The Art of Second Chances

by Coleen Patrick

  “Yeah. It’s due in the fall, but I’m having trouble with it, and Jenny knows what they want. I can’t put it off. Not when my summer is already booked with my internship. I want it done and out of the way ASAP.”

  “Um, so wait…” I sat up straighter, attempting to not bump his feet with mine under the coffee table. How was it that less than ten minutes ago our legs tangled as we kissed? “So you’re not going to the beach house?”

  Zac reached for my hands, forcing me to unfold my arms. “If I finish early, I will.”

  “But why is this the first I’m hearing about it? Why did you let me think you were going to the beach?”

  “Because I was planning on going. Jenny was supposed to come to Hickory Bend last weekend, but her plans fell through. So spring break it is.” Zac scratched his head.

  “You’ve known for almost a week?”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Pinks. I’m an idiot. I’ve been so busy. I’m going to make it up to you, I swear. We’ll do something else. Go somewhere else. Let’s plan something for the beginning of the summer, before I leave for my internship. Just the two of us. Maybe we can go camping.”

  Camping. Dirt instead of sand. Flies instead of seagulls. Hard ground instead of bedrooms. No ocean. No hang gliding. Camping instead of spring break at the beach sounded like more of a regression than a step in the right direction.

  Except, what I really wanted was to be with Zac. Us. Together. Without all the school crap that seemed to be keeping us apart. So yeah, I’d take camping. Even if summer was months away. With a sigh, I smiled.

  Zac grabbed me in a hug. “You’re amazing. I know I’ve been so busy, but this grant in particular is important for me. I can’t flake out on this Jenny thing. I need all the help I can get.”

  “No, I get it.” I shifted in his embrace. Something about the way he called it the Jenny Thing, sent up a tiny smoke signal of jealousy. Sure, a big part of me understood, but I had to admit, some part of me smoldered a bit at the idea of him spending time alone with Jenny Oliver while I was away. Even if it was all about his journalism portfolio.

  Because there was history with Jenny. She went to Carringham Academy and had taken Zac to her prom last year. I wracked my memory to recall the spring of my freshman year, the last year Jenny was in HB, before her family moved. I remembered her being around, hearing her name on occasion. She and Zac seemed to know each other because they both worked on their school’s papers. She went to the same school as Chloe, but she was two grades ahead of Chloe and me. I couldn’t even conjure a picture of her in my head. Zac and I were only friends back then, and I didn’t really pay attention to what was happening with his love life or whatever it was that went on between them. I’d always been under the impression that he and Jenny had gone to prom as friends. The thought that there might be something more between them planted in the large, paranoid section of my brain, and like a dry piece of kindling, it fed that little possessiveness fire.

  “Why Jenny?” I asked. “She doesn’t even live here anymore.”

  “Because she applied for and got this very journalism grant. She’s going to Columbia this fall.”

  Columbia was Zac’s mission. But I still didn’t get why this was the first I’d heard about him asking Jenny for help. When had they worked out all this scholarship stuff? Did they text regularly? Hang out somewhere online? Instant message? Video chat? I didn’t even know they kept in touch. What else didn’t I know?

  Heat flared somewhere in the vicinity of my heart and lungs. Jealousy. The burning sensation reminded me of the (rare and random) times I’d run with Zac. Or whenever I ate taco torpedoes from Mexico Palace. My body didn’t take well to either.

  Zac tightened his hold on me. Why was I jealous? This was stupid thinking, unfounded. I needed to stop the negative reel in my brain. Zac couldn’t stand a clingy, desperate girl. An hour ago, he’d switched off the movie we’d been watching after yelling at the insecure chick in the movie. Although with all the kissing, we’d barely been paying attention. It was possible the bigger reason he’d clicked the remote was because the movie was getting in the way of us making out.

  I looked at Zac. Only minutes before, he’d said that he really wanted to go to um, Fiji with me. He emphasized the “really” part, right? Except in the next breath, he ditched the opportunity for us to basically be alone for a week. Technically. I knew his portfolio was important, but still, I couldn’t help but wonder, what freaking red-blooded, seventeen-year-old guy turned down even the slightest possibility of being mostly alone with his girlfriend? Especially when the project wasn’t due for months.

  Wasn’t I “alone worthy”?

  As if he could read my mind, Zac snuggled closer.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m bummed, too.”

  Then he kissed me again, and the disappointment and confusion slunk away.

  Was that his plan? Kiss away my confusion? A diversionary tactic to stop me from guessing that there actually was a Jenny Thing?

  Did he want to be alone with Jenny?

  Ugh. No. I was being stupid, jealous, and clingy. A terrible trifecta in a girlfriend. Instead, I resolved to be a secure, strong, and supportive girlfriend.

  Well, I was going to act like one, anyway.

  Chapter 3

  Fruit Bowl with Melons, Synthetic Polymer Paint on Paper

  “I don’t even know why we’re here,” I said to Chloe. We were at the mall, standing in front of a carrel of brand new swimsuits and a mocking sign above that read: Just in time for spring break.

  I laid my head on the metal bar, the smell of new clothes taunting me. I imagined them saying, “You want me but don’t need me.”

  Just like Zac. I felt ridiculously sorry for myself. But it was an ailment that Chloe would cure me of in no time.

  “I know you’re bummed, Grace, but it’s not like he’s breaking up with you,” she said. “Crap happens.”

  “I already mapped out all the fun we were going to have.”

  “Then you didn’t miss anything.” Chloe held up a canary yellow bikini with a giant pink hibiscus flower on the bottom. She flashed the suit in my direction, smirking, before returning it to the rack. “Besides, you said he could show up before the week is over. At least, you have hope.”

  I winced, knowing she referred to the fact that there was no hope left for her and her ex- boyfriend, Taylor. “You’re right. And he did bring up Fiji. That’s got to mean something.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but every guy wants to go to Fiji.”

  I thought of Jenny. And Zac. Their impending aloneness. Jealousy flared. I pushed it aside and focused on Chloe. I stared at her, looking for signs that she was sad or broken from her own recent breakup from Taylor, her boyfriend of nine months, but there wasn’t even a quiver of doubt on her face. Plus, she wore a T-shirt she’d made that read, I love my book boyfriend. Chloe seemed fine. No, she was fine. Obviously, her sensible personality made it impossible for her to be bitter and brooding.

  “How is it that you’re so okay with Taylor and Alana?”

  “What’s my other option? Eating cookie dough ice cream and crying?” Her left eyebrow arched up with effortless attitude.

  “It’s what the broken hearted do in the movies.” I shrugged, thinking pity party with ice cream sounded a lot like my first instinct. “You and Taylor were so close. I don’t understand how you bounced back like this. Zac and I are together, and I’m still jealous. You’re so mentally healthy. Did your mom have some secret therapeutic advice? Because I think I need some.”

  Chloe’s parents both worked in the mental health profession—her mom was a psychologist. So she was very well-adjusted—and if for some reason she wasn’t, she pretty much knew how to go about adjusting herself.

  “Are you kidding? I don’t talk with her about guys anymore. Dr. Smith-Winters claims to keep her analysis to her patients, but she made it quite clear she analyzed Taylor early on.”

  “Oh,
right. Your mom called him a caveman.”

  “Egocentric Neanderthal. But not to his face, of course. I overheard her talking to someone on the phone an hour after he came over for dinner the first time. Apparently, she was quite disturbed over the teenage male lizard brain. So, believe me, I don’t want to hear her opinions about me hooking up with a seductive narcissist. ”

  “I’m sorry, Chlo.”

  “I’m not. I don’t want to waste any more time on the Taylor BS. I have too much to do. And so do you. First, we need to find you a swimsuit. A couple well-timed bikini shots will keep Zac’s jealousy fires burning, too.” Chloe pointed at me. “Remember, you’re a strong, independent woman who also knows her way around that lizard brain.”

  “I guess, but it’s just that I imagined strolls along the beach at night, staying up late talking, and swimming in the ocean at sunrise.”

  “Prime time for a shark attack.” Chloe pushed through the bikini tops rack. “Why does everything have to have a print? What’s wrong with a solid color suit? Wait—how about this one?”

  I pushed away the white bikini. Not because of the tiny red hearts dotting the surface, but because it was white. I’d have self-tanner streaks all over it in not time. “Are you listening to me? Oh, it doesn’t matter. Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want, I uh, I think I need to stay home.”

  “You mean you want to spy on Zac and Jenny?”

  “No.” I pouted, flicking through the suits on the rack in front of me but not noticing a single one. “Yes. That lizard brain goes both ways you know.”

  Chloe sighed. “I get it. Jenny is blonde. Plus, she’s got those huge boobs. She used to complain when they got in her way in yoga class last year. With her luck, I foresee they’ve continued to grow big and bouncy, but in a totally firm way, of course.”

  “Not helping,” I said through gritted teeth, as I scanned the store to make sure no one was nearby to hear our conversation about another girl’s assets.

  “Just remember the only so-called normal people are the ones you don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t your mom have that framed in her office?”

  “Yeah. Famous psych guy, Alfred Adler.” She waved a hand. “Anyway, normal is a façade. You don’t know what lurks underneath that Columbia-approved brain, that great hair, and great--”

  “Don’t say it again, Chloe. I really don’t need to hear how awesome her rack is. Not when it’s going to be near my boyfriend next week, while I’m out of town. Not when we were supposed to go hang gliding and zip past the dunes on a Vespa.”

  Chloe laughed. “It’s the Outer Banks, Grace, not Rome.”

  “So it was going to be our Rome.” Or our Fiji. Although, why the subject of “Fiji” now resided in the priority section of my thoughts I wasn’t sure. Was I thinking about it more because Zac would be spending time alone with big-breasted Jenny?

  “Whatever.” Chloe resumed her bathing suit browsing. “And for the record, I wasn’t going to mention Jenny’s rack. I was just going to say she also had a great ass.”

  I let my head loll back. “Chloe!”

  “What? You can see a lot when a person is in downward dog.”

  Later that afternoon, I got home and found my mom packing. Totally odd behavior considering we weren’t leaving for another few days. My mom was far too carefree for any advance planning.

  “Hey.” I stepped into my parents’ bedroom—or my mom’s, I guess. As far as I knew, or wanted to know, my dad hadn’t slept in that room for almost a year. After being laid off from his job at Thorne Properties, he’d found work three hours away in Richmond. He used to come home on weekends, but that stopped when he got himself a girlfriend. Even the girlfriend hadn’t lasted long—the rumor was they broke up on Valentine’s Day. Now, my parents acted like they were in a middle school relationship, talking on the phone, circling each other from a distance. Do you still like me? Ugh.

  Or maybe I was just overly sensitive to the topic of breakups. With my parents, Chloe, and this weird Jenny and Zac thing, I was thinking too much about insecurity, jealousy, and breakups. Because even Zac’s parents seemed to do the back and forth thing, and they were officially divorced.

  “Hi honey.” My mom sounded chipper. “There’s been a little change of plans. Something came up. So I’ll meet you all at the beach house. I’m not sure when exactly.”

  Then she flashed the corniest smile, like someone spiked her vegan Madagascar vanilla chip brownies with something far more earthy and organic (and illegal). “Why? Where are you going?”

  “Your dad called.” She shrugged, then folded an A-line, knee length, denim skirt. She set it in the bottom of the bag and smoothed it flat. “He wants to talk. So I decided to drive to Richmond.”

  “Oh.” One syllable was all I could manage. I wasn’t sure what to make of my mom’s plans, what to feel. Last year, this news would have made me ecstatic, because all I wanted was for my family to be normal again. But my definition of normal didn’t take into account my parents’ feelings, and all their relationship stuff I hadn’t been privy to (and didn’t want to be). Chloe was right. To define something as normal was to not really know it.

  “Your dad and I have been talking more since Valentine’s, and I figured…why not? Oh that reminds me, I need to run to the store and make a batch of those sweet potato cinnamon rolls.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, feeling something odd in the air between us. It wasn’t exactly comfortable hearing my mom talk about my dad like he was her latest crush, but I didn’t think it was that. It was something else. Something I couldn’t name.

  “Oh you need money. What was it for again? Gas?” My mom tapped at her collarbone. Her high spirits shifted to nervous. Maybe that was why this conversation made me uneasy. Normally, my mom went about her life like a sparkly buoy in the ocean. She was happy and didn’t mind the unpredictable storms that threatened to overcome her, knock her down. She bobbed along, brightly. In fact, her favorite motherly pep talk relied on the ocean as a metaphor.

  “No, I need to get the car inspected.” Car inspections had been my dad’s duty. Something she’d never remember in a million years. But ask my dad to name my birthday, and it would probably take him a million years, too.

  “Right. Inspection.” She snapped her fingers. Electricity seemed to spark from them, around her. Not her typical sparkle, but some haywire kind of thing, and I half expected her to twirl as she moved to her dresser and opened the lid to her wooden jewelry box (the one with a pair of doves on the lid that my dad had carved for their first anniversary a gazillion years ago). She held out a couple of twenties.

  “But you’re taking the car.”

  “Oh, right.” My mom frowned at the money. “Well then, hold on to it until after spring break.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” I uncurled my hand and reached for the bills. If I had any nails to speak of, they would’ve made half-moon indentations in my palms. I hadn’t adjusted to my parents as separate entities. They’d always been a package deal. Whatever my mom didn’t handle, my dad did, and vice versa. I guess I didn’t know how they worked apart yet.

  “Or, should I take a bus to Richmond?”

  “No. It’s fine. Whatever you want to do.” I stared at the money in my hand, noting the smiley face in each corner of the bill. My mom’s handiwork. She doodled smiley faces on money as far back as I could remember. Even after my dad told her it was illegal to write on money. She’d laughed and extended her hands, ready to be handcuffed and put away for her cheerful emoticons. Doodling on dollars was one of her things. One of her things that set her apart from my dad.

  Maybe it wasn’t all that hard to keep them separate.

  I exhaled. Maybe nothing was wrong. I just needed more time to adjust to the change in my family.

  Unless they were now trying to get back together.

  I folded the bills and pushed them into the front pocket of my jeans. Instead of feeling hope
ful or excited at the hint of some sort of reconciliation, I only saw gray clouds and an impending storm.

  Or maybe that was my Zac worries darkening my vision.

  Chapter 4

  Snarky and a Boy Chatting in a Coffee Shop, Bronze

  “I’m not going to Nags Head. I’m staying home,” I said to Zac. He was behind the counter at Higher Grounds. It was closing time. I’d just finished a shift at my mom’s café, Zen, and walked across the street. I stepped into the coffee shop as Zac’s dad placed the last chair upside down on a table and headed upstairs to his apartment, where he’d lived ever since he and Mrs. Anderson split up.

  “What? Why?”

  “My mom’s not going to the beach house until later in the week.”

  Zac poured my blended frozen coffee into my cup. “So?”

  “I don’t know. It would just be me, your mom, and Lily.”

  “Then why don’t you invite Chloe?” He pushed the lid on my reusable, double-walled tumbler, his forearm muscle flexing. Any more force and he’d break my Green Project award commemorative cup. Was he trying to get me out of Hickory Bend?

  “I could, I guess, but . . .”

  “But?”

  I want to spend spring break with you. Except I didn’t say that. Zac’s snappish attitude had me suddenly feeling shy. And stupid. I wasn’t completely cured of my penchant for keeping crappy thoughts locked away in my gray matter. I thought of the Vent Me a Latte shirt Chloe made me last fall. It was mostly faded, with an enchilada sauce stain under the “me”.

  “I have that big art project due the week after.”

  “I thought you finished that.”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t worked on it in weeks. The assignment was to come up with our own art period or movement, like impressionism or surrealism, based on the characteristics of our signature style. We were supposed to have three pieces of artwork—complete with original titles—to go with it, but all I had was my initial, still untitled piece, the Rubik’s cube mural. The whole project was due after break, and I hadn’t come up with anything else. To myself, I called my personal art movement, The Indifference Period.