Beth tapped her foot anxiously against the tile floor, barely resisting the urge to get up and pace around the room. Her pantyhose itched and her high heels pinched her toes. She hadn't worn such fancy clothes in a really long time, but she wanted to make a good impression. She sighed, and Glenn patted her hand and gave her a comforting smile. She smiled back, relieved that he was here to support her.
Beth and Glenn were waiting to speak to her banker about a loan to open her shop. Glenn had helped her with her business plan, and had come with her to the bank to help explain it to the bank.
The phone at the front desk rang, causing Beth to look up sharply. The receptionist, Jessie, smiled at her a slightly as she spoke quietly to the person on the other end.
"Okay Beth," she said finally. "He's ready to see you, go on in!"
Beth scrambled to gather her notes and the briefcase she had borrowed from her father, smoothing out her skirt and adjusting her hair.
"Good luck!" Jessie said, as Beth walked past. But Beth was so full of nerves, that she could barely nod in return.
"Hello, Beth," Spencer Monroe, her family's banker, said warmly as she walked in. She only realized she had halted in the doorway when Glenn cleared his throat behind her, causing her to stumble forward.
She was so nervous, she felt like a little kid playing dress up, but was glad to have Glenn as a steady presence beside her.
Her confidence grew as she explained about her business plan. She was so excited about her idea, and had worked so hard on it, that she was eager to tell everyone all about it. Spencer nodded seriously as she spoke, and took several notes.
The spoke more about the cost of the business. Beth had some money saved, and had been left some money from her mother. As well, Hershel had invested some of his own money in her business and had given her the greenhouse on his property.
By the end of the meeting, Spencer had approved her application for a business loan. Beth was so happy, she could have burst into tears.
"Best of luck, Beth," Spencer said, shaking her hand as she left. "I can't wait to see it."
Beth said a polite goodbye and managed to hold it together until she and Glenn had turned the corner around the bank before she shrieked with excitement and threw her arms around him. Glenn was laughing and patting her back.
"Okay, okay, I know it's very exciting," he said, laughing. "But we've got another meeting to get to."
Beth hurried as fast as her high heels would carry her to the abandoned ice cream shop around the corner, on the main street and only a few minutes' walk away from The Junction diner.
"Hello Beth, Glenn," said Jacqui, the real estate agent who had been helping her find a space. She smiled warmly at them, noticing Beth's beaming smile and Glenn's indulgent grin at her excitement. "I take it the meeting at the bank went well?"
"Yes it did!" Beth said too quickly. "We're good to go!"
Jacqui laughed kindly and said, "Well alright. I think you'll like this space."
She unlocked the doors to the empty ice cream parlour and led them inside. It was a little dark and dingy, and clearly had been left empty for a long time. It would need a good cleaning and some serious fixing up, but Beth could see the potential. It had wide windows that she could fill with display flowers, a long counter to help her customers, a small but tidy back room and office, and built-in fridges and a small freezer-room where the temperatures could be adjusted to store her flowers.
She loved it. It was perfect.
She turned back around to where Glenn and Jacqui had been talking by the doorway. Glenn saw the excitement in her eyes immediately, and gave her a gentle warning look to not be too overeager.
"It's nice," Beth said finally. "I think I'm interested."
Jacqui nodded. "I can contact the owners for you if you like. It should be a standard rental contract, nothing to be concerned about. I can have for you by the end of the day."
"That'd be great," Beth said smoothly. "Thanks."
Again, she waited until she had turned the corner before she pounced on Glenn with hugs and laughter and excitement.
She was so proud of herself. She wasn't falling into her life, she was choosing it for herself. It was hard work, and often stressful, but she was building something for herself. She was making herself a real life of something she actively chose and wanted.
Back at the farmhouse, everyone raised a glass to her success as a small businesswoman. Beth laughed and grinned and thanked them all for all of their help.
But still, as her family smiled and cheered her success, she couldn't help but feel slightly out of sorts. She knew now that she was finally on the right path and doing what she actually wanted with her life, but she couldn't forget her time working at The Junction and all of the friends she had made there. Her time there wasn't nothing, it wasn't meaningless just because it was exactly what she wanted to do. They had been kind to her and she had run off with barely a word.
She sighed, and tossed her new cellphone back and forth in her hands.
She slipped away from the crowd to the quiet hallway outside the kitchen and hesitated only a moment before dialing the number.
"Hello?"
"Hey Rosita." Beth clutched the phone tighter as the other line remained silent.
"Oh hey Beth," Rosita said finally. "How have you been?"
"I'm good," Beth said. "I'm opening a flower shop in town. Not too far from the diner actually."
"I heard. Gossip spreads fast in small towns."
Rosita said nothing more and Beth felt her nerve failing, but she pulled her courage together and said, "I was wondering if you were free to meet for a coffee tomorrow afternoon?"
There was another long pause.
Beth didn't blame Rosita for her reluctance. After Beth ran off to Atlanta with barely a word to anyone, she hadn't worked very hard to maintain contact with any of her friends in town. She had been so desperate to put all of the pain behind her and get back to what she thought was her real life that she had pushed everyone away. Since then, she had only spoken to Rosita a handful of times.
"Okay," Rosita said slowly. "I'm off at two tomorrow. We could meet at The Pantry then?"
"Okay that's great!" Beth said eagerly. "I'll see you then!"
Rosita hung up with a much less enthusiastic goodbye than Beth, but Beth didn't mind. She knew she hadn't been a good friend to Rosita lately and understood her distance. But she wanted to make it up to her.
She arrived early to the coffee shop, and sat by the window watching for Rosita. She remembered this coffee shop. She had actually been here before. It opened while she was in high school and was the talk of the town for a while as it was a bit more of a trendy and upscale café than their little town had seen before.
She spotted a cluster of girls giggling in the corner, all crowded around a phone.
"What do I say?" wailed one of the girls, pouting with bright purple braces and clutching a sparkly pink iPhone.
"Who cares just text him back!" another said, pulling the phone out of her friend's hand.
Beth smiled to herself and took another sip of her latte. She could so clearly remember being fifteen and all the drama and heartache that came with it. But then again, she thought as she spotted Rosita hurrying down the street towards the café, does it ever really end?
"Hey sorry I'm late," Rosita said, throwing herself into the brown leather armchair opposite Beth. "The oven broke this morning and a repairman had to come in but it slowed everything down and it's been so chaotic today."
Beth listened eagerly to the Rosita's quick story. She hadn't realized how much she had missed the daily dramas of the diner.
"I'll have a latte," Rosita said to Olivia, their server and owner of The Pantry. "Thanks Olivia."
"I'll throw in a couple of biscottis for you girls," she said with a wink to Beth.
Beth smiled, suddenly not feeling much older than the high school girls in the corner.
"So," Rosita said, suddenly all business. "What did you want to talk about?"
"Oh," Beth said, taken aback. "I just thought we could… hang out."
Rosita stared at her with cool eyes for a moment. Beth paused under her hard gaze.
"I haven't seen you in months." Rosita said finally. "I've barely heard from you."
"I know," Beth said quietly. "I'm sorry. I just… I was so confused and unsure about everything in my life and so desperate to get back to what I thought I wanted that I pushed everyone away. I wanted to get back to the last place I felt… secure in my life, but I didn't think about the people I already had in my life that depended and relied on me and how I was hurting them."
Rosita nodded and took a sip of her drink. "So I take it nursing school in Atlanta didn't work out."
"No," Beth said with a wry grin, remembering her argument with Dawn in the hospital cafeteria. "It didn't. I'm glad to be home. I belong here."
Rosita smiled at her, all distance between them forgotten. While Rosita was not a pushover and wouldn't let people get away with hurting her, she was also not a cold person and could see the pain her friend was in, and how sorry she was.
"Well it's good that you're back," she said. "We need more sensible people in this town. You would not believe everything that's been going on."
"Tell me everything," Beth said smiling. "I want to hear everything that's happened since I've been gone."
They stayed at the café for a few more hours, talking and laughing and gradually getting back to the friendship they had before Beth left.
When they finally walked out of the coffee shop, the sun was setting and the cool autumn wind was picking up and blowing orange and red leaves down the street. Beth snuggled deeper into her jean jacket. She loved the fall. The air smelled fresh and crisp and it always reminded her of going back to school.
"I should get going," Rosita said. "Though Abraham has his dopey friend Eugene over for poker tonight and I don't know if I can stand another evening of listening to him talk about how he invented his own kind of battery."
"Come over to my place then!" Beth said impulsively. "Have dinner with us!"
Rosita paused only a moment before grinning and saying, "Okay sure!"
Rosita had driven left her car at the diner before meeting Beth, so said she would walk back over and pick it up before driving over to Beth's house.
Beth was just starting to give Rosita directions to the farm, when Rosita waved her off and said, "It's okay, I've been there like a million times."
"Oh of course," Beth said, thrown for a moment. "Well I'll see you there then!"
As she drove back to the farm with Rosita following behind her, Beth felt the usual pang of grief and disorientation as she always did when she realized she had forgotten something else. Of course Rosita had been to the farm before. Beth was sad that she couldn't remember any of those times, but, she reminded herself, she was starting again. She was building a new life with new memories.
She was beginning to have the worrying suspicion that she would never regain her missing memories, that there would never be that magic moment where everything she had lost came flooding back. And while the thought of those last five years being permanently erased forever made her breath come short and her heart pound, she couldn't be lost in grieving the past forever. She was no stranger to grief and loss, but also no stranger to picking herself up off the ground and trying again.
Beth made jambalaya for dinner that night and Hershel joined them at the kitchen table while they ate. Rosita playfully flirted with him while Beth rolled her eyes and Hershel teased her right back.
"If I was a younger man…" Hershel said with a twinkle in his eyes.
"Oh you're breaking my heart!" Rosita laughed.
"Please, please stop," Beth begged for the millionth time.
After dinner Beth and Rosita set themselves up on the living room couch with a plate of Patricia's chocolate chip cookies, a few glasses of white wine, and some silly Netflix rom-com.
Hershel, always early to bed and early to rise after a lifetime of farm work, came into the room to say goodnight.
"I don't want to hear any giggling after ten," Hershel said, wagging his finger in mock-seriousness at them. "Is that understood girls?"
"Yes sir." Rosita grinned.
"Okay daddy," Beth said.
The girls exchanged glances, and laughed quietly.
Rosita's phone buzzed and when she glanced at the text, she gave Beth a quick look out of the corner of her eye.
"That was Abraham," she said at Beth's questioning look. "Daryl's joined him and Eugene and some of the other guys for poker."
"Oh."
As usual, Beth felt a swoop of emotion in the pit of her stomach at Daryl's name.
She fiddled with the tassel on the throw blanket for a moment. On the screen, the leading couple had just had their meet-cute and were now flirting ridiculously over the adorable situation.
"It's Saturday night," Beth said awkwardly, still not meeting Rosita's eyes. "Doesn't he have other plans?"
"Are you asking if he's seeing anyone?" Rosita asked bluntly.
Beth could feel her staring at her, but still didn't look up. She could feel a hot blush rising in her face. She had no right to ask this. She was only making a fool of herself.
But Rosita saved her anymore embarrassment and said, "No. He isn't seeing anyone."
Beth looked up quickly, and was relieved to see that Rosita's eyes were kind and understanding.
"You could call him," Rosita said gently. "I know he'd love to hear from you."
Beth said nothing. She quickly blinked back sudden tears, and willed her heart to stop racing. She was grateful for Rosita's kindness and friendship, that she hadn't teased her or thrown her mistakes back in her face. How would she call Daryl? She wouldn't even know what to say.
But Daryl was single. She didn't want to think about why she was so glad to hear that.
Beth shook her hair back from her face and summoned an easy smile for Rosita. She turned up the volume of the movie a bit and said, "Look at this. This is the best part."
A/N: Beth is getting her life back on track! She is taking steps back to what she wants and needs!