At the door to an old building sandwiched between a camera store and wow — another camera store, Meg rang the buzzer for the second time and turned to head back to the subway.
Chase wasn't home.
It was nearly dark. She couldn't hang around too much longer. She'd let Bailey dress her up and drive her to the train station, and traveled all the way to the city for nothing. She wiped a bead of sweat from the back of her neck and started walking, oblivious to the messenger bike that — with a squeal of hand brakes — narrowly missed plowing into a parked car.
"Megan? Megan, is that you?" A familiar voice shouted.
She spun, found Chase in the street, bright yellow helmet on his head, standing beside a bike. His jaw dropped. So did the bike.
He left the bike where it fell and ran, pure joy in his mystical eyes. "Megan!"
She took a few steps toward him, stopping to clutch an iron rail in front of the building. She smiled his smile and never bothered to hide it and it almost hurt, it felt so good. When he reached her, he scooped her up in his arms, and just held her, held tight. "Megan. What the hell are you doing here? Why are you wearing a dress?"
She pulled back — not away — just far enough to look up at him and try to understand the temper that heated his words. "Um."
"You here for me?" He pulled back, dropped his hands.
"I'm here for me. I think."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Chase, I'm so sorry. For— for not trusting you and not talking to you and for — for all of it."
He crossed his arms over his chest. "We should talk," he said after a long moment. The smile faded from her lips but she nodded.
"Come on." He retrieved his bike, led her through his door, and walked to the elevator. They rode in silence to the eighth floor, tension so thick it practically had its own heart beat. He did not look at her. Finally, the doors slid open. He pushed the bike to the third door on the right, opened it, and stood aside to let her go first.
She stepped into a narrow hall that led from the front door to the living room, where the smell of old pizza lingered. He propped the bike on a rack and removed the helmet. She moved to the window, stared down. "Nice view."
He flopped onto a second-hand sofa covered in threadbare brown fabric pushed up against the short wall. "The one from my room back home was better. I used to watch you, you know. All the time." He suddenly blurted.
She spun, the blue skirt swishing around her legs. "Really?"
He ran his hands through sweaty hair and then wiped his palms down his bike shorts. "It's— um— how I knew you hurt your hand."
She flexed it and a long purple scar winked at him.
"I love to watch you paint. It's like… like someone kicked you into high gear. You're awake, you're moving, but damn, when you paint, you're—" He spread his hands, unable to find the word.
"Alive." She finally supplied and then laughed.
"What?"
She waved a hand. "It's nothing, just thinking how Bailey would go all gooey at that. She'd have said, 'Oh my God he's just like Edward!' and I would have rolled my eyes or something."
He scrubbed a hand over his face that had suddenly gone red but didn't say anything so Meg lost her grin. "You must have thought I was crazy, painting you all the time."
Slowly, he shook his head and smiled. "No. All I saw were eyes, hands, a jaw. I was jealous. I wanted to be what got you fired up like that. And then, the night you cut you hand, I found out I was. I thought I had it made." The grin faded when he shook his head and added, "I was wrong."
She moved to sit beside him at those words but he jumped up. He crossed to the tiny kitchen, snagged a bottle of water. "You want something? Water, soda, iced tea?"
"What? Oh. No. No, thanks." This wasn't going as well as she and Bailey planned. And then she almost laughed. She put on a pretty blue dress, let Bailey smear some make-up on her face and thought what? That Chase would just heel like a trained pet? She'd hurt him. Hell, she'd meant to hurt him. To drive him away. She'd always believed hard work and perseverance were the keys to success. Her heart pinched and she'd never wished to fail at something as hard as she did now. She ran her hands down her legs, felt the lump in the pocket of her dress, pulled out the folded square of paper she'd tucked inside. She held on to it for luck. For courage.
He cracked open the water bottle cap, tipped it back and gulped. "So, what do you think of our place?"
She noticed he didn't come back to the sofa. "Um, it's cleaner than I expected. How close is it to your campus?"
"A couple of subways."
It gave her a little pang whenever she thought about Chase living in Manhattan instead of in the big house behind hers. She smiled briefly. "You've got, what, three roommates?"
"Yeah. It's nice not squashing one of my brothers' toys every time I sit down." Chase hesitated a moment and sat back down, settling against the cushions only to wince and immediately straighten up. He stuffed his hand between the cushions and pulled it back, holding the TV remote control. His face went crimson and she laughed but he didn't. "How'd you get here anyway?"
"Bailey. Um, she had your address, dropped me off at the train station. Then I took a subway."
He choked on his water. "You took the subway dressed like that? Which one?"
"Uh," she tried to remember. "I think the number six train."
He shut his eyes and shook his head. "I'll get you a cab back to Penn Station. You're not walking around in the dark like that." He put the water bottle on the floor, froze when he saw the paper clutched in her fist. His eyes shot to hers, held there. "You…is that…you kept this?" He took the paper, unfolded the sketch he'd done of them at I-CON. "Why?"
He smiled and it was real and whatever kept pinching her heart finally let go. "I was wrong, Chase." She blurted. His eyes popped, a muscle in his jaw twitched. "I was so wrong."
He didn't say anything so she tried harder. "Have you ever imagined not having your dad?"
Her question made him pale. It was a long time before he spoke. "I don't know if imagining that does any good, you know? I've had my dad my whole life. You haven't. I don't know if anybody can really understand something like that unless you live it."
She nodded, staring at her hands. "For as long as I can remember, he used to tell me to have a plan for the future. It was pretty scary sometimes. I was like, four, maybe five years old and he'd be telling me how short life is and if I didn't have a plan, it would be over before I knew it." She tugged the skirt over her knees, abruptly cold. "I didn't even know what a plan was let alone how to make one. So instead of bedtime stories, I got lessons on the future."
Something passed over his eyes. She thought it was sympathy and continued.
"He told me how important it was to get good grades and go to college and get a degree — how important it was to be able to take care of myself so I'd never have to worry about money. He told me not to let anything or anybody sway me from my plan. And I didn't. Not until you."
He twitched beside her. His legs bounced and for a minute, she thought he was about to run. Instead, he reached over, took her hand and squeezed. She clutched it like she had the night in the hospital. "When I was little, I thought he was teaching me all about plans because he loved me." Her voice broke. He shifted closer. "But the truth is, he blamed me."
He made a sound of protest but she cut him off.
"I was an accident. I knocked all his plans off course. Then, he lost his job and the money problems just exploded. Everything that happened, everything that went wrong — it was all my fault. The night before he shot himself, I heard him arguing with my mother. He was screaming, 'I told you I never wanted kids!'"
She dropped his hand and covered her ears. "I swear that was louder than the gun shot."
Chase drew his hand back, put it on top of his thigh and stared at the dingy carpet. "You're not five years old anymore, Megan. People have kids they didn't plan all the time and don't kill themselves. He was sick. It had nothing to do with you. If not you, he'd have found some other reason."
She winced at his tone. "Yeah, that's what my therapist says," she murmured and his head snapped up.
"What?"
"Yeah, I'm seeing a therapist now. It was sort of Bailey's idea." She gave a tiny smile and his eyes popped.
"You and Bailey are friends again?"
She rocked her head sideways. "We're trying. We have a lot of work to do. Therapy for both of us was part of the deal — along with a fashion intervention." She waved a hand over her dress, her face burning.
"So where do I fit into this plan?"
She almost winced at his choice of words. Instead, she took a deep breath and stared him right in the eye. "Chase, the time I spent being with you was so amazing, it was like I was painting even when I wasn't. And then, when you told me about the new baby, I freaked out."
"Let me guess… this master plan you and your dad constructed… it has a spot for the 2.5 kids, dog, and white picket fence somewhere between age 30 and 35?"
Her dark eyes filled with hurt. "No. No, Chase, you don't get it. I was going to live my life alone. College, career, financial independence. No one to answer to. No one to worry about. No one to sway me from my goals. The kids, the dog, the white picket fence, the mini-van with vanity plates —"
His lips twitched into half a smile.
"All that showed up on my plan after you tucked me into your bed and made me Rice Krispies. I woke up the next day and suddenly, I was part of this big noisy family expecting me for Sunday dinner. I was scared and unbelievably touched and confused and hurt with all the Bailey crap and then, you dropped the baby news on me by asking me to run away with you and — and I couldn't stop thinking — what if it was us? What I got pregnant? Damn it, Chase, it was all… all just too much."
Chase flung himself back against the cushions and stared at her. "I don't get why you're telling me all this now. Nothing's changed."
"Uh. Yeah. It has." She retorted. "I have. Or — well — at least, I'm trying to. And that's why I'm here. I want us to be together."
That muscle in his jaw twitched again. "Megan, I don't have a plan. I don't know what I want, what I want to be. I don't know when or if I'll ever have kids. There are just so many possibilities, you know?"
She nodded once, swallowed hard and shifted. It was time to leave. Maybe she never should have come. Just as she'd finally accepted that her father's life plan was wrong, it hit her that Chase's idea of no plan wasn't much better. Bailey's last words as she dropped her off at the train station replayed in her head. Just see what happens. Let it play out. She'd done that. And supposed it was good to know one way or the other.
Even if it felt like a steel-toed kick to the gut.
"But I can promise you this. We can figure all these things out as they come." He waited a second. "Could you live with that?"
She didn't reply. Could she live with unknowns?
Instead, she stood up, held out her hand. "I want to show you something."
He didn't take the hand she offered but stood anyway. That hurt too, but she moved to the window. "Look. See that building over there?" She pointed west. "That's the dorm for The Cooper Union. That's where I'll be staying next year if I make it in." She turned, took his hand in both of hers. "But if I don't get in, I have to have a new plan."
He sighed so she squeezed his hand.
"It's pretty short. It has room for kids some day — a whole bunch of them. I didn't even know I wanted kids until I woke up in your house. I know I want to paint. I want to surround myself with art. It used to be just a hobby, just something I did to keep myself busy. Now, it's going to be my job. I don't know how yet. Artist, curator, appraiser, maybe — I have no idea. So besides Cooper Union, I'm applying to a bunch of other schools. I may end up living at home, commuting to school, or hopefully, staying right over there." She jerked her thumb at the window. "So there's a lot of wiggle room in the plan."
"That's it?" He crossed his arms, angled his head.
Meg understood that part of her plan wasn't enough for him. She lifted a shoulder and let go of his hand. It was time to get reveal the next part. "No. That's not it. There's you. You're part of the plan — I mean, if you want to be." She managed a small smile. "I don't know how we can do this if we're in different towns, but we could try."
Chase stared out at the brick facade on a building a few blocks over and said, "Binoculars."
"What?" She looked worried when he grinned.
"Nothing. Come on." He grabbed her hand, dragged her to the bedroom. He shoved a pile of dirty clothes off a metal folding chair by an ancient desk, sat down, and logged into Facebook. She watched him click his profile, tap a few keys. Finally, he looked up at Megan and said, "Okay. You sure about this?"
She stared into enchanting green eyes and swallowed once. "Told you, I'm making this up as I go."
"I like this plan." Chase clicked Save and smiled when his status updated.
Chase Gallagher is in a relationship with Megan Farrell
Forty miles away, Bailey's cell phone buzzed. She unlocked it, saw a new Facebook update from Chase and clicked it.
"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!" She did a little chair dance and this time, Gran didn't shout at her to stop.