1001 Dark Nights Short Story Anthology 2020

by Fiona Archer

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  Scoring a Second Chance

  A Mr. Match Prequel Tale

  by

  Delancey Stewart

  Chapter One

  Melinda

  My father was my hero.

  I mean, sure, all little girls say that, but not all little girls can look up to a man who spent his life literally saving peoples’ lives. The man taught me right from wrong, made sure I knew how to throw a punch if I needed to, and left me with final words that would always make me laugh and cry at the same time: “Melinda, never trust anyone who doesn’t like cornbread.”

  How could you ever top that?

  And now he was gone.

  The little church was full. And the air conditioning was broken. Which was not unusual. Small town, small church, small budget. But big, big hearts.

  “Errol’s daughter Melinda would like to say a few words,” the pastor said, and my mother’s hand landed on my forearm, pulling me from my thoughts.

  I sucked in a steadying breath and rose, turning to look at the faces that had spent as much time in my house growing up as they probably had in their own, people my father had brought together—some he’d actually saved.

  “Dad would have loved this,” I started, resting my hands on the solid podium in front of me. “He would have loved seeing all of us together here—he would have wondered where the food was, though, and why y’all are so damned quiet.”

  That brought a little chuckle to the crowd, and my heart turned over inside my chest. God, he’d loved to laugh—and he’d made all these people laugh for years. I was a sorry substitute, and I realized I could never properly pay homage to a man like my dad. There were too many words to say, too many things to cover, and I wasn’t a woman who dealt in words. I felt the lump grow in my throat as my eyes filled, and I looked down at the notes I’d scribbled earlier.

  Shit. Pull yourself together.

  The church was stifling now, and the uncomfortable silence swelled as I struggled. I cleared my throat and forced my eyes back up, sucking in a deep breath.

  I was about to speak again when the door opened at the end of the aisle, and a ghost slipped inside, glanced quickly around, and then slid into a seat at the back.

  Adam

  I probably shouldn’t have come. Funerals weren’t the kind of gatherings you just popped in on. And arriving on time would have been better than sprinting from the parking lot in my suit just in time to arrive inside to slide, sweating, into the last seat in the back. But there was nothing I could do now. I shot a smile at the woman next to me, thankful she’d been willing to slide over enough for me to fit in and certain she was regretting it now.

  The sweating. Shit.

  I’d barely had time to shower after the game and pull this suit on in the locker room, much to the amusement of my teammates, who had no idea what I was up to. And I sure as hell wasn’t telling them.

  Because what I was up to was probably a horrible idea. And when your idea is so bad you don’t want to mention it to a teammate who’d once been arrested for trying to climb through a Taco Bell drive-thru window at two in the morning? That was the hallmark of a shitty idea right there.

  But it was Melinda. And so I’d had to come.

  Melinda

  Adam. Adam was here?

  My mind spun as everyone in this condensing space waited for me to speak.

  “My father,” I said, my voice cracking. “My father was my hero.” I lifted my eyes, unable to keep them from the magnet in the back row. My gaze met his, and the room stilled, my heart stilled. My pain—blessedly—stilled.

  Because Adam Isley had always been the stabilizing pole around which my world turned. There had been Adam and my father.

  Until Adam had left.

  It didn’t matter now. I took that mental quiet, that constant stability his presence gave me for whatever inexplicable reason, and I ignored every other thing happening inside my body and my heart. And I spoke about my dad, my eyes never leaving Adam’s.

  When I’d finished, the church was no longer silent. People were chuckling, some were crying, and all of them were thinking about my daddy, remembering him like I did. I wrenched my eyes from Adam’s, turning to look at the photo of Dad in his bunker gear, dressed to go pull folks from a burning building at a moment’s notice. I took another deep breath and then found my mother’s tear-stained face and returned to my spot in the front row as the pastor took over.

  “Who’s back there?” Mom asked, angling her head behind her and whispering to me.

  I stared at her. “What?”

  “You were talking to someone. Did you see your pop’s ghost come in the door?”

  It had been a ghost, but Mom didn’t need to know who. I wasn’t completely sure he was actually there, anyway. My mind was such a mess. “No one, Mom.” I held her hand against my arm. Her skin was cool, even in this heat.

  As the pastor finished the final prayer, he released us, asking everyone to join him at our house this evening for a reception. We stood, and I felt the air thin as someone opened the back doors to let out the heat. Steeling myself, I turned around once more to scan the back of the church, but the crowd was thronging to the door and towards the cool fresh air beckoning in the Carolina sunshine outside. And he was gone.

  Adam

  I’d held her gaze while she talked. I would have held her hand if I could. Hell, I wanted to do more than that. Melinda was every bit as beautiful as she’d been when we were eighteen. And when we were twelve. I’d even thought she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen when we were five.

  And I wanted her every bit as much today as I had the day I’d made my choice and walked away.

  But I didn’t have the right to hold any part of the woman I knew I’d always love. I’d chosen professional soccer over her, after all…and who did that?

  The South Carolina sun beat down on the parking lot outside the church, but a breeze pushed through the damp, cooling the air like a promise. I stood to the side, under the shade of a drooping magnolia tree, watching familiar faces descend the steps, spread out to climb into air-conditioned cars, and drive away.

  I knew I should do the same. I had a plane to catch. The Sharks were headed back to San Diego, and we had another game in two days. That was my life now. That was what I’d chosen—not this green beautiful place full of people who’d give you the shirt off their backs or their last quarter, just for asking.

  “Adam Isley! I thought that was you, boy!” Dr. Sculler practically bounced across the little mound of grass beneath the tree, hand outstretched and teeth shining behind the wide grin he’d always worn.

  “Dr. Sculler, sir. How are you?”

  He shook my hand enthusiastically. “Good, son. Good. Nice to see you here.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Melinda know you’re here?”

  “She saw me,” I said.

  “Shame about your folks, son,” the doctor said, and I had a flashback to him calling me to deliver the news. An accident. Together in the car. And that was one reason I never came back. Without my parents, I didn’t have an excuse to visit. Melinda didn’t want me here. Not normally. “Well, anyway,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Good to see you again. You keep it up man, love watching the matc
hes.”

  “You watch soccer now, Dr. Sculler?”

  “This whole town follows the Sharks,” he laughed. “You tell those boys they’ve got a second home here in South Carolina.”

  “I’ll let them know. Thanks.” I shook the doctor’s hand again, but my attention was pulled past him, to the steps Melinda had just descended with her mother.

  As the doctor walked off, I stared. I couldn't help it. And as I watched the woman I’d loved my whole life thank everyone around her with handshakes, hugs, and kisses, I wondered how I’d ever had the power to leave in the first place. Because I’d planned to leave right after the service today, but I was rooted to this spot.

  Melinda and her mother both looked over to where I stood, and I hoped maybe the shade of the tree was enough to hide me, knowing full well it wasn’t. Mrs. Rogers lifted a hand in acknowledgement, and then joined another woman to walk to a car at the edge of the parking lot. And Melinda stood still, staring at me.

  The dark dress she wore clung to her thin frame. And while it was conservative, there was no hiding the curves I still knew like I knew my own face. The swell of those perfect breasts, the round of the best ass on the face of the earth. Her dark skin practically glittered in the sunlight, and I knew I wanted her every bit as much now as I ever had. But I’d made my choice, and she’d already said she would never forgive me.

  So why was she still standing there?

  Melinda

  The man had a hell of a lot of nerve.

  I told him three years ago never to come back.

  If he wanted to race around a grassy field with a bunch of other men chasing a stupid ball, that was fine. And if that was more important than whatever we had—whatever we’d had since we were five years old?—then that was fine too.

  Only my heart had never really agreed.

  And interestingly, neither had my dad.

  “If you make that boy choose, Mellie, you’ll break the both of you. There’s no right choice,” he’d said. But I’d been certain he was wrong.

  And now Adam stood like a dark simmering god waiting for me beneath that magnolia tree, and I knew I was making a choice of my own when I took that first step toward him.

  His broad shoulders and wide thighs filled out his dark suit in a way that was practically obscene, and I struggled to quiet the part of me that wanted to run to him, to cry in those magnificent arms, to let him comfort me. To let him do a hell of a lot more than that.

  Instead, I held myself tall and firm, and I came to a stop before him with the scent of magnolia blossoms heavy in the thick air around us. I imagined myself delivering a curt, “Hello Adam.” I wanted to be steel and glass in front of this man who’d chosen something else over me.

  But he was here.

  “You came,” I heard myself say instead, my voice a whisper.

  “Of course,” he said simply. “Mel, I’m so sorry.”

  He’d loved my father. He didn’t have to remind me of that or offer any other platitudes about the man my dad had been. It was enough.

  I wanted to answer, but my mouth was full of words I couldn't say, and my heart was too full to talk. So I looked at him instead. I looked into the eyes that still filled my dreams—golden and green, glittering and playful, and so very mischievous. I looked at the stubbled jaw, the deep brown skin stretched across it like satin, the perfect lips sculpted just for me to touch, to kiss. I looked into the face of the man I should have been angry with, the man I’d told myself I would never forgive.

  And when he reached a hand out, I took it, accepting that warm touch and doing my best to ignore the stark certainty that had always filled my heart when our skin met.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said, his voice soft, uncertain.

  “You too,” I told him.

  We stood there for an awkward moment, and I felt the years flash by as we stood, flickering images scrolling one by one—the two of us beneath this magnolia tree, at five, at ten, at fifteen, eighteen. Now.

  It was too much to process, especially today. The world felt like it had drawn itself down to this little spot, to this small touch between two people as fated as any ever were to find one another over and over again. If not in this life, then in the next, or maybe the one after that. Two souls that had been together as long as time had pulled the waves onto shore or turned the earth on its axis.

  “You thirsty?” he asked, giving my hand a little squeeze.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “I am.”

  “Your mom need you, though?” He knew we’d always been close.

  “She’s got three of her four sisters with her. I think she’ll be okay for an hour or so.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me for the briefest of seconds, his concern for my mom, for the fact that we’d just buried my father, evident in the furrow between his brows.

  “It’s okay. An hour.” I smiled at him, and he tugged me gently toward the parking lot.

  Adam

  When Melinda took my hand, I knew I wasn’t going to make that flight.

  I helped her into the passenger seat of the Escalade I’d rented, silently acknowledging that if she asked me to stay this time, I would. The guys would never forgive me—but I knew now I could survive the disappointment of the South Bay Sharks. I could live with that weight around my shoulders, but I couldn’t carry the weight of letting this woman down for another day.

  When our eyes had met again, when our skin had slid together, every cell inside me had screamed with connection, with absolute certainty. She was all there was for me, and I’d been a fool not to see it before.

  “Diner?” I asked her, sliding a glance sideways to take in the way the dress pulled up her smooth bronze thighs just a few inches higher than the pastor would condone.

  “Yeah.” She nodded and let out a breath.

  “How are you?” I asked. “I mean today, with everything. But also…how’ve you been?”

  She chuckled, a low sardonic sound that both shamed and inflamed me. But she didn’t speak. Not for a long moment.

  And in that moment, I saw ninety-nine versions of this conversation unfold. I felt the pain of her sending me away again, of having to live without her, and I felt the joy of being accepted into those arms again. For good. My heart swelled and broke over and over until a word finally fell from her perfect lips.

  “I’m better now that you’re here.”

  The diner hadn’t changed, and when we were settled across from one another in the same booth where I’d stolen fries from her plate hundreds of times before, something inside me began to settle.

  “I owe you an apology,” I started, and she shot out a hand, putting it on mine and stilling me, stopping my words.

  “No,” she said, smiling and shaking her head in a way that spoke of so much sadness I wanted to pull her across the table and into my arms to comfort her. “No, you don’t.”

  We didn’t speak for a few minutes, but I ordered a milkshake and she asked for sweet tea, and when the waitress was gone and the air had stilled again, she leaned back into the booth and fixed me in her dark gaze.

  “I asked you to make an impossible choice. And it was unfair.” She shook her head, as if at herself. “I was young and selfish. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m still young and selfish…” she trailed off, her brow wrinkling as she seemed to think of something. “Do you have a girlfriend, Adam?”

  “I do not.” I smiled at her, relieved we weren’t going to talk about work and the weather. Or even about the fact that I had her here at a diner when her mother was certainly expecting her at home to help prepare for the reception.

  “And why are you here now?” She barely glanced at the waitress as our drinks arrived.

  I opened my mouth to answer her, but as I did, something wild flashed into my mind, and for no reason I could explain, I turned to the waitress instead. “Just a second,” I said. “Could we get some cornbread too, please?”

  “Of course.” She turned and left, and I looked bac
k at Melinda to find her staring at me, a strange expression on her face—shock?

  “I came back for the cornbread,” I said. “Can’t get it like this in San Diego.”

  She raised an eyebrow and shook her head slightly, her vague smile returning.

  “And for you, Melinda.” That was the truth of it. I waited for my heart to stutter after I said the words, laying it bare on the table before us, but it didn’t falter—its beat was solid and reassuring in my chest. “I came for you. To support you today, but also…because my life isn’t whole when you’re not in it.”

  “You’ve got soccer. You still love it, right?” She pulled the straw up into those perfect lips and stared at me over the table. Without meaning to, I imagined it was me between those round soft lips of hers, her wide eyes looking up at me as I watched her take me in. My cock stiffened uncomfortably in my trousers, and I shifted, adjusting. Her smile grew around the straw like she knew exactly what I was thinking. She always had.

  “Turns out there are a few different kinds of love,” I said. “I miss the kind I had with you.”

  “Maybe you’ll find it out on the beach in California,” she suggested. “Plenty of pretty Barbie soccer fans, I suspect.”

  I shook my head slowly back and forth. “Why are you making this hard? Is there someone else?” I’d looked at the church, fully expecting to see some dark masculine presence at her side, in my spot. But there was no one. I knew the answer before she confirmed it.

  “There’s no one,” she said softly. “There’s just you, and I’m trying my damndest to hate you for it.”