“That app you developed… do you think it can be put into production?”
She shrugs, continuing to piston confidently across the cracked sidewalks.
“Well, sure. I guess so. Eventually. Why do you ask?”
“Have you ever written a business plan before?”
She looks at me sidelong without slowing down. “What do you mean?”
“Well, if you're going to have a business, you have to have a business plan. If you are going to have a partner… investors…”
“Daniel, what are you saying?”
“I'm saying that this is something you should consider. If you have something that you can bring to market, why wait? We should do it.”
She slows down dramatically, then stops in the middle of the sidewalk. I circle back and find her staring at me, her hands on her hips, her head cocked to one side.
“What are you talking about?”
I jog in place, not wanting to lose my target heart rate.
“If you are ready, let's do it,” I explain simply. She scowls at me, pressing her lips together and shaking your head.
“That's not…”
“Kita, you have nothing to lose. I'm excited about your project. Let's do it.”
She tilts her head back, staring at the sky which is now a pale yellow, the color right before it turns blue.
“Daniel, you don't understand… I don’t think I want to go back to school.”
My feet stop. I stand there, suddenly winded and panting.
“What are you talking about?” I bark, way too sharply.
She raises her hands and then lets them fall helplessly against her thighs. “It's just… after Lizzie and all that, I don't want to. It's like you said, I could do anything I want. Which means I don't have to do anything I don't want, right?”
“Well, I guess…” I admit, not wanting to acknowledge that she has a point. Yes, I might've said that, but this not what I meant.
“And didn’t you tell me that after the semester was over, I could do what I wanted?”
“Um…”
“The semester is over,” she says quietly.
“So… what does this mean?”
She shrugs one shoulder. “It means… well, it could mean a lot of things. But I don't think that you want to be going into business with somebody who dropped out of college, would you?”
“Actually, not really. Isn't there anything else you can do? What about the online classes?”
She looks around, squinting into the middle distance. “Well, the course schedule isn’t really complete. I mean, you can't get a whole degree with those kinds of classes.”
“Well, can you do at least a couple years? Because by then, you know Lizzie will have graduated. Or gone to work for her mother or something.”
“Hm.”
I sense that she hadn’t considered that. A ray of light cuts across the open field and shines on her golden hair.