Because You're Different ✔

68. Chance

Nathan

The air was hot and humid, making me sweat intensively for the second time today. While on the plane it'd reeked of fear, it was now a saltier, slightly more tolerable smell. The driver was humming along to an old Spanish song coming from the crackling speaker on the one side of the car, like the heat didn't bother him one bit. He claimed the AC was broken — if I wanted to cool off, I would have to roll down the window, he'd said.

The foul breeze hitting my face, laced with exhaust fumes and rotting garbage, was only a slightly better alternative than suffering through the heat. April in New York. I'd only been there twice before and had never liked it much. Too crowded. I couldn't imagine June willingly living here, with the endless streams of people not paying attention to anyone but themselves. Or maybe she appreciated the anonymity of it. Maybe in this city, she could walk around without people staring and pointing at her.

"We're here."

The car had stopped abruptly, parking at the side of the road. We'd landed in a street with narrow houses, all with a tiny stroke of fenced-off front yards attached. Most of them were neat and in good repair, some with a touch of color here and there. Every few feet, a tree stretched out its branches to the sky, brightening up the grey of the concrete pavement and the bad road. Kids chased each other and played hopscotch, while their family members hang about, animatedly talking to each other, most of them with a skin like June's or darker. It didn't seem like the worst of neighborhoods. I could see how growing up here could be fun, never alone, always having someone to look out for you.

"It's here on the left. With the orange door."

There was no need to have told me that. My heart skipping a beat had been enough.

Because there, sitting on the front steps with another girl, was June.

She was laughing about something, her shoulders shaking, her hands relaxed in her lap. Her hair was bound together in a braid, dangling in front of her. From here, it was impossible to see if the little lights were there, but I imagined they were, and that if I just stepped out to get closer, I would get to see them.

The girl next to her was Valentina, looking all grown-up, putting her arm around her cousin and saying something in her ear that made her shriek louder.

To the left, a bulky guy grinned down at them, someone I assumed to be David, her other cousin who I'd only ever seen in pictures. He was the big, tough type, with a long denim jacket and muscular arms, casually leaning against the iron fence as he told jokes to the two at his feet.

I released a breath I hadn't been aware of holding. She was fine. She was doing okay. She wasn't alone, and she was still able to smile. The death of her father hadn't completely destroyed her, like I'd been afraid it might have.

Of course not. She was strong. Stronger than I'd ever been.

With a bitter taste in my mouth, I remembered saying to her that we were both fighters, her and me, that we did what we had to do, never gave up. Some bullshit. If I had been a fighter, I wouldn't be a lawyer now. If I had been a fighter, it wouldn't have taken me ages to realize what she meant to me. If I had been a fighter, it would've been me sitting with her, making her laugh.

I could live up to the name right this moment. Get out of the car, walk up to her, and confess my love for her or some shit like that.

But who would I be fighting for, if I did that?

Her, or me? The both of us?

I loved her.

But would it be fair to come clean? Drop that on her, when she appeared to have finally retrieved some peace? Or would it be selfish? A selfish thing coming from a selfish guy who very selfishly had kissed her, and selfishly left her by herself to save his own ass. She was only seventeen, for god's sake, and I put her through all of that, and then she also lost her dad, the one person in the whole wide world who meant the most to her. He died, while I was busy saving my reputation, too confused to see what kind of golden prize was right in front of me.