Second Chance (24 page)

***

A half
hour later I find Sage
Street. I
t’s unnerving
to
discover
Cat lives
about
six
blocks away
from Gray’s house
.
It’s one of my stranger fates
.
I hear someone strumming a
guitar
and
I follow the sound until Cat’s in view, sitting on
a brown couch
on
the
f
ront porch
of a small,
single story green house
tucked between two maple trees
.
I
swing my duffel bag down on the ground
to find
my camera
.
I take a
couple shots of Cat
while she’s stuck inside a creative haze
before she notices me
.
S
he stops strumming and blinks over at me
.

“Dylan?”
she asks, t
hough she doesn’t look surprised to see me
.
She already knows me too well
.
“What are you doing here?”

I set my camera down and laugh
at myself
.
At this point, it’s either laugh or cry my eyes out
.
 

“I took your advice
,” I say as I walk
through the grass t
o
the
porch
steps
.
She stands up and
sets her guitar on the
couch
.
“I came back
to see
Gray.”

She regards my face
.
“
It didn’t go too well
?”

I sit down on
the steps and
shake my head
.
There’s an ivy plant crawling up the
metal
railing and I rub the smooth leaves between my fingers
.
Cat
walks over and
sits down next to me
.

“It a
ppears time has two different e
ffects on the heart,” I say
, still looking at the leaves
.
“
It
either
makes it
swell
with love
or
shrivel with b
itter
ness
.”

“Yeah,” Cat
agrees
.
“It’s usually one extreme
or the other
.
”

I nod and a long sigh escapes my chest
.
She wraps her arm around
me
and I rest my head on her
warm, soft shoulder
.

“The good thing is,” Cat says, “
the heart
has an amazing capacity to
forgive
.
It might
just
take a little
convincing
.
”

We sit out on
the porch for a few minutes. 
Cat rubs my
arm
and I think about forgiveness
and
try to walk around in Gray’s shoes
.
I try to understand exactly what I did wrong
.
 

Cat
tells me she has a place I can crash
.
She grabs my
duffel bag
and
I follow her to a one-car garage
detached from the
house
.
She unlocks the door and explains she use
d to use
the space
for band practice
, but they’ve been signing so many shows they hardly
need
it anymore
.
I look around at the
renovated apartment
.
T
here are huge windows
along one wall that
face
s
out
to
a row of tall
sycamore
trees
.
T
here’s a small bathroom
attached to it, and
a futon with a pile of blankets
folded
on top
.
The floor is gray cement
with a few woven rugs scattered around the space
.
T
he walls are painted light
brown,
and
a few apple crates piled on top of each
other form a makeshift
shelf,
stuffed
full of music books
.
I set my bag down next to it.

“It’s
perfect
,”
I say
.
I
promise Cat
I’m going to look for a
temporary
job and I’ll pay her rent
as soon as I
can
.

“
How
long do you think you’ll stay
?
”
s
he asks
as she helps me sort through
my
heap of dirty clothes.

I shrug
.
Until Gray forgives me
.
“I have a summer job back in Wisconsin, so
maybe a few months, if it’s okay
,” I tell her
.
I hope it’s enough time
.

GRAY

Sunday night
the team bus pulls into the parking lot of the Lobo center
after a three game weekend
.
W
e’re all sun
burned,
exhausted
,
and
starving
.
Why didn’t I get groceries before
I
left
town
?
Oh, yeah, because I had some
unexpected
company
.

After we separate our gear, w
e pack into Todd’s car and
Travis joins us because he lives
next door
with a couple football players
.
We all discuss ordering
pizza.

“I’m broke,” Bubba says
.

“You say that
every time
we order out,” Mil
es says
.

“Well,
every time
I’m broke.”

“Maybe if you stopped
spending all y
our money on Amy…,”
Travis
hints
.

“We broke up
,
but thanks for mentioning it,
” Bubba says.

W
hen we
pull into the driveway
,
Todd slows down and stares up at the house
.
Half
the lights downstairs are turned on
.
Bubba
turns and glares at me.

“
Dude
, did you give that crazy girl
keys
to our house?”
he
asks
.

“What crazy girl?” Travis asks
.

I shake my
head and insist she’s
staying with a friend.

“
Then who gets the numbskull award for leaving the lights on?
”
Bubba asks.

We grab our bags out of the trunk and I’m the first one
to
the house
.
The front
door’s
unlocked, and w
hen I
walk inside
, I’m hit with smells that make my mouth water
—garlic, butter and
marinara sauce.

I hear footsteps and
Dylan
appears in
the hallway. S
he’s wearing a green apron
around
her signature baggy shirt and
jeans
.
Her
hair is braided in pigtails.