Despite getting accepted to Yale, Aaliyah decided to attend Sampson University, much to her mother's chagrin. She soon befriended Tanner and Lynn Lockhart, Elijah Barker, Tommy Covington, and Lorenzo Vidal. The latter she started seeing even though Mala wasn't keen on her seeing someone who didn't value education. Though Aaliyah stayed firm about staying with Lorenzo, it soon emerged that her parents were getting divorced, which she didn't take well. At dinner with her mother and her boyfriend, Daniel Covington she confessed that her father was now seeing Louise Saunders Lockhart. Yet, she came around to her parents' moving on in their romantic lives. She overheard Lorenzo's inability to afford tuition at Sampson, so she went to her father to write a check to cover the balance. However, Lorenzo didn't accept the money; he later dropped out of Sampson. But the two were able to reconcile.