Page 11 of Captivating Mr. Second Chance

Nadir pointedly kept his eyes on his cards but sucked air through his teeth when Seth continued to push.

“How do you even know what I’m going—”

Dean thumped his fist on the table. “I don’t want to hear whatever it is you’re about to say. My sister got cheated on by an asshat, so no, I don’t think she wants to go out with you. And no, I won’t give you her number. And no, I especially don’t want to hear how hot you think she is.”

Dean and Seth worked at the same law firm, and Ethan had never had a problem with the guy before. Besides this once-a-month poker night, they didn’t know each other well, but Ethan had a strong urge to hurl his pint glass at Seth’s face now.

“Hey, whoa, all right. Just saying,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender.

“Well, don’t,” Dean snapped.

Dean had always been protective of Laney, even though they’d tended to fight like cats and dogs when they were younger. With her being the girl everyone wanted in high school, Ethan supposed Dean had felt some kind of innate responsibility to make sure she wasn’t hurt. Which was part of the reason why Ethan and Laney hadn’t told anyone about their…thing. They met up in secret, kissed in the dark, and for sure had never told Dean. In school, they’d run in different circles. Dean and Ethan were in the band, took AP classes, dated the dance team girls, while Laney was an athlete and went to parties with the football players. Sure, everyone had been friendly, but there were still cliques, and the prom queen didn’t go together with a bando.

Throughout history, there had been the caste system, the feudal system, and the social politics of the modern-day educational system. Surely robots would study it one day when they eventually took over the world.

Plus, Laney was Dean’s sister. That was a line better left uncrossed.

“Your turn to deal,” Ethan said, changing the subject as he tossed the deck of cards to Seth. Obviously, that line wasstillbetter left uncrossed.

If only he could forget about those few weeks when that line hadn’t existed.

Nadir tapped on the table, calling everyone’s attention back to the game. “Come on, ante up.”

With that, they all got back to playing. And Ethan lost fifty bucks.

* * *

Laney parkedher car back in front of Dean’s house. The lights were off, but she peered through the blinds of the front window to make sure everyone was gone. The few miles on the treadmill and subsequent aimless driving did nothing to calm her nerves. It was as if she were adrift in the ocean, still struggling to come up for air from the Bobby Magnate wave, only to get knocked back down by the presence of Ethan.

Making her way into the house, she kept the lights off and crept upstairs. The walls were paper-thin, and she could hear Dean snoring in his room, yet instead of going to her bedroom—or rather, the guest room she’d been borrowing—she walked to the middle of the hall, wincing when the wooden floorboards creaked.

Holding her breath, as if that would make opening the door quieter, she snuck into the small room which was apparently of no use to Dean except for storage, including some boxes from Laney’s previous life. They were stacked up, still unopened and wrapped with packing tape. Keeping sound to a minimum, she moved them around to get to the one at the bottom labeledMiscellaneousin her sloppy handwriting. Inside were random mementos, framed photos, a raggedy stuffed Thumper almost as old as Laney, and a few books, including the Holy Redeemer High School yearbook from her senior year.

With the tiny lamp on in the corner, she flipped through the thick pages, scanning the little notes and signatures written in every color, in every direction. A lot saidCall me sometime!with a phone number. Cash, the resident class pothead, had drawn a marijuana leaf, while somebody sketched a big penis with no name. Nice.

The pages held black-and-white photos of every team and activity in the school, with Laney in a lot of them: in the volleyball and softball team photos, standing on the stage at the homecoming dance with a court sash, making announcements as school vice president, dancing with JT as prom king and queen. Then there were those with Dean in the marching band, along with his best friends, Patrick, Gabe, Hank, and Ethan. They’d had their own jam band too. They called themselves the Anchormen, and a bunch of photos of them were included as well, all the boys in various states of shaggy hair and shirts untucked, against school dress code.

Stopping on a page about Religious Education, she skimmed her finger down to a picture of the whole school at mass in the gymnasium. It was Ash Wednesday, marked by the dark crosses on everybody’s foreheads, but besides that, her eyes tripped over a detail she didn’t think she’d ever noticed before. In the photo, Ethan was turned around to look back at Laney a few rows behind, her hand raised a little as if she might have been waving to him. She didn’t recall that particular moment, but she did remember the big fight Ethan had gotten in with his girlfriend, Madison, that day. He hadn’t sat next to her during mass, and she’d found him afterward in the main hall, hissing at him in that way she used to do so everyone knew they were fighting.

Laney pressed her fingers to her mouth now, holding back a laugh at how dramatic they all were back then. Everything was the absolute best and worst, highest of highs and lowest of lows. If only Laney knew then what she knew now, maybe she would’ve done everything differently.

Skipping ahead to the pages with the formal senior portraits, she found what she’d been looking for, the tiny writing—Ethan had always written so small—next to his picture with his wavy hair combed to the side, save for that cowlick. The smooth bronze color of his skin was done no justice by the photo, but the quirk to his lips was perfectly captured.

Lane,

Getting to know you this year has been great. The only thing I regret is not having more time with you. I hope we can change that this summer. –Ethan

Pangs of melancholy shot through her as Laney thought about how she and Ethan had danced around each other that year. He’d started going out with Madison, a dance team girl, and Laney had whatever it was with JT, so that by the time they figured it out, they’d barely had any time together.

Though by then, Laney knew how she felt about Ethan. She knew from all the hours they’d spent talking throughout the year. She knew what his goals and aspirations were, and he knew that her greatest fear was disappointing people. And he’d been the only person she cried in front of.

When he’d found her in the hall after school that late winter afternoon, and he asked her what was wrong, she broke down. Because he had been the one to ask her. She had told him how stressed she was, feeling pressured about college and her grades and everything going on at school. Laney had always felt guilty for feeling frustration over her circumstances—why should the popular, pretty, rich girl have problems?—which led her to hide behind her mask of perfection, but Ethan knew. And he’d held her and let her soak his shirt with her tears.

That was the day Laney realized she loved Ethan.

She read his note three more times before she closed the yearbook and tucked it away, unable to put her finger on the reason for this late-night archaeology dig. Something about being heartbroken and home and longing for comfort. All of it together had her trying to imagine what might have become of them, of herself, if things had been different between her and Ethan. She wouldn’t have been afraid to run into him on break and might not have taken that summer marketing internship with the Triple-A baseball team, which led to the next internship and the next and the next, until she’d graduated with a job offer in hand. If Ethan hadn’t moved on with his life with other girls, she might not have learned how to curate her social media to make it seem like she was living it up. Maybe she wouldn’t have tried so hard to stay with men who didn’t respect her. Maybe she wouldn’t be twenty-eight years old with no job and living with her brother, no husband or boyfriend. Not even a dog.

At this point, she’d even take a goldfish, but Dean didn’t like animals of any kind. He always said if he wanted to live with animals, he’d move out into the wild. Last week when she’d brought up adopting a cat, he’d told her to go to the Philadelphia Zoo if she wanted to see some cats.

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