Second Rate Chances

by Stephens, Holly

  It ended too soon. And funny enough, Sam wasn’t thinking about his life.

  CHAPTER 2

  Running late for work was a daily occurrence for Lil Harper. Then again, when you technically had no boss to report

  to, running late was not an issue – unless of course she wanted to face the wrath of her best friend and assistant. But this morning she was bringing coffee. Ellie couldn't be mad when the fresh roasted smell of coffee beans from Latte da clouded her senses.

  Lil turned up the radio. On their own accord, her shoulders moved up and down to the beat of the tune. Without a care in the world – the skies were blue, and her coffee nice and toasty on this chilly morning – Lil started to sing, Fire, a song The Pointer Sisters made famous and even Elmer Fudd made sound good.

  She drew out the chorus, using her best soulful voice. It wasn't on key by a long shot, but it felt good to belt out the words so early in the morning. Nine fifteen being early.

  Lil drove down Main Street. There was nothing like driving down the street that connected all of Fair Haven together. The car, her old Chevy Tahoe she had bought when she landed her first big paying job as a photographer right out of college, cruised toward The Village.

  Boutiques, antique shops, mom and pop stands, anything and everything that could keep a small town a float, thrived here. It was the place to be and be seen when her grandparents were young and hip. Lil reserved a soft spot for The Village; there was something homey about driving down the cobblestone streets. Some days, when she was left to her own thoughts, she'd imagine what it must have been like for her grandparents to roam these streets as teenagers, courting one another. Maybe they’d hold hands as they walked toward the Cineplex and then stop by the Tasty Freeze for ice cream. Her Grandpa might even try to sneak in a few stolen kisses after the movie. She could imagine the evening ending with their arms wrapped around one another as they stopped to admire the big open sky under a blanket down by the river.

  Lil sighed as she pulled her car in front of the little door that housed her very own place on Main Street. Lily Rose Photography was scripted in elegant letters on the black awning above her bold, red door. She had to make a statement here, where every other door was either glass or plain. Red was the boldest move she could make. Besides, it had worked for Elizabeth Arden.

  The door swung open as Lil nudged it with her knee, her hands full with two Grande lattes. Ellie didn't even look up from her computer screen to see who had interrupted her morning Facebook stalking of what had happened to her "friends" while she had been sleeping. For one, no one was expected until later that afternoon, and two, she could smell the intoxicating aroma of a salted caramel mocha from down the street.

  “You're forgiven,” Ellie said, closing out of screen she was currently browsing.

  “Well,” Ellie said in a way that Lil immediately knew she had something good to say.

  “Spill!” Lil demanded excitedly. She might not involve herself in social media but she enjoyed the tiny tidbits Ellie provided.

  “A certain someone now has season three of Night Court in his possession.”

  “Shut up! When is he bringing it over?” Lil dropped into her favorite chair.

  “This weekend,” Ellie said laughing. “Jeez, what is it with you two and Night Court? The show has been off the air for how long, yet my best friend and my boyfriend can't seem to get enough of it. Please,” she said, folding her hands together and propping her chin on them, “what is it that gets you? Is it Bull's bald head or Roz's no-nonsense attitude?”

  “Neither,” Lil said. She picked herself up from the lime green chair and began to make her way to her own office. “It's all about the judge and the gavel.”

  “You're sick, you know that? Oh, wait, before you get settled in, someone's been trying to reach you ever since I got here this morning.”

  “Who?” Lil asked.

  Ellie shrugged her shoulders. “No clue. She won't leave a message, but she's been calling every fifteen minutes since eight o'clock.”

  “She?” Lil questioned. “Have I pissed off anyone lately?”

  “Not that I know of, but who knows. Speaking of pissed off, don't forget that you have that consultation with the Reed family about Santa pictures this afternoon.”

  Lil groaned. She loved her job. She loved taking pictures of families and couples and tiny little bundles of joy, but she hated Santa pictures. And to make it worse, these were Santa pictures with the children she and Ellie had dubbed the holy trinity of terror. Triplets, each worse than the next.

  “You promised Marcie that you'd do the girls' pictures this year. You owe her for getting you that mega wedding job this past summer. Besides the Ratcliff’s wedding, the only other big wedding gig for this town is–”

  “Don't say it.” Lil's tone was firm. She knew exactly what other wedding Ellie was referring to. She didn't need to hear the names to be reminded of the upcoming nuptials.

  “I'm going to my office. Buzz me if that woman calls back.”

  Ellie nodded her head, regretful for a moment that she had even brought up the other profitable wedding in town. She should have known better. Time may have distanced the situation but it never healed her wounds. Lil proved every day that her wounds were still open. She closed herself off and hardly let anyone know that the past still haunted her. But if you looked into the depth of her sparkling blue eyes, there was still a hint of despair in them. Ellie hated seeing that. She wanted her to find happiness and love. She knew not to push and that one day it would happen. Patience was a virtue.

  Lil put the mention of the big wedding out of her head. She discarded her bags in the little closet she kept on the far side of the wall from her desk and fired up her computer. She was ready to tackle the day's events.

  Replying to a few emails, oblivious to the fact that the phone was ringing, Lil sang the last song she had heard on the radio. In the car she was channeling The Pointer Sisters; this time around she mimicked Elmer Fudd.

  “Woemeo and Jewiet.” Her voice carried to the front hall where Ellie sat. The buzz of her phone next to her computer stopped her singing short.

  “Frantic woman on line one, Elmer.” Ellie said with a laugh.

  “Thanks.” Lil picked up the phone, delivering her standard greeting.

  “Good morning, this is Lil. How can I help you?”

  “Well, it's about damn time you decided to show up for work. You know most people put in an eight-hour day beginning at eight in the morning. Not,” the woman paused, “nine-thirty.”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman immediately said. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I’m stressed and tired and did I mention stressed?”

  “I understand,” Lil said. “With whom am I speaking?” Lil kept her tone nothing but professional. The last thing she needed was to get snippy with a paying customer on the phone.

  “It's Chloe.” The woman said her name like there was one Chloe in the world. Or at least only one that mattered.

  Lil racked her brain. She knew of Chloe Davis that had her engagement pictures done a year ago. The wedding had taken place in Cabo so a photographer on site was hired. Maybe she was planning a holiday-themed reception.

  Then again, maybe it was Chloe Keyes who, the last time Lil saw her in the grocery store, had just found out she was pregnant. Instead of debating the Chloe's in town, Lil asked the woman to clarify.

  “Chloe, what's your last name, sweetie?”

  Kindness always killed.

  “Chloe Miles. Sam’s fiancée.”

  Kindness wasn't the only thing Lil wished she could kill at the moment. Whatever she had said about being ready for what the day would bring, she took back. She could not be, nor would she ever be, ready to deal with the woman that was engaged to Lil's first and only love.

  CHAPTER 3

  Lil sat frozen at her desk. There could have been a million reasons as to why Chloe was calling yet Lil couldn’t think of one. This woman was mere weeks away from
marrying the one guy Lil had thought she’d spend forever with and she was on her phone.

  “Hello? Lil? Are you there? Listen, we really don't have all day.”

  “No, no, of course we don’t,” Lil said in a daze. “Wait, what do you mean we?”

  “Something’s happened with Sam.”

  Lil felt her stomach drop. She and Sam hadn’t been together in nearly three years, yet he had been a huge part of her life, and regardless if their relationship had worked or not, he still held a piece of her heart. Maybe all of it.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Lil asked. She noticed after the question had left her mouth that her words had dropped to barely a whisper. It was like she was afraid to ask what had happened in fear of the absolute worst.

  “Because you're the only person who can help him. Believe me,” Lil was momentarily shocked at the sincere tone of Chloe’s voice. “If I could find someone else I would, but I can't. They all keep telling me that you are the only person who can help him.”

  Lil shook her head. She wanted to laugh at the situation. She wanted to scream from the rooftops how the irony was not lost on her. All she could do was manage to get a few words out and she was lucky if those words formed complete sentences.

  "What kind of help?” Lil managed to ask. She had to wonder how awkward it was for Chloe to be calling her soon-to-be-husband's ex-girlfriend and asking for a favor. Lil remembered when she had heard Sam was dating Chloe. It seemed to happen overnight. One minute they were apart and the next he had moved on, as if their whole relationship meant nothing. How could he go from one girl to the next? This had been the man she fell in love with when she was eighteen. The man who was in every single college memory. The other half she co-signed her life away with on a house she still currently lived in. The only man she had ever seen herself spending the rest of her days with.

  On the flip side, this was the man who had turned his back on her when she needed him most. Who sought comfort in video games and late night work sessions rather than holding her close and telling her that everything was going to be okay.

  Deep down Lil knew that it didn’t matter what kind of help Sam needed. Even if once upon a time he hadn’t given her the support that she had needed, she’d be there now to offer a helping hand to him.

  Chloe was quiet for a moment before she answered Lil's questions, or rather, deferred the answers. "Listen, I can't say over the phone. It's honestly best if you come down and see for yourself."

  “Fine. Where are you?”

  “Fair Haven General. We're on the third floor. And please, hurry. The sooner you can get here and hopefully do whatever it is that everyone thinks you can do, the sooner Sam and I can get on with our lives.”

  Without a goodbye or a kiss my ass, Chloe hung up the phone. Shocked beyond words, Lil held the receiver away from her and looked at the piece of technology like it had suddenly sprouted three heads.

  13

  SECOND RATE CHANCES

  CHAPTER 4

  It was funny how things happened. To say Lil had gone almost three years without thinking of Sam would be a bold-faced lie. Sometimes she couldn’t help but think about him, but he didn’t affect her daily life. She didn’t think about him when she saw something on TV anymore or when a song came on the radio. But now driving to the hospital in her car, a car Sam had stood by while she negotiated the price with the salesman, she was seeing him everywhere.

  Every song that played on the radio as she drove made her think of him. Irony had a hell of a way of intervening. Could it have been fate telling her that it was time for the closure she never received?

  When Lil pulled into the parking lot of the hospital, she quickly found a place to park her SUV. The sooner she was in there, the sooner she could do whatever she needed to do, the sooner she could be on her way and have this whole mess behind her.

  Lil walked through the automatic doors of the hospital into the large, open and brightly-lit reception area. An older woman was behind the desk, dispatching calls throughout the hospital. Lil veered to her right toward the elevator bank. She pushed the up arrow that looked oddly like the logo for the Starship Enterprise, and held her breath until the light blinked and the doors dinged open. When she stepped inside the confines of the small space she thought to herself, here goes nothing.

  Beam me up, bitches.

  ~~~~

  The doors to the third floor opened with another ding. One that sounded loud in the quiet halls of the hospital. Her trip to the hospital felt like judgment day and she couldn’t help but feel that Chloe was her judge. Or her executioner.

  Lil had never met Chloe Miles, the daughter of an ex-model mother and mogul father, yet she knew enough about her to know that she was a woman who got what she wanted.

  Lil rounded the corner from the elevator where she saw a man standing at the nurses’ station. He stood with his head bowed and his hands clasped together like he was in the middle of a prayer causing Lil to stop in her tracks. She held off the urge to call out his name, instead taking a moment to notice all the changes in a man that she once considered a father figure.

  Paul Travers was classically handsome in an old movie star kind of way. He stood just over six feet tall, with wide broad shoulders and a head of dark brown hair that had turned grayer since the last time she had seen him. But the rest of him looked as if it had stopped aging. His body was still fit, as if he worked out every day. From the angle at which Lil stood, she could partially see his face and from a distance she didn’t notice wrinkles or any other telltale signs of aging. Lil found herself wondering if age had caught up with Sam. Would he still take after his dad? Would his dark hair show signs of graying?

  Growing older was inevitable, but Lil never imagined it happening to Paul. She and Sam had been dating for a year when Lil's parents died in a boating accident and Paul had stepped in. She had prepared herself for facing Sam but she hadn’t considered his dad. When she and Sam had broken up she was left with a void in her chest. When she lost Sam, she lost her family too.

  Lil took quiet, tentative steps toward Paul. He rubbed his stubbled jaw with one hand while his other massaged the back of his neck. The clear look of distress that he was under did nothing to help ease the thoughts running through Lil's mind. What if Sam was dying? A mountain of regret flooded Lil. So many things that were left unsaid would haunt her if the end of his life were near. Could she make things right this time? Could she tell him now, after year’s apart and extensive therapy, that she no longer blamed him for what happened? Would he even care?

  Finding her voice, Lil opened her mouth to say Paul’s name when another door opened and a much younger version of Paul stepped out of the room. Lil smiled to herself in spite of everything. Sam's younger brother, Joshua, was a product of his father. Still tall, he had a head full of dark hair much like Paul used to have.

  Joshua took a stand next to his father, patting the man briefly on the back in a heart-warming gesture. Paul looked over at his son, offering a small smile. When his eyes passed over Lil his whole posture changed. He went from looking like a man on the brink of losing everything to looking like a man who had just been delivered a gift from God.

  “You came.” He stated the fact even though the words flowed from his mouth more like a question.

  Joshua moved away from his father when he saw Lil standing like a lone solider in the battlefield. He offered her a smile that she couldn’t help but return.

  As she closed the distance between them, she offered them both a small wave and a shy hello. As if the chime of the elevator were loud to her ears only moments before, it was nothing compared to the sound of her heartbeat. With every step she took, her heart blasted like a canon.

  Both men rushed toward her and wrapped Lil in a tight embrace. It was an awkward position, being sandwiched between them, but Lil took comfort from their arms. She closed her eyes as they held her tighter. So many memories flooded her all at once. She had missed them, but she didn’t realize
just how much until that very moment.

  “Thank you,” Paul whispered into her ear. “I know this can't be easy for you, but thank you.”

  Lil was the first to pull away. “What’s happened?” she asked. “Is Sam okay? Wait, what am I saying, of course he’s not okay. He wouldn’t be in the hospital if he were.”

  Paul cracked a smile and hugged Lil again. “God I’ve missed you.”

  The hint of a smile began to form on Lil’s lips. She pulled out of the embrace and punched Joshua playfully on the arm.

  “My God, Josh, look at you! You’re not some little kid any more are you?” Lil ran her eyes over Josh and waggled her eyebrows at him. Josh laughed and squeezed her again.

  “You know some say I’m twice the man my brother is,” he teased. Lil rolled her eyes.

  “And I’ll have to take your word for it,” she playfully said back.

  “Lil,” Paul said. “Why don’t we have a seat?” He gestured to a set of white folding chairs along the far end of the wall. Lil led the way over taking one of the chairs while Paul took the other. Josh squatted down on Lil’s other side.

  Not beating around the bush, Lil asked the one question that had been plaguing her since Chloe had called. “Be honest, Paul. Is he dying?”

  “He's not dying,” Joshua replied.

  “Oh.” Lil breathed out, relieved. But if he wasn’t dying…

  Another set of footsteps sounded down the hall. Paul looked up and sighed. The reaction caused Lil to turn around to see who was on their way. An unfamiliar man in a white coat headed in their direction. Lil assumed this was the doctor.

  “Mr. Travers. Joshua,” the man said extending a hand to Paul. “How is he today?”