Unexpected Chance

by Annalisa Nicole

  She sits down and digs in. Other than seeing my sisters eat like pigs I’ve never seen another woman eat like this. I find it amusing so I just watch while I sip my coffee. She looks up with half of a piece of bacon hanging out of her mouth, and then swallows the food that’s already in her mouth hard. She takes the half of a piece of bacon out of her mouth and says, “What? Do I have egg on my face or something?”

  “No,” I answer, amused.

  “Is there something wrong with your breakfast?” she asks concerned, looking at my plate.

  “No,” I answer starting to like this game.

  “Well, you haven’t eaten any,” she replies.

  “No,” I answer.

  “Are you going to eat your bacon?” she asks.

  “No,” I answer. I wonder how many more questions she’s going to ask that I can answer no to?

  “Do you know how to say anything other than no?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I answer.

  “Well, thank God! I thought I was transported to the universe of no and I was the only strange one that knew how to say anything other than no.”

  I couldn’t help it; it was so damn funny, I tipped my head back and laughed. It was a full on deep belly laugh that was contagious because she started laughing, too. She’s laughing so hard she has tears streaming down her face. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.

  “Wait, what are we laughing at again?” she asks seriously, wiping her tears.

  My face goes serious. Is she for real? Then I bust a gut laughing again.

  “Seriously, you aren’t going to eat that? Can I have your bacon?” she asks again.

  “I slide my plate over to her and she takes all of my bacon, leaving only my eggs. I slide the plate back and eat my eggs.

  “Do you want to talk about last night?” I ask.

  “Not especially,” she answers, bringing her right leg up to her chest. She’s insecure about the question, but not about me seeing my own underwear on her thighs.

  “Alright, I won’t pressure you. Then how about if you tell me a little about yourself?” I try.

  “There’s not much to tell really. My dad was never around, my mother died when I was ten. I was raised by my Aunt Molly, I moved out when I was eighteen. I’ve been on my own ever since,” she says, shrugging.

  The dryer buzzes and I get up to get it.

  “I’ll get it. You sit and enjoy your coffee,” she says. She rests her hand on my shoulder on the way into the laundry room. She comes back out dressed in all of her own clothes.

  “I’ll just clean up the breakfast dishes, then me and Ruby will be out of your hair.”

  “You can’t go,” I tell her, standing in front of her.

  Savvy

  “What do you mean I can’t go?” I ask, looking up at him. I hold my stare for about fifteen seconds, then take the plates to the sink, turn the water on and load them in the dishwasher.

  “You’re invited to family dinner tonight, and I thought we’d hang out today until then,” he answers.

  “You want to hang out with me?” I turn around and ask, surprised.

  Men don’t usually want to hang out with me. They want a quick fuck, sure, but not to just hang out with me. And he’s already indicated he doesn’t want to sleep with me. I tried to show him my gratitude this morning and he wanted no part of it. So why would he want to hang out with me?

  “I do. We can do absolutely anything you want today,” he answers, finishing his coffee.

  “I really should go home and get a change of clothes and my books. Unfortunately, I have studying to do. How about we go get my stuff, then we go to the zoo for about an hour. I’ve always wanted to go to Woodland Park Zoo,” I say, excitedly. I’ve wanted to go since I was a little girl. I’m actually extremely embarrassed by the things I haven’t done. Aunt Molly never allowed it. Even on field trip days in grade school, she made a point out of it and made me stay home, just so I couldn’t have any fun.

  “Deal! I’ll follow you home. You can leave your car . . .”

  “Ruby,” I interrupt.

  “You can leave Ruby at the condo. We’ll take my car to the zoo, afterwards we’ll come back here so you can study for a bit, and then we’ll go to my mom’s for dinner. Does that sound like a plan?” he asks.

  “That sounds like a fantastic plan!” I say. Secretly inside my chest, my inner little girl is jumping up and down screaming and doing cartwheels across the room. If he offers me an ice cream, I’d have to chalk this up to one of my top five days ever.

  Aiden gets in the shower and I straighten up his house. If I can’t show him my appreciation with sex, I’ll clean up his house. And I for sure won’t think about a naked, sexy, hot, dripping wet Aiden in the shower.

  When I was a little girl, I always felt like Cinderella. I was the dirty step-sister who cleaned and did dishes and never had anything nice, except in my version I never had a sister. Aiden is the type of man I always dreamt of as my Prince Charming. He’s tall, dark, and handsome and has yummy written up one side and down the other. I’m always a sucker for a good head of hair, and Aiden hit the jackpot. Forget George Clooney. Aiden has hair more like David Beckham. What I wouldn’t give to run my hands through his hair. And his eyes. Good God, behind those dark rimmed, sexy glasses, Aiden has eyes I could stare into for the rest of my life. They look like the rest of his families, the clearest blue I’ve ever seen. I can just see our children now. Me, with blonde hair and green eyes, mixed with his dark brown hair and blue eyes. We’d have the best looking kids alive.

  “Savvy,” Aiden says, scaring the shit out of me.

  “Oh, dear God,” I scream, and turn around. I was totally fantasizing about Aiden and I didn’t even hear him come into the room. He’s standing behind the couch sans glasses and shirt, hair wet, pecks on stand-by, six pack . . . check, skip that, make that an eight pack.

  “Are you alright?” he asks, concerned.

  “You’re more than alright,” I breathe. “I mean, yes, of course I’m alright,” I say, trying to cover my slip up.

  “You kind of had me worried there for a second. You looked like you were lost a million miles away. Are you sure you’re alright?” he asks, sweetly.

  “Yes, super-duper fine,” I answer.

  “I’ll only be a minute, and then we can get you home to change and pick up your books,” he says, with a wink.

  The wink sent butterflies to my stomach, but I quickly shut them down. He’s just being nice. That’s just what the Wellington men are all about. He didn’t mean it any other way, I’m sure. Get a hold of yourself, Savvy. I pull the rest of my stuff together and head into the guest bedroom to make the bed and clean up any mess I may have made. When I come back out, Aiden is standing at the counter wearing jeans, a black leather belt with a thick black buckle, a t-shirt and black boots. His hair is styled in a sexy messy mess, and he still has two day’s worth of stubble on his face. I’m talking sexy as hell, panty melting kind of stubble on his face.

  I swallow hard and grab my purse. “Ready when you are,” I say.

  He looks up from some papers on the counter and smiles at me. “Alright, let’s go. I’ll follow behind you to make sure your car gets you there safe,” he says.

  “There’s nothing wrong with Ruby. She’s never failed me,” I insist. That’s a total lie. I love Ruby, but she can be a real persnickety bitch sometimes.

  We walk out into his garage, then he opens the door with the button on the wall. I walk over to Ruby and give Aiden a smile. While I have his eyes, I rub Ruby and say a little prayer that she’ll behave.

  Aiden unplugs Jade, then slips into his luxury car, and I put the key in mine. I turn the key and wouldn’t you know it, nothing, she didn’t even try. Shit. I try her again and still nothing. Aiden looks over and I give him a smile like there’s nothing wrong. I try her again and nothing. Aiden gets out of his car and walks over to mine. He opens the door and offers his hand.

  “I’ll just gi
ve her one more try. She’ll start. I just know she will,” I insist.

  “It’s alright. We’ll just take my car. We’ll go to your condo so you can change and grab your books, then we’ll go to the zoo. After the zoo, we’ll come back here so you can study and I’ll take a look at your car. Then we’ll go to dinner at my moms.”

  I hang my head, take my key out the ignition, and take his hand. He closes my car door and then opens the passenger door of his car. I turn around, curse at Ruby in my head and give her the finger, then get into Jade. If I could have done it without Aiden seeing it, I would have stuck my tongue out at her.

  Jade still has that new car smell. The leather seats are soft and luxurious and feel like they were custom molded to fit my ass perfectly. They’re black and trimmed with a green stripe that match the paint color of the exterior. Even the steering wheel is green. There are more high-tech buttons and controls than I would know what to do with. There are not one, but two digital displays. Ruby sure doesn’t have any of this. Shit, her windows don’t even roll down! And when I say roll, I mean roll, as in with the window crank . . . that’s broken.

  Aiden turns the key in the ignition, but I don’t hear anything. “Your car won’t start either?” I ask concerned.

  “It is started. It’s an electric sports car,” he says.

  “Get out,” I say enthusiastically and push him into the door.

  With that, he puts his head back on the head rest and laughs like he did at breakfast. It sends the butterflies a fluttering again in my stomach. He sure is handsome when he laughs.

  He drives to my condo, and I find it kind of weird that he knows where I live when I didn’t give him any directions. But I guess it’s not all that weird, since it is his sister’s condo after all. He pulls in the driveway and turns off the car.

  “I’ll just wait here,” he says, as I get out of the car. “You should pack some clothes for tonight, too,” he says.

  I would have said ‘say what,’ in a high pitched voice, but the door had already closed. He wants me to stay at his house again tonight? That inner little girl in me is doing somersaults, back flips, hopscotch, and the dougie dance all at the same time.

  I hurry in my house, brush my teeth, slap on some deodorant, flip my hair upside down, shake my head back and forth, and then run my fingers through it. I flip it back over, look in the mirror and roll my eyes. It never worked before, so I don’t even know why I just tried it. Models and their perfect hair are bitches. I put it in a ponytail and call it good. I swipe on some eye liner and mascara and dab on some lip gloss, then throw it all in a cosmetic bag. I run into my room and rip off my clothes, then freeze. I haven’t been around much and I don’t really have many clean clothes.

  I pick up several items from the floor and give them the good old sniff test. Most are a definite no, some aren’t worthy to sit in Aiden’s car, and some are just too wrinkled, but I find one of my favorite outfits that pass both the sniff and the wrinkle test. I quickly put it on, run back in the bathroom and spritz on some perfume that Ava gave me. If there’s any chance I don’t smell good, that will do the trick. I head back into the bedroom and grab a bag to shove in some other somewhat clean clothes. Then I freeze again. I don’t sleep with clothes on. I don’t have anything to wear to bed. Then I get a little devilish thought as a smile creeps on my lips. Maybe I can get another one of those soft, old, t-shirts that smells just like Aiden from him. I giggle at myself and call it a plan. I grab my messenger bag with my school books, check myself in the hallway mirror and smile. Aiden wants me to spend another night at his house. Is this dumb? I’ve gone from living under one person’s roof and their rules to another my entire life. This is the first time I’ve actually been on my own. Oh, who the hell cares! Have you seen Aiden’s hair?

  I rush back out to his car; he’s sitting, relaxed, with his head down looking at his cell phone. He looks up at me with a smile, and I smile back at him. I slip into the car because really, there’s no other choice; it’s not a plop in kind of car. It’s a slither-in-like- a-sexy-cat-on-the-prowl kind of car.

  “Have everything you need?” he asks.

  “Yep, all ready,” I tell him with a nod, then put all my stuff on the floor between my feet. And I thought my car was small. Aiden’s car is super tiny. At least I have a back seat.

  He backs out of the driveway and heads toward the freeway. Once on the freeway, he opens the car up and accelerates in the fast lane. I giggle with excitement. Aiden likes to drive fast, and I feel completely safe with him. He maneuvers between cars, but he’s always in complete control. He’s courteous too. He never once cut off another driver or flipped them the bird. Aiden even lets other drivers get in front of him while he’s driving, and he doesn’t complain when they don’t use their turn signal. Reno was always yelling out the window or flipping people off. It was, ‘fuck you, asshole,’ or, ‘learn to drive, motherfucker.’ I couldn’t tell you how many times he ran people off the road, just so he could get out of the car and bang on their window so he could yell at them to their face. He even tore off a side mirror once, then threw it at the driver’s side window. It was like he wasn’t satisfied with his rage unless he had the last word. I kept telling him that one day he was going to piss off the wrong dude. That they would reach in their glove box and pull out a gun and shoot him. He’d just laugh and say, ‘not if I get to mine first.’ I never wanted to go any deeper into that conversation.

  We get to the zoo right at nine thirty when they open. I can’t believe all of the animals they have. They have elephants, gorillas, and giraffes, and my all-time favorite animal, the meerkat. I just love their cute, long bodies and the way they stand up on their back two legs. It’s cuteness overload! I wish I could stuff one or maybe two of them in my purse and take them home with me. Aiden walks with me from exhibit to exhibit; he holds my hand or has his arm around my shoulder the entire time. This is the first time I’ve been with a man that stayed by my side. Reno was always wandering off or he’d leave me standing somewhere by myself. If we were at a bar, he’d disappear for, like, thirty minutes. It was, ‘Savvy, get me a beer,’ or, ‘bitch leave me alone.’ Aiden never once said this was dumb, or we need to go do something he wanted to do, saying I was a selfish bitch. Aiden seems like he really wants to be here with me. We get a few curious stares because of my black eye and the cut on my cheek, but Aiden never let it bother him. I feel a little guilty about him paying for my admission into the zoo, and he paid for lunch, too. Reno always made me pay for everything.

  We’ve been here for hours and I know that we should get going. I really do have a ton of studying to do before we go to dinner. I just need to see the meerkats one more time.

  “Can we go see the meerkats one more time? Then we can go, I promise,” I ask him.

  “We can go anywhere you want. Today is all about what you want to do. We can even come back another day and spend more time if you like,” he says.

  If I like? Is the sky blue? I think I just fell in love. Who the hell am I kidding? Have you seen the Wellington women? They’re all prime rib, and I’m a McDonald’s McRib. They’re Malibu mansion, and I’m trailer park trash. It’s no wonder Aiden didn’t want to sleep with me this morning.

  “I’d like that,” I say shyly, which is not like me. I’m loud, proud and usually annoy every person I come into contact with.

  We walk hand in hand back to the meerkat exhibit. I lean over the railing and watch all the meerkats run around playing with each other. There doesn’t seem to be a lower, middle, or upper class society. They all just happily coexist. Oh, to be a meerkat. Their life seems so simple, and they all seem to get along.

  After about ten minutes of enjoying the meerkats, I turn to tell Aiden we can go, but he’s not there. I frantically search the crowd; he has to be here, he just has to be. My heart sinks. I guess he isn’t that different from Reno after all. Maybe all men are just like Reno. I look to my left, then to my right one more time, and my heart breaks. I don
’t see him anywhere. All the cartwheels, somersaults, and backflips just ended in a big old belly flop. A painful, stinging, belly flop.

  I guess I’ll just walk back to the car and wait for him, hopefully it’s still there. This wouldn’t be the first time a man left me behind, either. I’ve had to call a cab or take a bus home, that’s nothing new. I walk through the crowd with my head hung. I look up to move out of the way of a child, and then I see him. I see Aiden walking my way with his hands full and with a breathtaking, devastatingly handsome smile on his face. He stops in front of me with a stuffed meerkat and an ice cream cone. Now, I know I said if he bought me an ice cream cone, this would be one of my top five days ever. I lied. This is the best day ever. It’s so good that I can’t control the tears that flow down my cheeks.

  “What’s wrong? Did something happen while I was gone? I knew I should have told you I’d be right back. You were so happy looking at the meerkats,” he says. He unwraps the napkin from around the ice cream cone, then dabs at my stitches. “You aren’t supposed to get these wet yet,” he says, dabbing gently. “There, all better,” he says, handing me the ice cream.

  I take the ice cream and give it a lick. Best ice cream ever. He hands me the meerkat and I snuggle it to my chest. He takes my other hand, then we walk back to his car as I finish my ice cream.

  Chapter 3

  Aiden

  I’m not exactly sure what’s going on with Savvy, but I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I’m getting the feeling that she hasn’t been treated right by very many people in her life, especially by men. She said she’s never been to the zoo, and I’m thinking there are a lot of places that she’s never been to. I find myself thinking of places that I want . . . no need, to take her to.

  I drive back to my house and park in the driveway. I open the garage door and see her poor car; someone should take it to the pick-and-pull and put it out of its misery. Luckily, one of the many gifts my dad gave his children was the gift of being self-sufficient. I may be a lawyer, wear designer suits, and drive a sports car, but I also know how to work on cars and do just about anything there is to do around the house. I used to get so annoyed with my dad on the weekends when he’d want to teach me something new. He’d drag us boys out to the garage and teach us electrical, plumbing, carpentry, cars, you name it we did it. Now I’d give just about anything to have him back, knocking on my bedroom door at six in the morning saying, ‘let’s hit it,’ and teaching me something else. As I became older, it wasn’t about him teaching me something. It was about spending that time with him. I miss spending time with my dad.