The Second Chance (Inferno Falls Book Three)

by Aubrey Parker

  Contents

  The Second Chance

  Copyright

  Chapter 1 - Maya

  Chapter 2 - Maya

  Chapter 3 - Maya

  Chapter 4 - Maya

  Chapter 5 - Grady

  Chapter 6 - Maya

  Chapter 7 - Grady

  Chapter 8 - Maya

  Chapter 9 - Maya

  Chapter 10 - Maya

  Chapter 11 - Grady

  Chapter 12 - Maya

  Chapter 13 - Maya

  Chapter 14 - Grady

  Chapter 15 - Maya

  Chapter 16 - Maya

  Chapter 17 - Grady

  Chapter 18 - Grady

  Chapter 19 - Maya

  Chapter 20 - Maya

  Chapter 21 - Grady

  Chapter 22 - Maya

  Chapter 23 - Grady

  Chapter 24 - Maya

  Chapter 25 - Grady

  Chapter 26 - Grady

  Chapter 27 - Maya

  Chapter 28 - Grady

  Chapter 29 - Maya

  Chapter 30 - Grady

  Chapter 31 - Maya

  Chapter 32 - Maya

  Chapter 33 - Grady

  Chapter 34 - Maya

  Chapter 35 - Grady

  Chapter 36 - Maya

  Chapter 37 - Maya

  Chapter 38 - Maya

  Where Did Bridget Go?

  Stuff You Should Know

  The Second Chance

  Aubrey Parker

  The Second Chance

  Aubrey Parker

  Copyright © 2015 by Aubrey Parker. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read this work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help spread the word.

  Thank you for supporting Aubrey Parker

  CHAPTER 1

  Maya

  It happened again.

  Yesterday, talking to my friend Jen about her problems, I got to thinking about Grady. That’s not unusual. He’s on my mind so much that I’ve stopped even mentioning it because I’m pretty sure everyone thinks I’m pathetic. I’m like a potential widow walking her deck, staring out across the sea, awaiting her long-lost husband’s return. Except that Grady left for reasons that had nothing to do with sailing, and I have no reason to believe he’ll ever come back. My friends think I’m wasting my time, uselessly pining. But for me, some days, the idea that he’s still out there, caring for me, maybe making his way home, is the only thing that keeps me going.

  I talked to Jen about her unrequited love. I got to thinking about mine. The thought became a virus, and hours later it was impossible to shake. By the end of my shift, I’d started to get uneasy, and there was an hour left after work where I could leave Mackenzie at her YMCA daycare program. So I made a call. I met a man I know. He always tells me I’m beautiful. An hour later, I was picking Mackenzie up, sure she could read the truth on my face. Wondering why Mommy is flushed and nervous instead of vaguely sad like normal. Wondering why Mommy keeps fussing with her lipstick at the stoplights, as if she’s done something wrong and has everything to hide.

  I could say that it happened again, but that would be a lie because every time I do this, it’s intentional.

  And I could say I regret it, but that would also be a lie.

  In the purest sense, a large part of me doesn’t regret it at all. I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs; I don’t stay out late; I pay my rent and take good care of my little girl. When I feel sad and I find someone who makes me slightly better, that’s my form of coping. I could blame someone else — my parents for being so strict and making sex seem mysterious, Grady for leaving me young and pregnant — but really it’s me, doing what I do. I could stop. I could find a nice guy and settle down for the long term. But I’m afraid my subconscious has other opinions: People can hurt you when they get too close. Best to keep them at arm’s length, where all they can do is make you feel good.

  Unless, the next day at work, you find yourself looking at your reflection upside-down in a spoon while setting a table, wondering who you are … and feeling not so good after all.

  In the spoon, inverted as if hanging from the ceiling, I see a girl with wide red lips and orange hair. Fair skin that Grady used to say was smooth like milk. She’s not a bad person; really she’s not. The girl in that spoon made mistakes early, when she was trying to be her own person, when her loving but strict parents forbade her to date and required her to volunteer at the church every afternoon. She made one whopper of a mistake that filled her belly with seven pounds of life-altering joy, and today that little girl is nine and no longer so little. I spend half of my time trying to be the best friend Mackenzie will ever have, and the other half hoping she won’t be like I was and (let’s be honest) still am, hoping she’ll never find out what I do when I’m feeling low, and who I sometimes spend my time with when she’s at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

  It always seems like such a good idea while temperatures are rising, when my mind fills with thoughts of skin on skin.

  The way a guy will flirt, and I’ll find myself flirting back.

  It feels good, being wanted. I spend my days being one thing, just a mother, so it’s nice when that’s not what someone sees in me — when they instead see someone sexy and young and pretty and worth their desire. I don’t see the problem with any of it — or rather, I should be girl-empowered enough to not see the problem. But I do.

  If I was really empowered about my sexuality, I suppose people would know this about me, but they don’t. It’s a secret. On the outside, I’m almost a prude. Only after letting go do I become something else.

  For just a little while, I allow myself to forget everything that’s made life so … average.

  Until afterward, when I remember.

  When men do what I do, they’re studs. Girls are sluts. I don’t know why. Both parties leave with what they wanted.

  If it’s okay, a voice in my mind whispers, you wouldn’t spend the next days looking at yourself upside-down in a spoon’s reflection. If you thought it was fine to hook up, you wouldn’t hide what you’re doing.

  I can only imagine what Ed would do if he had any idea about the incredibly handsome man who came on to me two weeks ago, and who I went to visit later.

  I can only imagine what Roxanne, the head waitress, would say if she knew that between last night and today, I had several of my most intimate itches scratched.

  I can only imagine the names Roxanne would call me, or how much harder Ed, who’s already awful, would harass me. And if any of that, in any form, made its way to Mackenzie? That would kill me.

  I’ve always justified it as proper, in a way. I don’t have time to date, and I’m sure not going to bring a man around my daughter until he’s sufficiently vetted and proven. But because I can’t be alone, hookups feel less selfish, ironically. No muss, no fuss. I get an hour or so of feeling good before it all goes away. It’s always been my way of coping. It keeps everyone out of the loop. It’s just me and him. Clean, like a transaction.

  But all the justification in the world changes nothing.

  I know, each time, that I can’t keep doing this.

  When I was a teenager, I could make excuses. I was a wild child who no one knew was especially feral. I did all the nice stuff my parents asked me to do. I gave to the poor and helped the needy. Everyone knew me aroun
d church because Mom and Dad had me there so often. It hardly mattered what happened in the back rooms, in the cloisters or whatever. I was a stupid kid, and even if I’d been caught, it would hardly have mattered. It broke my parents’ heart a little when I got pregnant, but they blamed him more than me.

  I was with Grady for a long time, and look how that turned out.

  I can do the girlfriend thing. I loved it, and deep down, I want nothing more than to have that kind of thing again. But it’s hard. It hurts. And when Grady was gone, there didn’t seem to be any logic in trying to find another man to stay with me. The old habits returned. Secretly and safely, only when someone else was watching my daughter. But they returned just the same.

  I’ve known for a long time that I had to knock this off. In a few years, Mackenzie might start asking questions that are increasingly harder to answer. In the not-terribly-distant future, my little girl will start noticing boys, too. I can show her one face and hide another, but she’s not stupid. And I can’t let her be like me. I won’t.

  Across the diner, I see Roxanne prowling toward me. I give myself one final look in the spoon, smile wide, and try to tell myself that I’m a good person.

  I’m not failing my daughter.

  I’m not failing my parents.

  I’m not living a lie.

  The way most people see love and sex, I can do the same … from here on out, starting today.

  That was the last time. For Mackenzie’s sake, that was the last time I place my own old scars ahead of common sense. Yesterday was empty calories. It’s knowing I shouldn’t eat cookies, standing in front of the box and repeating that I shouldn’t eat them, that they’ll just make me feel horrible … then eating them anyway because of how I know they’ll make me feel when I’m weak and need something, anything, to make it better.

  Sex is not the same as love, I tell myself. What love would do to heal these wounds, sex will not.

  If I can never have love again, it isn’t enough to settle for sex.

  I’m better than that. I’m worth more than that. And my daughter deserves better than to have a role model like I am … like I now, officially, used to be.

  “Are you going to set the table or keep breathing all over the customers’ silverware?” Roxanne asks on arrival, her exotic eyebrows arched and accusing.

  It bothers me that I feel one-up on Roxanne right now because yesterday, the handsome man in booth six wanted me, not her.

  Unless I was willing and Roxanne was not.

  Unless I was low-hanging fruit and nothing more.

  It’s ironic: I’m sure I hook up because it makes me feel like I’m worth something to someone for a change, but right now, I’m feeling exactly the opposite.

  “I can’t fire you, but Ed can,” Roxanne says when I don’t respond.

  I tell her I’m sorry, toss my mirror-mirror spoon into the bus bin behind me, lay out a fresh set, and move on down the line.

  CHAPTER 2

  Maya

  “Hey, Sugar Tits,” says a voice.

  Beside me, Abigail says, “Ignore him.”

  “You can’t ignore Ed. He’s like a virus. He’s more afraid of you than you are of him.”

  “You’re thinking of bees, Maya,” Abigail tells me.

  “Then he’s like a virus in that he’s gross and nobody’s sure if he’s actually alive, or just this thing that keeps coming on, like the Blob.”

  “Better,” Abigail says.

  Abigail steps aside before Ed arrives at the drink fountain. This is an agreement we have. For some reason, Ed is really into me but usually leaves the others — except Roxanne, of course, who holds more of his strings than he realizes — alone. Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: Maybe Ed bothers me so much because I allow it. But in my mind, it’s always better to play along than to fight something that’s only annoying, not actually damaging. I know Ed won’t stop ogling my ass and boobs, brushing into me and pretending it’s accidental and winking at me as I’ve ever shown an iota of interest. Getting upset will only make it unbearable. This way, I can at least make fun of him with the other girls behind his back.

  “Talking to you,” Ed says, arriving. He gives me a wink. Ed has fluffy hair and skin that’s cratered like the moon. Rumor says he was almost married once, but then the woman met him and things went quickly downhill from there. Another rumor tells tales of an almost-marriage, but then she died because he overinflated her. Both rumors are surely untrue, but I’ve been embellishing them in my head since hearing them. It’s the only way to make him bearable. Self-help gurus would call that reframing. I reframe his ass all the time. That’s how psychologically healthy I am, except for my glaring personal faults.

  “Yes?”

  “Table 4 says his toast is burned.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “You should handle that.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  “I don’t know why I’m handling it.”

  In my head, I say, Me neither. Asshole. And then I look at the clock, glad that there’s only about an hour left in my shift.

  “I just dropped it off. I haven’t checked on them yet.”

  “Well, he says it’s burned.”

  “I’ll go talk to him.”

  “You should fix it.”

  “I will, Ed.”

  He pinches my ass and gives me a wink. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to think this is hot, like we have a thing brewing, but I ignore it. I suppose I should stop it, but if I worry every time Ed touches me, I won’t have time for anything else.

  I head out to the table. The guy got our double-decker grilled cheese made with mizithra — one of the trendy, reinvention dishes that supposedly makes the Nosh Pit so hip. When I arrive, I find that the guy has eaten half the sandwich. He’s actively chewing when I ask how their meal is, giving no indication that the manager sent me.

  “How is everything?”

  “This sandwich is over-toasted. See here?” He shows me a spot of barely brown.

  “I’m sorry?” After dealing with Ed, it’s hard to keep the question mark out of my voice. The guy has been a problem from go. His whole table has. They seem to be early twenties, maybe late teens, and they keep speaking loudly about topics that would make Ed proud, like their girlfriends’ tits. I’ve already come over twice to ask if I could refill their glasses, in the hopes that sticking more things in their mouths might quiet them down.

  “Can’t you tell that’s over-toasted?”

  “Would you like something else?” I look at the half sandwich. I don’t know which kind of scam to accuse him of. If the sandwich wasn’t to his satisfaction, he shouldn’t have eaten so much of it. But this is the second time I’m offering to get him a replacement, and I’ve already decided I won’t be getting a good tip. It’s all I can do to not spill things on them.

  “A cheeseburger,” the kid says. The answer comes out so fast and automatic, it’s clear he’s been waiting for me to ask. There’s no please, no thank you, no would you mind. There’s no acknowledgement that half of his entree is gone. No acknowledgement that there’s nothing wrong with the sandwich whatsoever, even though I’m pretending to understand.

  I consider saying something, say nothing like always, then take the plate with a smile I don’t mean and head toward the back. I’m telling the chef, Patrick, about the replacement order when Roxanne sidles up and perches beside me like a vulture with an attitude problem.

  “That’s coming out of your pay,” she says.

  “The grilled-cheese sandwich?”

  “The cheeseburger.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the second replacement that guy’s asked for. What are you doing wrong?”

  “I don’t know, Roxanne. I guess my cooking skills are off today.” I glance before saying it, making sure Patrick is out of earshot.

  “You should fix what’s wrong, not give out free food. I heard you over there. You didn’t even try to correct the grilled cheese.”

&
nbsp; I sigh. Roxanne doesn’t care about the customers or the diner’s operations. She mainly cares about dressing me down. I can’t say anything right. But unlike with Ed, it’s not simpler to let her keep grabbing my ass and calling me Hot Pants. Ed is a dog in search of a bone, more sad than threatening. But to Roxanne, this is a power game. Queen of the wait staff. If I weren’t so depressed that I ended up a waitress too, I’d mock her ambitions to rule the underlings instead of making something useful out of her life.

  “He returned it because he doesn’t like it.”

  “Because it was over-toasted,” Roxanne says.

  “It wasn’t over-toasted.”

  “Not in your mind.”

  “I’m bringing him something new anyway. Why not bring him something he’ll eat?”

  Something to Roxanne’s other side catches her attention, and I’m spared a reply. I’m sure I was about to get accused of tip grubbing: giving the annoying customer a peace offering to try and save fifty cents or a buck when their meal is over. It’s so not true. I just want to get through the next — and here, I look at the clock — the next fifty-five minutes. Then I can go home, wash the food smells off of my body, and finally spend some time with Mackenzie. God knows she deserves it. God knows my complex-but-relatively-simple life has screwed her enough lately, and that’s not counting the few times I’ve elongated her daycare because stress hurts, because I’ve thought too much of Grady, and because I spend so much time taking care of others that sometimes I want someone to take care of me.

  Which is over.

  Starting today.

  There’s a crash in the front room.

  “Maya!”

  It’s Ed. I run out, apparently incapable of ignoring a shout lest it turn out to be something horrible. I find Ed standing with his hands on his hips. He’s in his mid-to-late forties and has a gut. The ridiculous way he’s standing, with his poofy hair and terrible skin, he almost looks like a sports team’s mascot.