One Chance

by Best, Victoria J.

  “No, it was an AA meeting,” I said softly as I rounded the large island she’d put between us and stopped next to her.

  Her head whipped around, her blue eyes meeting mine. “Really?” There was no hiding the hope in her voice and the desperation in her eyes.

  Again, I regretted hurting her and that I couldn’t stay away from her because I just knew I’d do it again.

  “Yup. But I was late and only got to speak to the woman in charge of the meeting. I didn’t actually get to sit in on the meeting. She gave me this.” I pulled the pamphlet out of my pocket and handed it to her.

  Tea forgotten, Nicolette took the paper from my hand and walked around the island to perch on the edge of a stool. Her eyes skimmed the information for a moment before she looked up at me.

  “Are you going next Tuesday?” She pointed at the times printed on the pamphlet.

  “Yeah. I already added it to my phone’s calendar.”

  “Good idea,” she said, hopping from the stool to scurry over to where she’d discarded her purse when we came in.

  “What are you doing?” I took her now-full mug from under the coffee maker, grabbed a little pot of honey that was on a tray next to it and brought both over to the kitchen island. I went back over to the bank of drawers on the other side, pulled open a few until I located a spoon and went back over to sit down on a stool.

  “Getting my phone. I’m going to add it on my calendar. I’ll go with you.” She pulled her phone from her purse, tapping away on the screen intently for a minute.

  “Really?” It was my turn to be surprised.

  “I said I would, before, I mean. I still want to go with you.” Her brows knitted together as she spoke. She crossed the room again, bouncing up onto the stool again.

  “Even after I was an asshole yesterday?” Why was this woman so forgiving?

  “We all make mistakes, Henry,” she murmured as she took a sip of her tea.

  “I appreciate you wanting to go with me, but I think for this first one, I should go alone.”

  “Of course, just let me know when you want me to join you.” She flashed me a smile, then peered down at her phone.

  I watched her as she absentmindedly stirred the contents of her cup. It was becoming even more evident that I wasn’t worthy of her forgiveness. But, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stay away from her.

  Chapter 12

  Nicolette

  “Where were you going when I got here?” Henry asked when there was a lull in our conversation.

  I was still looking down at my phone to see if my boss had texted me again. It was after five o’clock. I had left work less than twenty minutes ago, but just as I walked into my apartment, my boss, Hannah, texted me that she had a project she absolutely needed me to pick up a packet on before tomorrow. This was what she did all the time. I was her personal gopher, the person she treated like her assistant when I wasn’t actually an assistant but a junior executive. And she could get away with it because her father owned the company.

  I waved a hand at his question. “Back to work. My boss is being a bitch.”

  Henry arched his eyebrows, and his burst of laughter filled the room. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this angry at someone.”

  “You barely know me. I’m not perky and cheerful all the time—especially not with my boss.” I shook my head as I spoke because that woman was the bane of my existence.

  Henry didn’t respond. When I looked up, he was frowning. “I guess you’re right. I don’t know you.” His mood was suddenly darker, broodier than it had been a moment before.

  “That’s not what I meant, Henry. I meant that appearances aren’t everything. Sure, most of the time, I try to look on the bright side and be positive, but people get to me, too.” I was irritated that he’d turned my words around in a way that sounded like I had meant it as a dig towards him, when all I’d wanted to do was to reassure him.

  “People get to you? Do I get to you?” The frown was still firmly in place as he stood up and towered over me.

  I wanted to back up, because from this angle, at this proximity, it felt too intimate. Instead, I cleared my throat.

  “Of course, you do,” I said, my voice soft as I tried not to give into the urge to stand and wrap my arms around his waist.

  It felt like he was asking me for something, but I couldn’t figure out what. Under the bluster of his sudden mood change, I felt his insecurity. I longed to wrap him up in my arms to show him that, no matter how hard he tried, I wouldn’t let him push me away.

  “How?”

  “So many ways.” Unprepared for the question, I answered him when I knew I shouldn’t have. I should have left it in silence. But now, my response was out there for him to question further.

  “In what ways?” The defensiveness was gone from his tone, replaced with curiosity. And desire. The latter of which I was trying to ignore.

  “Henry, I don’t really want to—” I started but was cut off when he gripped my hips and pulled me flush against him.

  “Does this get to you?” Our noses were centimeters apart, his breath mingling with mine. My eyes absorbed the ferocity of his emerald gaze.

  “Henry,” I whispered his name, unable to say anything else.

  When he was sober, he was intense, charismatic, and like a drug I couldn’t get enough of. This was the Henry I was getting lost in. This was the Henry that could make me fall in love.

  “What do you see when you look at me, Nicolette?” He asked it like he knew what I had been thinking.

  “I see you,” I said, my voice almost a whisper.

  He took in a sharp breath at my words but didn’t let go of me or waver in his gaze. “How?”

  The question was rhetorical, but I answered him anyway.

  “You can’t hide from me, Henry Rogers.”

  He let go of me after that, dropping me back to sit on the edge of the stool with a thud. Without saying anything else, he paced to the corner of the living room, stopping at the window. The view here wasn’t anything like that of his cousin’s apartment, but, just like the other night, he perched his head against the large window, eyes closed. I went to him this time, forgetting everything that I’d said I wouldn’t do or become with him. I wrapped my arms around his waist, resting my head against the lean muscles of his back.

  “I want to know you, the real you. The one that I see on days like this. I don’t know if I can promise you more than friendship, but I want to know you, Henry. And I want to be there for you when others haven’t. That’s why I want to go with you to the AA meeting. That’s why I forgive you for yesterday. That’s why I let you come up today.”

  “Okay,” he said, turning around, his arms going around my waist again.

  This time, I put my head against hist chest, hugging him back. This thing between us was more than physical attraction, though that was definitely a large part of it, too. But there was something else here, between us, something that made me finally feel like I wasn’t alone after so many years of feeling like I was on my own. Sure, I had Liza and my dad, but even they couldn’t chase away the demons that plagued my mind the way Henry had after only three days.

  Being with Henry made me feel like the turmoil inside of me was finally quiet. He made me feel like I could finally come clean about the self-destructive cycle I had been in since high school.

  “Henry, there’s something I—"

  I began to speak, to unburden my heart just as he had with me that first night, but my phone rang, shrill and stark from the other side of the room.

  “Shit,” I muttered under my breath as I dashed back over to the island and scooped it up. Before I even answered I knew who it was.

  “Nicolette, I’m at the office, waiting on you. Again.” Hannah’s nasally voice came through the phone, so loud that when I pulled it away from my ear, I could still hear her.

  “I’m sorry. I, uh, had an emergency. I’m running late.” I knew that wouldn’t assuage the tongue-lashi
ng she was going to give me, but would hopefully buy me some time.

  A loud, dramatic sigh came from the other end of the line. “Well, I can’t expect everyone in the company to have the same work ethic that I have. Get here within the next ten minutes or don’t bother coming in tomorrow at all.” She hung up without another word and I was left staring at my phone.

  “What’s going on? Was that your boss? Shit, Nic, I’m sorry.” Henry ambled over to me, pushing his hand through his hair as he walked.

  I watched him, my stomach fluttering at how handsome he was. His face was unshaven, a few days’ stubble turned into almost a full-coverage beard, his dark hair hanging down over one of his eyes despite him having just tossed it back. My stomach somersaulted again as my eyes trailed down his chest over the tight-fitting gray t-shirt he wore with black designer jeans and a pair of black Nikes. He didn’t look like the rich playboy I’d met four days ago on a blind date.

  “What?” he asked, because I hadn’t answered his question but I was staring at him instead.

  I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said, trying to shake off the attraction that was growing by the day, snowballing like an avalanche down the side of a mountain I was powerless to stop. “I have to go back into work, or she’s going to fire me.” I rolled my eyes because Hannah always threatened to fire people but rarely did. There would be no one left for her to order around or to do all of her work for her if she made good on her threats.

  “What if you didn’t go back and I got you a new job?” Henry said, a mischievous grin on his face.

  “What? You’re not making any sense.” I waved off his comment, went to the closet, and pulled my coat back out and shrugged it back on.

  Henry grabbed my bicep gently, turning me around to face him. “I could talk to my mother for you, see if she wants to hire you for my old job. I have it on good authority that she’s still looking for someone.” He wagged his eyebrows at me.

  I laughed. “Don’t toy with me, Henry. I’ve hated this job from the moment I started, but in Manhattan, I don’t have a lot of choices. The market is pretty closed in the PR industry and even tighter in fashion.”

  “But I’ve got an in with a family that owns their own fashion house. I told you that, right?” he teased, winking at me.

  “I thought you weren’t speaking to your mother?” I asked him, seriousness creeping into my voice.

  Henry shrugged. “Mother is never talking to me, but then calls to ask me to do things for her. That’s how it’s always been. Jax is the golden child, the one who can do no wrong and stays out of the spotlight. Me? I blow the spotlight up. Especially yesterday. She was not happy about my drunken display at that restaurant.” He grimaced, shaking his head.

  “But if she called you this morning about the, um, incident from yesterday, won’t she be angry?”

  My stomach fluttered with anticipation. Why did I have my hopes up? There was no way I was getting a job at the Radcliffe fashion house.

  Henry waved away my comment. “She wants me to go to therapy with her and my father tonight. I’m gonna tell her about AA. I’ll ask her about interviewing you.” The way he said it, all of it, was so nonchalant and cavalier, like he expected it to all work out, that I almost said yes.

  The gears in my mind turned as I thought about the possibility of never having to run another errand for Hannah again. Of being able to work with the best designers in the industry and promote their clothing. The anticipation made my palms tingle with anxiety. Could Henry come through with his promise? Could I get this job?

  There was only one way to find out.

  “All right. Okay. I won’t go back tonight.”

  Here goes nothing.

  Chapter 13

  Henry

  “Well, look who decided to show his face?” My mother growled the words at me through clenched teeth. Her hands were clasped in her lap, her lips pursed.

  Next to her, my father sat stiffly, his eyes following me as I sat in a chair across from them instead of on the couch with them. He raised his eyebrows at me, and I shrugged. I didn’t owe him an explanation for my lateness. I didn’t owe him anything.

  “We’ve only just started, Mrs. Rogers,” Dr. Gerard said.

  “Radcliffe-Rogers,” she corrected him, her lips so tight they could crack a walnut. “Unlike Henry, we arrived at the prescribed time of fifteen minutes early.”

  The therapist flicked a glance my way but all I did was shrug. I wasn’t going to respond to her passive-aggressive jabs. Not tonight. Not after I was riding high from an afternoon with Nicolette that surpassed anything alcohol could do for me.

  After she’d decided to blow off her boss, we sat and watched a movie on Netflix, complete with greasy microwave popcorn and sodas that I’d insisted on getting from the convenience store down the street. It was like being a kid again, except what I would have imagined a middle-class childhood was like. Not one like mine where every minute of every day was scheduled and regimented to the point of exhaustion. The movie was cheesy, but being next to Nicolette on the couch for two hours while we shared a bowl of popcorn and drank from the same soda straw was the most fun I’d had in a long time, if ever.

  I wasn’t about to skip out early for the torture that was a family therapy session.

  “Shall we begin?” Dr. Gerard tried to steer us back to having a discussion. “What concerns do you have to share with us today, Henry?”

  I was surprised that he began with me. Usually my mother monopolized most of the time, start to finish. Sitting up straighter, I cleared my throat to begin.

  “I’m going to start going to AA meetings,” I said, holding my head up and looking my mother directly in the eye.

  Horror crossed her face just as my father broke into a wide smile.

  “That’s wonderful, Harry,” my dad said as he stood, walking over to where I sat to lean down and hug me.

  I hugged him back, astonished again for the second time tonight. He clapped me on the back a few times before he broke the embrace, walking back to sit down next to my mother. We all looked at her, including Dr. Gerard, waiting for a response to my declaration. But she didn’t speak, only sat wringing her hands in her lap and with a tight look on her face.

  “Mother, did you hear me?” I asked, to make sure she was indeed listening.

  Ire flashed in her clear blue eyes as I addressed her. “Yes, we all heard you, Henry. How will dragging our name through the mud at some sleazy AA meeting help any of us?”

  My father and I exchanged a look of confusion before he turned to her.

  “Bea, Harry is making a decision to stop drinking. Don’t you think that’s a good thing?” His tone was direct and even as he spoke to her.

  My mother let out a loud sigh, closing her eyes and shaking her head back and forth slowly. “You’re both missing the point. Yesterday, Henry blatantly disgraced the family, in public, with his drinking. The last thing I want is for everyone in Manhattan to see his face splashed across the front pages of every news outlet walking out of some rundown church in midtown from an AA meeting. Then everyone will know he has a drinking problem. Can’t you just take a three week ‘vacation’”—she made air quotes—“to a rehab facility like everyone else does?”

  It was my turn to close my eyes, resting my head on the back of the couch for a second.

  “Is nothing I do or decide good enough for you, Mother?” I asked, my voice even and steady with conviction. I would not let her derail what I had already decided.

  She shook her head again, her hand clutching the pearls at her throat. “Don’t be dramatic, dear. I want what’s best for the whole family, for the business. If you are out there making fools of us all, how does that help anyone?”

  What could I say to that? I had made fools of them on many occasions, so she wasn’t wrong. But what she failed to acknowledge was that I was actively trying to make amends now. The way I was doing it should have been no concern of hers.

  “It was never my inten
tion to embarrass you,” I said with sincerity to both my parents as I stood up.

  I was done.

  “Harry, please sit down. Your mother didn’t mean it. We’re happy you’ve decided to get help. Right, Beatrice?” My father looked between us, panic evident in his hazel eyes. He was trying to appease both of us, playing mediator as he always did.

  “Oh, Henry, just sit down and let’s finish this session. Then we can talk about it some more over dinner. You’ll have dinner with us, won’t you?” That was her way of apologizing—always had been.

  I wondered, not for the first time, if she would ever offer a real apology.

  A huff of air left me as I sank back down onto the chair. I was exhausted of all of it—the fighting, the disappointment, and the shame. For too long I’d lived with it all, unable to cope with my parents’ expectations and living up to what my cousin had become. But I was finally ready to take control of my life again, to make a decision about my future, and I didn’t want my mother to try to dissuade me from doing it because I wasn’t doing it on her terms.

  “I’m doing this my way, Mother. I won’t be run out of town to some high-end rehab facility with the likes of Ben Affleck just because you’re embarrassed of me. This is the way that I want to get sober, this is my choice. Not yours.” I looked to Dr. Gerard as I spoke—his silence deafening in the room full of the declarations made by my parents and me.

  “You’re doing well, Henry. You have the right to ask to be heard. And I agree that you should take the best road to sobriety that you can.” Though he spoke to me, he looked at my parents.

  My father nodded, his eyes meeting mine. For the first time in a long time, I saw admiration in them and not disappointment. I wasn’t looking for his approval on this, but it was certainly nice to have an ally against my mother.

  My mother let out a strangled groan. “Fine, Henry. Go to your little AA meetings. But don’t expect to come back and work for me at the fashion house. That ship has sailed. You’ll have to find your own way.”