Up for the Chase (4 page)

Chapter Seven

Ariana

“Mom,” Avery shouts from the other side of the apartment and I rush towards her.

“What?” I say
, annoyed, when I see that she isn’t in trouble.

“Do you have to go to w
ork tonight?” she says, innocently.

“Yes, dear,” she scoffs and then looks back up to me.

“But I don’t like staying with Mrs. Schuman.” She pokes out her bottom lip.

“She’s a nice lady.” I tell her.

“She smells like cats.” Her comment causes me to laugh. Sometimes she reminds me exactly of Chase. It’s amazing how she has never met him and somehow carries so many of his personality traits. She huffs and I go into my bathroom again to get ready for the night.

I stand in the bathroom looking at my reflection and it’s like I’m transported back in time. I hear him laughing to himself outside of the doors and I never want to open them to look up at him. When I finally let myself out of the room he smiles at me.

“I was only joking.” He laughs.

“I know.” I tell him. “Thank you for consoling me last night.”

“It’s not a problem. Do you want to talk about it?” I let the sigh fall out of my mouth and I sit on the bed. “I’m not sure why I am telling you this.”

“Because for some strange reason even though we have just met it’s like we have known one another for years.”

“Yeah,” my jaw drops and it’s like he read my mind, “The night my mother died, well I wasn’t at the neighbor’s house.”

“What do you mean?” he asks me his deep brown eyes staring into my soul. Someone knocks hard on the door telling us that they are going to breakfast, we hurry and change and leave with them.
Before we walk out of the door Chase pulls my arm back and I look at him. “You will tell me one day?” I’m not sure if he is asking or telling me, so I just let it drop and shrug my shoulders.

I walk out of my apartment a couple of hours later walking towards my job. It’s a crummy bartending job, but it pays well, and between my inheritance and my pay I only have to work a few nights a week, so I can concentrate on school and Avery more.

My breathing halts when I see the
GTO sitting a row above me in the parking garage I pass as I make my way through the town. I can’t help myself but I open the door and climb the stairs and I see it, staring at me, perfectly red with the two black stripes down the center. I approach it carefully looking around me to make sure that he isn’t anywhere around. I circle around it taking it in from all sides. I look for any indication that it isn’t his car. I peer into the windows and I notice the black leather seats. It brings back a memory of looking over to him as he drove us away, away from our pain. I turn quickly and convince myself that it isn’t his car that there isn’t a way that he was here in this town and if he was it wasn’t to look for me. He had never been to Savannah, why would he come now, and anyway he knew that I was from Beaufort why would he think I would move here? Why would he even be looking for me at all he left me alone in a hotel room years ago, and at that moment I feel furious and I turn to leave walking back out of the parking garage and to my shitty bartending job down the street. As I walk away from the car I pretend to not notice the dent in the back bumper if I allowed myself to notice it than it would prove to be Chase’s car.

The next afternoon we sit in the driveway of his frat house, it really isn’t a frat house, but it’s what I
have decided to call it, he keeps correcting me. “I can’t believe you don’t know how to drive stick.” He says to me sitting beside me in his car and I shrug my shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” I mock his frustration, “I can’t believe you are trying to teach me in your car.”

“Well, what else would you like to learn on?” He raises his eyebrows.

“Anything but your “baby’,” I mock him.
I see him grin.

“Shut it, just let off the clutch and ease onto the gas. Come on reverse and first are the only hard gears.” I sigh looking over to him,

“Oh, are they, they are only the two most important gears.” He laughs.

"Go," he shouts and I attempt it but I know as soon as I do it that I have pressed too hard on the gas and I have just catapulted us backwards toward the road I try to swerve and then I slam my foot onto the break as he is yelling me to do so, but not before I feel a little jolt to the car, and I know that I
have just hit something. My face falls slightly and he gets out of the car walking to the back and he starts laughing.

“Why are you laughing? Have you just lost it because I hit something with your car?” I feel the tears creeping into my voice.

“Maybe,” he says walking around to me and placing his hands on my arms. “But it isn’t that bad, I could actually just pop it out.”

Even if I did notice the dent I wouldn’t let myself wonder why he nev
er popped it out. I make my way inside of the bar just minutes later and my boss meets me at the back door.

“McCree
, you’re late again.” He snaps at me.

“Sorry Dale,” He is all bark and no bite.

I can’t seem to focus tonight my mind keeps wandering back to the car sitting in the parking garage. As much as I don’t want to admit it I know it was his, but why would he be in Savannah? I’m trying hard all night to stay centered but I seem to keep going back to that instant where I was standing on the other side of his car.

I pull out a Bud light for a regular that comes in every night when I see girls all around me become unhinged as they look toward the door so intensively
that of course I follow their gaze.

I see the top of a man’s head; it stands over the rest of the people in the bar;
I can’t look away now. As the man approaches the bar the beer slides out from my grasp as I see the deep brown eyes looking towards the other side. He smiles politely at a girl who has approached him and passes her by. I hear the beer bottle shatter and without thinking about it I dart into the back room. I watch as Dale approaches me to ask me if I’m alright.

“I’m
not feeling well I need to go home.” I never do this he looks at me questioning and then waves me off. I hear the door swing open again and watch as Sandra comes through looking at me.

“R, are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m just not feeling well. I need to home.” She nods her head and smiles at me.

“Alright, feel better.” She says and leans into me and hugs me. I would never consider her a friend, in fact she doesn’t even know about Avery.

I open the back door to the bar as I make my way through the town back home.

We stayed at the frat house for a week, before I started to feel out of place, maybe that I was wearing on my welcome, but everyone kept telling me that I wasn’t. Everyday Chase and I had a new and exciting story to tell everyone. We went swimming in the lake that was outside of town and found new ways to entertain ourselves daily. In the week I had started growing extremely fond of Chase. He changed my world the moment that he walked into it and he didn’t even know. Every night since the first night I stayed in his room he would climb into bed next to me always asking if it was alright first, and we would fall asleep never blurring the lines more than they already were.

The week after I arrived at his house we were laying on his bed one night talking about our lives. He is trailing his fingers on my thighs connecting my freckles, he sits next to me with only a pair of workout shorts on and I am trying my best not to stare at him.

“Just sometimes I feel like I don’t belong. I feel like the life that I have been living with my father isn’t for me. Sure I want to go to school, but I don’t want to go to his school. I want to be able to choose something for my
self.” I told him and he smiled, nodding. I knew he understood.

“What’s something that you have always wanted to do?” I pause really thinking about his question for a moment.

“Drive cross-country. I’ve always wanted to see California. I was actually born there, but we left when I was very young, and I don’t remember it.” He smiled at me.

“Well, then let’s go.”
He says sitting up and looking over at me.

“What?” I asked him not believing what he was saying.

“Let’s go. You want to do it, let’s get up tomorrow morning and go.” He’s serious, sitting up, shirtless, and looking at me. I can’t help but to stare at his muscular chest.

“You can’t just leave
, can you?” I wonder out loud.

“Sure I’m off for the summer and my family has more money than they know what to do with so I don’t really have to work.”

“You’re joking right?” I laugh at him.

“No, you want to go, let’s go. Tomorrow we will get up and go.”
I realize that he is serious.

“But I hardly know you.” I
tell him and I can instantly see the hurt in his eyes. “I trust you, but my father would kill me if he knew that I was in a car with a guy that I hardly knew going to California.”

“Isn’t this whole trip to do what you want and not what your father is alright with?
Plus, don’t you think that your father would be upset about you sharing a bed with someone you hardly knew.” He’s got me there and then he lets the conversation die with that and he quickly fell asleep.

I contemplated his proposition all night. In fact, I barely got any sleep and by the time that I had made my decision I was so exhausted tha
t my eyes shut within seconds. We aren’t going to go.

I hear singing coming from the shower when my eyes flutter open and I can’t help but stifle a laugh. I hear the lyrics of Silverstein
’s Call it Karma coming from the shower and I smile, I love that song. I lay myself back down until I hear the water turn off and I smile pretending to be asleep. He walks out of the bathroom still singing to him as I am pretending to be sleeping. I hear him walk over to the bed and I can’t help but smirk.

“You’re not sleeping,” I
can hear the smile in his voice as he shakes the bed.

“You caught me I just wanted to hear
you sing.” I admit and he jumps on the bed shaking it even more.

“I’ll sing whenever you want me to
.” he smiles looking down at me ad for a second I’m sure that he’s going to lean over and kill me, but then his eyes change and he looks away from me.

“So, I thought about going.”
I look up into his rich down eyes.

“And?” he asks almost impatiently.

“Let’s go," I smile and he grins wide. I’m not sure if I had changed my mind, or if my mouth was betraying me again.

“That’s good because I have already packed our stuff.” I laugh at him.

“But you didn’t know that I was going to agree.” I call him out.

“Oh, Ariana, I did know. You just hadn’t realized that you would say yes.” I smack him in the stomach and then take a shower myself.

Chapter eight

Chase

I hear the sound of shattering glass as I look up all I can see is the sway of a door that leads to the back room and then I watch as the bartender walks back I guess to check on who ever just ran through.

I sit at the bar as the bartender comes back out and looks to me.

“Oh,” she says and pulls down on her shirt. I’m not sure why girls act so strange around me. I order a jack and Coke and then I watch as she picks up the broken shards of glass off of the floor.

“What happened?” I ask her.

“Oh, the other girl isn’t feeling well and dropped it, she went home though.” I smile at her; I can’t help it. I silently want to curse Ariana; she was like a wrecking ball to my life. Before she came into my world I didn’t care about what happened. I definitely was a “man whore” I guess it's what you would be called- although I hate that term- but no one really cared, but then she came into my life. I remember her walking up to that park and she took my breath away. Even now not seeing her for five years when I think back to that she still takes my breath away.

I decided to try and find her two years ago. She was still embedded into my soul after all the countless dates that I went on trying to rid myself of
her.

I’m not going to lie, I had meaningless sex, but none of it ever amounted to sex with Ariana
the girls would come and go and none of them even stuck. None of them even came close to her, and I’m not talking about just sexual either.

They were dumb, they were slutty, and they were just annoying, again I was found in a point
of my life where I wasn’t being cared for. I did compare every single girl I met to her, hell I still do. I’m sitting here looking at the bartender leaning over clearly knowing that she is bent over right in front of me, I slowly peel my eyes off of her ass, but I am comparing it to Ariana. I have never met someone who has implanted themselves in my soul the way that she has.

The bartender finishes cleaning up the glass and looks over to me again as I take a sip from the glass that sits in front of me.

“So, stud,” she says, let me just express my hatred for this word, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Not really.” I tell her stirring the straw around in my glass.

“What does that mean?” she smirks at me and leans over the bar so that I have a clear view down her shirt. I don’t give her the satisfaction of looking.

“Well,” I pause and decide to hell with it, “I met this girl
six years ago.”

“
Six years?” she asks.

“Yes, she completely changed me.”
I finally admit to someone.

“How so?” she asks standing up, I figure that she can tell I don’t want her that I just need someone to talk to.

“When she came into my life I was a different person, I was broken. I didn’t know how to be someone I liked.” I start.

“And she came along and changed that?”

“Well, she came along and showed me the type of person I wanted to be, the type of person that she deserved. Only I realized that too late.”

“How was it t
oo late?” she asked and I look down at my cup and then start stirring the straw again. I hear at my side someone come up and ask her for something so she let the sentence die. When she walks back over she frowns and looks at me again. “It takes a lot for someone to want to be better for someone. It’s a love that I’m not sure could ever be replaced. She’s really lucky to have you looking for her, and I truly believe that you will find her one day.”

“Hopefully,”
I say it, not believe that I ever will.

“What was her name?” she asks me politely I could tell that she wasn’t thrilled to hear a
story about my long lost love.

“Ariana,” I smile to her as I get up from the bar, pay for my drink, and I leave. I begin to
wander outside, which probably is not the safest thing to do in a city that I have never really been to.

The month after I left Ariana in the hotel room, I didn’t go back to school in fact, I dropped out and moved to Orlando, the only place where I felt complete afterwards. I frequented the bar where we went that night and I would drive past the hotel on a regular basis, four years after I left school I ran into Will, since he had moved there to a job. I was working as a Computer Technician, I’m not sure even how I had landed the job, but I was making pretty good money. When I saw Will he smiled at me gave me that weird little bro-hug and then told me that Ariana had been calling him looking for me. I never explained to him what happened with us, only that it was complicated. He had given me her number and I had saved the piece of paper in my wallet. A year later at the bar I was drunk one night and I found the small sliver of paper in my wallet as I went for my cash and I pulled it out, calling it almost immediately when I received a “This number has been disconnected or is no longer in service” message I got pissed and threw my phone across the bar. It hit the wall shattering, seconds later I was hurled out of the bar and banned from ever going back due to “throwing my phone at the bartender,” I tried to explain to the bouncer what happened and that the bartender wasn’t even standing in front of me and that if I had wanted to hit her with it I wouldn’t have missed, but he took that as a threat and told me that if I was still there in a minute he was going to call the cops, needless to say I hurried away.

T
he morning after I got up nursing my hangover, got a new phone, vowed to myself that I wouldn’t get that drunk again, and made a promise to Ariana that I would find her. Now here I am two years later still looking for her, I haven’t stopped either.

Ariana

The knock on my front door brings me out of my thoughts as I lean against my counter, I already know who is going to be on the other side of the door I slide it open and see the busty brunette standing  in front of me.

“Fucking miss me,” I smile letting her into my apartment.

“Of course,” I smile at her pulling her in again. She had finally moved back to the area two years ago since her family moved away right after graduation. She grins holding up the movies in her hand.

“Ready for Friday movie mantra?”

“Always,” I grinned we had started a tradition since both of us were usually off at least during the day on Friday that we would watch movies and then she would watch Avery as I went to work, it worked out.

We are in the car on the road and I can’t stop laughing, you would think that being in a car with a stranger that I would feel completely awkward, but there was just something about Chase that sets me at ease.

We are driving down a desolate road when Chase smiles to me and turns up the stereo as he starts to belt out Panic at the
Disco’s I Write Sins not Tragedies at the top of his lungs. I can’t help but laugh as I begin to sing along with him. We are laughing by the end of the song when he finally turns the radio back down and looks to me again.

“So, Ms. Ariana, where would you like to go?”

“It doesn’t matter...” I pause thinking for a moment, “Where is the closest major city.”

“Well,” he smirks, “We could go to New Orleans.”

“Sounds good,” I shrug.

“So,” he says looking over to me.

“So,” I bat back to him and he grins.

“Please, we have to talk about something because I can
’t stand this quiet car.” I laugh.

“Alright, where are you from, you know originally?”

“I already told you, Tennessee.” He looks over to me, smirking.

“
Oh yeah, I forgot, well then why did you move to Tallahassee then?”

“Because of Matt, I didn’t know how to handle it so l just wanted to get far away, hell Ariana you should understand.”
He looks over to me.

“Oh
, I do. I just wasn’t sure.” I say looking back out to the road.

“So, I already I know that you are from Beaufort
.” He trails.

“Ugh, don’t remind me.”

“What? You don’t like it?” I can see the amusement in his face.

“You’re joking right? I mean have you ever been there?” He just shakes his head no, “Well,
be thankful you haven’t.”

“But aren’t you close to Savannah at least?”

“Yeah, oh it’s beautiful, as long as you stay downtown. I’ve always wanted to move there and live in one of those old houses, they’re amazing!”

“I wouldn’t know
, I have never been there either.” He shrugs.

“Seriously,” I know that I basically shouted that at him, “It’s amazing, promise me that you will go one day.”

“I promise.” He laughs.

“R, are you alright?” I hear Hannah ask me and I turn out of me thought. Well Chase had finally done what he had promised me.

“Yeah,” I tell her smiling to her.

“You’re lying, and you think that I won’t notice. Come on R I have known you basically my whole life, what is going on?” I take a deep sigh and turn my body to look at her.

“Han,” I pause and finally look back over to her and I state, “I saw Chase.”

Her mouth falls open as she looks to me again, “You mean, Chase-Chase, like the father of your child
Chase, who has yet to know that he has a daughter Chase.” I nod my head carefully and her eyes grow wider. “Well, what did you say to him because it should have gone something like ‘Hey would you like to come to my place and fuck or maybe meet your daughter’?”

“No
,” I laugh slightly.

“No? What do you mean no?”
she shouts.

“I mean
, I didn’t say anything to him, I saw him walk into the bar last night and I dropped the bottle I had in my hand and bolted.”

“But, R, this is the man that you spent almost a year trying to get a hold of, R, remember you telling me that you had to talk to him because you had to let him know about Avery. You even drove down to Tallahassee to try and find him but he had moved and no one knew where we went.

“I know Han, but then I would have been prepared for him to walk into my life, not last night, not after six years. Not when it’s the last thing that I am expecting.”

“Well, What if last night was your only chance, What if you never see him again?”
She asks.

“Or what if that is the push to get me to start looking for him again. Han, everything that I felt back then, seeing him last night, it all resurfaced. I have never met anyone in my life
that has implanted themselves into my brain as he has managed to do.”

“Well, I hope you know what yo
u’re doing” she tells me.

“It’s very clear that I do not.” She laughs at me as we
walk out of the apartment and begin our journey to go pick up Avery.