Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
brIANNA
On the short bus ride home, Brianna mused over her dinner options. Thankfully, her grandfather had brought over some groceries and stocked her pantry so she could cook, but it was also the first day of her new job, so shouldn’t she order in to celebrate?
She opened a food delivery app and typed in her new address before she scrolled through the options.
It was a little depressing, and she decided she’d cook instead.
She’d have to get used to small town living, and she wasn’t sure whether she could get back into it after living in a big city for so long.
Not wanting to dwell, she queued up an audiobook instead and let it distract her for the rest of the evening as she adulted.
She moved through the motions and even made enough dinner to have leftovers for lunch tomorrow, so at least she was even more on top of her shit than she was earlier that day.
When she was done with her meal, sitting on her new couch, she looked around the room.
“Now what?” she mused aloud to no one.
It was fairly disheartening. Back in Toronto, she could open her Find My Friends and see what her friends were up to, maybe even surprise Amy at their place if they were home.
She did so now and was even more depressed at the sight of all her friends congregating at Tyler’s without her, Amy included.
She didn’t realize how much of adult friendship was based on where you lived and where you happened to be; even in today’s interconnected world, it seemed geography still mattered a little.
Thankfully, an email update that her boxes of books were on the way came in, cheering her up slightly.
With nothing else to do, she started thinking about how to rearrange her books when they arrived.
Perhaps she could even buy some more new shelves.
No longer needing to make sure all her stuff would fit in a single room in a shared house, she could at least muse on what it was like to have a proper home.
She hadn’t thought about that word in a while, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. If this was home, she wasn’t sure it was what she was looking forward to doing for the rest of her years.
God, that was a sad thought. Her job in Beaver Creek was presumably her last major career change, save for an eventual promotion in a decade, if she even wanted one. Being a librarian was a career one hoped to retire on, and she had already hit it in her early thirties.
The outlook for her future was more grim than she thought.
The rest of her week passed by similarly to her first night, and by the weekend, she was bored out of her mind.
The work week itself was fairly low stakes.
She had finished of her video training in record time, and her time on desk was surprisingly similar to what she was used to from her old library: the standard questions about how to use the printer, where to find the cookbooks, and of course, stopping the town creeps from watching porn on the computers.
Now, on Saturday, she realized she had a whole day ahead of her. She was due to do some laundry, which she set to do first thing in the morning to get the chore over with. She could not remember the last time she had a proper weekend off; at least that was a perk of being Head Librarian.
It had been some time since she hung out with Nathan, and she was starting to think that perhaps enough time had passed to consider herself more properly settled in now.
She was horrible at texting and had often been told she had the soul of a grandmother for how much she enjoyed reading and calling people.
She called Nathan then and was grateful he picked up right away.
He had never been one to decline her calls unless he was genuinely busy, and it took them no time at all to arrange to meet later that day for a proper dinner at a fancy restaurant outside of town to catch up.
When the call was done, Brianna went back to her mission of searching through Pinterest for ideas for her new home library.
She wasn’t about to buy furniture yet, as she was also on a separate mission to scour online used marketplaces to find one, but she appreciated seeing the inspiration online.
It was wild to think about how her mood had changed with just something new to look forward to.
Maybe that was what Brianna needed to focus on; instead of worrying about the rest of her life, she should just worry about what’s next.
Unfortunately for her newfound optimism, Nathan had the exact same thought as her during their dinner.
“So, what’s next?” he asked as he dug into one of the bread rolls in a wicker basket at the centre of the fancy table.
The dark mood lighting in the restaurant had given this place date vibes, and Brianna was almost confident the server thought they were on one, because the smile they gave the pair when they walked in was way too weird.
She was finding it helpful to focus on how awkward that would be instead of the question Nathan had actually posed.
“Are you even listening?” Nathan asked, now done with his bread and staring at her with an eyebrow raised. He did always have such an expressive face.
“Yes, I’m listening. I’m just not sure how to respond. This is ‘what’s next’. I’ve arrived,” she said.
“Deep.” Nathan nodded.
“Thanks?”
“Is there anything you want to do, though? Maybe something we can work towards.”
“We?” It was Brianna’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
It was then the server arrived again to bring out their dishes.
Not one to waste an opportunity to try more food, they had ordered three entrees, which they were going to split between them.
The server placed the dishes, and Brianna took a moment to take a quick photo of the food; even if the picture was ugly and would never be posted anywhere, she loved doing it.
When the server left and they properly dug into their food, Nathan answered Brianna’s earlier question.
“I meant ‘we’ as in I would be supporting you. You need external validation, y’know?”
“I know.” Brianna didn’t even fight him on it.
She had known this about herself for far too long.
It was what made it so hard for her to figure out what she actually wanted to do versus just agreeing with people around her.
It was something she had meant to be working on now, another thing on her long list that she needed to do right in her life now that the rest was about to begin.
She chugged her soda as a lifeline to avoid going down that scary thought rabbit hole.
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” she finally said, hoping that would appease Nathan for now. “What about you? Any grand plans we need to start working on?”
“You know, I was actually thinking about something the other day. You know how they never found the Titanic?” he said before trailing off into the most unreal, and clearly fictional, business idea Brianna had ever heard.
She knew it wasn’t serious and that he was wrong about his starting fact, but she was more than happy to play along with this familiar game of “Nathan the daydreamer” and his sidekick who teased him mercilessly.
They’d moved on topics by the time dinner ended, and walked back to his car so he could drive her home.
At a lull in the conversation at a red light (one of few in Beaver Creek), Nathan turned to Brianna. “Have you thought about getting your driver’s license?”
“Sure, I’ve thought about it.” As in, she really did not want to do it but knew it was an evil she would have to overcome.
Like how Nathan would have to defeat that monster at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle if he ever wanted to open his hypothetical business—daunting and impossible to imagine doing.
“Why don’t you learn to drive? Seriously, it’s setting you back in so many ways. You have to find a ride or take the bus and before you say anything, waiting thirty minutes for a bus ride is not convenient no matter how much you convince yourself it is.”
“It’s not like I’m in a rush to go anywhere in particular though. I just go to home and to work.”
“Because that’s where the bus goes! Imagine all the places you can go. Like that Dr. Seuss book. You can go to the mall.”
“Pass.”
“To a fancy restaurant?”
“With what money?”
Nathan remained undeterred. “You can drive to a bookstore.”
“Well…there is a pink romance only bookstore I keep seeing on social media that looks awesome…”
Knowing he won, Nathan began drumming on the wheel. “Car! Car! Car!” he chanted as Brianna laughed.
“Just find me a teacher, and I’ll think about it,” she said, hoping that answer would satisfy him enough for one evening.
“Deal.”