Vinyl Resting Place by Olivia Blacke

Author:Olivia Blacke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 16

As soon as I got outside, I pulled up the Uber app and scheduled a ride. I was grateful that we had access to ride-sharing services in Cedar River. Despite our nearness to Austin, it mostly felt like we lived out in the middle of nowhere. The nearest available car was ten minutes away, so I changed the pickup point for Sip & Spin and pedaled back to the shop.

I was just parking my trike when the Uber showed up. I waved at my sister through the window before getting in the backseat of the car.

“I’ve heard good things about that place,” the driver said, gesturing toward our record shop before doing a U-turn on Main Street.

“Glad to hear it,” I told her. “I own the place, along with my sisters. You should drop by sometime.”

“Oh, I don’t even have a record player.”

“That’s okay. We sell those, too.” Maggie had thought that it was a waste of space and money to stock record players when anyone could order one online for next day delivery, but Tansy and I talked her into it. Now that might be about to pay off.

She nodded. “I’ll swing by sometime. You heading to UT?” the driver asked.

“Yup.”

“That’s my alma mater,” she told me.

“Mine too!”

“Criminology major. You?” she asked.

“Information systems.”

“Isn’t it funny? I drop a small fortune in tuition for a degree, then end up driving for Uber full-time to try to pay off my student loans. The amount of information I have in my head about criminology is, well, just about criminal, but I can’t get a job in the field. And you’re here with a computer degree working at a record store.”

“A record shop that I co-own,” I said, slightly defensively. “And up until a few weeks ago, I did work in IT.”

“Oh,” she replied. “I guess there goes that theory.”

“What theory?”

“That no one ever goes into the same field as their degree. So, why are you heading to campus this morning? You enrolling in business classes or something?”

That wasn’t a bad idea. It wouldn’t hurt to know a little more about the ins and outs of running a business, now that I was an honest-to-goodness small business owner. And I was looking for something to occupy my time outside of the shop. I could take classes on campus or online and could study between customers. There was just one problem. I was broke.

“Or something,” I finally answered, and we lapsed into silence.

When the driver dropped me off on campus, not gonna lie, it felt like coming home. I’d spent four years here studying, working, and partying. I’d never lived on campus—my parents’ house was too close to justify the expense—but I’d spent most of my time here. When I wasn’t in class or the computer lab, I was at my work-study job, or in one of my study groups in the library. I stayed late for football games and plays and art exhibits. I came in early for student fundraisers and once for a twenty-four-hour public reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey, in Greek.

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