What if second chances come a second time?
Long ago, Hannah and Jonah called it quits. Long ago, Hannah stopped trying to make things work, and Jonah let her go. Long ago, Jonah mailed back all of Hannah's stuff from his apartment, and Hannah blocke...
Freddie's a good friend of mine. I met him at my first college party the night before my actual first day at college. The next morning, in class, I saw him sitting two rows ahead of me and when spoke again, we realized we were planning to declare the same major. We didn't become instant friends—I had Tammy and I also formed a small circle of friends with two girls whom I mutually had nearly all the same classes with—but I seemed to always cross paths with him, from getting assigned in the small study group for a few of our classes together to having his best friend date my roommate.
The inevitable happened, of course, with how intensely we seemed to always see each other every day. We didn't deny the building attraction between us, and he didn't hesitate to pursue me. I, having been single for a few months but not seriously looking for any more complications in my life, humored him and his attempts to woo me. We casually dated for a while, just for fun, until the attraction dries out. We broke up on good terms and he remained one of my best friends.
Sometimes we still joke around about it—with us being exes and in the same group of friends who hang around together all the time. He'd still flirt with me, but I know he's just still playing it up for laughs.
I love that things aren't awkward between us, that we didn't break our friendship when we broke up. Freddie is my safe place. I'd even say he's my best friend here. I love him, but I'm not in love with him. He told me he felt the same way about me too, when we finally broke up.
There isn't anything like sparks when he touches me, or the stars that explode when I close my eyes as he kisses me. I haven't felt anything like that again, not once since him.
I'll probably never feel that way again with anyone else.
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After the presentation, I turn my phone back on and see 6 missed calls from my brother, Tony.
My brother's wedding day is coming along soon. He's planning a winter wedding—which is just shy of two months away from now. He picked the season for sentimental reasons and chose the date specifically because that was the same day that he first met his fiancée, Kate, eight years ago.
They met at a record store while he was picking out a birthday gift for me. She was working there, part-time, and they ended up exchanging numbers after she rang up his purchase. They were friends first, before he finally decided to ask her out. Kate, having already fallen for him at first sight, didn't take long to say yes. They'd been together since.
My brother and I had a complicated relationship. He and I were inseparable while I was younger. He was my best friend. He was my rock and my everything. Then one Thanksgiving night, he got into an argument with my parents, snuck out to a party, and called me up drunk asking me to pick him up. I was only 13 at that time and could barely drive a car, but he insisted and I could never say no to my best friend, and promised myself to drive as slowly and carefully as possible. But it wasn't easy, being a young, scared girl trying to drive a car in the middle of the night, while the passenger of said car was drunk out of his mind and had been looking for a fight the whole night. Long story short, we got into an accident which put me into a coma for two weeks, and I woke up paralyzed from the waist down.
Tony, blaming himself for causing the accident, had run away from home. It didn't help that for the first few months after the accident, as I was going through intense physical therapy to learn how to walk again, I had been hysterical every time I heard his name. I didn't find out until years later, but apparently, I'd start crying and go catatonic whenever he was mentioned, and I didn't remember any of those episodes. That was also the reason why my parents basically agreed to let my brother leave, and to never mention his name around me for those months after the accident.
Anyway—long story short, Tony had run away, moved to a different town, and met the love of his life while he was purchasing a CD for my birthday. And now he's here, spamming missed calls to my phone, and I break away from my friends to deal with another one of his wedding frenzy freak-outs.
I dial his cell number, but he doesn't pick up. I stop after the third attempt, roll my eyes and slip my phone back into my bag. Maybe I should just have that lunch first, my stomach is already growling in protest. I turn around, ready to run back and re-join my friends at the café, but I'm stopped short when I crash into something warm, and tall, and breathing.
In mortification, I realize that I've accidentally knocked the water bottle out of the person I crashed into, and now the front of his shirt is damp. I'm such an idiot.
Honestly, it's giving me goddamn déjà vu and I hate it. Before I'd started dating my ex, he was known to be the school's loner who didn't talk to anybody and one day I decided to get my crush to pay attention to me. Obviously, as any other teenage girls normally do when they want their crush to talk to them, I orchestrated a scheme to make him talk to me by making him hate me. Which started with running into him on purpose while I was holding a can of soda and basically drenching the front of his shirt. You know, accidentally. But on purpose.
I keep saying sorry with my eyes focused on the damp shirt of the guy standing next to me. I'm about to dig into my bag for some Kleenex when he speaks, and my breath stops at my throat.
"It's alright—it's just water."
That voice... I haven't heard it in over one year, but there's no mistaking whose it is. I haven't been able to get that voice out of my head. I couldn't forget it if I tried. But I refuse to believe it. Maybe I'm starting to hallucinate his presence. Maybe I'm clinically wrong in the head.
In a nearly out-of-body experience, I feel my neck slowly craning up. I fear it, I fear death. It's coming to me, I'm already feeling my heart stop. But in that moment, my once-stopped heart began frantically beating again, irregular and rapid and crazy. My eyes are as wide as they can get when I finally look up. There's no way that my eyes can fool me like this. Not this vivid. Not this realistic. I think I want to vomit, I'm gasping like fish out of water, I'm pretty sure I look crazy.
