Chapter One: We won't remember meeting like this... Will we?

And eventually, she left him too...

Little Holly grew into a defiant teen, hellbent on doing whatever she wanted. Running away for a night or two with the hippies, drinking father's not-so-hidden liquors, skipping classes, getting into fist fights, stealing muffins from the local minimart. Normal delinquent teen things: nothing that would really land her in a small-town jail truth be told. Even so, she went on to prove the Kingsley family wrong about her in the end. She graduated within the top ten of her class without their help and had missed nearly every day of her senior year doing it too. Small towns often just wanted their students to succeed in life; failing them or holding them back over truancy in their final year was something rarely done. Little Holly maybe just got lucky.

A long move to the big city just to get away from people that knew her, a shitty waitress job and two years later, Holly Kingsley stood before the grand Gotham University's administrative building.

She looked up at the old brick building wondering how she had actually stumbled through life to get there. Just meeting the bare minimum, having done just enough. She thought she might feel a sense of wonder, pride, anything besides the ultimate feeling of 'nothing particular.' Only the physical feeling of cool air blowing at her back. A signal that it would storm in the ever-rainy city that was Gotham. Grey clouds had already begun to form by the time she made her way inside.

Holly found her way among the mess of students moving from class to brunch to lecture to practice to whatever they may have been up to. The administration building being located close to the center of campus and attached by a covered walkway to the cafeteria, many students and faculty passed through the building on the daily but more so due to the worsening weather. She was easily directed by signs in the polished wooden halls, to Office A-11. Where the university was grouping new students by handing out their schedules then trying to sell them the most expensive discounted books in the next room over. When Holly leaned against the desk counter, she looked an older woman dead in the eyes before speaking, "Kingsley, Holly. Should be majoring in accounting." Her own grey-blue eyes dropped down when the other woman looked to her mechanical cream-colored keyboard to type out Holly's name. Computers were such a thing to marvel at, Holly stared at the back of the box-like monitor; all that potential inside something smaller than an oven. However, the older woman typing did type so painfully slow.

"Accounting sounds so exciting!" This older woman had to be kidding thought Holly, "A real movement for women to be going into all these office jobs these days, more than just secretary work of course," the other woman sounded genuine with a small chuckle at the end and Holly realized she probably wasn't joking. That it was likely a 'change of the times' and a difference of the generations, "Kingsley..." One letter at a time she typed out the name, "H-o-l-l-y, enter. Let's see." The older woman squinted briefly at the screen, "Yep. Student ID 998015475," She waited for Holly to nod in affirmation, "Here you are then. Let me just print this schedule for you and you'll get your ID card next week. You took your photo last weekend, right?" Holly nodded again.

She had underestimated how long the printing process would take; that was truly painfully slow. It was no wonder there were so many students gathering up in the hall outside.

With schedule in hand Holly set out, then right back inside when she saw little ice chunks falling to the ground with the rain. Other students and staff were crowding at the doors, looking out at the weather as it grew worse. "Well. Fuck." She stated aloud. A soft 'tch' came from just behind Holly when she cursed, by the time she turned her head to look the individual had already started down the hall towards another exit out the cafeteria side. Obviously inconvenienced by the mass of people attempting to go out, or in, the front.

Holly would never have guessed a few weeks later that she'd run into them again.

While laying on a covered bench at the edge of campus grounds, one that connected to the main road she was awaiting a city bus to take her to work. Maybe she was just having déjà vu, regardless, the same soft 'tch' rung in her ears. This time when she popped her eyes open to look there was a young man standing, facing away in front of her. He looked like he was attempting to juggle folders, books and other college essentials in his arms. He was just out of reach of rainfall being covered by the bus stop, yet, seemed entirely uncomfortable standing there so close to the pouring weather. Or maybe it was her laying there taking the whole bench space that was the problem. "Well. Fuck." Holly responded by moving her legs slowly, giving them a good stretch before sitting upright at one end of the bench. During this he had turned to look at her for just a moment, making the decision to set his things down on the bench to reorganize them. Rather than potentially dropping them in a puddle on the sidewalk. Holly thought for a moment he had murmured a 'Thank you' and she turned to look at him like a deer in the headlights stupidly asking, "What?"

He only stared back at her, an uncomfortable unapologetically dead stare. He either thought long and hard before he replied or was caught off guard. Perhaps both. In the end he said nothing. The two sat in silence, staring straight ahead until the bus came. Holly thought it more awkward when they got off at the same stop, walked the same direction, and went to the same place. An All-American diner that many college students went to meet up for classwork. He went in the front taking a seat at a booth with three other individuals while Holly went in through the back to put her pack up and put on a bright red waist apron.

For the entire first four hours of her shift, Holly avoided eye contact with the young man from the bus stop, only mildly red in the face when she walked past their table the first time. Work consumed her otherwise; she did not have the time to worry over one awkward moment forever. Taking down and bringing out orders; remembering who got a large cola and the small diet, which kid needed a coloring mat with crayons and who was in need of a cheque. A shitty little waitress job for sure, but it was honest work she needed to pay for her classes with.

On that four-hour mark she noticed that the four college students hadn't left yet. They seemed to be either studying or working together for some class; certainly something school related. They had, had multiple sodas, coffees, pancakes, a few grilled cheeses, some fries and one of them just kept having vanilla ice cream cones. She went to check on them as her fellow waitress was on break. Forgetting that among them was her awkward bus stop encounter.

"Hi there, just wondering if you all are ready for the bill or... More ice cream?" She noticed one of them had gotten a water cup, full of water and ice, upside down on a twenty dollar bill upon the table. Great. She just smiled.

A blonde boy leaned back from looking at the water cup intently giving Holly a sly grin. "Nah. We're good." He seemed to notice where her eyes went on the table, "Oh... Don't worry about this. It's for Johnny here, he's been such a great help since last year. Tutoring us an' all. Thought I'd tip him." Holly realized now it wasn't slyness, the blonde was just patronizing and arrogant, "For you though doll," he shuffled around, pushing one of his friends to get their things and get out of the red-white-n-blue booth. Three of the four stood, two walking ahead while the blonde held out another twenty to Holly. She took it thinking it was his part of the bill until he added, "A tip for you an' the old bag you work with. Ciao." The three left laughing to one another.

Tch. The noise came from her mouth, annoyed. The scowl on her face was mirrored by that of the young man left in the booth, he was staring at the water cup and money under it. "Hey." Holly rather than upset spoke in her customer service voice, letting the scowl disappear before she turned to him, "Let me show you a neat trick about these." She pressed two fingers on the edge of the bill then carefully shook the glass enough for it to release the suction. The bill slid along the table without spilling too much water. Quick reflexes pulled the bill out of more watery danger with very minor tearing at the top, "... Don't worry about the check either. I'll tell Moe they dined and dash-."

"I don't need your pity." He was obviously pissed, after cutting her off he breathed in heavily once to calm himself. He took out his wallet and snatched the wet bill from her, folding it inside and looking through it for a fifty. It would cover the total and some change.

"You don't have it," she was tired, only four hours of work and she was done with people, "and I don't want your money. You paying for those cock-suckers isn't right after that." That's what she was supposed to say right?

Very calmly he set the money on the table anyways and started to gather his things, "The world is full of injustices," he had at one point must have heard her called by name during the last four hours from one of the kitchen staff, "Holly," but hearing a total stranger say her name like that truly did catch her off guard, "regardless if you think something is right or not, it is none of your business." And he left too.

Hours later...

"Well. Fuck." Holly said after her shift was finally over. She sat outside her housing looking upwards into a rare clear-ish night. No more ice hunks making insurance companies cry at least. Stars continuously swallowed and reemerged from thin wispy clouds as the breeze pushed them along. The wailing of police, fire truck and ambulance sirens echoed from the inner city and behind her the home thrummed with boppin' mixtape tunes. Holly played with an unopened pack of cigarettes, turning it slowly between her fingers without looking at it. She'd smoked before, from cigarettes to cannabis and other strange things since her junior year. This however was different. Since junior year she carried around the same pack of cigarettes; plastic wrapping still on them and all. Albeit they were likely stale. She spoke aloud, more mumbling to herself, "He was kind of cute... A cock-sucking asshole, but cute." Holly huffed a sigh of disappointment. Blonde boys were always a bit cuter than the rest in her opinion; something about them subconsciously screamed dangerously fun. And she tried to tell herself it was not because he tipped her a twenty that she needed for that new textbook and had kept without sharing.

Suddenly her back was bumped into and a very drunken, "Woah... s'orry" came from a girl only slightly older than her. They then giggled squinting at Holly as if to tell who she was on the dimly lit porch, "Eyyyy... It's you! You... The-Uh. The girl who took over Kitty-Kate's room, fuck I miss that bitch..." She paused then drank from a bottle held between her sky-blue manicured hands, "what-cha doin' out here. Comon' an parrr-teeey!"

"... Yeah okay." Holly stood stretching her arms above her head, putting the cigarettes in her jacket before snatching that bottle of whatever. It smelled kind of like bourbon, didn't matter as long as it burned on the way down, "Hey, Stacey, I know you're shit-faced right now but you know..." Holly took a long drink of the certainly throat-burning bourbon bottle following the giddy girl back into the loud house, "where I sign up for class tutoring?" She could get that boy's name and number that way right?

"I'm nooot tell-ling~" Stacey sing-songed as they wound and weaved between people dancing or sloppy smooching, "We don't do that nerd shit in this house!" The woman turned around with her hands on her hips in a sultry manner, leaning towards Holly, "Not unless it's for a booooooy." Holly crooked a smile.