Render Street Snack Bar had been there since approximately forever. The sign was red and slightly faded. Inside: plastic trays, laminated menus, a fryer that had never once been silent, and lighting that was aggressively bright in the way of places that have nothing to hide.
Marta arrived at 6:53 and ordered immediately because she needed something to do. She was wearing her good jacket — dark green, fitted — and her hair was down, which it hadn't been for any of the driving lessons. She had thought about that specifically. She had thought: he has only ever seen me in a ponytail and mild panic. Let him see the rest.
She was halfway through her corn dog when the door opened and Mark walked in.
He stopped just inside the entrance and looked around. Then he saw her, and something passed across his face — quick, almost imperceptible — before he put his usual expression back on. The calm one. The instructor one.
But she had seen the other one. She filed it away.
He came over and sat down across from her. He was in a dark jacket, no tie, and he looked different outside the car. Less official. More like a person.
"You started without me," he said, looking at her corn dog.
"I was hungry. Also nervous."
He raised an eyebrow. "You. Nervous."
"Occasionally," she said. "I hide it well."
"I know," he said. "I watched you parallel park between a delivery truck and a cement barrier and narrate the whole thing out loud to yourself."
"That's a technique," she said. "Verbalization reduces anxiety."
"You said, and I quote, 'okay we're doing this, we're absolutely doing this, come on Marta don't be a disaster.'"
"That is a completely normal thing to say."
He smiled. It was the real one — not the professional reassuring smile she had catalogued over six weeks, but the one that arrived without being managed. She had only seen it twice before. Once when she had asked him, on week three, whether he had ever genuinely feared for his life as an instructor, and he had laughed before he could stop himself. Once when she pulled perfectly into a space that had defeated her for four sessions running and he said there it is under his breath like it was about more than parking.
Now it was here again, and she let herself look at it directly.
"I'll get food," he said, and stood up.