Chapter Ten #2
“You’re wrong,” Jen says. There’s a note of patience in her tone, like this is a conversation they’ve had several times.
“My dad likes to say I’m living proof of why you should never hire your family.”
I wince, and Randy makes a disapproving grunt.
“Your dad’s a dick,” Tessa mutters, bringing a smile to Arun’s face.
“Oh, I know,” he replies, and we all laugh. “As much as I miss DC sometimes…I do love that being in Greenstead got me the hell away from my dad. And my sister’s in Charlottesville, so I get to see her and my niece more.”
“And Greenstead was the first place where I was fully…me,” Tessa says.
“I’d been wanting to transition for a while.
When I heard I was being transferred, I was pissed , but then I thought…
no one in Greenstead knows me. I could just show up as me , as Tessa, and that’s all they’ll know me as.
So I did.” Her proud smile grows pensive.
“But it’d be nice to move to Richmond eventually.
I’m there a lot to see friends, hang out, explore.
I love the food, the…vibrance. And the sidewalks,” she adds with a dry chuckle.
I force a laugh in return, even though I can’t fully relate.
I loved starting college in DC, where I could step outside my dorm and just start walking, passing libraries and shops instead of dirt roads and ditches.
It felt like my world opened into new dimensions.
But the neighborhood I moved to once I went all in on my FIRE plan doesn’t offer any of that.
Laundromats and construction zones aren’t quite the city life I’d imagined.
But with so much of my money going to savings, that was all my carefully allocated rent budget would buy me in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the country.
Somehow, my new city life left me feeling just as constrained as before.
“You’re not a fan of Richmond?” Tessa guesses, trying to read my expression.
“Lauryn has a whole thing about Richmond,” Marina says. When I turn to her in surprise, she stiffens and reaches for her drink. “Or—maybe that’s changed. I don’t know.”
I have to sit with that for a moment, the knowledge that Marina remembers minute details about me, that they can come slipping out without thinking. That I’m not alone in remembering everything our friendship was.
“I wasn’t even thinking about that, but she’s right,” I tell Tessa. “I’ve always kind of…avoided Richmond. I just think of it as the place where I had to get my hearing tested every year, which…wasn’t fun.”
I was four when my parents realized I was deaf in one ear, after giving me the phone to talk to my grandma left me crying that I couldn’t hear anything, until they switched it to my other ear.
That prompted a series of appointments at a fancy hearing center in Richmond, all to conclude I must have lost my hearing as a toddler, maybe from a virus or an ear infection.
Then came the annual hearing tests, the powerlessness I felt every time I sat down for a test I was guaranteed to fail.
I came to resent that hour-long car ride to Richmond.
It left me with no interest in seeing what the city had to offer besides stiff waiting room chairs and Press the button when you hear the beep .
But Tessa seems to take this as a challenge.
“I go to Richmond like every other weekend,” she tells me. “You’re coming with me next time. I promise there’s fun stuff there.”
“Okay.” I don’t expect to feel such a thrill at this. I have to sip my drink to make a show out of being casual. I just can’t remember the last time I made weekend plans with anyone.
“You go that often?” Marina asks, leaning forward on her elbows. “What’s stopping you from moving there?”
Tessa shrugs. “I keep going back and forth on what my next move should be, job-wise. I spent so much time working toward R&D. And now…I don’t think that’s what I want.
Not just because of the salad dressing thing.
I wasn’t ever really passionate about it.
But I’m still paying off loans from my food science degree.
Pivoting to something else is a risk. It’s easier to just…
get a little too comfortable staying where I am. ”
“I know what you mean,” Marina says.
I jerk my head toward her in surprise. In all those years we spent talking about our hopes and dreams, never once did she mention wanting to leave Greenstead.
And clearly that hasn’t changed. She’s still throwing her whole heart into goodness, searching for a way to salvage the deteriorating town she loves so much. She couldn’t possibly relate to Tessa.
“I know what all of you mean,” Marina says, sending me into another spiral of surprise. “I feel like all I do lately is mess up.”
I may as well be on the floor at this point. Marina doesn’t mess up. That accidental arson story she trotted out was years ago, when she was a student teacher. She’s been nothing but successful since then.
We may not have had a real conversation in over a decade, but I still know Marina.
I’ve seen her social media posts about her life as a fourth-grade teacher.
I’ve seen the hand-drawn cards her students make for her, not even for Teacher’s Day or her birthday, just handmade cards on a random Thursday, just because they love her that much.
Her posts exude happiness and fulfillment in a way that makes me feel empty and maybe a little bitter, which is why I haven’t looked up her account in a while. But now I’m starting to realize I can’t remember the last time I did.
“I can’t see you messing anything up,” I say, hoping she’ll fill in the blanks. But she just gives me a closed-lipped smile and drinks her beer.
We stay in that booth for another two hours at least. It feels like a place outside of time and geography.
No stuffy Ryser office politics, no faint mustard must of Greenstead, no drowning in lowered expectations at the Ryser Cares office.
Here in this booth, in this bar, we’ve found a place that is entirely ours.
Randy shows us a picture of him and Marge on a ski trip they went on last winter.
Jen walks us through a play-by-play of the latest season of Love Is Blind and the jokes her online community has spun from it.
Arun shows us a video of his four-year-old niece shrieking with excitement the moment they entered Solar Summit’s water park in Falls Point.
Tessa tells us about how she keeps talking herself out of getting an annual pass to Solar Summit. “I mean, I’m thirty-nine years old,” she says. “That park’s for kids, right?”
“No,” Marina and I say firmly.
Our eyes catch across the table, and I know she must be thinking about all the trips we’ve taken there. They’re certainly running through my mind, anyway.
“Get the annual pass,” Marina says, turning back to Tessa. “Your future self will thank you.”
“I would,” I agree. “I mean, I won’t , because I’m moving back here when I get my job back,” I correct myself. “But if I were staying in Greenstead for the long term, I would.”
Randy, Tessa, and Arun exchange looks. Jen nods brightly and says, “Of course you will, hon.” But there’s something off about her smile.
Marina looks… I can’t place it. A little wounded, maybe.
“Not that Greenstead isn’t great,” I rush to say. “I just, I mean, I’m still paying rent on my apartment here, so I’ve got to come back.” I end on a nervous chuckle that dies in my throat.
“I know,” Marina says, but her expression is unreadable and closed off now.
I stew in the awkward regret of feeling like I’ve killed the moment somehow, but the conversation floats on. I drain the rest of my drink as the others talk, and little by little, that regretful feeling eases out of me.
Marina and I exchange a look when a Destiny’s Child song that we’d devised a whole dance routine for plays over the jukebox. She doesn’t comment on it, and neither do I. But that small acknowledgment is enough to take root in my gut, make me feel like we’ve smoothed over whatever that moment was.
We applaud when Tessa eats the last coconut shrimp, and we take that as our cue to head out. After we throw away the grease-soaked napkins and pay the tab, we step outside into fresh air, a dark sky, and glittering city lights.
The car ride back is filled with chatter as we pick up the conversations we left off in the bar.
Randy and Marina swap book recs, Arun talks about wanting to take a trip to Colorado and Jen recommends an inn she once stayed at, Tessa shows me a crossword app she likes after she hears about my love of puzzles.
Every now and then, I glance Marina’s way, overcome with an urge to say something. To ask her why she feels like she screws up, to apologize for my eagerness to leave Greenstead, to ask if she ever got an annual pass to Solar Summit like we used to dream about.
I don’t find the courage to, tonight. But I do think to myself, with a floaty sort of hope, that maybe next time we can have those conversations. I feel like we opened a door to something tonight—and I’m only just now realizing how badly I don’t want to see it close again.