This was her first time inside the building in a very, very long time. Why? Because it was Satan’s house and everyone knew all evil orbited its concrete foundation. Yet the day was here. Sadly, her online request for a replacement had been denied due to the number of years that had passed since she’d last been in. She’d finally lost the lottery, and here she sat in a plastic chair with a loose screw that sometimes tipped her a little to the right just for fun. Satan’s late morning amusement.
To top off Juliette’s ten a.m. Thursday sundae of joy, it was raining outside. Before she’d left home that morning, she’d watched the big, thick drops cling precariously to the glass of the picture window overlooking her home’s front lawn, neatly trimmed and edged just the day before. She blew out a sad little breath in her plastic chair, lamenting the time away from her stationery store and counting the tens of dollars she was probably missing out on by having it closed midmorning. That’s when the merry band of elderly patrons hit up the town’s retail circuit. And what did elderly people love if not stationery. Thereby, the weather felt appropriate as she clutched the requisite paperwork, wrinkling the page and not even caring. Not at all like her. She wondered distantly how long she’d be here and, conversely, how long until she could open The Station, her baby, for business. Unfortunately, she was strictly a one-woman-show. She couldn’t afford employees, so when she couldn’t make it in, the place was dark and dead in the water. Given her dwindling bank account and the extra-small intake of cash the shop pulled in lately, she needed every moment.
She watched a middle-aged couple stand in victory when their number appeared above the counter in neon green. She nodded her congratulations as they scampered arm in arm to the bored-looking clerk. Juliette had been there twenty-four minutes and used each one to assess her professional trajectory of doom. The way she figured it, she had about nine months left until she’d have to close her business entirely, which crushed her soul and kept her up at night. There apparently wasn’t a big demand for personalized greeting cards in Landonville, and she was paying for that wrong turn now. She’d stayed afloat this long thanks to the small sales she made from the commercial odds and ends she’d stocked the shelves with for financial cushion—miniature tic-tac-toe games, vanilla-scented candles, a lollipop tree, and refrigerator magnets with sassy sayings from women with hands on their hips. But she had so much more to offer in terms of her art and passion. Somehow her skills with a pen and a brush hadn’t translated into a mortgage payment, a problem she’d have to address sooner rather than later. Watching one’s dream circle the drain was a bleak image to face.
Shifting to the left to avoid tilting to the right, Juliette took note of a new arrival to the waiting area, who would be taking the number after hers. A striking blond woman close to her age, who she hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t unusual. Their town wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small either. There were still lots of people Juliette didn’t know, and this happened to be one of them.
“Hey, there.”
Juliette took a moment. “Hi.” Oh God. The woman had taken up residence two seats down and was speaking. She also smiled kindly. Her lip gloss shimmered and matched the brightness in her eyes.
“Call me a weirdo, but I welcome the opportunity to take a break from life in a waiting room. The downtime is rare. What about you?”
No, no, no. Juliette gripped the edge of her chair. The woman was still smiling, awaiting an answer, and looking too pretty as she did so. Not only that, but she seemed to think a waiting room was Christmas morning. This was bad. Small talk was too daunting to be allowed. Her critical error had been forgetting to bury her nose in the book she’d packed. She never knew what to say, would wind up feeling awkward and socially exhausted. Plus, once those kinds of conversations started, they were impossible to end. You were both sentenced to polite chitchat about her dog named Cookie Monster or why you didn’t enjoy the mall food court on Thursdays. Why not just skip it and skate sublimely through the peace and quiet? Wasn’t this outing bad enough on its own?
“It’s okay, I guess,” she said, adding a tolerant smile. “Something we all go through collectively.”
“Collectively. I’ve always liked that word.” The woman, who had big hazel eyes, stared happily at the air as if the word sparkled in front of her and then glided off. “I get excited about simple things like this. And the occasion, of course.”
“I can’t tell if you’re joking.” But she was serious. Her face would have betrayed her. It was that expressive. “Really? Excited about the BMV?”
The woman raised her shoulders, resembling a hopeful Disney Princess with a side of street smarts. Her jeans had a perfectly placed rip in the thigh, edgy, and her white T-shirt and army-green jacket made her pretty-girl looks cooler than they would have been on their own. The paired brown heels proved she was a fashion-conscious human. “Anytime my day is a little different than normal, I try to embrace the adventure. Trust me. Life is too short. I realize that puts me in the minority of people here, but that’s just what I’m like.”
“No crime there,” Juliette said, adjusting in her chair. “Pardon the irony, because this feels like prison.”
The woman laughed melodically, definitely giving Juliette too much credit on that one. “Gotcha. I see how you swerved that one in. And trust me, prison feels nothing like this.”
Now she really was being funny. Still. Juliette had to get out of this without seeming rude. Her neighbor’s nice smile, which was definitely contagious, was not even close to worthy of small talk. Not that Juliette was in the market for a smile at the BMV. Blond hair with a part on the side and pulled back into one of those fashionably executed ponytails. Juliette eased a strand of straight, layered brown hair behind her own ear. She probably should do more with it. Meh.
“We’ll likely be here at least an hour. Don’t you think? I’m Peyton.”
“Juliette.” She supposed they were doing this now. Officially. “I hope to God not. I was estimating forty minutes tops.”
Peyton winced. “I get the feeling you’re not thrilled to be here.”
“I run a small business, and now I have to open late. It’s a whole thing.” She wanted to stop studying the woman, but it was hard. She had pretty skin with a noticeable freckle to the side of her right eye that was more attractive than any freckle had a right to be. She also had long swoopy bangs that would blind her if she hadn’t swept them to the side. That must be hard to achieve, the perfect bang sweep. Was it effortless for this woman or a painstaking process? Juliette could never. Why was she thinking about this?
She decided not to go on because then she was just furthering the exchange, and aside from her curiosity about the bangs, she needed to politely withdraw. She pulled out her book and flipped open to chapter one. Oh, look—words. In a row. Intriguing. She prayed it worked.