Lacey hadn't gone back to her apartment after she'd left Marie's home. Now it was her turn to enter the Split Bean soaking wet. Tanya was covering half of the morning shift and upon seeing Lacey she fussed over her shivering physique.
"You're setting a bad example for my boys, you now this is how Tommy got his cold." She referenced her son as she met Lacey at the end of the counter with a few towels.
When Lacey didn't respond Tanya became worried. "Everything alright honey?" She tucked a bit of wet hair behind Lacey's ear, her maternal instincts kicking in.
Lacey managed a nod as she buried her face in the warm starched cotton.
"Is the advance not working-" Tanya started but when Lacey shook her head fiercely - the only thing she could think to do in the moment - her boss stopped. Lacey lifted her head from the towel and sighed. Recognizing a customer at the register she gestured wordlessly and Tanya hurried away, but not after giving Lacey a reassuring squeeze of the hand. "You're a good kid honey, we can talk later if you want."
Lacey nodded and tried to smile, if only to make Tanya feel better. She didn't want to talk about it. Talking would only make her feel more guilty, she'd already asked so much from Tanya. Two advances on her paycheck and still her head had gone under the water, swallowed up by a wave.
Lacey stayed in the back room until she was on. Today she couldn't bear to sit in her corner. Today it wasn't enough for her to be anonymous - she wanted to be invisible.
Hours later when Lacey's shift started she politely put off the topic, assuring Tanya that she just needed some time to think. It was the best she could do - that was until she could think of a good way to ask if she could start sleeping in the break room.
At nineteen minutes to close Tanya had taken on the task of organizing the coffee bags in the stock room while Lacey cleaned the front. She'd just finished wiping the pastry case and all the machines down when the doorway dinged.
A flash of burgundy caught Lacey's eye. She followed the droplets that'd scattered to the floor up to the hand holding the curved handle. Lacey felt the need to duck behind the counter.
Marie was dressed uncharacteristically sloppily in torn jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt two sizes too big, the extra material tied at her hip. Pleased that she'd tamed the wild umbrella she strode to the counter. It'd been raining all day, ever since Lacey had burst out of Thrift Me Not. Droplets of rain that had infiltrated the umbrellas cover clung to Marie's frizzed hair.
Guilt hit Lacey like a railcar as she took in the woman's face.
"Did I do something wrong?" Marie's voice was quiet and unlike her usual confident charming tone. Her eyes were hooded yet she could feel them searching underneath the drooping lids. Marie wanted answers.
Lacey shook her head. She couldn't manage to get the word 'no' out, let alone everything else she wanted to say. A 'thank you' at the least. She wanted Marie to know how grateful she was, for the job, dinner, last night. Marie had been so gentle with Lacey, somehow sensing her walled attitude from the moment the events of July 17th arose.
"I would've liked to make you breakfast." Marie ventured, a bit of light returning to her eyes. "I know you probably think coffee is a proper breakfast - but I wanted to prove you wrong. I had a whole powerpoint mocked up and everything." Traces of jokester tone mixed with her tired voice and Lacey tried again to smile.
"I'm sorry." The words spit from her mouth - they'd been queued before - but unlike others, this time she truly meant it.
"Was it the company?"
"It wasn't the company."
Marie ran her hand through her hair and shook her head. "Then why?"
Lacey opened her mouth without thinking. "I'm a mess that's why."
Lacey knew the simplicity and angst in her answer was cliche but she didn't care. No more than twelve hours ago she'd gotten a notification from the bank. The hospital had withdrawn her monthly payment twenty days early.
She was back to square one - even less - checking in at $7. Her advance from Tanya and payment from Marie - all gone.
Rent was totally out of the question.
She'd tried not to crunch the numbers. Lacey knew it was a stretch for her to scrounge up the monthly hospital bill, but she'd hoped that her second interview at Mother Mary's Publishing House would somehow work out. That they would give her an advance too, enough to pay off her medical bills and that Lacey could start with a blank slate.
The same as when she'd graduated college.
Like the last year had never happened.
Those naive thoughts were nothing more. Lacey hated herself for believing them. Since when was she the one without a plan? For the past few months she'd been skating on uncharted waters, and not only was she without a map, Lacey didn't seem to give a shit about finding a compass.
Did she feel she deserved to be lost. Was this her punishment?
It hadn't been her fault - nothing in July had been her fault - but then why did she feel -
"You don't look a mess." Marie's practical observation punctured Lacey's thoughts.
"Well I am." Lacey placed her hands on her hips. "You shouldn't've put your neck out to get me that interview. I can't go to the second round."
"Why not." It was Marie's turn to put her hands on her hips as she countered Laceys statement for the second time.
"I just can't, ok."
"Is it about money? Because we can-"
Lacey cringed. "There is no we. Marie I'm not a fucking charity case, I can't keep taking your money."
"You aren't taking it. You're working for it."
"It doesn't matter, it's only prolonging my fantasy."
"Fantasy of what?"
"This!" Lacey waved her hands about. She was trying to keep her voice down so as not to disturb the waning population of customers, but it wasn't working as her tone grew sharp. "That I can do all this."
Marie raised an eyebrow. "Make a cup of coffee?"
"No- live. Be on my own. Independence the whole shabang. I can't do it." Lacey rushed the words and once she'd finished she felt exhausted. Her shoulders slumped and her head hung. She couldn't bare to look Marie in the eye.
Neither spoke as they let Laceys confession sink into the air around them until it became thick.
"Well of course you can't." It'd been a full minute when Marie decided to speak up. Her voice was paced as Lacey brought her head up to meet her coffee colored eyes.
"What?"
A smile spread to Marie's face - not of joy but of utter defiance to the reality. The out of place tooth visible under her top lip.
"No one can do it alone. That's why we have friends and family, and partners. We aren't meant to be singular beings Lace, we are meant to be with others."
The words struck Lacey but her inner drive welled up in anxiety. "But I don't have a plan. I don't have a next step - how can I -"
"Planning only get's in the way Lace."
Lacey shook her head. "I don't know how you can say that."
"I've lived it." Marie shook her shoulders casually. "Every plan you ever make gets changed, inevitably someone or something walks through the door to your nice and tidy little room where you make your plans. They walk right in and they fuck it up, they move the strings around, erase the details you outlined on the whiteboard. They fuck it all up - and sometimes it's what you need the most."
Lacey raised an eyebrow. "For someone to fuck it up?"
"Yep. Fuck it all up." Marie's grin grew.
Lacey bit on the inside of her lip in thought then asked. "Did you ever have a plan?"
"Once upon a time." Marie had set down the umbrella and began rearranging sweetener packets on the counter.
"Tell me." Lacey prodded.
Her brown hair shifted as she tilted her head. "I wanted to be a lawyer."
"You'd be good at it."
"You think?"
"You're good at bullshitting."
Marie laughed briefly as she organized the tiny packs by color. "Funny, that's the same thing my advisor told me."
"Did you go to law school?"
She nodded. "Made it as far as my first class - 8am, brutal. Giant lecture hall, must've been three- four hundred kids, all with their macs open to some word processing app while I sat there with good old fashioned paper and pencil."
Lacey bobbed her head recalling her note taking days.
"Then I got a call - ten minutes into my first semester and it was my sister."
"I didn't know you had a sister." Lacey interrupted.
"Got three of them. They're awful - wonderful people." Marie waved her hand. "Anyhow, she called to tell me that I needed to come home. Our mother had been admitted to the hospital for a stroke. So I skipped my next class and hopped on the next flight home. It was nothing major, but the doctors wanted to keep her under observation and I took a leave from school to stay home. My sisters have kids and jobs in the 'burbs," Marie rolled her eyes lovingly. "And couldn't manage the family business."
"Business?"
"Yea, my mom and dad started it before any of us were born. She always joked it was her first baby." Marie smiled wistfully and for a moment Lacey didn't think she was going to continue. "My sisters and I worked at it on and off during high school but my parents never pressured us to take over once they retired. They wanted us to have our own path, but with my mom in the hospital there wasn't much of a choice. So while my dad stayed with her I'd work and we'd switch off every few hours." Finished with her organization of the packets she looked up to Lacey.
Their eyes caught each other as Lacey digested Marie's history.
"What I'm trying to say," Marie placed her hand on the counter centimeters from Laceys. "Is that plans don't pan out. Sometimes life takes a sharp left turn and you have no choice but to hold onto the wheel and hope there's smoother roads ahead."
"Did you ever go back to law school?"
Marie nodded. "At least I tried, but I couldn't do it. I didn't want to take focus off the store. I'd found my calling."
"You stayed with your parents business?"
"Sure did. They retired a year after. Mom's fine, taking it easy now."
"Your parents, they owned the thrift store."
Marie laughed. "Built it themselves - well not the foundation and the walls but everything in it. It's what they grew - I just keep it running." Her smile faded. "You know more than I do that plans get derailed and rebuilt Lace. You just haven't accepted it."
Marie's hand crossed the empty space between the fingers as she squeezed her palm.
"You should go to the interview. You never know what could happen."
Lacey's heart skipped a beat as Marie rubbed her thumb over Lacey's. She wanted to go to the interview. Lacey wanted more than anything to follow her dreams, but right now - today especially - as her rent check loomed in the distance it didn't seem possible.
Marie's words rang in Lacey's ears. Lacey's plans had not only been derailed, they'd crashed and burned. She was a fraction away from debt, working over fifty hours a week and eating nothing but ramen noodles and stale scones.
Realistically, what tools did she have to rebuild her plans?
What company would want an editor who lived on the streets or hid a mattress under her cubicle desk?
There she was again. Where all this had begun to go downhill. The doubt that pulled her down like a magnet stronger than gravity. Doubt of herself, her ambition, her talent. Marie had already hit upon it. Lacey was scared. Terrified of being rejected and failing.
To her, that would be worse. In Lacey's mind it would be far worse to fail than to continue on a stagnant line.
But hadn't she already failed? She would come monday morning when her landlord ordered her out of her one bedroom. She looked to Marie, trying to imagine what she would say if she knew Lacey's full predicament.
Somehow she knew her answer would be no different.
Lacey's attacker had ripped up her confidence and agency on that warm July evening, but it was Lacey who refused to piece them back together. She'd needed time and a hand to reach out to.
Now she had both.
Lacey glanced at the clock, two minutes until close, it was pitch black outside and still raining. "Will you walk me home?" Lacey turned back to Marie locking eyes with her curious gaze.
Marie winked tapping Lacey's umbrella on the floor. "Lucky for you, I came prepared."