Mae

I’m a mapper. I map out my life, step by step, achieve the goals needed to get to the next step, repeat. It’s how I’ve always been, and it has never let me down. Until now. Now, I’m a hot mess, underemployed, moocher loserhead. And it made no sense. I followed the path to success to a T.

Get good grades and do all the activities in school to get a scholarship to college—check.

Earn a 4.0, 3.8 at a minimum, during my bachelor’s degree and get a TA position with a scholarship to get my MBA—check.

Get my MBA with a 4.0 and have all the jobs falling at my feet—big old fail. The 4.0 was easy peasy. The job, not so much.

Now I work at the grocery line in the podunk town my sister and her husband moved to, living in their spare room and applying to anything even close to my field anywhere in the country. It was supposed to be three months, just three, but two years later, I had nada on the horizon.

“You just needed to accept your life here,” my sister Lily kept saying. “Settle down with a nice guy, start a family.” And by nice guy she meant one of the plethora of undereducated guys in town who thought buying me a beer, one of their choice nonetheless, was the way to get into my pants. None of them wanted more, and none of them seemed worth it. Not when the entire town would hear about it in a nanosecond.

Nope. I needed to stick with my plan, not hers. I added a few specialty online classes to the plan, but the rest was the same, just… a different timeline. Fifteen applications went out this week. One of them had to stick. Or so I kept reassuring myself.

I grabbed my sweater and keys before sneaking out the back door like a teenager. Lily planned to tell her hubby, Ed, that she was ready to start making a baby, and if I were around, I’d just be in the way. She knew it. I knew it. And when given the proper information, Ed would know it. Unfortunately, they were both too nice and would want me to eat with them and such and that would be more kinds of awkward than I cared to imagine, so off I skulked to the local bar. The only bar, to be precise.

I purposely wore my ratty jeans and my blouse with a stain in the hopes of warding off the creepers. I wasn’t even what most people would consider hot. I had extra curves where they didn’t belong, I was far from the high maintenance model type, and flirting was not my thing. But in a town of so few, I was fresh meat. That was enough to warrant the unwanted attention.

My car was in the shop… again… so I walked the mile downtown. It was a gorgeous evening, and it gave me time to let go of the weight of all the rejection emails I got this week. I almost wished that they didn’t tell me I was rejected so I could be optimistically waiting for a call instead of the “we were lucky to find the perfect candidate internally” or “we have selected our candidate pool and regret to inform you that you were not part of it.” Besides, I could always snag a cab home. Well, the cab, if it happened to be running.

Being the ever nerd, I had my tablet with me so I could work on my latest course. It was a coding course that turned out to be far more practical than I thought when I signed up. If things didn’t pan out soon in the career world, I might just have to change my map and have my next destination be more tech oriented.

Dusk had barely started when I arrived at Nick’s, which was perfect. It meant that I could find a booth in the back to hole up in. If I ordered a beer and then later an appetizer and then another beer and such, they wouldn’t bother to ask me to move to the counter as it got busy either. At least not from my experience.

“Hi, Mae.” The waitress who had become my sort-of kind-of friend—partly based on the mutual understanding I’d over-tip her if she let me booth hog—met me as I skootched into my spot.

“Hi, Jackie.” I smiled up at her. She was a lifer in town, probably old enough to be my mother. She had a kind heart, but whoa nelly if you pissed her off. It was probably why I liked her so much.

“Hiding out for the night?” she teased.

“You know me too well,” I bantered back not wanting to think too hard on it. The sadness that crossed her eyes hurt. In some ways, she could see me better than most.

“You know if you got your own place, you could hide out at home.” By my own place she meant renting the apartment above her garage. I honestly didn’t think it was all for the money, either. I’m sure plenty of people would be interested in it if she even bothered to put up a flier.

“Yeah, but that would be giving up.” I fished out my tablet and keyboard, to hurry the conversation on. I didn’t want to get to the point where I was thinking about what it would mean if Lily and Ed did get pregnant right away. Sure, I’d be happy for them. Over the moon, even. They had been married six years, so it wasn’t like they were jumping into anything. It would, however, mean I needed to move out. I was in their only spare bedroom.

“True enough. Want the draft of the night?” As if she had to ask. I always had the sale draft. It forced me to try new beers and kept my wallet happy.

“Always.” I gave her a wink.

“I’ll get that right out to you. Still working on that fancy schmancy college stuff or working on applications?” She eyed my tablet, now set up on the table.

“Probably both. I have to figure out what I messed up on an assignment before I turn it in first.” It was killing me that I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong. It was so close to perfect, I could feel it, yet as is, it was rubbish.

“Sounds like a plan.” She stood there as if she had more to stay, and I threw her a subtle nod and smile in encouragement. “I may need to ask you to come up to the counter tonight.”

“That’s fine,” I boldly lied. It was far from okay, but what can a girl do? “Expecting a crowd?” I pried, wanting to be prepared for what the night was going to bring.

“Yeah. Old Woman Gracie passed away and after the funeral people are not gonna wanna go home.”

I never met Gracie, but the town seemed to adore her. I was surprised I hadn’t heard about her funeral. Although, I guess technically I had since people had been referring to “the funeral” as they meandered through work today. She’d moved to the nursing home long before I got into town, but the library had a Ms. Gracie story time room with her bio on the wall. Turned out, she fostered more than one hundred kids in her life time and loved them all as her own. That was dedication and purpose. I admired her, even not having ever met her.

“I understand that.” My unsettledness at maybe needing to move lessened as the reason why became clear. She was good people, and if those she touched wanted my little corner of the bar, so be it. “If it gets to the point you want my table, give me a nudge.”

“Will do. I’ll go get you that beer before things get busy.” She scampered off and I dove into my work. I was going to find the error if it near killed me.