Second Chances

by Younker, Tracy

  She lets her hand fall away from her mouth and it looks like she has tears pooling in her eyes. “Chase?” Her voice is a whisper. Man, I've missed hearing that voice. My name is a question like she doubts her sanity at seeing me standing here. My fault, of course.

  “My God, you look amazing. How are you, Hayles?” I ask as I start to move closer to her. I want to pull her into my arms and never let her go again, but I can see the doubt clouding over her face. Her expression goes from shocked to pained, and there are tears rolling down her creamy, smooth cheeks.

  I can feel my hand about to reach out and touch her arm, just to assure me that she is real, when she opens those perfectly bowed lips of hers.

  “I can't do this,” she whispers and before it registers in my brain, she dashes around me and climbs into her car. I watch as she backs out of her driveway, trying not to look at me and let me know that she is sobbing. Of the millions of different scenerios that I've envisioned of seeing her again, I can honestly say that this had not been one of them. I feel like my heart has been crushed beneath the tires of her car. It's only fair though, I guess.

  I end up sitting back down in the rental and trying to figure out how my life has gotten to be such a fucked up mess. What had I really expected coming here? I hadn't seen or heard from Haylee in four years. I can't exactly expect her to just run into my arms and forgive me for up and leaving the way I did. I'm not sure how I'm going to explain things and apologize to her though, if she can't even stand to look at me. My mind is trying to convince me that coming here has been a mistake. It would be easier to just drive back to LA and forget about this, but running isn't the answer. I know in my heart that this is where I need to be right now. They'll all need time, but I plan to be here until each of them comes around again.

  The sound of an engine pulls me from my pity party as a beat up old pickup truck pulls into the drive behind me. I glance up at the rearview mirror and recognize Griff climbing out of the cab and sauntering up to my open window.

  “Well, I'll be damned,” he gives a half-smile as he leans over and sets both hands down on the window ledge. “Chase Atwood really is in Haylee's driveway.” I guessed Haylee ran to Griff. I'm surprised though to realize that burned a little. I'd always been the first one she'd run to. Now I had her running from me. I shake that thought off. At least Griff is here for her.

  “Hey, Griff,” I smile cautiously as I pull myself out of the car. I don't know what to expect from him and after Haylee took off crying, I'm even more unsure.

  “Good to see you, man!” he grins and pulls me into a half shoulder, man hug. I have to admit I am surprised. Griff has always been easygoing, but after the way Haylee reacted and knowing that she'd tipped Griff off, I don't know, I half expected a right hook instead.

  He asks me when I'd gotten back into town and insists that I stay with him instead of the motel I'd stayed in last night. I hadn't slept a wink anyway. I was so amped up after peeping around last night, memories of our childhood flooded my mind and kept me from sleeping. After grabbing my stuff from the motel, we park back over at his house and talk while he feeds the animals in the barn. There is a third horse that hadn't been there four years ago, and a bunch of chickens and some ducks lingering around. Nothing new here…there are new families of ducks here at the lake every year and they always seem to end up at Griff's barn. Griff has a Shepherd attached to his heels the whole time, and watching them makes me miss my own dog. There are a couple of cats lying up on the bales of hay, and I notice the three-legged orange tabby that I'd seen with Haylee earlier that morning. I smile as I remember seeing her hold it.

  While Griff works, and I help out whenever I can, we talk about what it had been like to move to California and leave everything I knew behind. He wants all the details of the wakeboarding competitions and how I'd gotten a manager and sponsors. I spill my guts to him, all the good right along with all the bad. I've missed talking to Griff like this.

  He finally asks the million dollar question: why I've never called or come back to visit. I answer him as honestly as I can, that time and circumstances had just gotten away from me, and after a while I figured they were each so pissed since I hadn't heard from any of them either that they wouldn't want to hear from me anymore. I had felt as though after so much time, maybe it was best to leave the wound healed instead of tearing it open again. It had been my stupid way of dealing with it, but I realize now that it didn't work for everyone. Only recently I've had the balls to admit to myself that it hasn't worked for me either. Those wounds are still there. I want Griff and Haylee and Brynn to know that I'm here to fix that now. Things had really come to light in my life recently and it was far too short to leave things the way they were when we'd all been so close once.

  We finally head inside his house. It's weird how much things in here have stayed the same. If all I saw were the 'things' inside and not the people, I could easily believe that I'd never left. He takes me up to his older brother's room, which is empty since he moved out for college and is now living and working over in Chapel Hill. He tells me I can stay there as long as I need or want to. I don't have a clue how long that's going to be at this point. I'm living one day at a time right now.

  I find out that Griff isn't going to college yet. He's working at a garage in town because he claims he hasn't figured out what he wants to do. I can't help but wonder if it has anything to do with Haylee.

  “How 'bout Brynn? Does she still live in town?” I finally ask. I haven't heard anything about her yet.

  “Yeah, she still lives in town,” Griff says and I can tell by the way that he shifts around that he is trying to sugarcoat something. “She changed, man. After you left, she quit hanging out with Haylee and me. She hangs out with the dance team now and she acts just like them. Her and Haylee pretty much can't stand each other.”

  “Wow,” I murmur. I don't know what else to say. Haylee hated the girls she danced with. They were a bunch of whiny, gossiping backstabbers, so I'm pretty surprised that Brynn is one of them now. That had to hurt Haylee too.

  Griff's phone buzzes and he glances down at it and then back up at me. I am really hoping the town rumormill hasn't started up yet. I want to talk privately with my friends first. I watch as he sends a quick reply followed by another quick buzz and then he raises his eyebrows at me. What the hell is going on?

  “Haylee's heading over and she doesn't know you're crashing here yet. Just let me run out and talk to her first before she tries to drown you in the lake,” Griff tells me with a smile.

  “Thanks for keeping it real, Griff,” I chuckle.

  “Wouldn't have it any other way,” he grins as he stands to leave and pats me on the shoulder. “She'll be okay,” he says to me over his shoulder as he heads downstairs. I listen for the back screen door to slam closed and wonder how Haylee is going to take seeing me this time. It's incredibly depressing to realize that one of my friends has to go outside and smooth things over with another friend of mine for me. I feel like an alien from some other planet.

  I guess I should at least be grateful that Griff has forgiven me for walking out of their lives. He seems to understand where I'm coming from and can see both sides. Maybe there's hope for Haylee and Brynn yet.

  There is no denying the fact that I am nervous as hell to see Haylee again. She and I are a lot more complicated than me and Griff. There is so much I need to tell her, so much I need her to understand. There are a million questions that I want to ask her, but I have to take this slow. If she'd even give me a chance to talk to her, which is doubtful after this morning, I know I'll have to be careful how I say things so as to not scare her off.

  I am pacing back and forth in Griff's room as I wait. I guess I've always known how difficult this would be and why I've let the time just keep slipping past. How do you tell someone that you're in love with them, have been for years now, and ask them to forgive you for going missing for the last four years? What would I do if the situation was reversed and Haylee
had come back all of a sudden? How would I react to seeing her again? Since I really can't answer that question, I figure I know a tiny bit of how Haylee must be feeling.

  I don't know exactly what I'm up here waiting for. Is Griff going to send me some kind of signal that Haylee is calm enough and I can come down and talk to her? I've been waiting for four years and I just don't think I can stand waiting another second. She is so close I swear I can feel it.

  I hurry down the stairs, through the kitchen and living room that I'd spent so much time in as a kid, and reach the back door that leads out onto the patio just as Griff and Haylee are walking up the steps.

  Here goes nothing . . . no, scratch that, here goes everything . . .

  Chapter 5 - Haylee

  My legs are shaking as we walk across the driveway toward the back of Griff's house. As we go, I fill Griff in about what happened at dance and how I'd been dismissed.

  I've waited four years to talk to Chase but I feel completely tongue-tied and confused. He and Griff seem to be right back to being the best buds they were before he left. Griff says that he'd talked to him for quite a while, but I just don't know what Chase could say that would excuse disappearing completely for the last four years. Maybe in my youthful inexperience I'd misread how close we'd really been back then, because I know that I never would've been able to leave and not so much as write to him.

  We just start up the steps that lead to the back patio when I look up and find Chase looking back at me just outside the screen door. I must've stopped moving because Griff puts his hand on the back of my arm and nudges me the rest of the way up.

  “I'm sorry about earlier, Hayles,” Chase says and his voice floats to my ears like music I hadn't realized I'd been missing. “I didn't mean to startle you like that. I'd actually been on my way to the door when you came out and I just . . . I froze.”

  “I'm sorry about taking off like a lunatic,” I say softly, “I just . . . was not expecting to see you there, or ever for that matter.” His gaze flicks away from my face briefly at my bluntly honest words.

  “Can we talk?” he asks and reaches his hand out to me. “Please?” The look on his face and the way he holds his hand out jolts me back in time.

  I was about seven and had just started dancing. I was already not a fan, but Mom seemed to love it! Some of the girls from my class had been teasing me about being friends with two boys and calling me Dr. Doolittle because I was with the animals all the time. I'd come home, or over to Chase's house, in tears on days like this.

  Chase had come by my house early the next morning and told me he had an idea for a prank to get back at the girls. He stood there in the doorway to my house and reached his hand out to me with a huge, crooked grin on his face since I was hesitant.

  “Come on.” His face was alight with happiness and mischief, and it was contagious. “Please?” So I put my hand in his and we walked down the wooded path into town. He kept handing me a new piece of gum and asking me to chew it and then give it back to him as we walked. I was pretty grossed out and wondered what on earth he was doing. When we got to the parking lot of the dance studio, he smiled at me and began pulling the already chewed wads of gum off of his forearm where he'd been storing them. I wrinkled my nose at him, but kept watching. He started sticking the little wads of gum all along the walkway leading into the studio. I started chewing more gum and sticking the wads down along with him as he explained that the girls would step in all the gum and then they'd get stuck all over the dance floor. I would know to walk in the grass though and I wouldn't get stuck.

  “Where do you come up with this stuff?” I asked him while I was laughing.

  “I just have a crazy twisted mind,” he shrugged and watched me place one last wad of gum. I liked that he was looking out for me.

  I had never laughed on the inside as hard as I did later that day at practice and especially afterward as I relived it with Chase. Somehow, I had been the only one who had avoided the gum. Girls were whining and crying about all the gum they had stepped in and Madame Eileen had sent us all home so that she could clean up the mess. It had been my and Chase's secret.

  I can't bring myself to put my hand in his, but I nod in the direction of the patio table. I don't know if he is still that same kid that always looked out for me, and I can't help but feel scared. Can I still trust this person after four years of absence? He reluctantly pulls his hand back, and when I look over to my right, Griff has disappeared. I know that he is giving us some privacy to talk since he'd already had the opportunity to do that. I know he'll be somewhere close by in case I freak out though. I am so damn lucky to have Griff.

  I sit down in one of the six chairs and bring my knees up in front of me. There is a gentle breeze blowing off the lake and it is a beautiful day, but I can't focus on anything but the boy. . . er . . . man beside me. Chase sits down in the chair right next to me and I can feel his eyes on me. I glance up out of the corner of my eye and sure enough, he is watching me.

  “I know you probably don't believe me, but I've missed you, Hayles,” he starts, and the intensity in those blue eyes of his is enough to melt my heart. . . a little anyway.

  “You have a funny way of showing it,” I say as I wrap my arms around my legs.

  “I deserve that,” he says softly. It hurts me that I am hurting him with my words, but then I think about all the pain and unanswered questions of the last four years. Isn't it only fair that he hurts now since I've hurt for so long?

  “What are you doing here, Chase?” I don't know if I can handle his answer but I need to know what is going on. Why is he sitting here right now?

  I watch as he takes his hat off and sets it down on the table. He rakes his long fingers through his thick brown hair, something I'd seen him do millions of times before. His hair has lighter streaks etched into it from the sun. More than he used to have when he lived here, so I imagine he spends a lot of time outside boarding. His hair is also a little longer than I remember, and when he pulls his hands free from it, soft strands fall across his forehead. I am overwhelmed with the urge to reach up and brush those strands back so that I can see his eyes more clearly. I clasp my hands together to fight the urge.

  “The minute we drove out of here, my life changed,” he starts to speak, his eyes locked on mine as my heart hammers against my ribcage. “I had no one when I got to California. At least you guys still had each other. I did nothing for months. I was miserable and my parents weren't even around to notice. Dad worked even when he was home, which wasn't often, and Mom was all about becoming a Stepford wife. Everything was about image for her, attending charity events for this and that. Her own family was last on her list of concerns. I don't even know who they are anymore.”

  I think I hear a catch in his voice then, and I try-really try-to imagine things from his perspective as he talks. I can't let him hurt me again, but I can hear him out.

  “When school started, I didn't fit in, and that was such a shock from what I'd had here. Me and Griff could have ruled the school here in Wake Forest,” he says with a faint smile, as he holds his hand up in the direction of the high school. It was true too. The two of them had all the guys wanting to be like them and all the girls wanting to date them. They'd never been cocky or egotistical about it though, and that was probably what had drawn people to them even more.

  “Californians are so different. People always talk about that and it's the honest to God truth. They're so standoffish and they walk around like they're better than everyone else, but they never take the time to get to know for sure. Everyone is fake and just about everybody is hiding something, whether it's some scandalous family secret or recent plastic surgery. I finally made friends with a guy named Dylan in a bunch of my classes who wakeboarded in the next town over. I went with him to check it out, and it was so different than here at Falls Lake, but at least I had a friend and I was boarding again.” He is looking out at the lake now with a distant expression in his eyes.

  “I got
noticed at a competition I'd entered with Dylan and the sponsor offered to pay for me to enter another competition, and then another, and another. People in the industry started to recognize me, and things got crazy busy so fast with phone calls and bookings and competitions and such, and I still had to juggle school along with it. So Dylan hooked me up with a friend of his who became my manager,” he chuckles a little even though there is a sad edge to the sound. “Never thought I'd need a manager for anything.” He looks back at me then and I realize I'm smiling a little bit as I listen. Doesn't sound all that bad to me so far.

  “It was great for a little while, but I was still lonely. I wanted to tell you guys all about it, but so much time had gone by at that point that, well, I figured you guys wouldn't care anymore. You'd have written me off by then. Plus, California life started to suck me in, and not in a good way. I thought about you every single day, and I did stuff that I'm not proud of as a way to cope with the pain of missing you.” It doesn't escape me that he said 'thought about you every single day' and I can feel my face scrunch up at his mention of 'things I wasn't proud of.' What the hell does he mean exactly, and why am I sitting here worrying about the guy who left me behind?

  “This last year especially my life was a giant vortex of screw ups and I couldn't claw my way back out. I finally hit rock bottom and I guess that's what it took for me to finally realize what I had to do to get back to the way I wanted to live, to the way I wanted to be. I had to come back here and try to make things right.”

  What had happened to him that he was calling hitting 'rock bottom'? The thoughts and images of possibilites that are swirling in my mind scare the shit out of me. This is Chase, after all, and although I may be pissed off at him, I still care about him and don't want to think about what he might have been through.