Taking Chances

Chapter One

"Yes mom, I made sure to lock the door before I left this morning. No, I didn't leave my straightener plugged up........is that it.....? I know, I gotta go. I'll talk to you next week........I love you too. Bye."

If there was one thing that Andrea Hamilton was good at, it was talking. She could talk forever about the smallest things but bring life to them in such a way that you just had to listen. Today was Friday and as usual she had called her daughter, Normani, just to check in on her as she did every Friday night. This routine had been going strong for the last six months since Normani left Houston to attend Boston University and it showed no signs of stopping.

As Normani bid her mother farewell, she began to skim through her large purse in search of her keys. She had less than an hour to get changed, get some food in her system and wrap her hair if she wanted to be ready to lay on the couch and watch Bring It!. Moments later, wrapped up in her Apple headphones were her keys found. Not bothering to untangle them, she stepped across the plush floor runner up to her front door. As her hand made its way to the top bolt lock, Normani sensed that something was awry. The front door to her apartment was open to a crack; in fact the lock had been picked. Normani tapped the door slightly, letting it swing to a full open, listening for any sounds that weren't of her norm.

"Look, I know someone's in here so why don't you just come out and we can talk about this." Normani raised her voice enough to try and push the nervous lump in her throat back down.

She paused and waited for a reply. When she received nothing, she laid her belongings on the kitchen counter and headed past her living room into her back bedroom, her heels clicking on the freshly waxed hardwood floor. Hopefully she could reach the .38 she had tucked behind her toilet, before her intruder showed his face.

"You always forget to unplug your straightener when you leave the house. I see that much hasn't changed." Normani's heart jumped, startled by the raspy voice coming out of her dark living room. She was reaching down the left side of the toilet bowl for her weapon when she saw that her straightener had been unplugged and stowed away in its holder on top of her bathroom sink. Once the initial surprise subsided, everything began to fall together in her mind. The straightener. The picked lock. That tell tale raspy voice.

It was her. She was back.

Slowly, Normani turned around, retreating to the entrance of her home. Her stomach was fluttering, half with fear and the other with a longing desire to see her home invader. Seeing her front door still wide open, she thought about running out the door and down those three flights of stairs out into the cold Boston rain to escape the impending bittersweet reunion. But she dismissed the thought, slamming it away with the door.

"Lauren why are you in my apartment ?" Leaning up against the brass door, Normani took several deep breaths after stating her question, trying to prepare herself for the conversation she had just initiated.

"Jeez. I leave for two years and this is how you treat me when I come back?"

Lauren stood up from the ottoman where she had been laying with a cut of a cigarette hanging from her bruised pink lips. "No 'Hi Laur, how are you?' or 'Hey, how's it going?' ? Shit." She took two more drags from her cigarette before flicking it into the kitchen sink with skill.

Normani flicked on the living room light, moving closer to Lauren to get a better look at her former friend. It really had been two years since she had seen her, and had it not been for her green eyes and long black hair, her face would be almost unrecognizable to her loved ones. The fullness that once held her face was now nothing but thin dry skin attached to deep sunken bags beneath her still radiant eyes. Normani's eyes trailed down to Lauren's figure which appeared to have suffered nothing more than a small weight loss, but nothing too significant. She was cloaked in a black and red Nirvana T-shirt, black skinny jeans, floral burgundy based Doc Martens and a oversized grey sweater draped over her arms. All in all, she still looked great but a bit sleep deprived to say the least.