Anna's Dress: a heart-wrenching second chance romance story that will make you believe in true love

by London Casey

Because it wasn’t the first time I’d said goodbye to Evan with silence.

  Chapter Sixteen

  (The One Who Died)

  YEARS AGO

  (Adena)

  Ohmygod… she’s dead. She’s finally dead. Why did I just think ‘finally’ for? Am I a bad person? I don’t like hospitals. I don’t like any of this. I can’t do anything except look forward. Or to my right. To check on Aunt Beth. I saw her last week… rubbing her shoulder. Her left shoulder. Near her chest. That’s a sign of a heart attack, isn’t it? She told me she hurt it at work. I call BS on that. She didn’t hurt it at work. She hurt it… well, raising Anna. So that’s why I said ‘finally’ … because of Anna. Because if Anna is gone then Aunt Beth could heal. No, that won’t work, would it? She’d be crushed. Crushed bad. I bet her shoulder and chest would hurt even more. Which reminds me… I need to look all that up. I need to find out what else to look for. Oh, better yet, I can make an appointment with Dr. Webben. He’s cool. He’ll listen to me. It wouldn’t be the first time I went to him for a fake appointment. I asked him once about drugs. He laughed at me and then we had a long talk. The funny part was that he thought when I talked about my ‘friend’ I was talking about me. But it was my sister. Duh. This time I would be honest. This was about Aunt Beth. I loved her too much to let her go because of-

  “Here he comes,” Aunt Beth said.

  We both rose up out of the uncomfortable hospital chairs.

  The hallway had these dumb pictures of nice settings. A pond with willows blowing in the wind. Another painting of ducks flying free. Then one of a red barn with a yellow and orange hot air balloon.

  Seriously?

  What was that supposed to do for anyone?

  What was I supposed to do - dream of being in that hot air balloon and escaping this two-in-the-morning nightmare that my sister had so elegantly paint with her fingertip of destruction?

  “Doctor,” Aunt Beth said as she reached for him.

  I saw her left shoulder suddenly twitch.

  My eyes went wide. I pointed at her shoulder.

  I was going to say something but the doctor started to talk first.

  He was tall with bushy gray hair and a clean cut face that showed the hours he spent working.

  “She’s stable,” he said.

  Aunt Beth let out a ooohhhh sound and clutched her chest.

  There! Again! She’s doing it again!

  The doctor must have thought it was just relief.

  “Wait,” I said. “She’s…”

  “Now, listen to me,” the doctor said. “She’s far from out of the woods here, okay? She’s really banged up. Externally, it looks bad but all that will heal. It’s internally that we’re concerned about.”

  “Meaning what?” Aunt Beth asked.

  “Right now… left lung, kidney, and spleen.” The doctor quickly put a hand up. “But as I said, she’s stable. Right now. Okay? The goal now is to monitor her, give her the rest she needs, and hope her body is willing to fight back.”

  Got any booze or drugs you could slip in her IV?

  I turned my head at the thought. That was rude of me. But I couldn’t help myself. I actually had a meeting with a local banker in just, oh, three hours. Seriously. Me. At my age. My graduation project had been given to this banker by my one business class teacher. He knew the banker and it was my chance to present my business plan to him. That could result in money. Real money. Either to open my dream business or I could get a scholarship to go to college and keep working on my business plan while I was in college.

  Talk about a dream, right?

  I knew of one friend who was going to college. Harrison. He was going to law school. He was the smartest guy in school and he was smart enough to get out of the town.

  “So what do we do now?” Aunt Beth asked the doctor, breaking up my thoughts.

  “Wait,” the doctor said.

  “Can we see her?”

  “I’d rather not right now,” the doctor said. “It doesn’t look good. She was lucky but…”

  “But what?”

  “It was a car accident,” the doctor said. “You do realize that. She was not wearing her seat belt either.”

  “Of course not,” I whispered.

  They both looked at me.

  I didn’t say anything else.

  “Well, I have the right to see her,” Aunt Beth said.

  “I must warn you and your other… daughter…”

  “My niece. They’re both my nieces.”

  “Right. Well, she sustained serious injuries. Broken leg. Shattered ankle. Fractured collarbone. The left side of her face and head collided with the windshield. We need to schedule a second MRI for morning to check for any damage and swelling…”

  “Oh, God,” Aunt Beth said, her voice crackling.

  That’s when I saw movement from the corner of my eye. I turned and saw Evan pacing back and forth, glancing out of a window. It was dark out so the window only showed his reflection.

  I took a handful of steps and stopped when he saw me.

  He turned and put his hands into his pockets.

  Our eyes locked.

  He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

  So I took a few more steps.

  Evan moved toward me. “Dena… is she…”

  “Alive,” I whispered.

  It was the only word I would say to Evan that night.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said. He exhaled and ran a hand through his hair. He looked up and looked ready to cry. “Fuck. I can’t believe this shit.” He swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple pulled up and settled back down. He looked at me again. “I’m so sorry, Dena. I never meant for this to happen. You have to understand that. If I knew this was going…”

  He shook his head.

  I just stared at him.

  This was his fault, right? His fault that my sister was in a hospital bed. Or was that what I wanted to force myself to believe? It was easier to blame someone else for what Anna did, right? But Evan was the one with her. As always…

  “I should have been smarter tonight,” Evan said. “But we were all drinking, Dena. Okay? I didn’t mean for this. I had no plans for her to be in that car. Okay? Please understand that.”

  I nodded. Just to nod.

  “Great,” he said. “You won’t even say a word to me now. Nobody will talk to me. What the fuck am I even doing here? Huh? I’m done with school. God only knows why they gave me a fucking diploma. Not that it’s worth shit. And now this shit. Everyone looking at me for this. I just wanted to see her. One last time.”

  I opened my mouth to say last time? but I tilted my head.

  Behind me I heard Aunt Beth raising her worried voice, arguing with the doctor.

  I reached with my left hand and pointed over my right shoulder.

  I have to go, Evan…

  “I’m leaving, Dena,” Evan said. “I’m out. I’m done. I can’t do this shit anymore. This town. Your sister. All of it. Listen to me, Dena. This is something I should have said a long time ago. Fuck. I thought I was doing everyone a favor but I was only making things worse.” Evan reached for me. His fingertips touched my hand. “The truth is… I’ve always lov…”

  “Evan,” a voice boomed.

  He turned his head.

  I looked.

  There was a cop. Dick.

  No, no, no, no…

  “We need to talk,” Dick said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Evan said.

  I opened my mouth but Evan was already on the move. Walking toward Dick. He put his hands in front of his body. I had only seen one person in my life get arrested and that was my father. The last time I ever saw my father.

  And the same thing was about to happen with Evan.

  Dick walked him away. Evan looked back once. He mouthed something to me. I couldn’t really make it out. Something about love? Tell Anna I love her?

  My lip curled.

  There was no way I would tell…

  A buzzer sounde
d.

  I spun on my heels.

  The doctor touched Aunt Beth’s shoulder and started to shake his head.

  The buzzer sounded again, this time with a warning. A code something…

  The doctor started to run away, pointing to the nurses station, already calling out orders.

  Aunt Beth covered her mouth and looked back at me.

  She had tears in her eyes. Her shoulder twitched again.

  I took one step and paused.

  The buzzer and the warning sounded again.

  Down the hall I saw a group of people gathering together. Doctors. Nurses. Specialists.

  That was the night I lost Evan… and the night the accident became a fatal one.

  Chapter Seventeen

  (A Promise of Presence)

  NOW

  (Evan)

  I looked into her coffee mug. There was a small white gathering at the top of the tan liquid. I always thought she put too much creamer in her coffee. I never understood it. But that was Dena. I ran my middle finger around the rim of the mug. Then I rubbed my chin.

  I heard the shower running. The pipes went through the kitchen and the walls were super thin. When you turned the water on and off the pipes rattled and shook the wall. When the water ran it sounded like a rumbling hiss from inside the walls.

  It just showed how old the house was, like everything in the town. On the outskirts, developers had been buying up land from the old heads and knocking down the trees, flattening it all out, and were building new developments. The kind where the same thing was built a hundred times over and the prices were just low enough to convince people they could afford it. The heart of the town was left to age and rot, with the exception of the occasional person who thought they could buy low, fix it up, and sell high, thanks to reality television. But I knew it wasn’t that fucking easy at all. I dealt with that nonsense at the shop with Uncle Davey. People forever asked us if the shop was like the ones on TV. Uncle Davey had no clue what reality television was so I fielded the questions when they came up. I told everyone it was exactly like on TV. Our lives were scripted, the projects predetermined, and we got paid by the episode that was filmed.

  Smart ass, I know.

  I grabbed Dena’s mug and walked into the kitchen. I rinsed both our mugs out and put them upside down on a sunflower towel. I looked out the kitchen window to the porch and the backyard.

  What the fuck are you doing, Evan?

  That was a question I couldn’t answer.

  I had gotten what I wanted for so long. A stolen kiss from Dena. Grabbing those precious curves of hers and pulling her in. Our lips touching, flirting, kissing. My tongue gently tasting her tongue, a sweetness rippling through me, battling the devil that had kept control for years. We’d been on a collision course since the day we met. And the timing was always a fucking mess. Including that kiss.

  The way she pulled and walked away.

  She thought I was kissing her because of her damn sister. Because her sister was gone. Because I was sad. Because I wanted to get laid… why? Because that’s what you did when someone close to you died? Or did she think I was hoping she’d be vulnerable?

  “Fuck,” I growled.

  I pushed from the counter.

  I realized the water had turned off.

  If it wasn’t bad enough to picture Dena in the shower with the water hitting her sweet skin, now I imagined her standing there with a towel in her hand. Pressing it against her body. With one hand. Her other hand pulling at her hair, squeezing out the leftover water from the shower.

  I was driving myself crazy.

  So I left the kitchen and grabbed a chair. I spun it around and sat down.

  My phone started to ring - Uncle Davey calling me.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  I got him a cell phone last year and he’d probably made three calls with it. All three to me.

  “Uncle Davey,” I said.

  “Evan? Hullo?”

  “I’m here,” I said. “You okay?”

  “Evan. It’s your uncle.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know who it is.”

  “Hullo. Evan. Where are you?”

  “I’m at the… the funeral was yesterday.”

  “Right,” he said. “Listen. Uh, Jimmy called. He wanted to talk to you about another two deals. He said he was sending a spreadsheet. How the fuck do I get that?”

  I smiled. “Uncle Davey, I’ll take care of it. It’s a proposal from him to us. We review it and respond.”

  “Huh?”

  “He emailed it to us.”

  “Email? Jesus Christ. You know, in my day, if you wanted to make a deal, you came to see the person.”

  “Uncle Davey, Jimmy lives in Arizona.”

  “Oh. Oh, right. Yeah.”

  “I’ll call Jimmy,” I said. “Okay? I’ll let him know I’m out of town but I’ll go through the proposal.”

  “Yeah,” Uncle Davey shouted. “Yeah. Okay. Hey, Winston hurt his shoulder yesterday.”

  “I’ll be back soon.”

  I rolled my eyes again. The guy that told me to leave now wanted me back. Again, it was his subtle way of saying he loved me.

  “See you later, Evan,” he said and hung up on me.

  I looked at the phone in my hand and shook my head.

  “Evan?”

  I looked up and there she was.

  Dena.

  Adena.

  My Dena.

  Standing in jeans that had holes in the knees. A white t-shirt that looked perfect on her. I never met a woman who could do so little to herself and be so fucking beautiful. Her hair wet, dark, curly. No makeup on her face.

  My chest tightened.

  I wanted to stand up but couldn’t.

  I was trapped.

  Trapped in her stare. Trapped in her beauty.

  It was my worst fear.

  She had spent years trying to save Anna…

  … and now, in some fucked up way, I wanted her to save me.

  I caught my breath a few seconds later. In those fleeting seconds I pictured her walking to me. My hands sliding around to the small of her back. Pulling her forward and down, smelling her clean skin. Her soap. Her shampoo. A freshness that flirted with innocence. The kind of shit that would make the devil inside me growl with a deep need.

  But Dena just stood there.

  When I regained feeling in my legs, I stood up and turned the chair back around.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m here,” I said. “I didn’t come to just bail.”

  Dena sighed. “Evan…”

  “There’s about a million things I could say right now, Dena. A million more I should have said. No matter what I say to you it’s going to come out wrong. It’s going to sound like I’m feeling pity for you for what happened.”

  “So then why are you here?”

  I stepped toward her. I reached for her, skipping everywhere my hand wanted to go first and softly touched her cheek. My thumb teased at the corner of her mouth. The mouth I had been kissing just a little while ago.

  “Because me being here means more than anything I could say,” I whispered. “You expect me to walk out that door and leave you, but I’m not going to do that.”

  “There’s nothing here for you, Evan. You have a life somewhere else.”

  “I know,” I said. “But you’re wrong.”

  “With what?”

  “There is something here for me, Dena. You.”

  She reached up and grabbed my hand. Both of her hands to my one hand and she still couldn’t cover my entire hand. Fuck, that drove me wild. That turned me on so much.

  “Emotions are high right now,” Dena said. “We’re all thinking about every moment that leads to this. Regret. Doubt. Hurt.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re wrong again. I’m not thinking about anything but you. Just like I always did. I just never told you that.”

  “Evan… stop…”

  “Stop w
hat? The truth? What are you worried about? Losing your freedom again?”

  Dena laughed. A crying kind of laugh. “I never had freedom. I still don’t. I never will. But if I show up and smile, it confuses everyone. Enough that they leave me alone.”

  “I’m not going to leave you alone, Dena,” I said.

  “Evan, you have no idea…”

  “Then give me an idea. I want to know everything about you. Not her. You.”

  Dena shook her head. “I came downstairs to hopefully find this house empty. So I could eat and go to work.”

  “Right. Where do you work?”

  “A bakery, Evan. I complete the dream of someone else. My dream. For someone else. So tell me again how I have freedom?”

  I swallowed hard. This was not everything I had pictured. But in some way, this was exactly why I didn’t want to come back, right? Because of this. Dena being so fucking smart and beautiful. Knowing the right thing to do, which was kicking my ass to the curb. Because I spent years dealing with her sister. And Dena would never fully understand everything that happened or why.

  There was nothing I could say.

  My presence wasn’t even good enough for her.

  What else could I give her?

  So I took my hand away from her. I rubbed my face and made the mistake of using that same hand. I could smell Dena on my skin.

  “I guess I’m due back at the shop anyway,” I said. “Uncle Davey called while you were upstairs. He can’t open an email and read a spreadsheet.”

  Dena nodded. “I’m glad you came, Evan. Seriously. No matter the history, it was good to see you. To see everyone together again like that. It’s going to take time to figure out not having her around, you know? No more getting nervous after midnight. No more Tommy calling me to say that he found her sleeping on a bench. No more bailing her out. You know, Evan, you think I would maybe think I should have gotten the keys to her car from her, right? But I don’t think that at all. Maybe it was…”

  I made my move again. I slipped my hand around the small of her back and pressed my body to hers. We collided and she gasped. She looked up at me, eyes wide, mouth open, her lips already quivering.