Chapter 7: College Expansion

Crisp October air nipped at my face as I crossed the parking lot of Lakeside Community College, boots crunching fallen leaves that painted the pavement in shades of rust and gold. The campus sprawled modest and practical—low brick buildings, a central quad dotted with bare maples, students hurrying between classes with backpacks slung low. I’d enrolled part-time in a handful of courses, economics chief among them, because the future I carried in my skull made every lecture feel like a bad rerun I’d already fast-forwarded through.

I settled into the back row of the econ hall, notebook open more for show than notes. The professor droned on about supply curves while my mind mapped Tesla’s coming surge, the exact week Bitcoin would claw back from its winter dip, the OnlyFans explosion still two years out but already ripening in my plans. My gaze drifted across the room instead of the whiteboard, scanning for the next pieces of the circle I was quietly assembling. Power hummed under my skin—the quiet god-complex of knowing every pivot point in the next eight years while the world still thought I was just another eighteen-year-old chasing credits.

Sarah caught my eye first during a study-group session in the library the following Tuesday. Nineteen, quiet bookworm type with oversized sweaters that hid lush curves and a pair of glasses perched on a nose dusted with faint freckles. Her huge natural breasts strained the soft knit fabric whenever she leaned forward to highlight a passage, and the way she bit her lower lip while reading made something low in my gut tighten. We ended up paired on a group project about market disruptions. I dropped a casual line about how certain cultural shifts would rewrite entire industries in ways no textbook could predict yet—subtle enough to intrigue, sharp enough to make her look up with widened eyes behind those frames.

“You talk like you’ve seen the ending already,” she murmured, cheeks flushing as we packed up late that night under the library’s humming fluorescents. The building had emptied around us; only the faint scent of old paper and her vanilla lotion lingered. I let my hand brush hers reaching for the same highlighter. She didn’t pull away.

Raven appeared three days later in the campus coffee shop, black hair falling like a raven’s wing over one pale shoulder, tattoos peeking from the collar of her band tee. Pierced nipples hinted at through the thin fabric when she stretched to grab a napkin, the silver glint catching the light. She was arguing with the barista about some underground album, voice low and smoky with rebellion. I slid into the conversation effortlessly—name-dropping a 2018 band I knew would blow up by 2020—and she invited me to her dorm for “better music than this watered-down crap.”