by Alexia, Ava
Rachel wrapped herself up in a towel and wiped the steam off the mirror with her hand, leaning forward to study herself. Her brown eyes were nondescript. She remembered as a child wishing for a more exotic color — like the violet eyes of the princesses she read about. Maybe she should get a haircut, Rachel thought to herself, lifting a lock of her shoulder-lengthy brown hair and examining the split ends. Her hair stayed as flat as a fritter no matter what the humidity was, and she usually wore it pulled back in a low bun to keep it out of her face.
No, she wasn’t anything special, but Rachel liked to think she had a world of possibilities locked up inside her mind. She’d read just about everything she could get her hands on, devoured poetry anthologies, and had ideas she couldn’t put into words. The only problem was there wasn’t a key to unlock all of her so-called potential. Rachel had earned an incredible education, but she didn’t know how or where to apply it.
So she’d moved back home. Back to Blakely, the black hole of Indiana.
“Why, with a degree like yours, you could easily get into law school,” her father told her. “You have an analytical mind.”
“Be a teacher,” her mother urged. “You’d be good at it. Start studying for the GRE, MCAT, and LSAT and we’ll get you enrolled in grad school in no time.”
“Be a crazy woman poet,” Fiona suggested. “Smoke cigarettes. Be drunk all the time. Fuck as many men as you can — and some women — and write everything. Tell on everyone.”
“Be whatever you want to be, baby,” Tyler advised her. “It’s your life, and you’re the only one who could decide what you wanted.”
Rachel stared at her reflection in the mirror. She towel-dried her long, brown hair and smeared a little concealer beneath her brown eyes to try and hide the circles brought on by her sleeplessness.
She wasn’t anything special, but she knew there was something out there for her. She knew it in her bones. Rachel didn’t want to be a lawyer, or a teacher, or a poet. And, though she loved Tyler, especially when her boyfriend was trying his hardest to be sensitive and supportive, telling her that she’d just figure it out wasn’t enough.
Picking a clean-ish blouse from the mound of clothes in her closet and the black pants she wore every day to the restaurant, Rachel dressed herself and grabbed her purse. Stepping into her work shoes, she was ready to go. Her mother was ridiculously dramatic. She wasn’t going to be late.
Rachel let herself out of her room and trotted down the stairs to the garage proper. From there, it was another door and she was outside in the oppressive heat.
“Welcome to Antonelli’s!” Mr. Antonelli bellowed at her when she pushed her way into the heavy front door of the restaurant, making the bells jingle. “Oh. Rachel. It’s just you. Good afternoon.”
“Hi, Mr. Antonelli,” she said, trying to muster a smile for the man. He was her boss, after all. “Big lunch rush today?”
“Had a couple of tables,” he remarked, nodding to himself. “Better get started on the prep work.”
The prep work was slicing a couple of lemons and making sure all the tables had rolls of silverware. There wasn’t anything else much to it than that.
The bells on the door jingled again. “Welcome to Antonelli’s!” the old man bellowed. “Oh. Look who it is. You gonna order some food this time?”
“Hey, baby,” Tyler said, taking Rachel by the waist and kissing her for so long that she had to come up for air. “You just get here?”
“Just walked in the door five minutes ago,” she said, smiling at him. “How’s your day?”
Tyler launched excitedly into the details of the two workouts he’d already completed today — right down to the number of reps for each exercise. He flexed each muscle group that corresponded to his circuit at the gym, and Rachel made sure to “ooh” and “ah” and test his muscles for hardness.
Her boyfriend was kind of a meathead, but that just made him more endearing. When they’d gone on their first date — to the homecoming dance their freshman year — she’d been a head taller than he was. It wasn’t until they were juniors that he’d finally caught his growth spurt — and started working out.
Now, he had machinations of training to be a Mixed Martial Arts fighter, which meant that he had to go to the gym three times every single day. He worked nights as a security guard at a nearby junkyard. They gave him a stun gun to carry, but Rachel was pretty sure all he’d have to do is flex all of his muscles and yell. When his shirt would invariably shred off his body, whoever wanted whatever they could get in the dead of night from a junkyard would be scared they’d hired the Hulk to guard it.
“I just wanted to stop by and say hello,” he finished, giving her a shorter peck on the lips. “Hello.”
“Hello,” Rachel said, smiling. “You working tonight?”
“No,” he said, hugging her tightly. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“You going to sneak into my room tonight?” she asked, smiling and blushing.
“Only if you beg me.” He was all blond hair and blue eyes and good looks, a dimple set square in the middle of his chin.
“Please.”
“I think I’m going to have to make you beg,” Tyler whispered darkly in her ear, nipping it lightly. It made Rachel shiver with pleasure.
“Better get out of here,” Rachel murmured, leaning away, out of his embrace. “Mr. Antonelli is going to think there’s something going on between us.”
“Oh, hey, think you can get me a few rolls?” Tyler asked, brightening at the thought of food. “I gotta carb load for my training this evening.”
“Sure,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes and going back to the kitchen for a doggy bag. If it wasn’t working out, it was diet. Those were the only two things he thought about. Rachel was lucky the thought of her could get a word in edgewise in that thick brain of Tyler’s.
“Until tonight, then,” she said, waving him out the door.
He said something, but his mouth was already full of bread. Rachel couldn’t catch it, whatever it was.
She looked forward to tonight — to the sex, that is. Tyler was her first and only. When she went away to college, he’d driven to visit her almost every single weekend. Rachel had hardly even noticed the other boys, always looking forward to that Friday afternoon when Tyler’s Jeep would roll onto campus and they’d get to spend time together.
He found it bizarre that she was an English major and she found it frustrating that he’d never considered even trying to go to college, but they still made it work.
When Rachel had graduated and moved back home, it was as if nothing had changed since high school. It was comforting, she figured, to at least have another ally in this town besides Fiona. She loved Tyler.
But when he worked at the junkyard, the only highlight of her life was that she got to see Fiona. They were best friends — Rachel Moore and Fiona Mendoza, alphabetically destined to sit next to each other forever and ever, amen — and Rachel was thankful that Fiona still stuck around the area, caring for her ailing mother.
But when Fiona’s mother was so sick that she couldn’t spare time for even a text conversation, the only highlight for Rachel was going to her room above the garage and going to sleep.
Only she hadn’t been sleeping lately. She’d been staying up all night, staring into the dark and asking herself if this was really it — the life she was destined to have.
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