Second Chance (66 page)

I try to live life one day at a time
.
Don’t
focus to
o
far into
the
future;
don’t hang too closely to the past
.
But how can I live day to day without
him
?
I can barely go ten minutes without thinking about
him
.
A day, one whole
, entire
day is impossible
.
So I’ll go moment by moment
.
One second at a time
.
One breath
.
That’s what I’ll have to do
.
And maybe I’ll be okay
.

I learned something today
.
I learned that
the heart, our most vital organ, turn
s
out to be our weakest link
.
It’s scary to think something so necessary to sustain us, protected in a cradle of ribs and flesh and muscles, is so fragile, so easily broken
.

I
swing the door
open
to
the Brew House
and
I can tell
b
y Lenny’s
sympathetic
face that she’s already talked to Gray
.
She force feeds me coffee and a muffin and tells me I look
terrible. I appreciate her honesty.

“What happened to your hair?
” she asks
as she stands
next to the table and studies me.

“I tend to take out my emotional stress on either my nails or my hair,” I tell her.

“Actually,” she says
.
“I kind of like it
.
It’s more you.
”
I swallow down the hot coffee and begin
writing
farewell
letters
.
Cat’s out of town to play a show so I can’t say goodbye to her in person
.
Liz is working today and the last thing I want to do is walk into her boutique looking like this
.
I’ll give her a panic attack
.
I consider writing
letters to
Gray’s room
mates
,
even Travis
, but I know when Gray
shut
me out of his life, it included
his friends
.
When I’m done, I stand up
and
walk over to the counter
.

“What are you going to do?” Lenny asks
.

“I booked
the first flight I could get on,” I say
in
a voice that’s so monotone it doesn’t sound like me
.
“
I leave
in a few hours
.
”

Lenny’s
quiet and she doesn’t try to sugar coat my thoughts
.
That’s what I love about
her
.
You can just
be
around her
.
You don’t have to wear a fake smile or say everything’s fine because she knows
.
She’s like Gray, she can see through the artificial masks so many people dress up in
.
She keeps it real
, a
nd there’s a comfort in this
.

I hand Lenny
a stack of
letter
s and ask her to hand them out
.
I tell
her
to keep up with Sunday ni
ght dinners
.
I
t’s
a great tradition
.
 

She
fidgets
with the string of her apron
.
“Yeah, but it won’t be the same
.
You were the one that made it happen.” 

“Liz can take my place,” I say
.
Lenny
looks down at her feet and
slowly nods
.

“
Well,
I’d say keep in touch but,” Lenny starts.

“Yeah,” I agree
.
It’s not going to happen
.
Lenny
surprises
me
and
grab
s
me in a tight hug
.
She smiles at me, a warm, genuine smile.

“Good luck,
Dylan
” she says
.
“
I’m
really
glad I got to know you
.”
I nod and walk away
without turning back
.

I head downtown, my conscious state wavering somew
here between reality and a dream
.
I have three hours to kill before I need to be at the airport to catch my flight
.
So I do the only thing that comes naturally
.
I
lift my
camera
to my eye and let my mind escape.

When I look through the lens, I look outside myself
.
And that’s when I really start to see
.

I
turn down a shaded sidewalk
to Lily Park
and find a
cluster of peopl
e sitting outside
, enjoying the sun
ny afternoon
.
I walk around the outskirts of the park, watching people
.
I pass
an older man talking on his cell phone
.
He looks
about
sixty and he’s smiling
.
I notice the
gorgeous laughter w
rinkles around his eyes
.
I crouch down and just as he leans back and laughs, the light hits his face and I take a picture of his profile
.
Every wrinkle
on his face
curl
s
up
in the sunlight
, like a face fu
ll of a thousand smiles
.
It mak
e
s
some of the dark spots in my chest lighten
.
I grin and keep walking
.

I notice a girl stretching out
on
a
quilted blanket in the sun
.
She’s
highlighting a textbook
page
. N
ext to her is an opened spiral notebo
ok with coffee stains on the paper
.
I stroll by and, o
ver her shoulder,
take a picture of the coffee stained notebook
.
 

A
cross the street from the park,
I see
an old
,
rickety blue house with a white
front porch
that hold
s
a green
,
swinging bench
.
The white paint
of the porch is
crackled and peeling, but i
n a warm way
.
In a way that mak
e
s
it look used, loved,
lived in,
and
worn in with movement and feet and bodies
.
It look
s
like home
, s
o I
steal a permane
nt image
.

I
study
a man eating
a sack
lunch by himself on the sidewalk, alongside a utility truck
.
He
’s wearing
stee
l-toed
tan
boots
, a
nd a
yellow
hard hat
lies
next to him
.
His face
is deeply tanned
.
I notice
his jeans, faded and streaked with
heavy
dirt
.
When he look
s
away, I clic
k a picture of his dirty jeans, his strong, muscular arms resting on
his
knees
.
 

I
watch two young girls swing on a
swing set
and when they hit the highest point, where it looks like they could fly off into the sky, I snap a picture
.