Second Chance Love, page 3
On Christmas Eve 1993, he and Lizzie had both been freshmen in college. They had been best friends since 8th grade, when Lizzie had heard Steve quote a Monty Python skit that had been on TV the night before. From that day forward, they had been inseparable. In high school, they had gone to all the formal dances together because no one else was brave enough to be the third wheel on that particular motorcycle. They both understood those dates were just as friends, though. That’s all they had ever been—friends. Best friends.
When it had come time to choose a college, there was no doubt they would go to the same school, although it had been a tougher road for Elizabeth. Steve’s father owned a real estate investment company, and could afford to pay for him to go wherever he wanted. Hers was a construction worker who liked to drink and only worked sporadically. She applied herself through high school, and graduated with a 3.97 GPA, good enough to get the scholarships that would compensate for limited means. For Steve, a Business Administration major was the clear and only choice. Elizabeth, so practical in all other aspects of her life, chose to major in English Literature.
Steve tried remembering the first time that he'd realized he was in love with her, but he couldn’t pin down a moment. It felt like he had always loved her, though he had never told her. She was beautiful, and he was… not. She was tall and bubbly; he was just another short, homely boy wandering the halls. If she didn't feel the same way—as surely she would not—he would risk losing his best friend and gaining a broken heart.
On Christmas Eve 1993, that had been about to change. He had finally decided that he’d rather be rejected than remain an undeclared lover. During the days off from class leading up to that Christmas, he had spent hours making her a Christmas gift. It would finally reveal how he really felt about her. He finished the present on Christmas Eve afternoon and had just wrapped it and slipped it into his pocket when one of his fraternity brothers had knocked on his door to tell him he had a phone call.
It had been Margaret Larson, his mother. Looking back on it, he wondered why she hadn’t sounded hysterical and overwrought during that call. Instead, she had seemed stunned.
“Stephen, I wish I didn’t have to tell you this over the phone, but there’s no other way. It’s your father—he had another heart attack.”
“Mom—is he okay?”
“No. He’s not. He’s gone. I’m so sorry, honey, he’s… gone.” Her voice trailed off, unsure of where to go next.
“Mom…”
“I’m okay.” She had regained her footing. “I’m okay. I’ll make a plane reservation for you, so we can get you home. We need you here.”
“Of course, Mom, I’m out of class for a couple of weeks any way. I’ll stay there at the house with you and help you figure everything out.”
“I want to talk to you about that, Stephen. You know your father never graduated from school and he was…” She paused. "He was so proud of you and how well you are doing. He was planning on having you come to work for the company as soon as you graduated and then take over for him when he retired. But now…”
“What are you saying, Mom?”
“I want you to pack all your things and come home, sweetheart. I need you here. Dad’s company needs you, too, and not just for a couple of weeks. Mr. Mills has always been your dad’s right-hand man, but he’s already past retirement himself and he can’t stay on too much longer. I talked to him just a few minutes ago here at the hospital, and he said he’d be willing to stay on for another year and show you everything you need to know to take over, but no longer. I’m so sorry, Stephen, but I need you to come home to stay.”
That three-minute phone conversation had changed everything in his life. His dad was gone; his mom wanted him to leave school, and Elizabeth… Elizabeth. He was on his way to her house to finally tell her how he felt about her. Now he had no idea what to do.
His mom hadn’t threatened him, hadn’t said “You’ve got to drop out of school.” She had left the choice up to him. Still, it felt like no choice at all. Could he walk away from his family when they needed him? Could he risk letting his father’s business fail? If that happened, his entire future was in doubt, as well as that of his family and the numerous families whose paychecks came because the company made payroll. He walked to his car and drove to Elizabeth’s place in a daze. It was a big old house a few miles from campus that she shared with five friends. When he rang the doorbell, she flew down the stairs, threw the door open and said “Pancho!” That had been her nickname of the week for him, subject to change at any moment.
Her smile disappeared when she saw his face. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s my dad, Lizzie. He had a heart attack. He’s dead.” He hadn’t cried to that point, but seeing the instant sorrow and empathy on Elizabeth’s beautiful face, he couldn’t hold tears back any more.
“Oh, Steve. Oh no. Oh no, oh no.” She threw her arms around him and held him for a long time. When she pulled away, tears were running down her face as well.
“Mom just called me. She wants me home tonight.”
“Of course she does. She needs you. I wish I could come too and help out.”
"It's okay, but… It’s worse than that, Lizzie. She wants me to leave school and come home for good. She wants me to go to work for the company.”
Elizabeth took one step back.
“So… so then she wants you to leave, but you won’t be coming back? Ever?”
“No, probably not.”
“And, are you going to do it?”
He nodded. “I feel like I have to. I don’t know what else to do.” Until that moment he hadn’t realized that was his decision.
Her face fell.
“Oh.” He had never heard her sound so small.
In all the years they had been friends, there had never been an awkward silence between them, but there it was. Everything in both their lives had just changed, with no time to absorb it.
“So...” Elizabeth said. “Since I’m going to be right here for three and a half more years, I guess we’ll have to keep in touch through phone calls and letters, huh?”
“Yeah. Yes, of course. Lizzie, I’m going to miss you.”
And he had.
But he hadn’t seen her again until tonight.
Chapter Seven
Elizabeth hadn’t decorated the Christmas tree. It rested against the wall where she had leaned it the night before. It was too big for her apartment, really, but she didn’t know what to do with it, so she ignored it.
Light was just starting to come through the frosty window in her living room, but she had been awake for hours. In fact, she wasn’t sure she had slept at all.
When Steve had come to her house twenty years earlier and broken the news that he was leaving school, everything had changed for her. She had been in love with Steve since junior high, but had never told him. His family was part of the country club set, while hers just tried to avoid getting evicted for not paying their rent. She knew they could never really be a couple, so she enjoyed being his best friend and most-trusted confidante. Whenever anything good had happened in her life, like the day she got accepted into her first-choice college, Steve was the only person she wanted to share it with.
For weeks after Steve left her, she often hadn’t gotten out of bed at all. Her grades slipped. In the months following, some mainframe in the bowels of the university had generated letters advising her that her scholarship was in jeopardy, that she was on academic probation, that her scholarship was now revoked, and that she must maintain a certain GPA going forward or end her studies. She lacked the will to answer any of the impersonal wake up calls until it was too late. For Elizabeth, school was over. Not long after, she had gotten the job at the bookstore. She had clung to it ever since, taking the small solace that came from books and cats.
Now he was back, quoting lines from their favorite movies and dressed like a rich man. She looked around her cramped apartment and knew that their socioeconomic divide must now be even greater. His life surely revolved around charity dinners, rich socialites, and power lunches with important contacts. Hers revolved around TV dinners and paying her electric bill the final day before it was turned off. Their worlds could no longer possibly have anything in common.
Still… every time she tried to push him out of her mind and focus on making breakfast, getting ready to go to Christmas Mass, whatever—he kept pushing his way back in. Even as she sat in her accustomed spot at the end of the fourth right-side pew from the rear and prayed, he was there, tickling the back of her mind.
When Mass let out, she walked out of the cathedral and into bright sunshine. After days of blustery, snowy weather, the sun deigned to put in an appearance. The wind had stopped. The temperature was above freezing for the first time all week.
It was Christmas Day, and the only things left on her agenda were reading and talking to Sebastian. With at least a hint of warmth in the air, she wasn’t ready to give up on the day, so she decided to go for a walk. She walked past the department stores, with their large front windows still decorated with trains, elves, and Christmas trees. She walked past the park, but even the unexpected sun hadn’t brought kids out to play.
She checked her watch and saw that it was 12:25. She'd lost track of time. She hadn’t decided whether she wanted to see Steve again or not, but now the time had come and gone. Surely so had he, he was such a busy man. She decided to head for home, but her legs turned traitor. Without conscious thought, four blocks later she found herself approaching Moe’s Café.
Elizabeth hesitated. Surely he was gone by now, wasn’t he? She approached close along the wall of the building, so she could snoop on who was sitting in the booths.
There. In the booth right by the front door, there he was.
He wasn’t reading the paper or looking at his phone. He was just staring at the door.
She hadn’t gotten a full look at him yesterday, thanks to the combination of approaching darkness and her abrupt retreat. From this angle, she could only see the left side of his familiar profile. His hair was still mostly blond, albeit shorter and maybe a little thinner, but much as she remembered him. I would recognize him on a city bus, if I got a good look at him.
“All right, Elizabeth,” she said quietly, without realizing she was speaking out loud. “You’ve seen him. Now let’s go home.”
She didn’t. She couldn't make herself start moving. She was in people's way, with several going around her saying "excuse me" in that tone that really means "excuse you.” Just as she was ready to break the spell and move away, Steve turned his head and looked her directly in the eye. She felt a jolt of electricity at the sudden, unexpected connection.
He smiled, and his weary, relieved expression conveyed a lot. It wasn’t the flashing smile of Prince Charming riding in on his white charger to save the day. It was a man who had believed he was stood up, now relieved to see he wasn’t. The boyish quality of that expression brought back something for her. She felt herself thaw a bit inside.
He stood up, but didn’t move away from the booth. He gestured with arched eyebrows toward the empty seat across from him. Over the years, she had built him up into a cocky, arrogant businessman. The real Steve looked an awful lot like a somewhat pudgier version of the young boy she had once known.
She sighed, now resigned, and walked around through the front door. When she met his eyes again, they lit up.
“Lizzy. It’s… it’s so good to see you.”
“Is it?” she asked. “It’s been so long. When you left… college, it was so abrupt. And then, well, we promised to keep in touch, but I never heard from you.“
“I know, I know,” he said. “Please. Sit down.“ They took seats opposite each other. Steve said, “That first year was so crazy. Dad didn’t know he was going to die that day. He carried everything around in his head. I got no briefing. I had to discover everything on my own, and every decision might be a disaster. I felt like I was swimming upstream through warm Jell-O for those first few years. By the time I was able to come up for air, it had been so long that I felt guilty. Every day that passed, the guiltier I felt. That seems like it was just yesterday, but here we are now, twenty years later.”
She nodded. It was what she had expected to hear.
“You know, Lizzie, I’ve looked for you off and on all these years. I searched for your phone number, tried to find you on social media, but it was like you had just disappeared.”
She shook her head. “I’ve never had a phone. If I need to make a call, I use the phone at the shop. There used to be a payphone in the lobby of the building where I live, but they took it out a few years ago. I guess everyone but me has a cell phone now. I’ve never been on Facebook, or whatever else there is. I didn’t see the point. So then, the real question is, ‘how did you know where I lived?’”
Steve looked a little guilty, then reached in his coat pocket and produced her ID card. He handed it to her.
The light of realization dawned in her eyes. “I must have dropped this at the tree lot.”
Steve nodded. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be a stalker. I didn’t know any other way to get a message to you.“
She looked thoughtfully at the ID, then at him. Deliberating. Finally, she said, “It’s okay. It’s not like my address is a state secret or anything. Thank you for the tree, by the way. That was very thoughtful.”
Steve shook his head. “It was nothing. Really. So,” he said, changing the subject, “tell me what else is going on in your life, other than strange men from the past following you home from Christmas tree lots?”
The question she had been dreading. The answer was so… sad.
“My life is simple, especially compared to yours. I go to work at a little used bookstore. I do some volunteer work with a literacy group at an inner city school. I read a lot. Honestly, that’s about it. What about you?” She felt much better shifting the focus away from her life onto his.
“Kind of the same, really. I go to my office, then home. I don’t even have the volunteer work to keep me busy. Sometimes I feel like I’m married to my phone.”
“So, are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Married. To your phone or anyone else.”
He smiled again, and shook his head. “No, never been married. How about you?”
“No.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Lizzie, look. There’s something I want to tell you. That night, that Christmas Eve when I left school, I was on my way to see you when Mom called me, remember?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“Well, this is kind of embarrassing after all these years, but I was going to tell you something that night. I was going to tell you…” He paused, searching for either the words or the courage to speak them, even after twenty years. “I was going to tell you that I had feelings for you. Oh, hell, I was going to tell you that I loved you.”
Elizabeth shut her eyes and kept them shut for five, six, seven seconds. When she opened them, there were no tears, but he saw the pain.
Steve reached into his pocket and pulled out a small package. “Here,” he said. “This is for you.”
He pushed it across the table to her. It was rectangular and wrapped in faded Christmas paper that had faint pictures of elves and boughs of holly.
“I was going to give it to you that night, but when I saw you, it just didn’t seem right. I’ve been carrying it with me through every move and relocation since. If that little box had a passport, it would have a lot of stamps.”
She reached out and touched it delicately. It felt smooth and cool to her touch.
“Actually,” Steve said, “I don’t know if it has any practical use at all anymore. It’s a pretty old school gift.”
She picked it up. The weight and proportions felt familiar, and the Scotch tape on the wrapping paper had gone dry and brittle. She had to tear open the end of the package. When she did, a Memorex cassette tape fell out into her hand.
“It’s a mix tape,” he said, as if that were not evident. “I spent three days making that for you. We had always listened to music together, but the songs we shared were always fun songs. This tape was about telling you, finally, how I felt about you.”
The insert of the cassette box had been turned inside out, and there was Steve’s messy handwriting on the insert’s spine: “Love songs for Lizzy.” The front of the insert held all the musical memories she remembered from their friendship of old: The Pet Shop Boys’ Always on my Mind, When I’m With You by Sheriff, I Can’t Make You Love Me by Bonnie Raitt.
“I was going to put I’m too Sexy by Right Said Fred, but I ran out of room.”
She shook her head again, but he saw a little smile as well.
“Steve… I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t expect you to say anything. I just wanted to tell you that was how I felt. So now I have. One more thing checked off my bucket list. Or, I guess I should say, my ‘lifetime regret’ list. I want you to know that I realize I made the wrong decision that night. I should have stayed there with you and told you how I felt. Together we could have figured anything out. Instead, I came home, got the business stuff together and the rest of my life is crap. I haven’t even taken a vacation in ten years because there’s nowhere I want to go, and no one to go with.”
Elizabeth fell silent for a few seconds. My picture of this man was almost completely wrong. This is not what I expected. What to do? She made a sudden decision.
“Have you got a few minutes? I had a present for you that night too. I think I’d like to give it to you.”
“Seriously? Of course. It’s not like I have any plans. For that I’d need a social life.” They traded little smiles, a spark in common.
“If you don’t object to a little walk, my apartment is just a few blocks away.”
“I know. If you hadn’t shown up, I was going to go camp on your doorstep until you talked to me.”
