If You Come Back

by Alexis Leia

  “I wish I had come earlier that day”, he said and sorrow filled Selene’s heart. The past belonged in the past, and she had buried it a long time ago. Sometimes, though, it had the tendency to resurface.

  “Don’t. It’s not your fault, it’s nobody’s fault. Everything you did for me after that is what counts”, she said in a flat voice, the echoes of the previous pain existent, but the trauma no longer prevailing. She truly did get over it.

  She wasn’t afraid to talk about what happened over a decade ago, but people who knew – which was everybody – never mentioned it in front of her, as if hearing it again could somehow break her. It was kind of ironic; she was the one who went through all of it, yet everybody else was afraid to talk about it. The past couldn’t break Selene, that was something she always pointed out.

  “I’m just worried, now with Chris being back and all...”, he said. So much for not thinking about Chris anymore.

  “Chris is on a vacation and will be back to L.A. soon. His visit means nothing, Wilson”, she pointed out, returning to her old self.

  “What about the auction dinner?”

  “We’ll have it on Friday, but don’t think I’m the same little girl I was thirteen years ago. Chris is nobody to me now”, she said, subconsciously knowing that she might be lying.

  Chris could never be a nobody to her, but she could sure as hell make sure that he didn’t influence her life.

  “Alright then. Just looking out for you, baby girl”, Wilson said and kissed the top of her head.

  “You’re the best grandfather ever”, she said and hugged him.

  “With my kids and grandkids living on the other side of the country, you’re the only granddaughter I have left here!” he laughed. She smiled sincerely at those wonderful words.

  “Martia said you should come over for dinner. Bring Sam if you want to”, he said, referring to one of her favorite foster kids.

  “Will do. See you at six”, she said and waved before walking away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Waterfall Lake was one of the main attractions of Mountainview, and it used to be Chris’s hiding place when he lived there. Located just outside downtown, it was easy to find and it was incredibly inviting. Instead of taking his rented car out for a drive, he walked downhill and reached the lake within five minutes. He told Sam he would be there, and he always kept his promises. He suspected the kid had very few adult friends, and if Chris had to be the one, he would gladly do it in order to show him that not all people were evil like Chris used to think back in the day.

  He almost regretted walking through the town, since almost every person who saw him stopped him for a short chat, asking the usual questions: how’s life in L.A.?; did he know Brad Pitt?; did he drive a Lambo?, etc. The majority of people he knew from his childhood, and instead of feeling bitter like he had expected to feel if he ever came back, he felt almost nostalgic. People were kind, forthcoming and welcoming here. He realized that he didn’t hate the town, but the pain it represented.

  When his life changed two decades ago, it also changed his perspective. Instead of being comforting, this town had choked him and people’s kindness drove him mad. He still had to visit that one place, but he couldn’t make himself go. He would try until the end of his vacation, but even after twenty years, he still wasn’t ready.

  He sat on his old bench and stared at the broad, sunny horizon. The lake got its name by its actual source; if he looked from his sitting position on the right, he could see the mountain and its waterfalls running down and creating the restless lake. It seemed like there was no end to the lake, and on the left thick evergreen trees grew, creating a small forest where a lot of people lived in their wooden cabins. During the winter, ice covers the lake and creates a very risky skating ground, where only the bravest test their abilities; Chris couldn’t count the time he’d spent on the ice, skating around in circles. Seeing the lake now, it only awoke bittersweet memories. It was the place where he first met Selene.

  He was thirteen at the time, angry at the world and himself, and Selene was ten, incredibly mature and responsible for her age.

  It was Christmas Eve, and instead of being gathered around the Christmas tree in a warm living room, the foster kids were sent to their rooms after a very frugal dinner. Chris wasn’t the one to stay inside confined, so he learned to be the master of escapes. He stood at the lake, knee-deep in the snow, watching the endless white horizon and snow that seemingly never stopped falling in Mountainview. He was freezing, but everything was better than suffocating inside that foster home where he was classified as yet another orphan, a number.

  “You should come back, we don’t want you to freeze to death”, a soft voice behind him said and snapped him out of his thoughts.

  He sharply turned around, fully intending to send his intruder to hell, but when he saw her, he lost the ability to speak. Her long, fiery red hair was decorated with white snowflakes that repeatedly fell on that thick red mane. She was petite, a few years younger than him maybe, but her amazing emerald eyes held the level of maturity he recognized in his reflection in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed in deep pink, due to cold or discomfort of being around him – he didn’t know. She was beautiful, a kid who captured his attention. If he was capable of love, he would say that in that moment the girl became the object of his love. But since that was him, and his heart was nothing but a crucial organ inside his body, she became the object of his fascination.

  “What does it have to do with you?” he asked her arrogantly and actually witnessed her eyes flashing with irritation. So, she wasn’t afraid of him. There were few who weren’t.

  “I don’t really care. I was just sent here by our foster parents to come and get you. They knew you’d be here”, she said defiantly as she inched closer to where he stood.

  When she reached his side, she looked him dead in the eye and raised her eyebrow, waiting for response he forgot to give her, since he was so mesmerized by the red and white show of her hair.

  “So, you’re the new kid, huh?” he asked her, becoming even more arrogant by the second, intending to push her away. He didn’t need anyone, didn’t want to get close to anybody.

  “I am. You got a problem with that?” she asked in challenge.

  “You’re too young to act so brave”, he teased her, sensing age might be her weak point. He was right; she silently growled in her throat, surprising the hell out of him.

  “Look, I was just sent here to come and get you. You coming or not?” she snapped and turned around to walk away.

  “What’s your name?” he asked her. He could see her debating whether to tell him or not, but then sighed and walked back to him.

  “Selene”, she said and he immediately liked it. It suited her.

  “Does it have a meaning?” he kept talking to her, realizing the sound of her voice stopped his grim thoughts for a while.

  “I think it’s Greek for ‘the goddess of moon’. I mean, that’s what my mom told me, before she…”, she said and almost immediately her face dropped, her eyes getting sad. He didn’t like seeing sadness clouding her face, but he was a selfish jerk who wanted to know her story, so he pushed her a little more.

  “Where is she now?” he asked her, expecting her to get angry and leave him alone in the snow.

  “She died. Cancer. My father left while I was still a toddler”, she explained directly without a flinch. He admired that no-bullshit attitude.

  “Where’s your family?” she asked back.

  “Let’s go inside, we don’t want you to freeze to death”, he echoed her words in a voice colder than the night.

  “At least tell me your name”, she shouted behind him as she tried to keep up with his fast pace.

  “What, our ‘parents’ didn’t tell you?” he kept on being rude, putting a heavy sarcastic emphasis on the word ‘parents’. They could hardly be called foster parents, let alone anything else.

  “No. They seem like jerks anyway”, she said in
a grim tone, immediately making him like her even more.

  “It’s Chris”, he found himself telling her.

  “Chris”, she repeated his name, seeming deep in thought about it. He rather liked how she said his name.

  They spent the rest of the night in the foster home’s hallway, sitting in front of the doors of their rooms opposite one to another, talking and joking around, making him finally find a person who crawled under his skin and found the way to his soul.

  Chris smiled to himself as he reminisced about the past, about the only part of his past that wasn’t as dark. Selene never put up with his bullshit, and from day one she let him know that he couldn’t intimidate her. He couldn’t wait for Friday to come, when he would have some time alone with her.

  She didn’t want to go to a dinner with him, that much was obvious, but her strong moral compass obliged her to fulfill her part of the deal. When he’d told her that he wanted her, she didn’t react the way he expected. Instead of being either very angry or very excited, she didn’t believe him. She’d simply rolled her eyes and wanted to know where their, quote, unfortunate meeting would take place.

  Either she really didn’t believe that he wanted her, or she gave him the world’s biggest brush off. But how could she not believe it? Every single man would kill to have her, and Chris was definitely on that list. Her opinion of him was probably so low, she didn’t believe anything he said. He didn’t blame her, but that sure as hell made the situation more difficult. How was he supposed to apologize to a woman who doubted everything that came out of his mouth?

  His thoughts were interrupted by strange rustling of the bushes behind him. He turned around to see one small, dark head peeking above the bush.

  “I thought you’d be a no-show”, Chris said to Sam who obviously gave up on sneaking and came around the bush to stand in front of him, his hands inside his pockets and his gaze on the ground, where he kicked an imaginary stone or something.

  “I wanted to skip this”, the boy said and shrugged.

  “Then why didn’t you?” Chris asked him gently, talking to him like an adult.

  When he was Sam’s age, the thing he hated most was when people treated him like a kid, despite the fact that he was exactly that – just a child, hurt and wounded, but a child nonetheless.

  “Well, you invited me, didn’t you?” Sam fired back, lifting his defiant gaze up at Chris, who wanted to laugh at all the similarities between them.

  The kid actually looked like a ghost of what Chris had once been, and he guessed it’s really true what they say about the ghosts of the past – they do eventually come back.

  “I did. And I’m really glad you came”, Chris said and moved over to make room for Sam on the bench. The kid eyed the bench and him for a minute, and then sat at the far end, as far away from Chris as he could.

  “Why?”

  “I told you, you’re my friend. And friends like to hang out together.”

  “How can I be your friend if you don’t know me?” the kid kept on with his disbelieving attitude.

  Chris acted casual, shrugging his shoulders and keeping his eyes on the lake as well, wanting to make Sam feel as if they were equals.

  “Since you obviously care about Selene, that makes you her friend. And any friend of hers is a friend of mine. Besides, I like you, kid”, he said.

  “Are you her boyfriend?” Sam asked him and from the corner of his eye, Chris saw the kid finally looking at him.

  “No. We’re childhood friends. We met while we lived at the foster home together”, he honestly explained and looked at Sam, whose mouth gaped open.

  “You were in the foster home too?”

  Chris wasn’t surprised to hear Sam was an orphan. His private investigator had already informed him about Sam Lockwood’s background – eleven years old, thrown into the foster care after his mother left him in a safe house. His mother, her identity unknown, had left her son after they both escaped their abusive husband and father. Nobody knew where she was or what happened to her. The father was convicted for various crimes, which had left little Sam all on his own. When he found out, Chris wanted to punch a wall. He wished he had the authority to impose parental licenses all over the world, because some people weren’t fit to have children.

  “Yeah, I was.”

  “But the kids say that you’re rich and live in Los Angeles.”

  “I do live there now, but I’ve been in foster homes since I was about your age and left when I was seventeen. I was ten when they first put me in there. I suppose you’re about the same age?” Chris said.

  “I’m eleven”, Sam said and sniffed smugly. Chris laughed and lifted his hands up in surrender.

  “Alright, alright. Eleven is a big deal. How’s fifth grade treating you?” he asked Sam and watched his face turn mad.

  “They’re all bunch of assholes.” Oh, how Chris could relate to that.

  “Watch your mouth, kid. You don’t want someone to hear it and give you an earful about how it’s wrong to cuss”, Chris said lightly, watching Sam’s expression go calculating.

  “Adults say things like that all the time”, he pointed out.

  “Adults do and say a lot of sh – uh, things that they shouldn’t. That’s why you learn how to behave while you’re still a kid.”

  “But you don’t really mind if I cuss”, Sam pointed out, completely confident, and Chris noticed how the kid had a keen power of observance.

  “I should really say I do, because I’m a responsible adult, but I don’t mind it as long as you have some limits. But, do you think Selene would approve of that?” Chris asked, still not knowing what was the connection between Selene and the kid, who was obviously very fond of her, but fully intending to find out. He wanted to know everything about her, as simple as that. Admittedly, he wanted to know more about the kid too.

  “No”, Sam sighed and seemed to give up on the whole cussing thing.

  “Besides, you won’t be the most desirable guy between the girls if you cuss like a sailor”, Chris jabbed.

  “Ugh, girls. Who cares”, Sam said and faked a dramatic shiver, making Chris laugh.

  “What’s wrong with girls? I think they’re pretty interesting.”

  Sam rolled his eyes and finally seemed to relax as he leaned on the bench, turning toward Chris and crossing his legs underneath himself.

  “That’s because you like sex”, Sam said, surprising the shit out of Chris, who choked on his own saliva and coughed for a solid minute before continuing. He didn’t know how to answer Sam’s very correct assumption.

  “Uhm, okay... Uh, do you know what... sex... is?” Chris stuttered, blushing possibly for the first time in his life, causing Sam to roll his eyes, again. Chris had a feeling the kid picked it up from Selene, who had that habit when someone – most often Chris – said something incredibly stupid.

  “Of course I do. Selene gave me that birds and bees talk when I was eight years old”, Sam said. He looked a little more relaxed now, and Chris figured that he must be doing well with him, whatever the hell he was doing anyway. Kids were a foreign territory when it came to him, but this one turned out to be smarter than most.

  “So, what’s the problem with girls and other kids in school?” Chris asked him, avoiding the sex topic in a wide perimeter.

  “The girls gossip all the time and talk about clothes and make-up and puberty, and I hate it. And kids in general don’t really like me, because I live in a foster home”, Sam admitted, seeming angry on the outside, but the sadness from within came to the surface.

  “They still tell those lame jokes about orphans?” Chris asked him, letting him know that he was familiar with the problem.

  “Yeah. I mean, I ignore them mostly but sometimes it gets on my nerves so I end up in detention when I beat up some of the guys. I would never to that to a girl, though.”

  Chris was getting the pieces of the puzzle one at a time, and he suspected the kid had been exposed to at least some degree of violence at
some point in his life.

  “I know what you mean. I got into the same kind of trouble when I was a kid. But you know what?” Chris said and grinned, enjoying Sam’s anticipation.

  “What?” the kid asked.

  “Even though kids can sometimes be cruel and tease you about things that aren’t even your fault, the best thing you can do is ignore them. That gets on their nerves like you wouldn’t imagine.”

  Okay, that was nice adult advice that Chris would never have listened to if somebody had said it to him. He only hoped that he had more influence on Sam than other adults had on him when he was a child.

  “I’ll try”, Sam said in suspicion.

  “We have this thing in school, Parent’s Day. The kids teased me about who I’m going to bring. I thought about ditching that day”, the kid added, indirectly looking for Chris’s advice.

  “Is it strictly necessary to invite parents, or can it be someone else?”

  “We can bring someone else, I guess. I wanted to ask Selene, but I don’t think she has time for that since she’s just become the mayor”, Sam said and looked at his intertwined fingers.

  “You should ask her, I think she would really like to come. And I’d like to come too”, Chris said impulsively.

  What was he doing? Soon he’d have to leave Mountainview again, and he didn’t want to give the kid hopes that he’d have a constant backbone in him, when he wouldn’t even be around. However, he liked Sam, his attitude and his cleverness, so he wanted to help him out, at least that one time.

  “You would? I mean, that’s cool”, Sam began excitedly but then toned it down a bit, making Chris’ lips twitch in amusement.

  “Yeah, why not? Both Selene and I were foster kids, so we can show them that you can succeed in life no matter what kind of a background you have.”

  For the first time, Sam gave him a real smile that lit up his young face and made him seem more like a child he was supposed to be, rather than a child with the burden of the world on his back.

  “Thanks... Chris”, the kid said carefully, watching Chris’s reaction, who grinned widely and stretched his hand to ask for a high-five. Sam slapped his palm against Chris’s after a second of suspicion, and then the kid became all serious again.