Page 11 of The Hookup (Firsts and Forever #13)

Hal

Over the next few weeks, Ryder and I became a part of each other’s day-to-day lives.

There were a lot of texts and video calls, including a good morning message first thing every day and another to say good night before we fell asleep.

In between, there were check-ins, ongoing conversations, and plenty of silly little things.

Ryder loved sending me memes, cat videos, cartoons—anything he thought might put a smile on my face.

I was chuckling at his latest offering as I stepped through the door of my on-campus studio. It was early February, a week into my final semester, and I still needed to get going on the collection for my senior project. So far, I’d had a few vague ideas, but none of them were very good.

Since I wasn’t paying attention, I nearly collided with Kit, who shared the studio with me. He’d been carrying a huge roll of fabric, and he dropped it with an, “Oopsie,” as he did a quick sidestep to avoid me. Somehow, he was here every time I came to the studio.

“Sorry about that,” I said, as I tried to help him. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

He flashed me a bright smile. “No worries.”

I’d been surprised to learn Kit was twenty-seven.

If I’d had to guess, I would have placed his age closer to twenty.

That wasn’t just because he was a cute little twink.

He was consistently upbeat, positive, and optimistic, which were attributes I associated with much younger people—those who hadn’t been beaten down by life yet.

After we each grabbed an end and carried the heavy roll of fabric to his worktable, I felt the thick, dark red knit and said, “This is nice. Is it from the donation room?”

“Yup. We got a big delivery this morning.”

“I should take a look, before it all gets picked over.”

As I took off my messenger bag and set it aside, Kit said, “I’ll go with you. I grabbed this fabric and ran, but I want to take another look.”

“You definitely scored with that.”

“Right? I’ll bet there are over ten yards left, and you can see how wide it is.”

He put on a red vintage sweater over his basic T-shirt and jeans, and as we stepped outside, I said, “Oh hey, you colored your hair. It looks nice.” His natural color was as dark as mine, but in the sunlight it shone with purple highlights.

“One of the drag queens at this club I go to did it for me. It turned out I was secretly her guinea pig, so she could see how it looked before she dyed one of her wigs. The verdict was that it was too subtle, but I like it. I hadn’t gotten to do anything like this in a long time.

” That was a lot more of an explanation than I’d been expecting.

Our department’s studios were tucked away in a corner of Sutherlin’s campus.

The art college hadn’t added a fashion design program until the 1970s, several decades after the school was founded.

That meant they had to cram our facilities wherever they would fit, unlike the more established departments.

As Kit and I made our way across campus, I got another silly text from Ryder, which made me smile.

Kit seemed curious, so I showed him the meme.

It was a picture of a wide-eyed dachshund herding sheep with a bunch of border collies.

The caption said: When you lie on your resumé but get the job anyway.

He grinned and asked, “Who sent you that?”

“My… friend. His name is Ryder, and he lives in Texas.”

“That pause tells me it’s more complicated than just a friendship.”

“It is. We hooked up two months ago, when I was in Las Vegas. After that, we started texting and video chatting. It’s all been very G-rated since we’ve been back home.”

“Do you wish it was spicier?”

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “But then again, maybe it would make being so far from him even harder, a reminder of what I can’t have.”

“Are you planning on seeing him again?”

“I really want to. He says he’ll buy me a plane ticket if I want to come for a visit next month during spring break, but I don’t know if I can.”

Kit glanced at me and asked, “Why not?”

“I may need to work on my collection during that week off. It isn’t going well so far. But also, what if I went to see him and we had the most amazing week together? I think it would be really hard to walk away when it was over.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t have to walk away. Maybe you two could start a relationship and live happily ever after.”

“That’s pretty much impossible. He has all these responsibilities in Texas and could never move here.”

“Couldn’t you move there?”

“What would I do on a ranch?”

“Ryder.”

I chuckled at that. “Sure. But what about my career? It’s not like there’s a lot of work for fashion designers in rural Texas.”

“Yeah, you’d probably have to be self-employed, maybe work on commissions. That’s a tough way to make a living in this field.” He glanced at me again as we approached the design building. “Is it about more than just your career, though?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m wondering if you’re using that as an excuse for not getting serious with this guy, because the idea of starting another relationship scares you.”

He knew my last relationship had ended badly, so that didn’t come out of nowhere. Maybe he wasn’t entirely off the mark, either. I didn’t want to get into that right now though, so I left it at, “Maybe,” and held the door open for Kit as we arrived at the donation room.

Even though it was early in the day, news of the donations had spread fast. Several of our classmates were hauling around armloads of fabric, and even with the three items per person limit, there was very little left.

I unwound the last few yards of a pretty, pink chiffon from its cardboard bolt as I read the notice on the wall.

Today’s donation had come from a local designer’s workshop, which was clearing out last season’s inventory.

No wonder it was such good quality. Our program received materials from various sources, but most often it was weird stuff that didn’t sell at the local fabric shops.

Not that either Kit or I could afford to be picky.

Sutherlin was an expensive school, and tuition had eaten up the last of my savings.

Kit was in a tougher situation. He was here on a scholarship that only covered his tuition, and he was currently between jobs and barely getting by.

The supplies we needed to sew our assignments weren’t cheap, so no wonder he looked dejected when he came up to me and said, “I screwed up. I should have gone for my limit this morning and grabbed two more fabrics.”

“You wouldn’t have been able to carry them. I don’t even know how you got that heavy roll back to the studio.”

“I tied a clean garbage bag over one end, so I could set it down every few feet. And you’re right that it would have been tough to bring back more than that, but I wish I’d tried. Maybe I could have chucked something into the bushes and come back for it later.”

I held out the chiffon and asked, “Do you want this? You’re welcome to it.”

“I might take you up on that later if you don’t end up using it. For now, I think we both should go into scavenger mode and grab whatever we can.”

I scooped up a bright, garish plaid and said, “You’re right. If nothing else, we can always go for a retro punk look and spray paint it.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. Everything you make is so elegant and restrained.” We’d been in enough classes together to know each other’s style by now.

“I’ve been known to make myself big, wild pieces for special occasions. I just don’t do that with the stuff I design for school.”

He seemed confused. “Why would you hold yourself back like that?”

“I’ve been trying to fill my portfolio with stuff that’s more marketable. I think it’ll give me a better chance of landing a job after graduation.”

“I think there’s a lot to be said for letting your imagination run wild. I want to go way over the top with my collection. I started out designing for drag queens, and I’m going back to my roots.”

“That’s awesome! Have fun with it. I wish I could have fun with mine.”

He flung his arms out to the sides, causing another student to swerve out of the way as he exclaimed, “You can! You just have to give yourself permission. If your stuff is imaginative, I know you’ll get job offers.”

That was the problem, though. I was painfully uninspired. It was going to be hard enough to produce a basic collection, let alone a wildly creative one.

Just then, a student who’d been carrying around more than his limit returned three large, folded bundles of fabric to the table. Kit pounced on them and exclaimed, “Score!” He quickly added, “Obviously, this is for both of us. I just wanted to make sure we got it before anyone else did.”

We divvied it up and signed out, and as we began lugging our finds back across campus, Kit was buzzing with excitement. “This is so great,” he gushed. “I’m getting all kinds of ideas from these prints.” I wished I could say the same.

Over the next three hours, Kit played music, danced around the studio, draped and pinned some of the new fabrics onto his dress forms, and produced several stunning, fully rendered sketches of wonderfully original designs.

His problem was that he had too many ideas for his senior project and wasn’t sure how to narrow them down.

During those same three hours, I drank a pot of coffee, made with the old, funky machine Kit kept in the studio, and produced what basically amounted to a handful of doodles.

Finally, he stretched and said, “I think I’ll head to the cafeteria for lunch. Want to come with me?”

“Thanks for asking, but I have to leave for work in about forty minutes. I want to try to get a little more done before I go.”

“Okay, cool.” As he put on his sweater, he asked, “Will you be coming in this weekend?”

“I don’t think so.” I could sit around and get nowhere just as easily from home.

After he left, I dropped all pretense of trying to seem productive. Instead, I faceplanted on my worktable and sighed.