Again: A Second Chance Romance

by Nikki Chase

  “Stay away from that whole family,” Mom repeats like a broken record.

  “Yes, Mom. I told you. The wedding is over, and I won’t see them again tomorrow. I’ll be driving back to San Francisco and coming home, okay?”

  The line stays silent.

  “Mom . . . I’m coming home tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay,” she finally says.

  “I’m hanging up now and going to sleep because it’s going to be a long drive tomorrow. You should do the same, too. It’s late.”

  “Okay,” she says again. “Come home quickly, A.”

  “I will. Good night, Mom.”

  “Good night,” she says, almost as a reflex. She quickly adds, “And don’t talk to that whole family.”

  “I know. Bye, Mom.”

  “Bye. I love you.”

  “Love you too.” I breathe a sigh of relief as I finally hang up.

  That was a difficult phone call. I think she’s fine now, although I had to end the phone call with a lie.

  I’m definitely going to see Aubrey again, seeing as we’ll be interning at the same hospital. But, I don’t know if she’ll ever want to talk to me again.

  I press the Home button on my phone and check my messages. Still nothing from Aubrey. Just my own texts staring sadly back at me.

  Aiden: Hey…

  Aiden: Can we talk?

  Since I haven’t received a reply in hours, the answer’s probably “no.”

  I sit on the nice hotel bed and let my body fall backward until I’m staring at the ceiling. I’m glad I’m alone at least. I wouldn’t be able to mope around in peace with David around. I wonder if he found some chick to spend the night with.

  I wish I were spending some time with Aubrey. We don’t have to sleep together, or even touch—just her presence alone electrifies the air. And she’s hot as fucking hell, but what I really want to do is talk to her, straighten some things out.

  I had no idea she went to our meeting spot. I thought she’d instantly forgotten about me, since I’d never heard from her again after moving away from Vegas.

  But what am I after here? What’s the end game?

  I can’t bring Aubrey home. Based on the phone conversation that’s just taken place, seeing Aubrey would freak Mom out.

  Maybe that means there’s no future for us. Or maybe that means we’ll have to wait until Mom’s gotten over her irrational fear. Maybe I’m a dumbfuck because all these considerations are irrelevant if Aubrey hates my guts.

  I can’t predict how Aubrey or Mom would react to my actions, but I know I can’t just leave things alone now.

  The fact that Aubrey’s still angry at me, after all these years, means that she still has some feelings for me. Otherwise, she’d be indifferent and unaffected. She’d be laughing about it now.

  But the emotions I saw in her eyes in the hallway just a few hours ago . . . They were raw, real, and as fresh as if everything had just happened.

  I know it’s not just my imagination. She may not admit it, but at least a part of her heart still belongs to me. And I can’t just do nothing with that kind of knowledge.

  At the very least, I need to kiss her again.

  Aubrey

  There are two things that make me nervous on my first day as a medical intern: screwing up so badly that I kill someone, and facing Aiden. I think I’m more scared of the second one.

  I check my reflection in the staff restroom, running my fingers through my blonde hair. There's a small smudge of mascara under my eye, so I carefully blot it away with a piece of tissue. I smooth out my scrubs before I take one last deep breath and step out into the crowded hallway.

  Maybe I don't need to worry so much about my appearance. At Hannah and Earl’s wedding last month, it seemed like Aiden liked what he saw.

  I’ve been thinking about what to say to Aiden, but I can't come up with a script good enough to communicate I’ve never met anyone who makes me feel the way you do, and that's exactly why you should stay away, because I don't ever want to go through the same pain again.

  I can't tell him that. It feels too vulnerable, and I’m already feeling pretty exposed.

  In my blue scrubs, I attract attention. Patients and physicians nod at me as we walk past one another in the hallway. My heart thumps in my chest.

  This is going to sound crazy, but I feel like someone will suddenly realize I’m just an impostor and tell me to leave the premises because I’m a fake doctor and my education is worth shit.

  It takes me a while to even find my attending physician, Dr. Graham, because the hospital is a maze. But when she tells me what to do for the day, I start to breathe easy. She wants me to see some patients, make some notes privately, and then discuss how to treat those patients with her before we proceed together.

  This means there’s little chance of things going wrong because of something I do.

  Now Aiden’s the only thing for me to worry about.

  I don’t know why I blurted out what I did at the party. And I must’ve been crazy to let myself get carried away and kiss him. I’m lucky my dad didn’t see us together, or I’d be dealing with some drama right now.

  To be fair, though, Aiden seemed just as carried away as I was. But it was a wedding—of course everyone felt lonely and needed company. That’s all it was.

  Now that we’re going to be working together, it’s best if we don’t do any of that stuff. As much as I want to know how things went so wrong so quickly for us, it was ten years ago, and it’s weird to still be hung up on that.

  What was I expecting? Our love affair was intense and all-consuming, but we were sixteen. Everything was intense and all-consuming at that age. I had friends who cried when Kevin left the Backstreet Boys and broke up the boyband in 2006.

  Besides, Aiden probably doesn’t have any good explanation for what he did. Most likely, he just moved on because he found some other girl he liked better at his school, or something dumb like that.

  As much as it sucked for me at the time . . . he was sixteen.

  Well, I’m twenty-six now. I’m an adult. I should know when to let things go. And when it comes to this particular thing, I’m already ten years overdue.

  By the time I see Aiden, it’s late in the afternoon.

  I’ve been running around all day. My hair is probably a mess and I’m drowning in the heavy weight of my responsibility to take care of my patients.

  It feels like I’ve suddenly forgotten all the things I’ve learned over the past few years. Every time a nurse asks me to do something, I want to tell her I don’t know how to do it.

  But it’s time to go home now. A sense of relief descends upon me, and I can breathe easy.

  Then, I see Aiden, standing by the hospital entrance.

  Even though he looks exhausted from a full day of work, he looks hot as sin in his jeans and T-shirt. He’s leaning against the wall like he’s waiting for something—or someone.

  Is he waiting for me?

  I guess I’ll find out soon. He's already seen me coming out of the building. He fixes his gaze on me as he pushes himself off the wall.

  “Hey,” he says, wearing that smile that's been haunting my dreams.

  Funnily enough, after that wedding weekend, all my dreams about Aiden have been updated to show the twenty-six-year-old him, and not the teenage version of him I was familiar with for a decade.

  “Hey,” I reply.

  “How was your first day?” He takes a few tentative steps closer, moving carefully like he's approaching a nervous squirrel at a park.

  “It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. And you?”

  God, I hate this small talk. It feels like we’re both skirting around something that could potentially explode, taking both of us down. And yet, we’re just having idle talk. You know, like normal colleagues.

  “Yeah, same,” he says simply, clearly as uninterested in the topic as I am. “Listen, about what you said at the wedding, I—”

  “Oh, no, that’s .
. . Just forget about it,” I say quickly, cringing inwardly. I’m mortified by my own candidness that night. “I was just being weird. It was ten years ago. It’s all water under the bridge.”

  “Aubrey, I can explain why—”

  “Please, don’t feel like you have to do anything. I’m sorry I brought it up. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve known it was only going to make things awkward for us, now that we work together.” I give him a smile. “It’s okay. We were teenagers. Relationships don’t work out at that age. You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

  “Just listen to me,” he says with so much authority that I can’t help but shut up.

  I look at him expectantly. I guess, despite my efforts to convince myself to the contrary, I still care about what some teenage boy did ten years ago.

  “Good.” Aiden smiles and tilts his head slightly. The afternoon sunlight falls on his thick hair, revealing the light-brown undertones in his dark hair. “I never got a chance to tell you this, but my dad died ten years ago.”

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I say as I raise my hand to cover my mouth. “I had no idea.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. I never told you much about my family. My dad was, uh, on his way home from the casino—again—and he’d been drinking—again. He did that often enough that he was bound to crash his car at some point . . . and he did, one night. I don’t think I was very surprised when I heard the news.”

  “I’m sorry, A,” I say, my heart clenching for him. My dad can be annoying, but I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I were to suddenly hear that he’s… I don’t even want to think about it.

  “You used to call me ‘A’ all the time. I liked it. I still do,” Aiden says with a sincere smile. “So anyway, my mom became convinced that there was something evil in Las Vegas, and she took me to California. She also forbade me from ever going back and from ever talking to anyone I knew from Vegas.

  “She took my phone away but I, uh, I knew your phone number by memory. I wanted to call you, but by the time I finally found someone whose phone I could borrow, that number was dead.

  “I couldn’t believe it. I called again and again. But it always said the same thing. ‘The number you dialed is not in service,’” Aiden says.

  I study his features. It startles me to realize that he’s telling the truth.

  “My dad took my phone away too,” I say. “I can’t remember why anymore. I’m sure it was something stupid. He did things like that a lot. He still does, actually. Just last month, I found out he was tracking my location with my phone.”

  Aiden chuckles. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Because you’ve had first-hand experience dealing with him, and you know how crazy he can be.

  “Well, one day, he acted extra crazy. I guess I had a bad test result or something. He took away my phone and changed my email password. I had enough of him, so . . .”

  Aiden nods. “Yeah. I remember we had a plan just in case we had to get away from your dad.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “So like we’d discussed, I left a message for you at the convenience store, telling you to meet me at a certain time. I never got a reply from you, but I went anyway, hoping you’d show up. But you never did.”

  I force a smile.

  As I take a deep breath, I feel my tension melting away. It feels good to talk about this and finally get some answers, especially when the answer is that Aiden didn’t just abandon me.

  “I’m so sorry, Aubrey. That must’ve felt horrible,” Aiden says, his eyes filling with regret.

  I take a deep breath. “It’s okay. That was a long time ago. And you obviously didn’t do anything wrong. You were just going through some difficult times.”

  Aiden huffs a relieved sigh. “Thank you. That’s been weighing on my mind.”

  “Sorry I got angry with you at the wedding over something that happened a long time ago.”

  “That’s not a problem.” Aiden chuckles. “Honestly, it bothers me more that you haven’t replied to any of my text messages. I’ll forgive you if you say you’ll text me back.”

  I should tell him that knowing what happened in the past doesn’t change anything. We still have a complicated history, and we work together. The smartest thing to do here is to keep a massive distance between us.

  But instead…

  “Okay,” I hear myself say.

  What? Don’t judge me.

  I can’t help but feel like Aiden and I may have something we can’t just let go. Hearing his side of the story was overwhelmingly healing. All that pain that I’ve been holding on to for years is now gone. All it took was a few words from Aiden.

  Now, I feel like a door has been opened, and in front of me are so many possibilities my head’s spinning.

  “Okay.” The corners of Aiden’s lips curl up as he gazes at me with tenderness in his blue eyes. “I’ll text you, then.”

  “Yeah. See you tomorrow,” I say, meeting his gaze.

  Aiden takes a deep breath as he watches me, as if he can’t believe I’m actually here. He smiles. Then, he turns around and starts to walk away.

  But he only takes about five steps before he stops in his tracks.

  “Hey, what are you doing right now?” he asks.

  “Uh, now? Going home, I guess.”

  “I was going to text you and ask you to go out with me, but I realize that’s dumb. I know you’re probably tired right now, but just in case you’re not . . . wanna have dinner with me?”

  “Now?” I ask stupidly, in a bad attempt to stall.

  He just said “right now.” Great. Now I look like an idiot.

  I feel like I need to go home and process what’s just happened. But at the same time, as he was walking away, it suddenly started to feel so lonely.

  And, I mean, it’s just dinner, right? It’s not like we’re going to jump into bed together this same night.

  Aubrey

  That Same Night

  “You know, it feels weird to see you here. I’ve always associated you with Vegas.” I pick up a nacho, dip it in cheese, and look across the table at Aiden.

  “That’s funny. I’ve been here for ten years,” he says as he takes another sip of his beer. “So this is where you hang out, huh?”

  “Yeah. It’s close to where I live, close to the hospital, and close to my old college as well, so most of the time it’s the convenient choice.”

  “No kidding. This is prime location. It took us two minutes to walk here from the hospital.”

  I give Aiden a smile. Our location is not the only thing that feels strange about what’s going on. It’s also the fact that we’re having small talk like strangers do. I feel like Aiden and I have gone way past the introductory stage now, and yet here we are.

  “Where do you live?” I ask, despite the niggling feeling that I’m asking exactly the kind of question a stranger would ask.

  “Just outside of town, to the east. The rents here are too high for my Mom and me,” he says easily.

  Unlike some people I know, Aiden has never hidden the fact that his family doesn’t have much. I love the fact that he owns it and doesn’t seem to feel any shame about it. It’s easy to be confident when you’re doing well for yourself, but it takes guts to own up to your problems.

  Despite his humble beginnings, he’s made it through medical school, and now we’re peers. That’s way more impressive than the same achievement for someone like me, or someone like Trey. We both have dads who are prominent physicians; they have enough sway to help us advance in our medical careers.

  Trey’s been texting me, by the way.

  He’s been asking me out and I’ve been giving him excuses that get worse by the week—I’m sick, I have to go to the dentist, I need to organize my books by color, Game of Thrones is on, I’m deep-cleaning my fridge, and my horoscope warns against going out of the house.

  Now I need to brainstorm excuses that require me to be outside, because Trey’s offered to come to my place several times
. You know, to help clean the fridge or something like that.

  Trey’s a nice enough guy, really. He’s just a little brash for me. He’s also either dumb or gullible or both because he bought my lame excuses instead of laughing them off. Obviously, we don’t share the same sense of humor either.

  It’s nothing at all like how things are with Aiden.

  Even though being so close to him makes me nervous, I find it easy to find things to say, and whatever I say seems to amuse him no end.

  The way he gazes at me, rapt with attention, puts a permanent smile on my face. We must look like idiots, smiling and staring at each other while the food only gets nibbled on every once in a while.

  I don’t know about Aiden, but I don’t have time to eat. I’m too preoccupied with this invisible force that connects us together. Oh, and also, we’re kind of talking about cysts.

  “So I brought out the ultrasound machine,” I say, “and wait for Dr. Graham to find me like she said she would. Meanwhile, I put the gel on the patient and run the probe over her skin.

  “The patient looked at the screen and went, ‘Ooh, is that my ovary?’ I tell her yes because what else could it be? The probe was right over her womb. But then she asked me another question.”

  “Oh, no. That doesn’t sound good,” Aiden says, already grinning in anticipation.

  “She asked, ‘Do you see cysts there?’” I pause and let out a sigh. “So I had to tell her I didn’t really know how to use the ultrasound machine.”

  Aiden chuckles. “That’s not too bad, as far as first days go.”

  “Why? What happened on your first day?” I ask. This should be interesting.

  “Oh, not much,” Aiden says. “I only almost killed one patient.”

  I widen my eyes. “He survived, though?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry, I was exaggerating. I didn’t mean to alarm you.” Aiden shoots me an apologetic smile. “On the way to the hospital, the EMS took the insulin pump off this guy with Type I diabetes. I didn’t catch that right away, but I did before it was too late.”