"Welcome to Boston, sweetie," Beth said warmly, pausing just long enough to give Chloe a big bone-squeezing hug before effortlessly taking her bags and hefting them into the back of her minivan. "There's a bottle of water up front for you--your mom says you weren't planning on taking your mask off the whole way through the flight, so I figured you'd probably be thirsty. There's also a couple of granola bars. We got a little bit of a drive ahead of us before we get back to my place, I don't want you spending the whole time with an empty stomach. Okay, honey?"
Chloe nodded, feeling the older woman's warm, maternal energy enfold her like a blanket fresh from the dryer on a cold day. "Um, yeah, uh, sure, that's fine," she mumbled, a wave of absolute exhaustion washing over her as she finally took off her mask and settled into the passenger seat with a sigh of bone-weary relief. The whole day had been a whirlwind of last-minute packing and lengthy drives and standing in endless endless lines, all to meet a woman she hadn't seen since she was probably about five years old; and even though she knew she probably had another couple of hours ahead of her before she could settle into a nice soft bed and at least take a nap, it was so nice to let someone else take charge for a while that she practically slumped against the car door once it closed.
But Beth was full of that same inexhaustible energy her mother had described, and she immediately struck up a conversation the moment they pulled out. "So this has got to be a pretty exciting trip for you, huh?" she asked, giving Chloe a companionable squeeze on the arm that was meant affectionately but nonetheless reminded her that Mom's old friend had the kind of physique that only came from running your own farm and doing your own chores day in and day out. "Four years of living at home and you're finally looking at getting out on your own. Bet your boyfriend's going to be happy, mm?"
Chloe pursed her lips in an approximation of a smile. "I don't have a boyfriend," she said, her voice dull with exhaustion but not from the flight this time. It had really been over with Lane for almost two years now, ever since he dropped out of college perhaps a semester before he was due to flunk out to focus on a career as a DJ that had resulted in perhaps three bookings and a conviction for selling ecstasy at a rave. They'd stayed together out of desultory inertia for a while, but the moment her plans to move out East solidified into a reality, he dumped her knowing she was about to dump him and it would be more than his fragile ego could handle. Getting rid of him was like having a tumor removed, but she still wasn't fully used to the idea of being single yet.
"Well, maybe you'll find someone nice out here at grad school," Beth replied, seamlessly switching conversational gears without so much as a lurch. "Your mother said you were applying to MIT, Cambridge, and Harvard. Oof. No small potatoes for you, huh, sweetie? Not that there's anything wrong with being ambitious, but between you and me, I don't think I ever learned a single thing in college that was worth a damn to what I wound up really doing with my life." The tone was casual, but it nonetheless elicited a tiny wince from Chloe. Because deep down, that was what exactly what she was afraid of.
It was her own fault, really. She should have said something to her mom years ago, admitted that eighteen was far too young to know what the hell she wanted to do with her life and she was really just plodding along in the footsteps of an absent father and an overbearing mother in the direction of a degree in mechanical engineering that overqualified Chloe for all the jobs she was really interested in and underqualified her for everything that would actually pay off her massive student loans. And now Chloe was staring down the barrel of another year or two of full-time studies, another unimaginable load of debt added onto the ledger, and she still had no clue what she was going to do with herself.
And Beth, her mom's extremely sweet and kind and well-meaning friend who was giving her a place to stay for the indefinite months it would take her to work through the applications process and get a job and find an apartment and schlep all her stuff from Austin to Boston, just kept accidentally stepping on all her emotional pressure points. "So what happens if you don't get into the schools you've picked?" she asked, the innocent question making Chloe's bright blue eyes water with incipient tears. "Word of advice, you should always have a fallback if things don't work out the way you planned."
Chloe blushed fiercely, opening her mouth and discovering that all her emotions were too big to fit through the tiny hole of a windpipe that felt like it was closing tighter every second. "I don't know," she muttered, trying to keep the biting frustration out of her voice. "I guess I'll just live in your guest bedroom and be your lesbian sex slave."
