Another Life (Second Chance #3)
Chapter One
CHAPTER ONE
THE GIRL HE FELL IN LUST WITH
PRESENT
T ime is a tricky little bitch.
It has no loyalty to any of us and it stretches and snaps on its own accord.
And sometimes, it tears, ending precious moments in the blink of an eye.
For Peter, I’m sure he’d tell you that that’s how I asked for a divorce. That I woke up one day and told him it was over.
His look of bewilderment pisses me off, just thinking of it. Like I hadn’t been coming out of my own skin, trying to keep everything together.
It doesn’t matter that I argued back and forth with myself for years about staying with him for the sake of our girls. It doesn’t matter that the war I waged on myself was hard-won.
Peter still sees me as quitter.
And now we’re separated and I’m walking through a grocery store alone, trying to figure out what our daughters will need for the week. As if living in separate bedrooms in the same house as my estranged husband has made it impossible for us to carry out this task together .
But everything seems different now, something I’m sure Peter would agree with. In his mind, he could sum it up in one sentence: I turned thirty-two and I lost my mind.
As I peruse through the avocados, I think about the last time I did. Eleven years is a long time to be sane. And if that girl could see me now, would she recognize me? With my dark hair, no longer trying to mask the brown that I inherited from my crazy-as-hell mother.
As the years went on, I realized that it wasn’t just dying my hair that paid homage to the vastness I desired between the two of us.
I make sure I’m an amazing mother, just to prove to myself that I’m nothing like her. And keeping score with her memory is taxing.
It’s strange to be here without Penny and Jilly, but it’s even stranger to be out at the grocery store when I’d usually be at the office, putting in extra hours into the interior design firm I started with my best friend from college.
We’re in our seventh year and finally handling the types of clients we’d had our eyes on since our company’s inception.
I twist the top of the produce bag as I absentmindedly smile, setting it in my cart, proud of everything she and I have managed to accomplish.
I’m reaching for a bag of spring mix that will undoubtedly go bad in my refrigerator when I glance to my left.
The bag I was holding slips from my grip, and I turn away from my shopping cart, deserting it in my attempt to escape. Someone bumps into me, and I rush to the next aisle, feeling like I can’t breathe.
What the fuck is he doing here?
And why the fuck did I think I’d never see him again?
When Miley sent me a picture of him months ago while she was picking out furniture with clients, I’d figured it was a one-off. That he was in the area and that was that.
But the world doesn’t work that way, does it ?
This is karma, you stupid bitch.
But is it? Truly?
I’d stared at his picture for hours, trying to figure out how this random puzzle piece fit into the jumbled mess that is my life. Until I deleted his photo and remembered that the past belonged far behind me.
Certainly not in the fucking produce section of my local grocery store.
My heart is beating fast as I try to breathe through the adrenaline that spiked the moment I saw the familiar profile searching through apples not ten feet from me.
Had he seen me?
I’m going crazy in the fucking cereal aisle, my hand on my chest as I peer over the corner, to see if the coast is clear.
I see him walking toward me, his eyes on a jar in his hand.
The sight of him doing his own grocery shopping is something I never thought I’d witness. Something so everyday and public; something I’d never been privy to in our past lives. I jerk back into the aisle when he starts to look up, turning so I’m facing away as he walks past. I count to five and grab a box of cereal to hide behind before I peek back just as he steps in line to pay.
He isn’t very far. I could take a dozen steps and be right behind him.
Part of me wants to reach out and touch him, just to make sure he’s really in front of me. But I don’t. Of course I don’t, because that would be weird .
I stare down at my UGGs, my sweatpants and hoodie, knowing that at least I’m sporting a healthy glow, having just returned from my friend’s wedding in Puerto Rico.
Still, I’m far from the girl he fell in lust with.
I don’t dare call it love anymore. Not even if, in the deep recesses of my mind, I know it was the only time I really let myself fall into that kind of love.
Scary, free-falling to my death, love .
The kind of love that came with consequences that I was still dealing with.
He looks over his shoulder and I suck in a breath as his eyes skate to the right of me.
I duck away from his line of vision, my back against the shelf of cereal boxes. The sugary one in my grip gives a little under the pressure of my fingers, as if clutching my daughters’ favorite breakfast would make the ghost of my past disappear.
All the years of regret slam into me, paralyzing me where I stand. I hold a piece of my present life while my mind fills with a past I’ve tried so hard to forget.
Without a backward glance, I drop the cereal box and rush out of the grocery store.
Abraham Pugliesi is back.
And he’s chasing me out of grocery stores.
As I get in my car, I think about beginnings and endings and how no one ever got to know how we began or that we’d ever even ended.
Our existence only existed between the two of us, and that’s the saddest part of it all.