Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66518 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66518 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
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.