“So, what is it?”
“I don’t regret the kiss, but I can’t help but wonder what could have been.”
“Could have been…?”
“Like…if things were different, would this still be what it is? Or is it just in my imagination?”
“I’m not following…”
Of course he's not—I’m not making sense. Maybe I should try another way. “Can I ask you something?”
“Certainly.”
“And I want you to be completely honest, no matter what, okay?”
“I promise.”
Taking a deep breath, I ask, “If I would have asked you out at graduation, how would you have reacted?”
“Wait,” he says, touching my arm to stop me. “You were going to ask me out?” Going to ask him out…more like did…and then didn’t.
I nod, turning away from his gaze. He lets out a breath. He knows how he would have reacted. I brace myself since I already know the answer.
“I probably would have said something to the effect of ‘Let’s be friends.’”
I stay silent a moment. “That's what I thought.” I continue walking.
“Adrienne,” he calls out as he jogs to catch up to me. “You already know I would have only been doing that to protect myself. I was afraid if I were to get into a relationship with you back then, there was a chance it could end in heartache.”
“What makes you think it would end in heartache?”
“Because…” He runs his fingers through his hair. “Because when you finally have something you’ve always wanted, you have something to lose.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember when I told you how it felt safer to not get into a serious relationship?”
“I remember.”
“Well, before I transferred to Hamilton, I was dating this girl, Lola. We had been dating for four months when she decided out of nowhere to dump me. I was devastated to say the least. I liked her a lot and I could see potential for a long-term relationship. To have it vanish like that,” he snaps his fingers, “was more than my sixteen-year-old heart could bear. It was fortunate that my family moved right after. Not only because it meant getting away from where she was, but also because of you.”
“Because of me? Wait,” I say, holding out my hand. “So, you did like me back then?”
He laughs. “Adrienne, I’ve liked you since the moment I laid eyes on you. I always looked forward to seeing you and talking to you. Whenever I couldn’t be around you, it sucked. I wanted to be with you all the time, yet I was afraid to be heartbroken again by someone I cared so deeply about. Hence, the meaningless relationships that led nowhere. Then you made that comment about how you need to make the choice to either say nothing or speak up. Take a risk.” He lets out a long breath. “This summer, after everything that has happened, you have been there for me in ways I never imagined a person could be. I knew that you cared about me the way I did about you. It didn’t seem like such a risk once I knew.”
“That’s why you kissed me, because it didn’t feel like a risk?”
“No. I kissed you because you saved my life.”
I stop, taken aback. “What?”
He looks down at his feet. “That day at the cemetery…you saved my life.”
“How?”
“Do you remember when we found the bottle of vodka in my dad’s office?” I nod. He closes his eyes and says, “My mom handed it off to me to pour down the sink. I intended to do so but, for some reason, I was possessed to keep it. I hid it in my room…and I had it in my jacket pocket when you came. I wanted so much to just take it out and drink it all. Numb the pain. Ease the ache.”
My heart drops into my stomach and encases me in a suspended state. If he had the vodka in his pocket that day…when he told me to leave…and I left…when he was giving up…what else was there for him to do…but to…
He says softly, “Then you came. All I could see was us. You make me feel alive. I wanted to let go of that pain, that ache, and move on…with you in my life.”
I can barely breathe at his admission. Everything I thought I knew, I didn’t. Everything I thought I could see, I couldn’t. Everything I thought was the reason was never the reason. Things were not falling apart because I asked him for something more.
It was because I ran away.
I have been wasting all this time questioning his feelings. If I meant that much to him, why would he turn me down? The question I should have been asking…
If he meant that much to me, why did I run away?
“Adrienne?” Chevy’s voice breaks me out of my trance. I look up at him. “Why does it matter what I would have said then? Just because I might not have accepted at that moment doesn’t mean I’m not accepting right now.” He carefully brushes my cheek with his fingers. He murmurs, “Do you doubt my affection for you?”
I feel a thrill at the wording in his question and shiver. “No,” I whisper. “I don’t.”
“Then, why did you avoid me?”
I look down and bite my lip. “Everything else in my life was going wrong—everything—and then we happened and I…well, I panicked. If the rest of my life was falling apart…I was afraid that we would fall apart and I would be left with nothing.”
He reaches for my hand. “Whatever happened to taking a risk?” I stare at his hand in mine, and then back into his eyes. “Do you think it was easy for me to take the risk?” I shake my head no. “Then why does it matter?”
He wants a real answer—an honest answer. I let out a sigh. “Maybe…maybe it doesn’t matter.” Maybe it doesn’t. I was not able to keep John alive but I preserved something important between his family that was not there before. Maybe I am over-thinking. No. I am over-thinking. “Not now.”
“Why not?”
If I would have told him no in the cemetery that day when he told me to go away, perhaps all the mistakes that led to that moment could have vanished. Perhaps we could be here in a similar moment entangled in a different kind of predicament that would be easy to overcome. Perhaps we would have kissed and nothing would have tampered with the importance of that moment because nothing else would have mattered anymore. Maybe it was in my control all along. If I would have stood there by his side instead of running away again, I could have helped him. I let my pride get the better of me. We could still be here, in this moment.
We are in this moment. Nothing else matters anymore.
I smile and say, “Because we’re here now.”
He smiles. “Are we?”
“Maybe I was just terrified of my heart shattering at the possibility of losing the love of my life.”
He grins. “That makes two of us.” I open my mouth to say something, but he cuts me off with a finger to my lips. “You are right. Here we are.”
I spent years wishing for this. I spent years hoping for this.
And here it is.
I take a step closer to him and, cupping his face, press my lips to his. He wraps his arms around me and, smiling against my lips, whispers, “So, where do we go from here?”
“Now that I’m with you, anywhere.”
Epilogue
One year later
There are days where I imagine fate continuously circling us back to the moments we need to change until we get it right. We keep repeating history while being frozen in space, waiting for it to end so that we can move on. Only, in normal circumstances, we are not aware of it. I'm not one of those normal circumstances. I'm the one that got a true second chance, one where I had to learn from the mistakes rather than roll the dice. Of course, this is just something my imagination conjured up to make sense of that summer.