AGAIN

Chapter Two: Looking Back

Home.

Nicole still can't believe that she did it. She was back in Florida for the first time since she left five years ago.

God knows she had a lot of opportunities before to come back but she avoided it like a plague to the point of refusal. There were just way too many memories that were too painful to remember.

That was why she surprised herself when she made the decision to come back. Of all the places she would try to begin yet another new life, she still, for the life of her, couldn't understand why she decided to go back to Orlando.

Well, she did know the reason but she doesn't understand it at all.

She was sure that she could no longer stay in Argentina. She stayed there because her husband, Enrique, was there. But now that he's gone, taken too soon by a tragic, heart breaking car accident caused by a drunk driver, she knew she wanted to go back to the United States.

Florida has always been on the table since the US headquarters of Enrique's company, De Silva Corporation, was located in Miami and they also owned real estate properties there. But she tried to avoid it, considering other cities, illogical as it may seem, like the mountains of Montana, suburbs of Pennsylvania or New York's busy city.

In other words, anywhere but near her past.

And then she saw Liam.

Then all of a sudden, a part of her wanted the life she once knew , the life she had left behind, back.

It scared her that she even considered it, thinking how absurd it was, she has after all spent the past five years trying to forget, to move on.

Yet here she was, back in the US, back in Florida, in a little suburb in Orlando.

Orlando!

What the hell was she thinking?

Why couldn't she have just decided on Miami where she could at least be three and a half hours away safer.

Safe from what?

Safe from whom, actually - from the man who broke her heart.

Christopher Allan Bennett.

=====================

Nicole grow up in foster care, moving from one family to another since she was baby. Her biological parents, she was told, were practically babies too when they had her that they had to give her up. She was lucky that she had been placed with good families and was thankful to have been part of her life even if it was only temporary.

She was determined to make  something with her life that she worked very hard and persevered, and was rewarded with a full scholarship ride to become a teacher  at the University of Central Florida.

It was there that she met Chris. 

They met in the middle of October of her sophomore year. Helena, her roommate, took her to a birthday party for  one of her friends in her theater class. And as it turned out, the party was for Chris' twentieth birthday.

Nicole wasn't exactly sure as to what it was that made her fall in love with Chris because she could probably name a hundred and one - his childish grin that she was instantly attracted to or maybe those brown eyes that looked at her like she was the most beautiful person in the world.

It could also be how he relentlessly pursued her after they met and sang cheesy love songs to her (and her answering machine) until she finally agreed to go out with him. It may be how he patiently sat through a chick flick during their first date even though he so wanted to see the new sci-fi movie at the IMAX theater just because she would rather see the old Julia Roberts film at the local drive in. Or how his lips sent her into a whirlwind of emotions that she had never felt before the first time they kissed.