One Last Chance (10 page)

She made a face at him. “Look, I look good in this dress and I cannot say that often about anything I wear. So I’m staying in it for the rest of the night.” She paused. “And we’re not going anywhere.”

“Are you not hungry?”

She sighed and slid her card into the reader on the door. “Foolish man.”

She pushed open the door, put her hand on the small of his back and propelled him forward.

A small table sat in the middle of the room, covered with a white table cloth. Full plates with food were on either side.

“It looks like our table from the dining room,” he said, disbelieving.

“That’s because it is,” she said, triumphantly. “The guy who vouched for you? I had a little conversation with him when you insisted on going to use the bathroom to clean up your face before we went down to see the doctor. He got it done.”

“Wow,” was all Griffin could manage.

She limped over to the table and took her seat. “Are you coming?”

He shook his head, laughed and sat across from her. “You are something else.”

“Yeah, I really am,” she said, grinning, obviously pleased that she’d surprised him. “But this does come with a price.”

“Uh-oh.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Uh-oh.”

He wanted to kick the table out of the way, pick her up and throw her on the bed and kiss her until she couldn’t breathe. “What’s the price?”

She rested her elbows next to her plate and tented her fingers beneath her chin. “I want to know why.”

“Why what?”

She swallowed, stared at her fingers for a moment, then at him. “I want to know why you broke up with me in high school.”

Griffin reached for the bottle of wine on the table and poured.

Claire watched him. “Or not.”

He shook his head. She was just as impatient as ever. He was going to tell her. But he needed a drink to steady his nerves. And to give him courage.

They’d never talked after the Prom fiasco. He’d broken up with her and two weeks later, they’d graduated. She’d walked out of his life. Forever. And he’d missed her ever since.

“Give me a minute.” He uncorked the bottle and poured the merlot into the empty wine glasses.

He handed her a glass. “First,” he said. “A toast.”

“Another one?” she asked.

“You can’t ever have too many toasts.” He held his glass up and looked at her. “To new beginnings.”

Her brow furrowed but she clinked her glass against his and took a small sip.

And waited.

“OK,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “Where do I start?”

“Well, since we just toasted new beginnings, I’d say that’s a good place to start. You know, the beginning.”

He nodded. “Right. OK.”

He took a deep breath. He didn’t know why he was so nervous. He felt like some punk high-school kid, getting ready to ask out the girl of his dreams. He smiled at the analogy. Because here he was, sitting with the girl of his dreams. And she had no idea that’s what she’d been to him. What she still was.

“Did you know I had a crush on you in high school?” he asked.

“A crush?” She thought for a minute. “No. We dated, Griffin. Remember?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, I remember. But did you know I had a crush on you? Like, before we dated?”

She shook her head. “You did not. You never even looked at me.”

“I looked at you all the time.”

“No, you didn’t. You
teased
me all the time.”

He sipped his wine, letting the alcohol touch his cuts, sting them a little. “I teased you because I liked you.”

She considered this. “Why?” she finally asked.

“Why did I like you?”

“Yes.”

He lifted one of the lids from the dishes and a rush of steam escaped. A plate of sauteed shrimp, drenched in butter, resting on a bed of rice. He picked up the platter and handed it to Claire.

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t really like seafood.”

“And seafood probably doesn’t really like you.” He scooped a piece of shrimp with a large spoon and set it on her plate. “Try it.”

Tentatively, she picked up the shrimp. “How do I eat this? Just pop the whole thing in my mouth?”

He smiled at her naivete and marveled at how her lips pouted in the shape of an O as she contemplated  it. “No. Hold it by the tail and bite off a piece. Chew. Swallow. Repeat. But only if you like it.”

She narrowed her eyes at him as she took a bite. He watched with satisfaction as her expression changed.

“OK,” she said after she swallowed. “That is good. Really good.”

He smiled. “Told you.”

She took another tiny bite. “Yep. You did. Now tell me why you liked me.”

For a million reasons, he thought. The way you listened when I talked. The way you smiled at me, like I was the only person in the room. The way you took the jokes and the teases and gave them back ten-fold. The way your eyes glittered when you spoke about things you cared about, and how I wished over and over they’d sparkled like that when you talked about me.

But he didn’t say any of this. He didn’t want to scare her, didn’t want to overwhelm her. He needed to start small. “Initially? I thought you were hot.”

Her cheeks flushed.

“Look, I was a high school boy,” he said, grinning at her. “Hot girls got my attention. I looked at you across the room and I thought you were really attractive.”

She looked away from him.

“And then, when we got to be friends, you made me laugh,” he explained. “You talked to me. And not like you were just killing time.”

“You talked to everyone,” she said. “You weren’t exactly a wallflower.”

“Maybe. But it felt different when I talked to you.”

She picked at the food with her fork, but didn’t say anything.

“But you always had a boyfriend,” Griffin said. “Always.”

“They weren’t serious.”

“Didn’t matter,” he said. “You were with someone. And they were different than me.”

“Different how?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. They didn’t go to St. Andrew’s, you know?”

She ran her finger along the rim of her wineglass. “No. A lot of them were in college.”

“Exactly,” Griffin said. “So, I just figured we were friends and that was it. Didn’t keep me from liking you, but I wasn’t going to put myself out there, either. Plus, I figured if I asked you out, it would just screw up the friendship and believe it or not, I really cared about the friendship. I liked seeing you every day. That mattered to me.”

“It mattered to me, too,” she said, her voice a little quieter. “But then you finally asked me out. Why?”

“You were free,” I said. “You weren’t dating anyone.”

“And that was it? I just needed to not have a boyfriend?  What about all the worries about ruining the friendship?”

He leaned back in the chair. “I figured it was either do or die. Year was winding down. It was my shot. And I’m pretty sure you wore a skirt that day and I couldn’t stop looking at your legs.” He smiled. “So I decided to take a risk.”

She smiled, but shook her head. He knew she didn’t like hearing complimentary things about herself. She’d never been comfortable with it and he’d always wondered why. He wanted her to see what he saw.

“And you said yes,” he said. “And I think I was sky high the rest of the day. Couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t wait to get to the weekend to actually go out with you. But then I went into panic mode, trying to decide what we should do.”

“Oh, please,” she said, frowning. “You don’t have a panic mode.”

“Oh, I do and I did,” he countered. “Maybe I didn’t show it to you, but trust me. I was totally worried I’d bomb.”

She stared across the table at him and his heart fluttered. How had he gone ten years without seeing those eyes?

“You didn’t bomb,” she said.

“Best first date ever,” he said, nodding. “Ever. Nothing’s ever even come close.”

She hesitated. “For me, too.”

“And the kiss at your door?” He took a deep breath. “As good as the date was, the kiss blew it out of the water.”

She nodded.

He emptied his glass of wine, the alcohol infusing him with more courage. “And I was hooked, Claire. Like…hooked. I went home that night buzzing. Couldn’t wait to see you at school. Couldn’t wait to hold your hand. Couldn’t wait to touch you. You consumed me.”

“Well, clearly I didn’t consume you that much,” she said.

“How do you figure?”

She didn’t say anything and Griffin continued. “What about that night at–?”

Claire cut him off. “I remember.”

Griffin remembered, too. The night at the beach had been seared into his memory. Hell, into his heart, into his soul.

“OK, good.” He smiled at her. “I was going to offer details. You know, in case you’d forgotten.”

Her face colored. “I remember,” she repeated.

He poured another glass of wine. He sipped it as he watched her. She was looking down, her eyes focused on the fork twining a path through the bed of rice on her plate.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked quietly.

She looked up. Her eyes were moistened with the unmistakable sign of tears.

“What?” he asked, alarmed.

“If you liked me that much,” she said. “If I
…
consumed you, then why did you do it? Why did you break up with me?”

He waited a long moment before he answered. “Because I was stupid.”

Claire looked back at her plate. She knew if she raised her eyes again, the dam would burst. Her heart was already in her throat, her pulse already hammering like she’d just sprinted a mile.

She hated that he could do this to her. It was like she’d walked through some magic portal that had transported her ten years into the past. She saw herself in her room, the phone clutched to her ear, listening to him say the words she never thought she’d hear from him. That they were done.

“Stupid isn’t the right word, maybe,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “I mean, I was stupid. I’m not saying I wasn’t. But I was stupid about a lot of things. With you it was different.”

He took a deep breath. He looked physically uncomfortable to her. Tension in his shoulders. Lines in his forehead. Eyes all over the place. Good. He deserved to be uncomfortable. Because she’d been a lot more than uncomfortable when he’d called that night ten years before.

“I was scared,” he said.

That was not what she was expecting to hear. “Scared?”

He bit his lip and nodded. “I know that sounds dumb and maybe you won’t believe me. But I was scared.”

She’d always believed every word he said, but she kept her mouth closed. She wanted to hear what he had to say. It had haunted her for ten years, maybe in a bigger way than it should’ve, but it was what it was. And now was the moment of truth.

“I knew the night we kissed,” he said. “And I knew the night at the beach. The way I felt about you? Way different than I’d ever felt about anyone else. Like apples and car batteries. I had nothing to compare it to.”

She could feel herself being pulled in by his words. She didn’t want to be, but the syllables were like gravity.

“And all I could think was that you were going to dump me,” he said, grimacing. “That I wasn’t like the other guys that you dated, that I wouldn’t measure up, that I was just filler.”

“Filler for what?” she asked, incredulous. “Jesus, Griffin. You were popular. Girls liked you. You were an athlete. Everyone liked you.”

“But I didn’t know if
you
did,” he said, staring at her. “I didn’t know. I thought maybe you were being nice to me, just said yes because I asked. A fling, whatever. I felt way out of my league.”

She shook her head. She just didn’t see how he could’ve thought that. If anyone felt that way, it was her. She’d watched him date other girls and figured he’d only seen her as a friend and was just stunned when he finally asked her out.

“And I just got it in my head that you were going to crush me,” he said. “That you were going to break my heart. And I’d never been in that spot before. I panicked.” He shrugged. “I wish I had a better explanation, but I panicked. I didn’t want to be hurt and I knew hearing you telling me goodbye would hurt.”

“Probably like it did for me to hear it,” she said.

His shoulders stiffened. “Yeah. Probably.”

She hadn’t said it to be mean or to punish him. But she remembered how much it hurt. A punch and a kick all wrapped up in one. The feeling had never left her. He had never left her.

“So I chickened out,” Griffin said. “I just figured I’d get it over with before you had a chance to do it to me. Typical high-school male bullshit. Everything I didn’t want to be. I felt sick on the phone with you. Felt sick after. Felt sick the night of the Prom.” He exhaled. “It’s never left me, Claire. It’s always stayed with me. I’d give anything to go back in time and do it over again. Because seeing you here the last couple of days? Spending time with you?” He chewed on his lip for a moment. “Man, I am right back where I used to be. How I felt about you. And the crazy thing? I knew it would be like this.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “It’s why I signed up for this stupid thing.”