Second Chances (29 page)

“Do you want to stay friends?”

“Of course,” Reagan said in a far more controlled tone.

Allison grabbed onto Reagan’s hands and brought her knuckles to her lips.  Her own hands smelled like Reagan’s arousal.  “Then please don’t demand something I’m just not capable of doing.  If you can’t accept that, I can’t…I just can’t stay friends.”

“Not capable of doing
yet
?” Reagan posed hopefully.

Allison’s hazel eyes shut tight.  “Reagan,” she choked out. “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be. I need you to be okay with this. I care for you
so much
, and it would kill me if we weren’t in each other’s lives anymore. I know I can't hide from myself forever. And you've helped push me to accept who I am, but I'm not brave like you."

Reagan sighed deeply.  She flexed her fingers and Allison released her hands. “Okay,” she conceded.  “Friends.”  She bit down hard on her bottom lip.  She felt the top and bottom rows cutting into the vulnerable flesh, but she didn’t care.  She needed something to distract her so she didn’t start to cry.  She opted for counting inside her head.

“We should get some sleep,” Allison said with a rough sigh.  “I’m sure you’ll want to get an early start in the morning back to New York.”

Reagan rolled onto her side, her back turned to Allison.  She felt the other girl moving in bed beside her, getting comfortable.  The dark, the silence, the moment, it all felt oppressive.

“I’m sorry you know.” Allison’s voice cut through the blanketing darkness.

Reagan was surprised she was able to find her voice without it reverberating with emotion.  “Let’s not, Allie.”

Allison clamped her mouth shut tight.  Frustrated, angry, and not a little melancholy, she yanked the cotton sheets up to her chin.  “Good night.”

Reagan stared at the darkness in front of her eyes.  She opened and closed her mouth, working the muscles in her throat, but no similar gesture came out.  She closed her eyes and willed sleep to come.

+++++

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

Ashley cruised into the room and threw her school bag onto her bed. "Prez, have you moved from that spot since this morning?"

Reagan groaned and stretched her arms above her head. "I got up once to pee."

"Damn, that's quite an assignment. What class is it for?"

Reagan bit her lip and shut the lid on her laptop. "It's actually not for school. I've been trying to find someone online."

"Oooh," Ashley cooed. "Internet stalking? Sign me up."

"I'm not stalking anyone!" Reagan protested. "I'm trying to find someone from Allison's past."

Ashley gave her roommate and odd look. "Why doesn't Allison look for this person herself?"

Reagan frowned guiltily. "She doesn't know I'm doing this."

"Oh, Prez. You crack me up, you little meddler." Ashley flopped onto her stomach on Reagan's bed. "So who are you trying to find? Allison's biological twin she never knew about? Her estranged Uncle Herman? Her family dog Spot who's been living with another family out on a farm?

"Her first girlfriend."

Ashley sat up. "Whoa. Was not prepared for that.
Girlfriend
girlfriend or friend who's a girl?"

"
Do not
tell anyone I told you this," Reagan warned. Her eyes flashed wildly.

Her roommate held up her hands in surrender. "Who would I tell?"

"I don't know. I'm just paranoid Allison will find out I'm doing this. And if it turns out I can't find this girl, she could get mad at me for nothing."

Ashley quirked an eyebrow. "And what exactly do you think you're doing?"

Reagan looked back at her computer and bit her bottom lip. "Trying to give Allison her second chance."

+++++

Allison tugged at the ends of her blonde hair.  “Should I get my hair cut again or should I let it grow out long?”

Reagan wiggled around on her mattress and tilted the lid of her laptop to better appraise her friend.  “You’re obviously beautiful either way, but I really like it when it’s short.”  Allison would still be stunning completely bald, she silently observed. 

“I like it short, too.” Allison looked wistful. Cutting her hair had been a kind of rite of passage for her.  She’d had it cut just a few weeks before her senior year began.  It signified a new start to a new academic year, but it also coincided with the moment when she’d stopped pretending that she wasn’t attracted to Reagan.

“I did something
,” Reagan announced. “And I’m worried if I tell you, you’ll be mad at me.”  She chewed on the corner of her bottom lip.

A million scenarios flashed through Allison’s thoughts, most of which had to do with sex, boys, and pregnancy.  She deliberately and loudly cleared her throat. “You kno
w you can tell me anything, Rea.”

“I found Daria Grey,” Reagan blurted out.

Allison was sure she’d misheard her.  She pushed the volume key on her laptop. “What?”

“After you told me that story about you and her in high school, I was curious.  So I went on Facebook and I found her.”

Allison’s jaw fell open. “You did
what
?”

“I still don’t understa
nd why you don’t have Facebook,” Reagan deflected. “It would make things so much easier.”

“Social media is intrusive,” Allison said dismissively. “Get back to the part where you stalked Daria.”

“It’s not stalking if it’s on Facebook,” Reagan grimaced. “I messaged her and told her you were a mutual friend.  She immediately responded.”  She took a breath.  “She lives in New York.  She goes to design school in Brooklyn. And…she wants to see you.”

Allison licked her lips.  “She wants to see me?” The words fell out quiet and precise.

Reagan stood from her bed and grabbed a post-it note from her desk.  When she returned to her laptop and the Skype session, she held up the post-it to her built-in camera.  “This is her email address.  She’s waiting to hear from you.”

Allison
’s eyes ran over the inked address.  “Why did you do this?”

“Because everyone deserves a second chance,” Reagan said.  “I mean, look at you and me.”  Her grin visibly dimmed. “Maybe you and Daria could have a second chance, too.”

Allison wished she was in New York in Reagan’s dorm room.  She wanted to grab her hand and intertwine their fingers. She knew Reagan had sought out Daria because she thought it would make her happy. She wanted to tell her it wasn’t necessary.  She wanted to wrap her arms around her and nuzzle her nose into her neck.  She wanted to breathe in deeply and swim in the scent that was all her.  She wanted to do all this and a million other things, but she decided instead to be polite. “Thank you, Reagan.”  She glanced at the clock in the corner of her laptop. “Shoot,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I’ve got a meeting with a professor about my senior project. I have to go.”

She
rushed around the room and threw a few books and a notebook into her messenger bag.  She flashed a wide grin in the direction of her laptop and her friend’s face. “I’ll text you later, okay?”

Reagan smiled back and nodded
. When she ended the Skype session, it felt a little like dying.

+++++

Allison stared at her laptop screen and flexed her fingers.  Her email program was open and the email address that Reagan had given her stared back at her.  After all this time, Daria Grey still remembered her.  After all this time, Daria wanted to reconnect.

She thought back to cheerleading camp so many years ago.  Every summer a few weeks before the start of the school year the high school cheerleading squad went to team camp.  It wasn’t your typical summer camp experience though.  For one, there was no actual camping involved.  Expecting cheerleaders from around the state to pitch tents in the woods or even live in bunkhouses with primitive bathroom facilities would have been cruel and unusual punishment.  Instead, teams were housed at the state university while school was still out for the summer. 

Normally teams kept to themselves and didn’t engage with girls from other schools.  This was the opportunity to work on team togetherness, strategize and choreograph dance and cheer routines, and get guidance from university cheerleaders who functioned as camp counselors.  Cheer competitions between squads also took place during the 10-day camp, further building the barriers that kept teams from becoming too friendly with each other.

Daria’s squad was from the Detroit area – a private, suburban school with a privileged student body far removed from city life.  Students were aggressively recruited from the Metro area for their athletic and academic prowess.  Rumor had it attractive girls were recruited as cheerleaders, too.  It was the kind of school Allison imagined her own parents would have sent her to if they lived there rather than their small hometown with its single school district.

The girls on Daria’s squad were notorious snobs with a biting ferocity that showed up in their precise, crisp routines.  For someone who came from a small, remote town, they were Cheerleading Royalty – awe inspiring and not a little intimidating.  That’s why, when Allison was brushing her teeth one evening in the dormitory bathroom, it took her by surprise when Daria Grey, head cheerleader, said hi.

For the rest of the week, they continued to bump into each other like that.  At some point Allison had lost track of which meetings were true accidents and which were premeditated meet-ups.  9:27pm: that’s when they brushed their teeth each night.  9:29pm: that’s when Daria kissed her.  It was some time before Allison could taste mint without thinking of Daria’s lips.

At the end of camp they hadn’t exchanged phone numbers, and the Internet wasn’t quite a thing yet in her hometown – dial-up modems and other prehistoric infrastructure had delayed the technology.  But they’d exchanged postal addresses.  There was never any thought that one day they’d visit each other; Detroit was at least a 7-hour drive and Allison’s parents would have never allowed it.  The only time she’d been to the city had been for a church conference.

The letters were good enough though.  The letters were safe. At the time, she’d felt a little like John-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.  Daria’s letters contained all the romance and intensity high school boys seemed to lack. She had found in Daria a confident, someone who understood the pressure of being perfect because she lived that life herself.  She wrote about more than just her daily life.  She wrote about her dreams and her plans for the future, to get away from Michigan and her parents. She wrote about all the things Allison wished she was brave enough to do.  It was kind of like writing in a journal that wrote you back.

It had been a safe place to explore her emotions as well.  Being gay wasn’t an option – not in her family, not in her hometown.  The letters had been the one place where she could be herself without judgment.  She should have been more careful.  She should have destroyed the letters after reading them.  But she’d never imagined her father would look in the shoebox under her bed.  Maybe a piece of her wanted to get caught thought.  Like with Reagan in the corn maze.  Maybe a part of her just wanted someone to notice that she, Allison Hoge, was tired of doing what was expected of her.

+++++

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Stop looking at me, creep,” Allison said playfully. 

“Then stop being so pretty all the time,” Reagan complained.  “I’m an artist.  I can’t help but be drawn to beauty.”

Trying to prove that they could in fact be just friends, Allison had come to visit Reagan for the weekend. They'd spent the majority of that morning walking around and just exploring.  Now they were doing homework in Reagan’s dorm room.  Allison sat on the bed while Reagan lounged on the floor.  Reagan tried to focus on her Modern Art textbook, but she kept staring at the fine bones of Allison’s ankles instead.

“I’ve been to the Museum of Modern Art before,” Allison said.  “I hope I’m not one of those contemporary art pieces.”

Reagan looked horrified.  “Don’t speak ill of MOMA.  That’s blasphemy.  Besides, there’s nothing contemporary about you – you’re an old soul.”