Chapter Text
Ashley rubbed the back of her neck and let out a slight groan. These days it seemed like the neck and shoulder tension never let up, no matter how many muscle relaxers she took. It didn’t help that any time she adjusted the way she was sitting to get more comfortable, she could feel her boss’s eyes burning into the back of her head. Joja bosses did not take kindly to anything their employees did that wasn’t directly bringing them profit.
Her phone vibrated and she glanced down quickly, pretending to examine a report so she could avoid the inevitable tongue lashing she would receive for so blatant a policy violation. It was her boyfriend, Mike.
“Dinner at 8:00?”
She smiled slightly despite herself. At least there was something outside of this mind-numbing, soul-crushing job worth thinking about. True, they had been fighting a lot lately. But she chocked that up to the constant stress they had both been facing at work. 10-14 hour work days weren’t exactly conducive to healthy relationships.
As the employees filed single file out of the building, shoulders slumped with exhaustion and strain, Ashley felt the same feeling of dread she always did. She would have to be back here at 6:00 am tomorrow. This certainly wasn’t what she had pictured when she started here straight out of college 3 years ago. It was supposed to be her golden ticket to wealth and success, at least that was what Mike had assured her. After all, he had been promoted to regional director in just 2 years.
Ironically, this was the source of most of their fights. Well, that and her desire to have a life outside of work. He accused her not working hard enough to be worth noticing, an accusation that stung more every time she heard it. It wasn’t that she didn’t work hard enough to be noticed, it was that Joja didn’t seem to think women were worth noticing. She was continuously passed over for promotions in favor of her less-skilled, less hard-working, less-tenured male co-workers. In fact, it seemed that all you needed to get promoted at Joja was a touch of sexism and a set of balls.
***
Mike was waiting at the table when she arrived at 7:58, tapping his fingers impatiently. “I thought you were going to be late,” he said, his ebony eyes flashing with annoyance. “You know how I hate it when you’re late.”
She sighed, sinking into her chair and pressed her fingers to her temples. “It was a long day. Can we just enjoy our evening without fighting for once?”
He looked back at her for a moment, frowning slightly. “Fine. Let’s get some drinks.”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him gratefully, pushing away the nagging thought that she really shouldn’t feel grateful for the bare minimum of civil behavior.
He ordered a bottle of Cabernet and she ran her eyes over his comfortingly familiar profile. He was handsome, in that classic, corporate boss kind of way. Tall, broad-shouldered, with close cut dark brown hair and equally dark brown eyes, his posture left no doubt that he was used to commanding the attention of a room, even when he wasn’t wearing a sharp grey suit.
As they made small talk about their mutual friends and workplace drama, Ashley allowed herself to forget the tension that had been building up between them. It was easier to let her mind wander to a different time when he had just been the confident, cocky cutey sitting next to her in a college class, so quick to argue his opinion to anyone who would listen. A time when they had cut class to go skinny dipping and dared each other prank the professor. A time when he had told her she was “his hottest bang ever,” and she had felt outrageously flattered. A time before he had become THE Mr. Pierce who cared more about his savings account than his girlfriend’s feelings.
Running her fingers absent mindedly across the back of his hand, she smiled at him. “What do you think about coming back to my place tonight?”
He raised his eyebrows across the table. “Tonight? We have work in the morning.”
“Oh,” she looked down in a mix of embarrassment and consternation. Of course, she should have known better than to expect him to do something spontaneous on a work night.
“So,” he took a bite of his cheesecake, “I heard from your mother today.”
“Oh?”
“She was rambling on about your grandfather’s old farm again.”
“What did she say?” Ashley blurted, perhaps a bit too eagerly. She knew this was a sore subject for him, but she had been thinking about it more and more seriously lately. The corporate grind was wearing on her soul.
“Just that she hoped I wasn’t trying to convince you not to go. But I told her you had too much good sense to throw away your career for some dumb old man’s farm, and my VERY justified opinions had nothing to do with it.”
“Why… why would you call him a dumb old man?” The tears stung in her eyes as she struggled not to lose control beneath the icy gaze she had unfortunately begun to grow accustomed to.
“Oh come on Ash. You know I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t be so sensitive. But if you think about it logically, he was kind of stupid. He willingly spent most of his life on that farm, a farm that never made him any real money. And what did he have to show for it? Nothing. Who would choose a life like that?”
“Enough!” Ashley stood up, almost knocking over the waiter in her anger and eagerness to get away from him. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to you talk shit about my family.”
“Ash..”
“No. I’m going home. If you have the smallest modicum of respect left for me, you will give me some space.” She turned and stalked out of the restaurant without another word, hot tears of anger and frustration falling unbidden from her eyes. All she had wanted was one nice night, something to take her mind off how horrible things had been lately. But he couldn’t even give her that.
***
Her apartment had always been her haven, with its blue walls, colorful paintings, books, and potted plants. A tiny piece of a world she wanted to live in when everywhere else made her want to crawl into a hole and die. Mike had always thought her wall-to-wall bookshelves were a dumb use of her limited space, she noted as she kicked off her heels. “Reading doesn’t make money” he always said when he caught her bringing home another book for her collection.
“Neither does being an asshole,” she had retorted, earning herself the cold shoulder for a week. When he had started talking to her again, it had only been to present her with “undeniable proof” of why being an asshole actually DID make you money. She frowned at the memory. He just always had to be right.
Running her hand lightly across the spines of her books, she inhaled the mingling scent of old leather and fresh paper, the smell of home. It had been so long since she’d found the time to just sit and read, a thought that brought another twinge of sadness. How had she ended up here?
She pulled a volume of old poems off the shelf and thumbed through it absent mindedly until she found a stanza that stood out to her. A work by Thomas Hood she had read a thousand times but never really understood until now.
I remember, I remember,
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow!
I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heav'n
Than when I was a boy.
That was it! The fir trees, the swallows… that was what she missed. The nature, the openness, the freedom of it all. This concrete jungle was stifling her, and she had to get out. She couldn’t waste another moment being miserable. Hand shaking, she dialed her mother.
“Mom? I’ve made up my mind. I want grandpa’s farm. I’m moving to Stardew Valley.”