Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Shane Ridley held it together right until the door to his apartment clicked shut behind him. Then, he dropped his keys into the bowl on the nearby table, let his briefcase drop to the floor, and flopped face first onto his couch.
Goodness, it had been a hard day.
But the problem was that most days had been hard recently. Nearly all of them, in fact.
How had this happened?
For years, Shane had absolutely loved his life working for a big tech company in San Francisco.
It was his professional dream, after all.
Beyond that too, he loved the challenge that came with coding.
It was like a puzzle, one that required thinking in new and exciting ways each and every day. It was always novel, always fresh.
But recently, it was always draining. Each day, he felt like he came home from running a marathon, when really all he had done was sit at a desk.
For hours. And hours. And hours.
And yet, it wasn’t enough. Not for his bosses, who always wanted more, wanted it faster, wanted it better. They didn’t care if he was chained to his desk late into the evening, or if he came in for more weekends than he stayed home.
He’d known that when he was getting started, he would be expected to keep up a swift pace. But he had left behind “getting started” many years ago. He would be forty this year, after all. He wasn’t some fresh-faced kid straight out of college.
But the pace hadn’t relented. Not the tiniest bit.
With a groan, he rolled over until he was sitting more comfortably. Lying on his couch after a long day was one thing, but lying on his face was a bit more tragic than he wanted to be.
The movement, slight though it was, seemed to remind his body that it had needs, however. His stomach let out a loud grumble.
Oh, right. He’d worked through lunch… again.
But he still felt too tired to get up and actually cook himself dinner…
Again.
Something had to change. He didn’t know what, though.
And he probably wouldn’t figure it out if his body didn’t get any fuel. With an even louder groan, he pushed himself to sitting, then rested his hands on his knees for a moment before managing to get all the way to his feet.
He rubbed his hands over his face. It felt like there was simply no… joy in things recently. Even simple things felt like chores. Even the things he liked.
He slogged his way through making a ham sandwich.
Normally, he liked mustard and crisp green lettuce with his ham, but he hadn’t been to the grocery store recently enough, so his lettuce had gotten soggy and sad.
And, once he gave up on that element, adding the mustard seemed like an unnecessary amount of work.
The sandwich would already be mediocre. Might as well embrace it.
He had just chased down the bite of sandwich with a swig of Coke when his phone rang. Even through the persistent haze of melancholy that had been weighing on him, he felt a spark of happiness.
It was his sister, Eleanor.
“Ellie, hey,” he said, scooping up the phone and pressing accept immediately.
“Oh good, I’m glad I caught you!” His sister’s voice was warm across the line. “I was worried I’d interrupt you while you were working.”
Eleanor’s words were kindly meant, but they caused a pang to go through him.
It was seven o’clock in the evening in California, which meant it would be after ten at night where his sister lived in Massachusetts.
She had probably stayed up late to call him…
and it was entirely reasonable that she might have thought he would still be working. He often was, at this time of night.
“Nope, just home having dinner,” he said dully.
“Uh oh,” she said. “That doesn’t sound good. Too long since you’ve gone grocery shopping again?”
"My lettuce was sad,” he confessed.
“Oh no!” she cried with a laugh. “Nothing is worse than sad lettuce!”
Despite everything, he felt a smile beginning to spread across his face.
“Yeah, there’s natural disasters, tragedies, and then bad lettuce. The worst incidents that can befall a man.”
Laughing with his sister felt good. He found himself suddenly eager to have more insight into Eleanor’s life, which had been wonderful in the past year.
Eleanor had spent too long in her marriage which, although not outright awful, had been less joyful than his sister deserved.
Ever since moving to the East Coast and starting work on her bookshop, though, Eleanor had been granted all the joy in the world.
He loved that she had such happiness. He hoped hearing about it would let just a little bit of that happiness spill over into his life too.
“Tell me how things are going, sis,” he said. “How’s the store? How’s that man of yours?”
To his complete and utter delight, because a man never really outgrew being the little brother who loved to badger his sister, Eleanor laughed.
Because of that same little brother instinct, he commented on it.
“The laugh! So, I guess that means things are going well.”
“They really are,” Eleanor said with a happy sigh. “Garrett has been the best through this whole bookstore opening craziness.”
Over the past few months, Eleanor had made a new home for herself and started a business, something that impressed and amazed Shane.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, though.
Ellie had always been willing to work for the things that she wanted.
It was what had made her such a wonderful mother to his beloved nephew, Jeremy, who was now going to college in Pittsburgh…
something that made Shane feel very, very old to think about.
Eleanor kept up her happy prattling.
“And he’s not totally a ‘book guy’, since he is pretty much only happy with at least one tool in his hand, but I recently found him this book about how they built boats at different points in history, and he’s been really interested in that.
I’m going to have to see what else I can find for him that he would like.
There’s this companion text that’s coming out next year that does the same thing, but it talks about old farming tools. ”
“Next year?” Shane observed mildly.
Eleanor broke off, clearly growing flustered. “Oh, uh. If we’re still together then, I mean. Things are going well—I think it would be nice—I’m just not sure…”
“I’m just pulling your leg,” he said, putting her out of her misery. “I’m not badgering you to propose tomorrow.”
“Har de har har,” she said dryly. “Remind me why I called you again?”
“Because you love me,” he said in a singsong voice.
He could hear her smile. “Yeah, I do. Plus, I need a break from this inventory. I love books, you know I do. But this is math, Shane. I do not like math! Nobody told me there would be this much math.”
“Actually, I think that’s a fairly well-known part of owning a small business.”
“Aw, what do you know?” she said dismissively. “You’re a tech guy. Speaking of, how is work?”
Shane didn’t really want to discuss work. He didn’t want to think about work more than he had to. But if he had indulged in his ‘little brother pest’ routine, this was Eleanor’s ‘protective big sister’ edition.
“Real subtle,” he teased. “Not at all your secret reason for calling.”
“Not at all,” she agreed. “Now. Spill.”
He sighed. “It’s… well, it isn’t great. I feel really burned out, and I can’t seem to get ahead. There’s always another client, or another program that needs debugging, or another update that needs to be pushed. It’s just…”
“Wearing you down?” she supplied gently.
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“Do you know what you need?” Her tone was too innocent, like this was a brand-new idea that she had just come up with, not something that she had been nudging him about for a while now.
“Is it a vacation?” he supplied dryly.
“It is a vacation,” she said brightly. “Have you heard of this adorable little town called Magnolia Shore? It’s a great vacation stop. Lots of people go there every single year.”
“Don’t they mostly go in the summer?” he said, his protest only halfhearted.
“Oh, pish,” she said. “You live in California. You don’t need to travel to go to the beach.”
“I haven’t been to the beach in… a decade?”
“Okay, well then, we can go to the beach. It’ll be cold, but we’ll manage.
But more importantly, it’s a great place to just take a break.
You need a break, Shane. I know you have about a billion vacation and sick days saved up.
Use some of them. Come here for a few weeks.
I’ll pick out books that you would like. ”
It sounded so good. But a part of him was almost afraid to take that step. If he went to Magnolia Shore, if he took a few weeks for himself, how would he manage to drag himself back to the office?
“Taking a vacation won’t fix everything, Ellie,” he said.
“I know,” she said easily. “I don’t think it will fix everything. But I do think that having time away will give you some clarity. Distance gives perspective.”
“I don’t know…” he hedged.
“At the very least, you’d get some sleep,” she pressed. “I make a mean cup of chamomile tea. Come on, Shane. Let me do the sisterly coddling thing for a little bit. You might find that some time away from the hustle and bustle will do you some good.”
Shane wasn’t certain why, in that moment, something clicked in his brain, but it did. And then, all of a sudden, all of his many reasons for putting off Eleanor seemed foolish.
He did have a million sick days saved up, not to mention the billion vacation days that were on top of that.
He had always felt that going away wasn’t worth the trouble that he would be faced with coming back.
There would be so much work that would pile up, so many problems that would meet his return to the office.
But that wasn’t a good reason, not when there were problems in the office every day anyway.
“You know what?” he said on impulse. “Yeah. I will come.”
“What?” Eleanor’s yelp made him laugh, so full of excitement and surprise as it was. “You will?”
“Yeah,” he repeated, feeling more confident. “I think it’s a great idea.”
“It is a great idea! Okay, okay. So, I will make the plan. I have a guest room, and it’s not totally ready, but I can make it ready. Just give me a few days. Oh, heck, no, I can get it done faster than that, just let me—”
“Okay, okay, slow down,” he said, shaking his head and grinning. “I’m in California, for one, and I’m not exactly rushing to the airport right this minute. I need to get some things squared away, need to apply for the time off. But I’ll make the plan. I promise.”
“Right,” Eleanor said, sounding practically out of breath. “Yeah. Obviously. I’m totally cool.”
“You’re totally cool,” he agreed. “Listen, I know it’s late where you are. I’ll talk to you in a few days with a little more information. I love you.”
“Love you too, Shane.”
He hung up, feeling honestly a lot better than he had when he’d gotten home a little while ago. And he decided, as he finished his lackluster ham sandwich, that he wanted to do it while looking at pictures of idyllic Magnolia Shore, Massachusetts.