Second Chance

* * *

Hally

Ten years ago

January 3

* * *

“Why aren’t you eating?” Mom asks me again as I push the mashed potatoes around on my plate. My silverware clinks on the ceramic plate as I set it down.

“I’m just not hungry,” I lie.

I can’t stop thinking about the fight I got into with Nathan and whether or not he’ll still love me tomorrow.

It wasn’t supposed to turn into what it did. I wish Nathan would just care. I don’t even know what we were fighting over. It doesn’t matter. I hate talking to a wall. I hate it when he doesn’t listen and the problem isn’t fixed.

I can’t just go on pretending like everything’s okay.

My throat starts to close and I try to swallow, but I can’t. I’m quick to reach for my glass of water and take a large gulp. I ignore my mother’s eyes on me, assessing, worrying.

Maybe I should tell her. Maybe she would know what to do.

“Is something wrong?” my mom asks and my dad elbows her. The table is square, but my father sits at the spot that faces the front window in the dining room, so I still think of it as the head.

I eye the two of them as they share a glance.

“You can talk to me about anything, you know that,” my mom says.

My dad keeps his eyes on the plate in front of him as he cuts up his pork chop and takes a bite. I’ve always appreciated how Dad lets me have time to myself. Mom’s the opposite.

“I know,” I tell my mom and scoop up a bit of the potatoes, but I just end up putting the fork down.

If Nathan didn’t live where he does, I could just walk to his house. I don’t have a car though, and he’d be pissed if I walked there to see him. And it’s freezing outside. I did once, and it’s the only fight we’ve gotten into where I was scared to talk back to him. He never yelled at me like that before.

It’s because he loved me enough to want me safe. And that only makes me want to go to him even more.

I love him, more than anything and I wish we didn’t fight. I don’t know why we push each other like we do. We need it to stop, but I don’t know how.

Tears prick my eyes and I push my chair back from the table. “May I please be excused?” I ask, knowing I’m upsetting my mom by not talking to her.

“Baby,” my mom says at the same time that Dad tells me to go ahead and leave.

The table shakes slightly as I get up and don’t say another word, taking the escape Dad gave me.

I head straight to my room, wanting to sleep this night off until I can see Nathan tomorrow and try to make it right.

“Let her be. She’s a teenager,” I hear my dad say as I climb the stairs, holding on to the etched wood banister as I go.

My parents met when they were kids, but I don’t think they’d understand. I don’t even think they’d approve. So I don’t tell them anything and maybe that was a mistake.

I never did tell my family that I’d fallen in love only to have my heart shredded in a way that was unimaginable. I think my mom knew though. She could always tell when something was wrong. Maybe that’s why she hovered so much my senior year. Maybe it’s why she wants me to stay close. I’m her baby and I always will be.

Some things I can’t share with her though.

It’s a story that’s just meant for Nathan and me.

I wish I’d known how to talk to him back then. I wish I’d been smarter and known what he needed without relying on him to tell me.

Things could have turned out so much differently if we’d only known how to handle each other. But we came from different worlds and that was something we couldn’t help.

Chapter 7

Nathan

* * *

My eyes look back at me from the mirror which is in the dead center of my dressing room. I haven’t noticed how red they are; I haven’t noticed the bags.

Three days of failed takes and threats of being pulled. Three days of Mark begging me to tell him what’s wrong, so he can fix it before I’m fired.

Three days of me feeling like I’m eighteen again. Because I’m avoiding her. I’m a fucking coward for doing it, but I know she’ll break me. She’ll bring me back to the exact thing I’ve been running from.

It was so easy to just live when I didn’t have a reminder of my past.

“You want to do something fun?” she’d asked me. She always asked me that. There was a sparkle in her eyes when she did it, too. Like she knew she’d get me into trouble. I can just see her whispering it off the set. I can see her luring me back to what we used to be and picture how she used to look at me. That desire in her eyes was the most addicting thing I’ve ever seen, ever felt. The taste of her lips and the feel of her curves as she moaned into my mouth is something I’ll never have enough of. It’ll be that question that pushes me to take my last breath.