Second Chance
Copyright © 2012 by Katie Kacvinsky
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
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.
Cover art: heart image
credited
to
CarbonNYC
via
www.flickr.com
Dedicated to:
Adam
Duritz
Your song lyrics inspired me to become a writer.
Is g
ray really your favorite color, too?
I hope we have that in common.
Second Chance
b
y
Katie Kacvinsky
Gray
I can’t sleep tonight because memories are pooling in my mind like a lake and I’m floating
face-down
on the surface, trying to
see
the bottom
.
Mostly, I’m
thinking about a girl
.
Which brings me to my
latest theory:
I
think
falling in
love
should come with a
warning
label
:
CAUTION—
side e
ffect
s
may include
breaking up
,
accompanied by
heartache,
severe mood swings,
withdrawal from people and life itself, wasted hours obsessing over bitter reflections, a need to destroy something (preferably something expensive that
shatters), uncontrollable tear
ducts, stress
,
a loss of appetite (
Cheet
os
and
Dr. Pepper
exempt
), a bleak and narrow outlook on
the future
,
and an overall hatred of everyone and everything (especially all the happy couples you see strolli
ng hand-in-hand,
placed
on your path
only to exacerbate your
isolation and
misery)
.
All above reactions will be intensified with the consumption of
one or more
alcohol
ic beverage
s
.
What, me, bitter
?
Not at all
.
Just honest
.
I
turn the music
up
on my stereo
and
take a long drag of
f
my joint
.
The smoke fills my lungs and I hold it in
until I feel a soothing burn
.
I count the months it has
been since I’ve heard from Dylan
.
I haven’t seen
her
since
she surprised me in Phoenix
over Christmas
,
and I was naïve enough to think
a long distance relationship could
work
.
Now s
he’s over
seas gallivanting around
Europe
like a bird migrating from one scenic landscape to
the next
.
S
he’s slowly becoming my past, s
omething like
a dream and reality mixed
.
I forget whe
re one ends and the other begins
because the
lines of
memories
are a
lways a
blur
.
She flew to
E
ngland
with a family who hired her to chaperone their
thirteen
-ye
ar-old daughter for
two
months
.
They covered all of
Dylan’s
traveling expenses
and paid
her
a daily stipend
.
Only Dylan would
fall into such a perfect situat
ion, like fate for her is a waterfall that
rushes her from
one exciting adventure
to
the next
with torrid
speed
because she
never seems to slow down
.
After her
job
commitment
,
Dylan stayed
in
Europe
to backpack
by h
erself
.
She sent me two postcards in the last four months
.
How thoughtful
.
It’s comforting to know she spent about six minutes thinking of me
in
Melk
,
Austria
and
Munich
, Germany
.
I’ve only spent about six
hundred hours obsessing over her
.
I’m assuming
she
met
some hot Ital
ian named Francisco or Alfredo
.
He
probably
has
haunting dark eyes and
chestnut brown hair
that flows in the wine-infused wind
.
He seduced her with lines like,
“I want
to
make love to you on the stars.”
And he can get away with sounding like an ass-clown
just because he has a
n
accent
.
How am I supposed to compete with
that
?
