Leo's Chance Read online

  "The princess closed her eyes for the last time, thinking of all the evil monsters who had been cruel to her and caused her heart to shatter. But, evil creatures, no matter how demented they are, never get the last word. The angels, always nearby, swooped down and carried The Glass Princess back up to heaven where they put her broken heart back together, never to be hurt again. The princess opened her eyes and smiled her beautiful smile and laughed her beautiful laugh. And it still sounded like the tinkling glass bells, just as it always had. The Glass Princess was home at last."

  With her words, memories come slamming back so hard and fast that they almost feel like a physical blow. Suddenly I'm up on a roof, crying in the arms of the bravest girl I've ever known and feeling the only love I've ever felt, the only comfort I've ever had. I want to fall to my knees because her voice brings back not only the memory but also the feeling of those moments, and my longing for her jumps tenfold. I need to get the fuck out of here. How am I going to handle all this? I feel intoxicated with memories, drunk on emotion.

  Evie makes her way back through the crowd and as she's talking to an older woman with bleached blond hair and ridiculous hot pink, stripper shoes, I walk around the tree and make my way to my car. As I'm walking, it becomes clearer than ever that I'm never going to get over Evie – a distressing thought when I consider that she may never be mine again.

  I get in my car and sit there staring out the windshield for several minutes until I feel some emotional equilibrium return. Then I pick up my phone and call the funeral home and make an addition to Willow's headstone. "The Glass Princess" will be added below her name. I think Willow would have liked that. It says she was loved.

  CHAPTER 4

  Dr. Fox walks into my hospital room and smiles in greeting. I raise my eyebrows at him. He's not supposed to be here until Thursday and it's only Tuesday.

  "Getting uglier by the day, I see," he says.

  "Ugly is only a state of the soul, old man." I grin my best sore-ass face, broken nose grin. "If I'm getting uglier, you might want to look into another line of work."

  He chuckles and pulls a chair up next to my bed.

  I still have a splint on my nose and deep bruising under my eyes, and the inside of my mouth hurts like a bitch from where they went in to do more repair work on my cheekbone and my jaw. And I have another surgery scheduled for next month. But my arms are out of the casts, thank Christ. I can at least brush my own damn teeth.

  My leg will be in a cast for another month and my ribs still need some healing time, but then I can start some physical therapy. I can't wait. I can feel my strength both growing and withering by the day.

  I would have been sent to the rehab facility by now if the rod in my leg hadn't gotten infected. The whole ordeal is extending my stay but I don't really care. For the first time in eight years, I feel like I’m claiming back a part of who I am and if checking out of life for a while helps me do that, then maybe it’s not a bad thing.

  "Something came up on Thursday and so I thought I'd drop by today for twenty minutes or so if you're free," Doc says.

  I raise an eyebrow. "I'm pretty much free, like… all the time, Doc."

  "Right." He chuckles again. "Then I guess a better question is, feel up to talking?"

  "Yeah, sure. Actually, I've been thinking about what we talked about last time. About me putting Evie on a pedestal in my mind. I've been thinking about whether or not that's the case and I guess I came to the conclusion, that, yeah, in some ways I always did and I do now. But I think my reasoning behind it is valid and so I don't know if it's a 'pedestal' so much as she just deserves the respect. She always did."

  "Okay, but you talk about who she is in present tense as much as past tense and you haven't seen the girl for eight years."

  I sigh. "Yeah, I know. Maybe it's wishful thinking… maybe it's just a gut feeling. I don't know."

  "Well, tell me what you've been going over."

  I gather my thoughts for a minute before speaking. "Do you have any idea how brave it is to continue to wear your heart on your sleeve, to stay tender, when you've experienced the kind of lives me and Evie did? When you're surrounded by vultures, do you know how much courage it takes to walk around every day with a sensitive heart ripe for the picking? To continue to love? Shit, the easier thing to do is to turn hard. It's the route I went. It's the route most of the kids I grew up with went. I mean, how did she do that? I just… I always felt so proud of her for that. And so murderously protective." I laugh a humorless laugh.

  Dr. Fox studies me for a minute. "It's always easier to build walls. You're right about that. And yes, it's remarkable that she was able to retain the sensitivity she did, and I hope that's still the case. But what I meant when I said you kept Evie up on a pedestal was that you seem to be under the impression that you weren't worthy of her."

  "Because I WASN'T worthy of her."

  "If you trusted her so much, wasn't she the one who was most qualified to decide that?"

  I consider this for a minute, wondering for the millionth time, what DID she see in me? All those years ago, I showed her my true self more so than I had ever shown anyone. More so than I've shown anyone up to this very minute. I had never held back with Evie because she made me feel safe in a way no one in my life ever had. I CRAVED that. And she had never turned away. Not once.

  "I don't know. I'll have to think about that." I sigh and run my hand through my short hair. They had to shave it to close the gash up on the back of my scalp and it's finally growing out.

  "Jake," he says, and I raise my eyes to his face. The first day he came back to my room to talk, he had asked me what I preferred to be called. I had explained why I had started going by Jake and although I thought I might be ready to have someone call me Leo, I realized that I wasn’t. Yet. That two syllable word of identity conjures up an emotion that is a relief as much as it is painful. Hearing my real name, even in my own head, feels like coming home. But I don't know what I have to come home to. It's so damn confusing. I have so much to sort through. Maybe I'll clear my schedule so I can get to that. I'm hilarious, even in my own mind.

  Doc continues. "What I'm worried about is that you're putting all your self-worth in one person's hands. Evie loved you. It doesn't sound like even you doubt that. Neither one of us can know what her life looks like now and whether or not she'll be willing to let you back in, in any capacity. But that can't be what defines you, son. That can't be what makes you value yourself. That has to be there with or without Evie. Because even if she is in a place to accept you back into her life, and even if she's willing to do that, you owe it to her to be a complete man when you ask her to make that leap. You owe that not only to her, but to yourself."

  "This is a lot of touchy-feely shit, Doc. I thought I told you I wasn't on board for that." I'm only partially joking.

  He laughs softly. "Alright, then let's get to the brutal honesty portion of our program. You need a shower, like, three weeks ago."

  I laugh out loud. "Yeah, you try sitting on your ass in a hospital bed for three months. You might not smell as fresh as a daisy either."

  He grins, the wrinkles by his eyes crinkling. "Don't they have pretty nurses to give sponge baths anymore?"

  I laugh. But I don't tell him that in my mind, I'm on my way back to Evie. I can only pray that she'll let me back into her life. But regardless, letting other women touch me is something I did to numb my own pain. I don't want to be that man.

  "So you got a hot date on Thursday or what?"

  "No, actually I'm helping an old business associate with a project he's working on. You might be surprised to know that I used to work with computers when I was younger. Was good at it too. I still do it on a consulting basis here and there."

  "That is surprising. How'd you go from computers to psychology?"

  "I decided that computers are too predictable. I like people better. They keep you guessing." He winks.

  I laugh. "Man, that makes one of us. That's exact
ly why I DON'T like people."

  "Ah, no, son. The complexity of the human heart is something to be awed by. If people always acted in a predictable way, determined solely by a set of data, you and Evie would have been much different people. Respect the mystery."

  "Hey Doc, has anyone ever mentioned that you have a tendency to sound like a fortune cookie?"

  He laughs out loud and stands up to leave. "I'll see you next week, son."

  "See ya, Confucius."

  CHAPTER 5

  I have to give myself props. I could be a damn good P.I. I’ve been following Evie for a week and a half now and she has no idea. I’ve even gotten pretty close a couple of times. Not close enough, but still pretty close.

  Today, I’m following her as she’s walking home from the library where she's just spent an hour. So she's still a bookworm. I have to smile to myself. She always had her head buried in a novel when we were kids. She would practically skip to school on library day. She used to try to tell me about the stories she read and I could only laugh at her enthusiasm. She talked about the characters as if they were real people. Evie’s own stories were always my favorites though because each one of them was colored with love. And since they were unwritten and unrehearsed, made up on the spot, you could count on the fact that they told the truth about how she felt about you. And there was always beauty in the way Evie viewed our fucked up little world. She made me believe, too. God, I miss that. It was… it was hope, that’s what it was.

  I pretend to talk on my cell phone as I walk on the other side of the street, several feet behind her. I watch her as she speeds up and walks right past her apartment building. What the hell? She rounds the corner at the end of her block and I can’t see her any longer as her apartment building goes all the way to the corner and blocks the view of the street she’s turned on to.

  I wait as a couple cars drive down the street and then cross behind them, picking up my pace slightly. I stop at the corner and look around the building. When I don’t see her, I turn the corner and walk halfway down the block. She’s completely disappeared. Where the he –

  "It’s impolite to stalk strangers!"

  I suck in a breath and whirl around at the female voice and there she is, Evie, standing right in front of me. "Jesus! You scared the shit out of me!" I breathe out. Holy fucking shit.

  "I scared you?" she says, glaring at me. God, she’s insanely beautiful. I almost fall to my knees right in front of her. Get it together asshole. She already thinks you’re some kind of demented stalker, which, come to think of it, you are. Shit.

  "You're the one following me like a creeper," she says, cocking her head to the side. "By the way, pointer, if you're going to stalk someone, you should try to be a little less obvious about it. For instance," she sweeps her hand in my direction indicating all of me, "Standing in the street gawking at your victim tends to be a giveaway." She narrows her eyes.

  I hear what she’s saying, half registering it, watching her lips move and knowing that I’ll be expected to reply at some point, but the blood rushing through my brain is making everything except her seem very far away. My thoughts are all jumbled and my skin feels prickly. Fucking A, I’m not ready for this.

  I stare at her for several seconds, trying desperately to collect myself. She doesn’t recognize me. Thank God. Fuck! No, this is good. No, this is bad, very, very bad.

  She puts her hands on her hips and my eyes follow her movements. "Don't despair though. I'm sure with some study, you could get better. There might be an instructional video or something you could pick up… maybe a book on the subject, Creepy Stalker for Dummies?" She raises one finely arched eyebrow.

  Her words register and I realize that she’s mocking me. I deserve it, obviously. I also realize that she’s probably known I was following her for quite some time. I really and truly thought I was being discreet. This strikes me as funny and I burst out laughing. "Well, holy hell, you really are something aren’t you?" I love it though. I love that she’s feisty and funny. And being able to laugh at myself feels good.

  I see her eyes widen slightly and her lips part as she stares at me, not saying a word. I’m desperate to know what she’s thinking. She’s sizing me up but there isn’t a look of recognition in her eyes. She definitely doesn’t know who I am. I knew there was a chance she wouldn’t. I look different than I did when I was fifteen. A lot different. But still, something inside me quietly dies and I steel myself against the hurt.

  After a minute, she says quietly, "Okay, well, the gig is up. Why are you following me?"

  My blood runs cold. I need time. I need to think. I run my hand through my hair, buying a minute, and look up at her. "I’ve been that obvious, huh?"

  I take a step toward her and she takes a step back. "I’m not going to hurt you," I say. She doesn’t respond. But that small movement is all it takes. That’s it. That movement hits me like ice water, fear sliding through my gut. I’ll do anything to keep her from backing away from me.

  "Yes, you've been THAT obvious. Enough games. I want to know why you're following me."

  I pause for the briefest of seconds, panic coursing through my veins, but before I can really even think about it, the words, "I knew Leo. He asked me to check on you," pour from my lips. I lie. And now there’s no turning back.

  **********

  I watch as her eyes flare and she jerks back slightly and then freezes. "What?" she says, her voice cracking. But then I see her immediately gather herself. She’s unhappy about her own reaction. I’m not sure what to make of this. "What do you mean you knew Leo?" she asks, her words strong and even now. She’s gathered herself from her initial reaction. I don’t know if this means that her first feeling was one of nothing more than surprise and she was able to quickly shake it off? Or if her reaction was something stronger than that, and she doesn’t want me to know.

  I’m all off balance, emotions slamming in to me too quickly to scrutinize, the feeling that I’ve just committed an epic fail forefront in my mind. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Can I freeze time and take a minute?

  She turns around and walks to some porch steps directly behind her and sits down. She takes a deep breath and repeats her question, "What do you mean you knew Leo?"

  I move closer, gesturing at the step next to her and she gives a slight nod of her head. I sit down and turn toward her, leaning my elbows on my knees. Her face is blank and she’s staring just beyond me, into space. Jesus, this feels beyond shitty. Now I’m going to have to expand on my lie and I feel like a fucking douchebag. But my other choice is to expand on the truth, including Lauren, and no, I’m not ready for that. I know in my heart that if I wasn’t ready to tell Evie the truth, the right thing would have been to walk away once I saw she was doing fine. But the thought of walking away from her again is unfathomable to me, even now that I’ve gotten myself into this fucked up mess. I speak slowly, picking my words carefully, trying to keep my lie as simple as possible. "Leo died in a car accident last year. We were friends, teammates in school. We all thought he might make it for a couple days, but he didn't. We visited him together and he pulled me aside and told me a little about you. He made me promise to check on you to make sure that you were okay, that you were in a good place, happy. He knew I was moving here to work for my dad's company, and that it would be easy for me to check up on you in person."

  She’s quiet for a minute before replying blankly, "I see. What exactly did Leo tell you about me?"

  Not only am I hating myself for sitting here lying, but also the fact that she seems somewhat unmoved by the fact that I just told her I died is playing serious havoc with my heart. I’m having a hard time focusing solely on her though and not my feelings of regret over my dishonesty, so my read could be off.

  "Just that he knew you in foster care and you were special to him. He said you lost touch but he'd always wondered about how your life turned out. That's really all."

  I see her face flinch very slightly and I know that was a sucky thing to say. Ho
w would I feel if someone told me that Evie casually wondered how my life had turned out, but not enough to bother ever contacting me herself? I’m trudging through a river of shit of my own making. But it’s either this or tell her the truth and watch her turn away in disgust. Either way, I’m fucked. At least this way, I’m sitting next to her on a step, memorizing her beautiful features up close and breathing in her fresh, very slightly flowery scent. God, I’m a selfish prick.

  "I moved here in June, but it took me a couple months to settle in. Then I finally had the time to dedicate to being the creepster I had promised to be." I attempt a smile, hoping like hell to make her smile too. She looks so lost.

  She offers me a small smile in return and stands up. I jump up next to her. She wipes her hands on her jean clad thighs and says quietly, "I'm sorry to hear about Leo. It doesn't sound like you know a lot about our history, but Leo is someone who… broke a promise to me. It happened a long time ago, and I don't think about him anymore. There was no reason for him to send you to check on me. If he wanted to know how my life turned out, he should have contacted me himself before… well, before.

  "All the same, it was nice of you to keep your word to your friend. And now you've done your job. Here I am, fine and dandy. Mission accomplished. Dying wish fulfilled." She smiles a small smile but it looks forced. Her words gut me and I almost physically reel back. Her indifference, feigned or not, kills.

  "By the way, who do I have the pleasure of calling my own personal, creepy stalker?" she asks.

  I find it in myself to smile, even though I’m still hurting from her previous words. "Jake Madsen." I watch her face closely for any sign of recognition. I don’t think I ever mentioned my adoptive parent’s last name but I can’t remember for sure.