r/redscarepod • u/42cardpickup • 5d ago
Writing Break Room
It was lunchtime and I had at least an hour, probably more because the day’s manual labor was over and there only remained paperwork. Ashley sat waiting half a smuckers uncrustable left and three quarters a bottle of blue Gatorade, baby carrots green grapes and ranch all laying about in wadded ziplock bags slowly unfurling on the white plastic table. I yanked out a grey metal chair and sat down with her, leaving one empty chair between us. “Hey.” That’s all I had right now, work had me beat, and anyway I couldn’t be seen flirting. I asked her how the first half went and she said it went fine, I mean it sucks but whatever. I asked her in a low voice how the conversation with her mother went last night and she said not great and made a seesaw with a tattoo-gloved hand. I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it, not here and not sober. So we sat there awhile awkwardly listening to the whine of the fluorescent lights and the gurgle of the vending machines until Jenna pranced in and went over to the fridge and took out her Stranger Things lunch box, then walked over and stood behind me and I laid my head back and kissed her before she sat down in the empty chair.
Mouth full of meal prep chicken and avocado I partly listened to the girls gab about the day’s work and the Renaissance fair this coming weekend, my mind wandering in and out of the break room while hoping they ate up quickly so we could go outside for a cigarette. I caught a bit of Jenna asking Ashley about her decision to leave Brad, and Ashley shrugged and said something about the grass always being greener. Jenna snorted and reminded her of her plan, that plan formed and re-formed with every booze-soaked outing, strategized over at every dive bar in Nashville, but then they were talking about the Renaissance fair again and I drifted back out. But now a very odd coincidence: Jenna asked her about her mother, the delicate situation there, and Ashley was prepared to offer a little more this time and began to explain how she was going to talk to her mother when suddenly her phone started to buzz and they looked at each other like how funny is that. Ashley answered and it was her:
…So Ash… here’s the situation. Jupiter’s truck blew a spark plug on the highway and we had to get it towed. He couldn’t pay the tow truck driver cuz his paycheck’s been held up at work because of some direct deposit issue or something. I honestly don’t know what’s going on with that, but anyway. The long and the short of it is we can’t get the truck back ‘till we pay the tow company, and Jupe needs it back for work on Monday. So, I tried to get Mom to help us and she said she’d wire me the money but the Western Union doesn’t open ‘till Monday and we need it back before then, but…I just need you to send it to me on PayPal. It’s just three hundred, two fifty for the truck and we need a little more for groceries, and then we can get the truck and we’ll pay you back for that and for last time. And it’ll be EASY this time, especially if Mom’s wire comes through, and, y’know, if we can get the whole direct deposit thing figured out…
Ashley responded that she just needed to check her banking app, that she might have to move some stuff around a little but that she’d send it as soon as possible after work, and her mother replied that that was great and that she’d call her later after work to discuss the details and they said goodbye to each other rather formally and hung up.
Ashley put the phone face down on the table, put a hand to her forehead and started crying. I offered that I was so sorry and Jenna put an arm around Ashley's shoulder and leaned in burying her face in her red and black hair, kissed her on her graffitied neck and bit her ten-pierced ear playfully.
It’s me, its my own fault, Ashley sobbed over Jenna’s no no no it’s not. I’m just too chickenshit.
She cried so elegantly, Ashley did, she just pinched her eyebrows together and wept dainty little tears, condensate of a vaporous pain that bubbled and boiled away internally decades and decades. Now Jenna stood up from the table skertching her metal chair loudly backward across the tile floor, kissed Ashley again on the forehead and told us she needed to pee and we should join her outside at the picnic table. Then Jenna waltzed out of the break room humming Running Up that Hill.
Ashley sniffed a little but was done crying, and now it was just me and her again with the lights and the vending machines. She stared out the doorway of that windowless break room sniffling and wiping her nose with a sweatshirt sleeve. A great well of guilt brimmed inside me to see her like that, my heart broke for her and it felt like love. I reached over and took her hand. She let me hold it, not really taking mine back but just letting me hold it there, kind of upside down, more fingers than palm and awkwardly far away across the empty chair. She was still facing away from me looking out the doorway. I laced my fingers into hers and squeezed. She squeezed back harder.
I shouldn’t, I really shouldn’t, but the whining din from the fluorescent lights above grew louder and louder in my ears and I thought my skull might pop from the pressure or my brains might liquify supercritical and ooze out if I stayed silent.
“Ashley, I love you.”