Second Chance (17 page)

BOOK: Second Chance

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Miles opens the door for me and my newly acquired baggage
.
I
carry
her
up
the four
flights
of stairs to my bedroom
.
I imagined our
reunion
several times
but in my
day
dream she
always
show
ed
up to surprise me naked
, or
m
aybe
wearing
black lingerie
.
I never imagined it like
this, with her mouth hanging open and a strand of drool
wetting
my
T
-shirt, just below my collarbone
.

I
set
her do
wn on
the
bed
and she
flops over
on
to her side
.
A
few strands
of loose hair
stick to the side of her face and neck
and I wipe them away
.
My fingers burn
a little at the
contact
because I forgot how warm
and s
mooth
her skin
f
eels
.
I can remember how sweet it tastes
.
My eyes linger on her lips, lips that I’ve spent
days, months
obsessing over
.
I have to force myself to look away.

I take her
blue, faded
tennis
shoes off
and my nose
wrinkles
up from the odor that escapes
,
but
I’ve smelled worse
.
I consider b
urning
these pathetic shoes, with a frayed hole in the
toe
and the sole
s
worn almost completely down to the fabric
.
Yet, knowing her, she’s too sentimental to
carelessly burn anything
.
She
probably
wants to give them a funeral to commemorate their travels togethe
r
.
I set
them
on my balcony
to air out
.

I peel
off
her
sweaty
socks and frown at the brown stains on the
heel
s
.
I glance down at her and
wonder
if she ever did
laundry
.
I contemplate checking her hair for lice
.
I throw
her socks in the trash
and
notice her jeans are scrunched up around her knees so I
decide to slide
them off
, so she can be comfortable
.
Or maybe I want to torture myself
.
I’m relieved her pink underpants look clean
.
I
have to resist letting my fingers
run
down her legs
, legs that
I’ve tasted every inch of
, and I
cover her with a blanket
before I lose
any
self
-
control
.

I
head back downstairs
,
grab her ba
g
from the porch and
pour
a glass of water from the sink
.
When I
walk back
in
my bed
room I can’t help but
feel
like
its
brighter
, like the light
has shifted in the sky and more rays are filtering in, but I know why it feels
warmer
.
She
always had that
e
ffect on my life
.
I throw her jeans on top of her bag and
set the water on the nightstand next to the bed
.
I stare down at her for a few seconds
.
I could watch her sleep for the rest of the night and wait for all
the
old
feelings
to
flood
through my heart
.
But
I built a dam to catch
those feelings
.
Well, at least to
slow their progress
.
I
grab some shorts to sleep in and
escape downstairs
before the memories have a chance to
catch me
.

***

The next morning
,
I walk into my bedroom to
get
a change of clothes and try to
ignore the
energy of a girl whose
presence
I can feel like a gust of wind, like a storm blowing in
.
I glance
quickly
at
the bed and
Dylan
’s
still sound asleep
,
rolled up into a ball,
her nose and forehead peeking out from under the b
lanket
.
I need her out of my room before
her presence
contaminates everything
.

I grab
a gray hooded sweatshirt from the top shelf
of my closet
and
I
hear her body shift on the mattress as I pull
it
over my head
.
Y
ank
ing it
down over my
waist
, I
turn to see her eyes open now, blinking at the ceiling
.
I
shut the close
t door and
she turns and squints u
ntil her eyes adjust and focus
on me
.
We stare at
each other for a few seconds. T
he room feels too small, as if the walls are
slowly compressing around me
.

I tell myself I’m not impressed with those huge eyes,
eyes
that could level me with a single glance
.
She
blinks
at me unbelieving, like she’s still in a dream
.
She glances around my room
.

“
Gray
?
Where am I?”
Her low voice
is
slower and groggier than normal.

In a
mental hospital, I want to say, but she looks to
o
tired
for sarcasm
.

“
I
n my
bedroom,” I say
.
“I thought you might prefer it to
the
front porch.
”
I pull a
UNM
baseball cap
low
o
ver my head
.
She sits up and the blanket falls to
her waist
.
She
rubs her eyes
and
runs her fingers over
her messy heap of
bed
hair
.
I try to
dwell on the fact that her face is puffy and she has
dark
circles
under her hazel eyes and that I a
m by no means attracted to her
.

My mind quickly shifts to
Kari, the girl
I met at the Velvet Room
last week
, in those
high boots
that walk around in my mind
.
We’ve been texting and
have plans to hang out next week
.
I try to focus on that, instead
.