Chapter Text
It had been snowing particularly hard since early morning. No one had come by the diner where Christine Noel worked until a figure wearing a long, dark coat took a burst of cold air in with her, brushing off flecks of snow from her shoulder. She looked awfully familiar. Their eyes met.
Ginny knew it was Chris by the lurch of her own heart.
Chris recognized Ginny by her blue eyes.
Fresh off a red-eye and fighting jet leg, Ginny needed something to stay awake. She found the nearest place, a diner which just so happened to be Chris’s current place of work, and Ginny mentally cursed at herself when she realized she couldn’t turn back.
“Ginny,” Chris said, lingering slightly as she walked past her. “I’ll be with you in a second.”
Words came up empty. Ginny nodded and sat herself on a stool at the counter, fidgeting with her sleeve until Chris reappeared from the kitchen and said hello.
“Hi,” Ginny replied.
“It’s been a while. What can I get you?”
“Just black coffee, please. Thank you.”
As Chris was pouring her the coffee, Ginny’s eyes gravitated toward her name tag that said ‘Christine’, and Chris—Christine now, she guessed—said something that she didn’t hear.
“Sorry?”
“I said,” Chris chuckled, and Ginny hadn’t realized how much she missed it until now. “Are you in town for Christmas?”
“I…” Ginny stared at the steaming cup, bringing her hands to grasp the ceramic just to feel the warmth. “I guess so, yeah.” She cleared her throat. “Christine?”
“Yes?”
“No, I just mean—Christine…you told me you didn’t like that name.”
Her smile faltered ever so slightly. “Long time ago, I guess. It’s Christine now.”
Ginny nodded, saying the name again just to see how it felt on her tongue: new and foreign, like the first time they met.
She paused for a moment before saying, “But you can still call me Chris.” She momentarily dropped work from her mind, and just then she was actually Chris—Ginny’s friend, not Christine who kept her apron clean, smiled at every customer, and made pleasant small talk. She was Chris.
“Mrs. Danburry tells me you’re on Broadway,” Chris continued, quietly but excitedly, as if it were a secret.
“Just two plays, really. Everything else has been Off-Broadway.” Ginny replied, not that the difference would matter to Chris as she grinned all the same, visibly proud. Ginny didn’t know quite how to respond.
“You still talk to my mother?” Ginny asked. Chris had been part of the family up until Christmas of junior year, when Chet went around telling people he’d gotten bored and dumped Chris. (Everyone knew it wasn’t true.) The implication within her question is there—if Chris still had anything to do with Mrs. Danburry, then she had something to do with Chet again.
Chris, however, was quick to remedy that. “We just meet for breakfast every now and then.”
“So…” Ginny took a sip of her coffee, slightly burning her tongue. “No Chet?”
“No offense, I know he’s your brother—”
“Please, offend away.”
She laughed. “But never in a million years.”
Ginny let out a small sigh of relief, not invisible to Chris. In the back of Ginny’s mind there still lingered a question but she let it hang there, and let Chris direct the conversation back to her.
“When’s the last time you visited?”
“Nine years, I think.” Despite Chris’s nonjudging expression, Ginny felt ashamed to say it. Not just that she hadn’t gone to see her family in so long (and fairly, she had her reasons), it was also that Chris was here the whole time, and Ginny didn’t call. She left and didn’t turn back.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here. Did you take the bus from New York?” Chris asked.
Ginny hesitated. “I just got in from California, actually.”
“Really?” Just then, she straightened up as two people came in and sat at a booth. “I’ll be right back.”
Left to her senses, Ginny drank the bitterness. She couldn’t help but listen to Chris take their orders. It was a small place and there wasn’t much room for silence. Shifting in her seat, she couldn’t put it off for much longer, because it was just there: the quick heartbeat, the clammy hands, the warmth blooming in her chest.
When Chris came back, the cup was empty and the conversation continued.
“So, California?” Chris smiled.
Ginny let the caffeine do the talking, and she began to ramble. She explained the audition in Los Angeles, how everything was paid for, how she had just gotten in this morning, dropped off her things at the house and came to the nearest place that had coffee. Chris listened attentively throughout, and Ginny’s eyes kept shifting downward, afraid of memorizing how Chris’s face has gracefully aged all these years later.
Not even their history of a close friendship could save Ginny and Chris from the inevitable awkwardness that came naturally with a reunion. They eventually slipped into easier conversation but Ginny had a lump in her throat she couldn’t swallow down.
“I’m off in a minute,” Chris mentioned. “Why don’t you walk with me after?”
Chris, ever the more forward one, that part hadn’t changed. Ginny didn’t know if that was good or bad.
Ridgeway hadn’t changed much, either. It was still the same grey sky, the same trees, even the cars, though slightly faded and paint chipped, were the same. The crunch of the snow sounded the same, the hushed wind, a muffled little town.
“Tell me about your life,” Ginny said, and Chris sighed.
“I write columns for the paper,” she replied, looking down at her feet and stuffing her hands in her pockets.
“You don’t like it?”
“It doesn’t pay much,” she shrugged with a smile. Ginny could no longer hear the earnestness, instead the resignation that buried itself under. “I have to work at the diner. But, you know, that’s how it is. It’s temporary until…”
“Until…?”
“I find someone.”
“You and Knox aren’t—”
“Oh, goodness, no.”
Maybe it was mischievous, but Ginny felt warmer hearing it, and she needed it in the cold.
Chris continued. “It was over a long time ago. What about you, Ms. Hollywood star?”
“Come on,” Ginny snorted. “There’s no one.” Else. There hasn’t been anyone else, ever, ever since we met.
She gasped. “Really?”
“Really.”
Ginny ignored the lurching of her stomach at the thought of the whispers and the things said to her face over the course of her career, since the beginning. It always lurked somewhere in the back of her mind. Chris must have seen the twist in Ginny’s face or noted the quiet.
“What’s on your mind?” Chris asked.
“I just—” she began, but the unlit theatre—the hall she once performed in—across the street caught her eye. Chris looked in that direction.
“Oh,” Chris said. “Don’t miss that place, huh?”
Ginny stared back at her with lips slightly upturned in a sheepish smile because Chris still knew that Henley Hall was living hell until junior year, and that it was hell again after Neil’s death. She wondered if Chris knew she still kept the rivers and ridges carved into her life from the summer they had gotten close (inevitably, due to the growing serious nature of Chris and Chet’s relationship); a strong rapport forged through lunches, dinners, and little moments of friendship that year. Ginny has been holding a candle for Chris ever since, in a way she knew no one would ever accept.
“Not really,” Ginny replied. “But I miss Neil.”
Chris nodded solemnly. “I know. It seems like something is weighing on you.”
Ginny cleared her throat and ripped off the band-aid. “I’m living with Todd,” she said.
“But you two aren’t…”
“Oh, no.” She affirms. “No. We’re just…similar.”
“He and Neil were awfully close, weren’t they?”
“They were.” With one last glance at Henley Hall, Ginny continued their walk. She swallowed whatever it was crawling up her throat. “Todd missed—misses—him more than anybody. But he’s doing better.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Will you send him my wishes when you go back?”
“Yeah, I will.” Ginny bit her tongue and didn’t say she was going back by tomorrow. Maybe it was easier if Chris didn’t know.
They came to Ginny’s house before Chris’s. Ginny cleared her throat again. “Why don’t you come in?”
“Oh.” Chris hesitated. “I can’t…not with—”
“Chet’s not here,” Ginny replied. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
There was something unreadable on Chris’s face. Not reluctance nor shame. Chris was harder to read than people often thought, even for someone like Ginny who supposedly knew her so well. But Chris agreed to come in and it mattered more in the moment than trying to figure her out.
It was a November winter, sometime ten years ago, when Mrs. Danburry and Chris were left alone in the living room. Where Chet or his father or Ginny was, Chris couldn’t recall, but it was the warm fireplace and the cold windows and Mrs. Danburry’s words that stuck to her mind, which, to this day, she thought of. Mrs. Danburry was sitting at the end of the couch while Chris had her notebook laid out on the coffee table.
“You know,” Mrs. Danburry said. “I really admire you girls.”
Chris looked up. “Me and Ginny?”
“Of course. Who else?” Mrs. Danburry took off her reading glasses, wearing a reminiscent smile.
She shrugged.
“Girls should protect each other. I’m glad you two have that.”
“Thank you,” Chris laughed in earnest. “I’m inclined to agree, Mrs. Danburry. Ginny’s a great friend.”
The house hadn’t changed. The air was still warm, the curtains the same, the same Mrs. Danburry who greeted Chris with a smile.
“I’m so excited to see you girls together again,” Mrs. Danburry said. “Why don’t I make some tea?” She hurried off into the kitchen before Chris got a word out.
“Let’s go to my room.” Ginny dragged her by the wrist down the hallway, missing the way Chris just grinned a little harder at how familiar it all felt.
Chris didn’t expect to see Ginny again after graduation. She stopped coming around the Danburry’s when she had broken up with Chet, and Chet by this point was old news; Chris left a door open for Ginny’s return, if it ever came.
She returned unannounced, this time with longer hair and more lines on her face, and it was as if she was always there. Not here in this small town, but beside Chris.
When they entered the room, Ginny explained that her old bedroom had been turned into a guest room about five years ago. Ginny seemed indifferent. Gone were the posters, the canopy bed, the books and the wallpaper. In the corner sat a tiny suitcase, unopened.
“How long are you staying?” Chris asked, sitting on the bed. Ginny closed the door and took her gloves off, and began fiddling with her hands. It made Chris uneasy to see Ginny so nervous. “What is it?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“So soon?”
“I don’t want Todd to be alone for Christmas,” Ginny said solemnly. “I didn’t even plan on coming back here. But I wanted to ask—are you happy?”
Chris chuckled lightly. Of course she was, because Ginny was here. Ginny returned the grin but it didn’t have the same heart in it. “Sure thing, Ginny.”
“Are you really happy?”
“Where’s this coming from?”
“Do you remember what you told me, right before senior year?”
Her mouth dried. “That…was a long time ago.”
“I just want to know if you did. Remember, I mean. Just so I know you didn’t mean it.”
Everything hung in the air between them then. Chris had no idea just how much she had seen of Ginny’s heart, just as Ginny didn’t realize back then how much Chris wished for it. Chris tucked her hair behind her ear and shook her head. She looked at Ginny once again. “I can visit you next year, maybe.”
Mrs. Danburry knocked on the door. “Tea’s ready.”
Chris drank about half at the dinner table, feeling Ginny’s stare that she couldn’t meet.
They shared a hug in the doorway. “My bus leaves in the morning,” Ginny said, making sure the hold lingered a little longer than what they were used to. “At six.”
Chris turned back to leave and was sure that was the last time she would see Ginny. Her steps slowed, hesitating again, words resounding in her head, and she walked home so quickly she may as well have ran.
The next morning, at the diner, Christine couldn’t be found when someone named Ginny came looking.
At six, Ginny said goodbye to her parents and found someone standing on the driveway, and judging by the snow on her head she had been standing there for a while.
“Chris?”
“Knox used to tell me I had a problem with going for the things I wanted,” she began. “And I hate that he’s right.
“He only used to say it to convince me I loved him,” she laughed. “But what he never knew and only you knew—no one else—is that I wanted to leave this place long as I can remember. That’s what I told you, senior year.”
“So did you mean it?”
“I couldn’t possibly turn you down when you wanted me to go to New York, Ginny.”
“Then why don’t you go with me?”
Chris bit her lip, as if saying it would destroy everything she loved. “I know that if I agreed, I wouldn’t want to leave.”
Ginny was tired of asking questions. “It’s not a bad deal.”
It was all so far removed from everything she knew. But, oddly, the only thing that felt right.
“I don’t think you understand,” she replied. “You don’t want me there because I’ll fall in love with you.”
“Well, good.” Ginny beamed, genuinely this time, and Chris’s heart stuttered. “I’m pretty sure that’s what I want.”