.
Neil hadn’t said more than about ten words to his parents since he’d left Geneva Key and hadn’t spoken to Natalie at all. And I only went home at Christmas. I still talked to my parents, although Geneva Key seemed like a lifetime ago, and we’d all forged our own way here. Granted it had been with our parents’ money—except Neil who’d worked his ass off—nevertheless, the fact still remained…she’d be alone.
“Oh, honey, don’t say that.” Hannah grabbed her hand across the table and held it tightly with her own. “We can figure something out; we just need to talk about it. Right, guys?”
There was no reason to break up the Breakfast Club; we’d just have to find a way around detention.
***
The compromise ended up with Cora picking Cornell Tech in the heart of New York City to pursue an engineering degree. She’d taken math and science classes, but I didn’t believe that was what she’d intended to do on the other side of the country. It had been a possible path she’d tossed around, yet unlike everything else she did, this was the one thing she’d never had a firm grasp on. Cora had floundered with career choices, and in all honesty, I believed her desire to go to grad school stemmed from her inability to pick a direction. If she continued with school, it bought her more time to be indecisive.
Even with her concession, she didn’t seem the least bit upset with her choice. Hannah had decided to go to culinary school at The Michelin Institute on Long Island. She and Neil were getting their own place, and Cora and I were going in search of one ourselves. Neil had become a miser since his parents lost their fortunes—he’d give Scrooge a bad name. Somehow, he’d managed to pay for college as he went, helped with rent and utilities, and squandered away money to keep them afloat. I prayed to God he hadn’t taken after his old man and started gambling—albeit, if he had, he was clearly better at it than the previous generation. I wasn’t sure how long he could manage, but I assumed he would figure it out. Either way, I was ecstatic we had a plan and multiple businesses to look at investing in.
Graduation came and went with little fanfare. The four of us walked in the ceremony, although since my parents had been out of the country, and Cora’s grandmother hadn’t been invited, that only left Hannah’s parents. They had invited us all out to dinner, and we enjoyed an evening with them. At the end of the day, it was just that—the end of the day. One that simply marked the end of one chapter of our lives and the start of another.