Page 13 of One More Chance

I turn to the front counter, and for the first time since hearing the upsetting news about Grams, my spirit climbs a few feet.

Zara is standing there, serving a customer. Her long caramel hair is tied up under a purple silk scarf, highlighting her beautiful copper skin and honey-brown eyes.

At the sudden tornado of whispered voices—everyone’s shock now subsiding—she looks at me, and a huge smile spreads across her face. It’s the grin of late-night sleepovers and secrets about boys we liked and dreams of the future. It’s a knowing grin, a caring grin, an I’ve-got-your-back grin.

She says something to the other girl behind the counter. Then one minute I’m standing there, taking it all in, and the next I’m in Zara’s embrace, and I know everything will be all right.

I’ll survive this trip.

She steps back, eyes wide as if she can’t believe I’m here. Like I’m an apparition. A figment of her imagination. A myth. “I’m so sorry about your grandmother. How’s she doing?”

“Better now. I’m on my way to the hospital, but I wanted to pick up a treat for her.”

“I happen to know her favorite is available. Do the cops have any idea what happened?”

“Not really. They figure it was a hit-and-run. The driver couldn’t see her in the crosswalk because of the angle of the sun. They found the car, which had been reported stolen.”

The main door to the café opens. Lucas walks in wearing worn-in jeans and a faded navy T-shirt that skims his Marine-cultivated chest and shoulders. And it’s as if all the oxygen in the room has been sucked out, taking what little is in my lungs with it.

A craving stirs inside me to reach out and touch him, to have him hold me like he used to when I was afraid.

But that…none of that is possible.

Not anymore.

The last time I saw Lucas was at dinner over ten years ago with his parents, Grams, Aiden, and me. A series of memories from that night march through my head.

The stolen kiss between Lucas and me in the hallway outside the restroom. Making love to him that night—the last time we were together. The way he smelled like mountains and sunshine and hope.

He’s not the same boy who was once my close friend. Nor is he the same man I sent letters to while he was in the Marines.

Sent letters to until everything crumbled into a pile of bent and twisted metal.

I draw in a long breath, reminding my body, my heart, my lungs, that I no longer feel anything for him. My eyes, though, take a moment to feast on the man he has become.

He’s still tall and dark-haired with warm brown eyes, but there’s a hardness to him that wasn’t there the last time I saw him. A hardness I’d witnessed in my brother after he returned from Afghanistan, the playful boy I’d once loved long since dead and buried.

Why couldn’t Lucas have waited another five minutes before entering the café?

I would’ve been gone by then. Seeing him, after all these years, hurts too much. Hurts because I lost Aiden. Hurts because I lost my baby—Lucas’s and my baby.

Lucas is one more reminder, the biggest reminder, of all of that.

Fortunately, Troy is with him, and I relax a little. Troy is one more buffer between me and his brother.

Lucas sees me, and his eyes widen imperceptibly. “Simone. I didn’t know you were here. I’m sorry about your grandmother. I just heard.” Sadness seems to pull his lips into a smile.

And that smile, filled with sorrow and regret, squeezes the air from my lungs in a whoosh.

An image of what our daughter might have looked like sneaks in. Her warm brown hair and eyes and her love for everything to do with the mountains.

Like her father.

I shake the image from my thoughts. I can’t go there. Not here.

Not now.

Two of Grams’s friends approach, their smiles wide. Delores hugs me. “Rose will be thrilled to see you, Simone.” She steps back, and her eyes give me an appraising once-over. “You look amazing. How’s big city life treating you? I bet you have a special someone in your life?”

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