The Second Chance (Inferno Falls Book Three)

by Aubrey Parker

  I wince. I don’t know what else to do. There were days Dad and I went to another restaurant after leaving the Hungry Bear because Vincent showed up and we never got to order any food.

  “Oh, he didn’t mind,” Vincent continues. “That’s how he got his hook. And if he hadn’t gotten the hook, he wouldn’t have been able to zip line down the power cable with his cousin, Ralphie Pants.”

  “Ralphie Pants?” I’m still wondering how Stinky Peet died in the bowling alley.

  “I told you and your dad about the time my buddy Crotchless Dave got his fist stuck in his own mouth, right? It was Ralphie’s wife, Daisy, who helped him get it out.”

  “Okay.” But mostly I don’t understand why Daisy, alone in this story, has a normal name.

  Something breaks in the kitchen. Vincent looks over.

  “Dammit. New guy’s klutzy. But I had to have him cook for me. He’s Mexican.”

  The Hungry Bear doesn’t have a single Mexican dish on the menu.

  “Hey,” Vincent says, “remind me sometime to tell you about his brother, Guacamole.”

  I wonder if I should express shock at the possible racism. But there’s too much to be confused by, and this story’s other characters are Stinky Peet and Crotchless Dave, and they could be any race, creed, religion, or even gender. So it works out.

  Something else breaks. Without excusing himself, Vincent gets up and runs away. I think I hear him say “Margaret Thatcher,” but there’s no way to be sure. This time I’m alone for five full minutes before I eventually see Vincent again, this time following one of the waiters. The waiter’s eyes are clearly up in the top half of his head, so he’s either rolling his eyes at Vincent’s latest tall tale or he’s been working at the Hungry Bear long enough that they’re permanently stuck.

  I pick up my phone. It’s 8:25.

  It’s strange to be in this place alone, I think as I continue waiting, still not knowing what to do with myself. It occurs to me that since I’ve been back, Vincent is the only person I’ve talked to, and I didn’t actually talk to him at all. In most towns and with most people, the encounter I had might have felt like a welcome, but I’m confused and disoriented more than anything. Vincent sat as if I was here yesterday, and Maya responded to my text without any surprise. Am I missing something? Did the entire town know I was coming, and I’m the only one who finds anything about my homecoming trying at all? Should I head back to Ernie’s now and skip the reunions?

  With Vincent gone, it’s too quiet.

  I pick up the menu. It literally hasn’t changed. If I looked through all of the menus they own, I could probably find the one whose corner I melted with my father’s lighter while he was in the bathroom. I browse the foods and look at the photos, not feeling hungry at all. Worse: I can’t focus. The top part of my mind knows what a Reuben and a cheeseburger are, but to the part that’s in charge, they’re meaningless words.

  The waitress arrives while I’m still looking, feeling a sudden urge to get an order in before Maya shows up. I can’t be sitting here ramrod straight, jittery and unsure, waiting to be judged, yelled at, or perhaps even slapped. If all I’ve done before she shows is to sit and look penitent, it’s giving too much away. It will unsettle our footing. Start us off on the wrong note. I already feel like I begged in my text, and like she shot me down with a big helping of I-could-give-a-shit. I won’t just wait. I need to be eating, so if she reams me out then leaves, I can at least pretend I came for more than abuse.

  But I can’t focus, and there’s so little time. I mutter without looking up, “I’ll just have coffee.”

  The waitress doesn’t respond, so I meet her eyes.

  But it’s Maya, not the waitress. She used to be pretty. Now she’s stunning.

  She looks down at me, and I have no idea what she’s thinking.

  CHAPTER 15

  Maya

  I told myself to stay cool the entire walk over here.

  I told myself that whatever history I once had with Grady, it’s meaningless today. The people we were back then, they might as well have been strangers. I used to be carefree around him, and today I barely know the word. I work all the time, and when I don’t, I’m on duty with Mackenzie. I only have time to myself when she’s asleep and I’m awake, or when she’s with my folks. Those times aren’t just rare; they’re downright strange. I never feel carefree enough to even appreciate the silence, and apparently I’m afraid enough of being alone that I leave the house most of those times to seek the company I always regret.

  I can’t remember the girl I used to be. I don’t remember what it was like before I had a kid, before I was a mom, before I had to sweat every inch of someone else’s life and be sure that I was usually doing it wrong.

  I don’t know about Grady, but on the walk over I decided he must have changed, too. I know he’s spent the intervening years traveling like he always wanted (like we always wanted), but the same time passed for him as for me. Surely, he’s different. Surely, he has as much trouble remembering the Grady who used to let a quiet little redhead hang on his arm at the movies. Surely, that kid is as strange to Grady as the old Maya is to me.

  There’s no need to be emotional — and that covers any emotion that cares to arise.

  I could be angry. I am angry and remember anger most strongly, so it’s an easy choice. But what will making a scene do for me? Maybe it’s better to be the bigger person.

  I could be sad. Because whatever was once between us, it’s gone now. I could be sad in the way I’m sad about the childhood toys I once adored but have since lost track of. Those old memories weren’t discarded; they’re just gone, as if they didn’t matter. It’s like that with the way Grady and I used to be.

  I could be indignant.

  I could, if I were brave, be cordial. I certainly don’t feel affable, but it’s an option. It’s a bland middle: not affectionate, but not furious, either. Cordiality, to me, feels like greeting him with a pat on the hand and a kiss on each cheek. Then we can sip tea with our pinkies out and talk respectfully about old times.

  I could be heartsick.

  I could be happy.

  I could be true to how I so often feel about Grady when he crosses my mind, and simply desire him. Not in the way I desired Chadd the other day and not the way I once very, very badly desired Tommy Finch — but in a way of simple wanting. I could desire his hand in mine. Our arms linked. His warmth at my side. His presence here, now, for however long it lasts.

  But desire is just as bad a trap as any other emotion. What’s done between us is done, and the only reason to let any feeling get the most of me is if I expect it to not stay done.

  Why should I feel angry? If what we had is in the past, then anger only pulls it back into the present.

  I’ve lived for nearly a decade without Grady. I’m used to the idea that I’ll live without him forever. If I hop-to the minute he decides to grace me with his presence, that says worse things about me than my lack of sexual willpower. Going to Chadd when he called, that first day, makes me feel like a whore. But responding to Grady would be even worse.

  Forget how I felt when I heard he was coming back, and forget my little crying episode over old memories last night. I wasn’t crying over today’s Grady; I was weeping over who he used to be. Who we used to be. There was a time when we shared something special, but that version of things is gone forever. No matter how much I pine and struggle and fight and scream and cry today, I’ll never change the past. I’ll never get carefree, sweet, naive Maya together with cool, handsome, young, loyal Grady. I’ll never know what those two kids might have turned out like, if things had been different.

  Nothing I do will change that.

  No matter what happens today, in the Hungry Bear, what’s done is done. No matter what, he’s now the man who left me, and I’m the girl who …

  But I won’t accept blame. It’s not my fault. No matter how sure I am to blame the more I consider things, I won’t accept it. He left me. He sho
uld have stayed. I didn’t cause this.

  Except that I’m sure I did. On the walk over, that felt more and more obvious. It was my action, in the heat of the moment, that broke us up. I started balls rolling.

  It doesn’t matter.

  What happened happened.

  I don’t need this man in my life.

  I don’t want this man in my life.

  And I don’t want this man in Mackenzie’s. He’s never been her father before, and he won’t be her father now. There’s a chance he might ask about her — maybe even want to meet her. But who does that help? What does that serve, other than my fantasies?

  I won’t indulge in make-believe.

  I won’t let myself imagine a future where he’s changed. Where he’ll stay. Where he’ll be an anchor to me and arrest what I’m afraid might be my slippery downhill slide. I won’t indulge in a fantasy where we’re a family, where Grady is the one who takes Mackenzie to Brownie meetings when I can’t. Where, if she slips and skins her knee, it’s Grady kissing the wound to make it all better.

  He wants to meet me? Fine. We’ll meet.

  Grady was once an old friend. I’ll let him be that: an old friend, compartmentalized in the past. And I’ll greet him as such. We can talk. Chat about the days when I climbed through my bedroom window to see him. About the times we watched the stars from a blanket, and how we learned the best nights to do it, and avoid the dew.

  I won’t meet him with an open heart.

  I won’t meet him as someone wounded.

  I won’t meet him as a girl with a flame to rekindle or a debt to settle.

  But when I see him, everything changes.

  He’s wearing his black leather jacket. It was his prize possession back then — one of the few things his uncle let him keep nice. It’s all straps and buckles — the sort of thing that should look corny but doesn’t. His dark hair is a semi-styled mess, as if he combed it, but then drove with an open sunroof. I can see his face without him seeing me enter, because he’s peering at the menu, and it’s exactly as I remember.

  No time has passed. My lips tingle like sabotage, recalling his kiss.

  I want to go to him. Sit beside rather than across from him. I want to pretend that time hasn’t left us, say nothing at all, and lean against him. I want Grady to put one arm around me the way he used to. When I was seventeen, that arm was enough to solve the world’s problems. I believed he’d protect me because he was tough like a fighter. I believed he’d take me exciting places because he broke the rules I pretended to follow. I believed that one day we’d leave Inferno together. He was hungry to roam, and I longed to see the world. I want to feel that way again — that sense of nothing holding me down, nothing to intrude on my mind.

  I crave that feeling, even if it’s fleeting.

  There would be no job I hate. No boss I hate. No head waitress I hate.

  There would be no clock to punch. No rent to pay. No obligations to promise then fall short on.

  There would be no Chadd. No Chadd and Tommy, with their tantalizing, terrible, reluctantly tempting proposals.

  No torment. No torture. No damage. No pain.

  Nothing but bliss, like there was when I had room for nothing but Grady.

  I walk to him, unsure what I’ll do when he sees me. But he doesn’t see me, and I’m standing inches away, terrified, when he finally seems to notice a presence at his side. And he must, even then, think I’m the waitress because he orders coffee.

  And when he looks up and sees me, I see his fear, deep down, like a boiling lake of fire.

  I can’t help the way it makes me feel, seeing those familiar eyes.

  My resolve drains like dye from a soaking cloth, and suddenly I’m standing in front of him vulnerable and naked.

  CHAPTER 16

  Maya

  God help me, part of me is still in love with this man.

  But unlike the last time I loved him, there’s a new storm of emotions swirling within me. I think I’ve idealized our early days, and they’ve taken on the saccharine sweet flavor of puppy love — virginal, naive, vulnerable, wondering. I feel that uncertainty as if it’s new — because as I once wondered if Grady would kiss me, I find myself wondering the same thing all over again. There are seconds, as I watch him stand and greet me with a hug that feels like paper-thin glass, that I think he might lean in. My heart beats harder. I try to control my breath, but I’m preoccupied. My eyes want to sigh closed. I want to tip forward and let him catch me. I want our hug to last too long, and become something else. Something I haven’t felt in a very long time.

  It’s clear he has no idea what to do.

  If I were gullible, I’d see his posture full of regret. I’d believe — because I want to — that he’s sorry. His text was the most personal thing I’ve heard from him since he left, and it wasn’t hard to read between the lines.

  He wants to make it right. But in what way?

  He wants to talk to me. But why?

  I won’t let myself believe this is what my foolish girl’s heart wants to think it is. Because it’s not, and I don’t want to feel that way again. I was crushed once, and I can’t stand the thought of being crushed again.

  “How are you?”

  With effort, I find my voice. “I’ve been okay.”

  “And … Mackenzie?”

  I don’t want to give away how pleased I am that he knows her name. It makes me a fool. Of course he should know her name. He should have been here all along, to know it intimately, to have written it on thousands of forms. But it’s hard for me to pry self-righteousness from selfishness, and at the same time as I’m trying to keep my distance, I know I might be demanding too much.

  “She’s good. Healthy. Happy.”

  “I saw your photos on LiveLyfe. She’s beautiful.”

  “Thanks.”

  “She looks like you.”

  “She looks like her father,” I say.

  I don’t know why I say it. I guess I just want to see his reaction. Maybe I say it because it’s a way of saying sorry and offering a hand. A way of saying that I’m not innocent here, either.

  He looks away. A short exhale leaves him. Then he picks up the menu. When I don’t do the same, he lowers it and says, “Have you eaten yet? Do you want dinner?”

  “Are you offering to buy me dinner?”

  “If you haven’t eaten, sure.”

  I watch his brown eyes for a long moment. I try to find the truth inside them. I try to find his intentions in them. I try to find the reason he got in touch, and what he expects. But they’re only eyes, inviting me to break bread and nothing more.

  “I had something before I left work.” It’s a lie, but my stomach is in knots and I don’t want him to see me hungry but unable to eat.

  “Oh.”

  But now he looks almost sad. I consider letting him stay that way for all those old grudges, but I promised myself not to react if I can help it.

  “I’ll have coffee.”

  I see a ghost of his old smile. He hasn’t shaved in a while, and the stubble gives him an uncouth, disobedient look that none of the other men around me have.

  “You always had coffee at night,” he says.

  “I still do.”

  “Isn’t it hard to sleep?”

  “I’m so tired these days, I sleep no matter what.”

  The smile leaves Grady’s lips as tidily as if I’ve smacked it away, which I basically have.

  “My dad and I used to come here all the time,” he says. “What does it say that I remember my usual order, right down to the strange half-and-half way they do the fries?”

  “Half-and-half how?”

  “Half-straight. Half-curly.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “With vinegar. You have to have vinegar.” He touches the brown bottle beside the sugar packets and salt and pepper shakers.

  “Gross. I remember how you always used to put vinegar on fries. And at the fair?”

  “You h
ave to put a lot of vinegar on fair fries. You have to drown them. At the bottom of the cup, you want those last few scraps to be almost unbearable.”

  I laugh a little, and Grady smiles. But then I stifle myself and let the laugh peter out. A slight-looking waiter arrives, and Grady orders so businesslike, it’s as if he’s requesting a stockbroker’s portfolio. When the server is gone, we look awkwardly across the table at each other, both of us with hands folded on the tabletop. There’s maybe six inches between my fingertips and his.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me,” I finally say into the awkward silence. My heartbeat doubles. My fingers twitch.

  “Actually, I said I wanted to see you.”

  “I guess you’re seeing me now.”

  “I am.”

  “How’s it going for you? Seeing me?” I don’t know if I sound playful or stupid. I know I feel stupid, but coming here in the first place, with no agenda, was stupid enough for us both. I won’t trust my judgment on these things for a while.

  “It’s nice,” he says.

  We sit for another thirty seconds or so in silence.

  “I have a cat now.”

  It’s such a non sequitur that I blink.

  “What?”

  “A cat. He’s back at my uncle’s old house. His name is Carl.” There’s a pause, and then Grady says, “He’s an asshole.”

  “Why did you get a cat?”

  “The cat got me.”

  “How big of a cat?” It’s a worthless question, but I have to say something.

  Grady holds out hands to show me. “I think he’s actually closer to a kitten.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s nice.”

  Grady nods. More silence.

  Finally, he sighs. Grady seem to mentally rummage through several possible things to say, rejecting one or two before deciding. Then he locks eyes with me, weakening my resolve, and says, “I missed you, Maya.”

  My tongue finds my cheek. I nod. I should answer in kind, but now that he’s exposing his belly, all I want to do is slash at it. Not because I hate him, but because I know I should. Because I still have some dignity left, and responding in the wrong/right way simply says I’ve accepted the apology he didn’t care enough to properly give.