Matt Drago meets a woman from his hometown of Front Royal, Virginia and discovers they grew up three blocks apart. Their families owned nearby businesses: his father's karate studio and her family's Apple House country store on Route 66. The chance encounter makes him rethink constant hustle in favor of connection and belonging.
Chapters
And I looked at her and I said, excuse me? She said, Front Royal, Virginia, have you heard of it? I said, I'm from Front Royal. And she was like, no way. And I said, yeah, seriously, um, my dad's the karate guy across from the Main Street Cinema, and I know this person, I know this person, I know this person. And I was like, well, what does your family do? She said, my family owns the Apple House, which is a small little country store, um, that only somebody in that area would know. Actually, they did Alpenglow, which was like the East Coast Martinellis. And it's just a store right off of 66 from our little town. And I looked at her in that moment, and on 79th and Broadway, on my dresser, I pointed to my 3 things on my dresser that literally still had the price tag still on them from the Apple House. So we're from the exact same town. We were, we were literally living 3 blocks away from each other our whole entire life, only a year apart. But because of the different divorces in our family, she went to this one school over this town. And I went to one school over in this town, so our circles were a little bit different. And, um, you know, at that moment, uh, it was a breakup scene from Say Anything.