Padding down the hall, she passed through the door to the garage. Eight boxes stood stacked in the corner, ready to move to New York. She scanned the clutter for furniture. Everything in her charmless faculty digs remained when she left. Just how did she plan to fill this mythical New York apartment? She had nothing of her own to speak of. Twenty-eight years old, she still ate ramen noodles from the same plastic cereal bowl she used in middle school.

Cheap, dollar store tape bunched around her fingers. She balled it and tore open a box labeled, “Brontë, popcorn popper, thrift store juice glasses, The Eagle.” Several copies of their school newspaper nested at the top of the carton. Jenn parlayed their shared undergrad journalism experience into a promising position at a major news site. She was ticking off the boxes of her dreams one by one. Tessa shoved the papers deep into the carton and went back inside, clutching the popcorn popper like a beloved stuffed animal.

Within minutes, steaming, air-popped kernels poured into her hands. She flinched and dropped them in a bowl. How had ancient people discovered popcorn anyway? Who looked at those hard, brown seeds and thought, “Hey, let’s torch these things and see if they explode into food.” If it happened accidentally, how flabbergasted were the first to witness it? And then what made them think, “Hmm. Better eat that.”

She hunched over the kitchen table and rolled an unpopped kernel between her thumb and fingers. Unlike Jenn, she came to college with no plan for the future. After grad school, she stumbled into teaching like it was a giant pothole. She had a newly minted master’s, and State was hiring an adjunct English professor. The transition couldn’t have been easier. Now, she’d been effectively fired from a position she never really wanted, and the heat was on. She tossed the kernel into the sink and chuckled. If one of her students wrote the metaphor, she’d say it was too on the nose. Still, the analogy was apt.

What will I be when I finally pop?

She smothered the popcorn in butter, but it didn’t taste as good as Jennifer’s. Nothing was as good when she wasn’t around.

Why not move to New York? Just go and work out the details later. So she wouldn’t be sharing a place with Jenn. What difference did it make?

She bit down on a kernel and grimaced. Not living with Jenn made all the difference in the world. Her friend would have far less time for her now, and Tessa would find herself alone in Manhattan. The romantic comedy she envisioned for her life risked turning into a sad and lonely drama. Running her tongue over her aching tooth, she plunged a hand back into the bowl, risking pebbly kernels and perfectly popped corn alike.