Saturn and the Sun

a cliche coffee shop trope

To say that Presley filled her plate with too much would probably be an understatement. In high school, she was the perfect student. Her GPA was nearly flawless, she had loads of extra curriculars and she excelled at all of them and she thought that it'd be easy enough to transfer that same energy in college but after just one week of classes, a job, student government and now the school paper, she was burnt out.

"Maybe you should drop one," Natalie suggested. She was sitting cross crossed on her bed, a notebook in her lap for studying and Presley was sprawled out on her own bed, eyes closed, trying to get some moments of peace and quiet.

"Yeah, the classes," Presley commented. Natalie laughed and folded up her notebook, putting it to the side and getting off her bed. She grabbed Presley's wrist and pulled her upright. "What? Can't you see I'm trying to relax?" Presley groaned.

"Maybe you should do the paper next year instead," Natalie said. "We'll leave a spot open for you, pinky promise." Natalie held out her pinky for Presley to wrap hers around but Presley just slumped her shoulders and looked at her friend.

"I don't wanna wait to do the paper. I prepped my entire high school English career for this." Presley was being a bit dramatic and she knew that but the sentiment still stood true. She had a goal, a vision, a dream to change the world. When Morgan said she was a tree hugger, she wasn't necessarily wrong. Presley was a huge advocate for saving the environment. Reusable cups, straws, containers. Recycling, gardening, she even was saving to buy an electric car instead of buying one that used gas.

"Maybe the environmental club is a little less demanding?" Natalie shrugged her shoulders and Presley threw herself back on the bed with a groan. "Just an idea," Natalie sang. She went back to her own bed and Presley stayed lying there, staring up at the ceiling.

Presley entertained the idea. She did all her extracurriculars and she went to work, letting the idea pass in her brain. She weighed the pros and the cons, making lists of the things that she loved and hated about each of them, hoping that she'd be able to come to an easy conclusion and have a revelation that one maybe just wasn't meant for her but truthfully, she was thriving in all of them.

She had spent hours studying the reciepes for work and now, she was flying through them without a second glance at the cheat sheet. All her ideas were being well received by the student government and she was having no shortage of said ideas, listing them off one after the other from fundraisers to pep rallies to updates to the student lounge. She had just gotten her first solo article for the school paper and she was so excited about it, how could she quit now? After a week of deliberating, she decided she wasn't going to quit anything besides sleep.

"How are you going to party with me if you're brain dead?" Morgan asked her one day. She sat in her chair, spinning around aimlessly and filing her nails.

"I'll be fine, besides, aren't you making friends in your classes that can go to parties with you?" Presley asked, tilting her head and giving Morgan a look. One that told her: stop being so co-dependent.

"No, sorry, I'm actually focusing in my courses instead of canoodling with the cute boy sitting next to me," Morgan teased, looking up from her nails and smirking at Presley. "Besides, I wouldn't want to party with anyone else."

"I don't party," Presley reminded her, "and you don't hang out with me at said parties." Morgan rolled her eyes at Presley and put her nail file down on her desk and folding her hands in her lap like she was ready to listen to whatever rant Presley was going to go on. "And, I'm not canoodling with David."

"David!" Morgan snapped her fingers and pointed at Presley. "That's his name, god, I could not remember it for the life of me." She shook her head and let out a sigh of relief like it was weighing heavily on her mind.