Never Too Late

by Ana Balen

  It should be said that while other grandmothers were sweet and balked at even the slightest bad word, mine was more in your face, do as she pleased and had a mouth of a sailor.

  She put her hand on my cheek and got in my face, her voice warm. “And I’m so very proud of you, my darling girl. You wouldn’t believe how much even if I had the words to tell you.” She stood up straight and slapped my cheek. “Besides, I already told everyone that you’re going to be a doctor, you don’t want to make me a fucking liar, do you?”

  I rubbed my face and through a smile muttered, “No, I wouldn’t want that.”

  “Good, now let’s go back so I can get that woman drunk and loosen up a little.”

  We walked a full circle around the square and got back to Mrs. McConnell. But she wasn’t alone.

  When I saw who it was, I stopped, not able to take another step. “Um... Grandma, I think I’m gonna…”

  “Don’t be a fool, he’s not going to bite you.”

  God.

  God.

  Dylan Thomas.

  He was the most beautiful boy I have ever seen. All through high school, I watched him grow up and fill out. I haven’t seen him for almost four years, but in those years he grew up into a beautiful man.

  Tall.

  I could see, even under his coat, that he still worked out (probably as religiously as he did in high school) and kept his muscled body the same. His jeans were plated to his thighs and with every move, he tested the seams of it. He had a knit cap over his dirty blond, almost brown, hair.

  “Hey,” he said when we came into his line of sight. His voice was so deep, I felt as if he was scratching my insides with it, in the best possible way. Wow, time sure did him good.

  “Hi.” I couldn’t look at him. I was afraid I would fall down on my knees and begged him to take me into his arms and finally kiss me, as I daydreamed all throughout school he would do.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t even notice I was alive, let alone shown any interest in me.

  “Hi, Dylan. Didn’t think you would be still here,” my grandmother said.

  Why wouldn’t he be here? Where was he living? The questions swirled in my head.

  “I decided to take leave and stay with my mom.”

  “Ah, I’m so sorry. How is she?”

  They carried on with their conversation and I hung on every word, trying to appear as if I wasn’t listening.

  “She’s still lost, doesn’t know what to do now, actually. So I figured it would be good if I stayed here with her until…”

  And then I remembered. A few months before, he lost his dad. He woke up, got his coffee, and collapsed. It was his heart, and they never knew he had a heart condition.

  His mom couldn’t cope but at the time and descended into depression. But I thought she was doing better with time.

  “I’m so sorry about your dad,” I said softly, and I hoped he could see how much I meant it. I knew how much and how deep losing a parent hurt.

  “Thanks, Sophie.” It was the first time he said my name. Ever. It wasn’t the right moment but I couldn’t help it, my name coming off his lips sent a shockwave through my system and ended up in one single pulse between my legs.

  God.

  If just him saying my name gave me such a reaction, would I even survive a kiss from him?

  “I will,” Dylan answered to whatever Mrs. McConnell said to him, and then he turned to me. I got lost in his brown eyes. “See you around, Sophie?”

  Another shockwave, another knee-weakening pulse.

  “See you around, Dylan,” I answered breathlessly. His look changed for a second. The dark blue circle that was on the outer side of his irises expanded for a millisecond before he shook his head and turned. I could swear there was even a hint of hunger in it, but the look was so fleeting I couldn’t tell for sure.

  As I watched him walk away, his movements almost graceful, I heard whispered in my ear, “You can stop drooling, darling.”

  The two of them walked away cackling at my expense. They were good at that. But I didn’t move.

  I stayed where I was and watched Dylan walk away.

  And I couldn’t help myself. The whole time I wished he was mine.

  4

  Dylan

  I could still feel the taste of rage in my mouth. Even days after laying my eyes on her.

  Fuck!

  Stopping my car, I leaned my head a little and could see a long line of cars, all waiting to pick up their kid. It was probably the first time ever I was grateful for the eager soccer mommies who have probably waited an hour already so they could be one of the first cars in the line and be able to give smug and judgmental looks to all other parents. It gave me the time to try to temper down the anger that only seeing Sophie was able to send sailing through me.

  Fuck, not even a call from my ex the day before was anything close to doing that.

  And she was testing my patience for months now.

  I had to tamp it all down. Zara didn’t deserve to be on the other end of it.

  But no matter how hard I tried, Sophie’s stunned face kept popping back out in my mind and I would be on the rage road all over again.

  Fuck, the woman was beautiful. When we were kids, she was stunning, and I knew that beauty would only increase with age. I wasn’t wrong. And that too made me mad. I wanted to know if there was a man who enjoyed all that beauty and the one that only Sophie could give. And that too raged within me.

  It was like I was on a merry-go-round. Just spinning in a circle, thinking about her and what could be and what was. The only constant was the taste that all that left in my mouth.

  I needed to cool the fuck down.

  I couldn't believe Sophie decided to stay in Hopeful.

  Come here and say goodbye to her only remaining relative, her grandmother, yeah. Hell, even I felt the sting of losing Evelyn Moore, she was a grandmother to me almost as much as she was to Sophie. And just thinking about how ravaged Sophie looked at the funeral made my knees buckle and burn in my gut to intensify. But she was supposed to leave after it.

  Maybe take some time to sort the things that needed sorting.

  But fucking open up a practice the moment Mrs. McConnell made sure she heard that Hopeful lost its only doctor? No fucking way in hell.

  And I knew it was Mrs. McConnell that was behind that little stunt. When she got something in her head, there was no stopping her, and she was on me for years to fly out and “Get our girl back where she belonged”. She wouldn’t listen to any reason. I lost count of how many times I tried to explain to her why things ended up like they did. And toward the end, even Evelyn got on her bandwagon and went after me. It was only when I had Zara with me, that I got any relief from their nagging. It didn’t sit well with me when Evelyn started hounding me, saying it was time to get my head out of my ass, but it was none of my business. Sophie and I were over for almost two decades and there was no turning back.

  It took me years to get my shit well enough together and to try to live at least a semblance of a normal life. And it took me more years to meet a woman and settle down, make a family with.

  With my luck, it was the wrong woman I chose, again. This one, great in bed but wasn’t all that interested in having a family. I did get my daughter Zara out of that mess, though, so I couldn’t regret even a single moment I spent with Cindy, my ex-wife.

  Cindy, damn.

  She was gorgeous, long legs, big tits, and fucking great hair. We dated six months before we got married and another two years before she decided that whole “gig” just wasn’t for her. It was just after Zara turned one that one day, when I got back from work, I found all her stuff gone and a note saying that Zara was at Mrs. McConnell’s.

  And up until now, barely a peep from the woman.

  Fuck.

  It was just what I needed, Sophie back in Hopeful and Cindy calling, claiming she wanted to be a mom to Zara. To be in her life.

  The horn blaring behind my car jolted
me back to the present, and I jumped in my seat, hitting the side of my head on my window full on. “Shit,” I muttered, rubbing the sore spot while slowly going forward to the pick-up spot.

  Not even three seconds later, the back door swung open and an excited shriek tore at my eardrums. “Hey Daddy!”

  Looking over my right shoulder, I could barely see the top of her head. My girl was still standing outside, not getting in the car, and she started talking like she was sitting right next to me and we had all the time in the world— “Guess what, Daddy?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her to get in the car, but she didn’t give me a chance. “Miss Simms chose my drawing for the board that’ll be put up next to the well for Christmas this year. And I got a gold star for my homework today. Miss Simms said I did best of my whole class. And…”

  “Zara, baby girl, get in the car and you can tell me all about it on our way home,” I said in a gentle voice. I knew if I didn’t, she would have stayed outside the car, rambling until she said all she had to say or until she lost steam.

  And sometimes that took hours.

  “Oh, right,” she muttered to herself and looked down as if wondering how she was still outside the car.

  “Sweet girl,” I prompted her to get a move on. I watched as she looked up, her gloved hand going to her forehead to push up her wool hat and gave me a toothed smile. Still standing outside and not sliding into the car. “Zara,” I warned, and she giggled.

  Fuck!

  She was playing me.

  I waited until she did her seat belt before I put the car into gear, flashed all four blinkers to the hysteric mom behind me, and went on our way.

  The whole time Zara talked a mile a minute. I was again reminded why the fuck I ended up grateful for the hell that was my time with Cindy. Listening to my girl talking about her day, I even managed to forget that Sophie was back in town.

  We went home, Zara did her homework while I cooked dinner. She then decided to read me a story that coincidentally was written only in her mind. It made no sense, the character kept changing names and whatnot. It was hard to follow.

  And I loved every second of it.

  “You just need to talk,” Mrs. McConnell said again as I stood up from the table to clear our plates.

  And again, I answered in what I thought was clear.

  “No. We don’t have anything to talk about.”

  It was a Friday night, a night when Zara usually took out all her dolls and whatnots to get Mrs. McConnell to play with her. It was also almost a month since I told Sophie to leave and she still didn’t. Until now, because Mrs. McConnell came to dinner with news. News that made my gut squeeze uncontrollably and I almost threw up all over the table.

  Sophie reached out to the realtor. She also demanded a meeting with the town’s council.

  It meant one thing.

  She was preparing to leave.

  Why that left a sour taste in my mouth, I didn’t know.

  Mrs. McConnell huffed but didn’t push. She turned to Zara and cooed, “No dolls tonight, my dear?”

  When Zara stayed quiet, I stopped thinking about Sophie leaving and focused on my girl.

  She was unusually quiet and played with the food on her plate all through dinner.

  It took more than gentle encouragement to get her to eat.

  The old lady who became something like my grandmother over the years and she dotted on Zara since the day she was born, kept sending me questioning glances but I was too wrapped up in the Sophie leaving part of the evening that I kept shrugging my shoulders and brushing it off since I didn’t know what was going on. She was fine when I got her home, maybe a little on the quiet side, but we spent the entire afternoon out in the cold running around the woods, so I put it on the fact that she spent herself while being out and when she got into warmer space, the exhaustion hit.

  “Zara?” I called.

  It was then the first cough came.

  And that wasn’t just a tiny, little, dry cough.

  No, it was wet, and it hurt my chest just hearing the sound of it.

  I put the dishes on the counter, not really looking where, and went to my daughter. She had her eyes fixed on the paper in front of her, her little hand holding a crayon, slacked on top of it, not moving.

  I crouched beside her, noting a pale look on her cheeks, and touched her forehead.

  I almost bit through my tongue so I wouldn’t let the curse that was dancing on my tongue out in Zara’s ear at the hotness and clamminess of her skin.

  How the fuck had I missed this?

  “Daddy, I don’t feel so good,” Zara wailed at the touch on my palm. She turned her head and looked at me. Her eyes also had a glassy look to them.

  “I see that, baby girl,” I whispered and cupped her cheek. “Let’s get you to bed.” Just as I started to get to my feet, a violent lurch threw Zara’s body back and then forward. Her head hit my thigh and she threw up all over my jeans and shoes.

  “Shit,” that time I couldn’t stop myself.

  5

  Sophie

  “We have a full waiting room,” Christine said in her, what I learned was her usual cheerful voice. The girl was like a rainbow and sunshine all wrapped into one, nothing could bring her down. “This flu that hit the town has almost everyone in its clutches.”

  “Hmmm…” I hummed my answer. I didn’t have the energy to be swept in Christine’s cheerfulness today. But that didn’t stop her from carrying on.

  “First, we have little Zara,” she announced. “The poor thing got a fever Friday night and ended up throwing up most of the night according to her dad,” she said with a strange little sigh. She also didn’t wait for me to participate, but continued. “She also has a nasty cough—”

  “Okay,” I cut her off. I preferred to get information from my patients, or in this case from their parents. They like to describe things in detail, and that gave a lot more information about the illness than they thought. “Do you have her file?” Even I could hear the flatness which borderlined on disinterest in my tone.

  I needed to figure out what I was going to do.

  I couldn’t stay in Hopeful. Not after learning that Dylan lived here.

  But I also didn’t want to leave.

  And also, that feeling was much more prominent after learning that Dylan was living here.

  It was only that I wasn’t sure if that was out of spite or something else.

  “Yep, right here.” Christine lifted her arm holding the file and went around my desk almost without stopping. It was a wonder that I caught the damn thing before it plopped on the floor.

  As she went around the office, preparing everything for the busy day ahead of us, I swiveled my chair to look out the window.

  I was so tired.

  And the view of the mountains always brought me a sense of serenity.

  After the way Dylan reacted in this very office, I was in a haze and finally, on Friday, decided I had enough.

  I was going to leave.

  I picked up my phone and with my heart in my throat, I set up an appointment with a realtor. I also asked the council for a meeting to which they reluctantly agreed. I didn’t tell them why I wanted that meeting, but they probably knew. It was either to resign or to demand more money. Neither of which they were happy about. And then I went out for a stroll on the main square. The holiday season was slowly pushing in, which meant the town was waking up and tourists had started to come. I told Mrs. McConnell what was going on and it was in that moment, when I voiced it, that my heart broke.

  I spent the weekend restless, not knowing why I was in such despair. I mean, sure, I was abandoning something my grandmother wanted for me, but I could “live” anywhere. Just because I was leaving Hopeful didn’t mean I would go back to my old way of burying myself in work and returning to Nathaniel. I could never do that.

  I just could not live in Hopeful.

  In despair, I again went out and after a few drinks in a local bar, I came h
ome, made a cup of hot cocoa, just like my grandmother used to make, with a drop of scotch, and decided to get the Christmas decorations out so I could go through them and see if I needed to buy anything new.

  If this was the last Christmas I was going to spend hare, I would make it count.

  My grandma was always big on Christmas and had this whole tradition wrapped around it. Starting with decorating the house, then Christmas tree and baking almost until you drop, then ending with the town decorating the well.

  Unfortunately, I was late starting at the beginning of the tradition. And would be even more late because in my pursuit, I found the box with the word pictures in black ink written on it and I got lost.

  I spent hours pouring over every picture of my parents, grandmother, and my life over the years. The bitter-sweet memories washed the wound in my heart that reopened the moment I got the call with dire news of Evelyn’s passing.

  If I was honest, that wound opened almost seventeen years ago when I left Hopeful after Dylan demanded it, almost in the same way as he did that day in my office.

  It wasn’t until I got to the bottom of the box and the pictures of Dylan, that the hurt really came.

  After finding the first picture, I left my cocoa and went into the kitchen to get the wine.

  You better get out of this town.

  His words were playing on an endless loop in my mind, torturing me the whole time.

  The rage that was on his face was such a contrast to the man I used to know, of the face I was looking at in those pictures and in my dreams.

  And one thing became clear to me.

  Well, two actually.

  I realized that I still knew every line of his face by memory, even though there were new lines that only time and experience can give us, but not much. Still, I knew them somehow. It was almost as instinct. And what became clear was that I still loved each and every one of them. And I could so totally get lost in discovering and loving the new ones.