Chapter 80
THREE AND A HALF YEARS BEFORE
M y freshman year had just wrapped up.
I’d returned to my house with Morgan, the two of us having very disparate receptions.
Morgan had an entire house party planned for his return, complete with pizza, friends over, and everything else that would mark a Hunt celebration.
I got a big hug and kiss from my Mom, a promise to treat me in private, and the cold shoulder from Edwin Hunt.
In other words, it was oh-so-typical a day in the Hunt household. The biological son got all of the attention, while the adopted son received nothing from the father and subdued attention from the mother—not that it was the mom’s fault. She just followed in the lead of her husband.
The good news, though, was that at this party, many of our mutual high school friends also showed up.
The party started at about 6 p.m. on a Friday night, and in this setting, surrounded by my peers in high school, I could easily engage in conversation, forget that my adopted father pretended I didn’t exist, and have a good time.
I could even have drinks; the only person I had to hide it from was my mother, as Edwin Hunt certainly didn’t give a shit.
This carried on like normal for a couple of hours.
I spoke with friends like Jackson, Carlton, Tucker, and Max, catching up on their stories from their first year at Duke, Dartmouth, Georgetown, and Yale, respectively.
Despite the lofty schools that we went to, it didn’t feel like we’d gone to a convention of jocks and rich kids; we were instead just a bunch of kids in their late teens, enjoying a summer off and some smuggled beer.
And then I saw her.
Sarah Hill.
I had not spoken to her in some time, perhaps in a year, not even on social media or through casual texting.
I had also never forgotten her words—that someday, we’d be able to break free from the bullshit of our last names and be together again.
I’d moved on and dated other girls, sure, but Sarah was always the one whom, if given the chance, I would jump to in a heartbeat.
And there she was, in a two-piece bikini, her tanned, soft body gorgeous and sexy as all hell. I couldn’t believe as a Hunt I was saying this, but I was nervous. Except you’re not a Hunt. Not in her eyes.
And that should no longer matter.
One moment defeated and the immediate next confident, I got out of the pool, my muscles much more defined over the past year from training at Columbia, and approached Sarah with confidence. She saw me approaching and smiled.
“Hi, Chance, you’re looking good,” she said, biting her lip. “What have you been up to? You’re at Columbia, right?”
“I am,” I said. “I could tell you all about it. Let’s say we go sit somewhere we can chill, though?”
I really just wanted to have her alone and away from the crowd. It was now starting to get late enough that a good tan wasn’t really possible and everyone was starting to feel the effects of the booze. I needed to both keep her away from everyone else and make it obvious.
Fortunately, Sarah was game, and for the next few minutes, we kept our conversation light and simple. I had to admit, though, concentrating on it was hard as hell. I was waiting for the perfect moment to ask her the question that had crossed my mind the second I’d seen her walk in.
And then, after she made a joke about ending her semester on a high note, I seized the opportunity.
“So, do you remember when we were middle school kids—”
“Do I have to?” Sarah said playfully.
“I know, right? But, hey, do you remember when we were middle school kids, you said there would come a day when our names wouldn’t mean anything and we could try and be together. Is that day at hand? Do you think we could have a second chance?”
Sarah’s playful demeanor immediately subsided. She let out a long sigh, stared straight ahead at the rest of the party laughing, and looked back at me.
“I think there’s always the opportunity for a second chance,” she said. “But don’t get your hopes up, Chance. I’m not saying that to be mean.”
“I know, but—”
“Chance, please don’t,” she said. “People change. Life circumstances change. Don’t assume that just because something worked once and had its obstacle removed in the future that that thing would work again.”
“OK,” I said, dragging out my response. “But that’s in general. What about us? Have you moved on from this already?”
Sarah bit her lip, but it was lot less of a seductive look than what I had seen less than fifteen minutes ago.
“Chance, I moved on like a month after we broke up,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s what people do. They move on. If you aren’t together, that’s what happens.”
“So… there’s no chance?”
“Chance…” she said, saying my name almost like a sigh.
“There’s always a chance. But timing means a lot.
Right now, I’m not interested. Maybe in the future, but that’s a big maybe, and I have no plans to go to it.
You just have to strike when it’s hot. Because if you miss out on it when it’s there, you may never get it again. ”
Sarah Hill.
The real, in the flesh.
Well, it wasn’t quite the flesh, but it was the flesh of Sarah Hill who had sent that message. Might I be getting played again? Might I be getting toyed with?
It was definitely possible. Obviously, I wasn’t going to send dick pics, no matter how provocative or steamy this conversation got. It was probably pretty telling that I was very interested in seeing this through despite the past and the inherent risk of getting fooled again.
Maybe this is why you wanted to go slow. To see…
Is that really what you want to do, though? To give up a sure thing for some childhood, middle school crush you never really got over? That’s a big fucking risk.
Still, I didn’t think it was fake. Her flirtation was less, well, flirtatious and more just her being warm.
She’d only asked to get coffee, not grab drinks and go dancing.
It was very possible, in fact, that her feelings from when she was a rising sophomore were the same today; that this was just a friendly catchup, nothing more.
But if that were the case, there’s probably about a half-dozen other people that she could have asked to meet up if she wanted. And she took none of them. What does that say for you, Chance?
I was confident in saying it was the real Sarah Hill, or at least that if someone was faking being her, they had done a good job of faking it. But the bigger question was if this was a good idea.
I didn’t see how it could hurt to meet her. Again, this wasn’t a date; this was a “meet up once while she’s in town, wish her well, and then talk to her again in like five, six years.” If Layla got upset at that, well…
Layla doesn’t need to know. At least not right now.
I pressed the reply button and started writing back to her.
“Hey! Absolutely. Let’s do Saturday morning/afternoon? Good to hear from you!
-Chance”
I stared at the message for far longer than I ever would have stared at a message for any other woman.
The little kid in me who was 12 was overriding the older, more mature Chance and wanting to make sure everything was perfect.
I’d thought I’d left him behind as I’d gotten older, but it sure seemed like he was pretty loud right now.
I finally just had to override my nervous impulses, say “fuck it” and send it.
I immediately put my phone back in my pocket, my heart racing and the nerves in my stomach flaring, wondering just what was happening to me.
Now you should really question if this is a good idea.
If there’s going to be anything to get in the way of Layla…
And you really think she’s just going to brush it aside if she finds out you went out with her?
When this happens… you need to either make a hard move for Sarah or push her away for good. If you’re going to go for Layla, you can’t have Sarah over her shoulder, drawing your eyes as she does.
Boy, I really hope I hadn’t fucked up.
It took less than five minutes later before I heard the “ding” from my phone, indicating that she had responded. I saw in the preview on the front screen that she said she’d love to and would let me know where her hotel was when she got in.
I just stared at that message as I walked, almost completely oblivious to my surroundings.
It was all I had ever wanted—a chance at Sarah Hill, a chance to atone for myself at 12 years old, to prove that I wasn’t the kid who failed because he wasn’t a true Hunt.
And now it was the very thing that was threatening to destroy something special with someone else.
Feeling guilty, I reached into my phone to text Layla.
My last message to her had come the day before; she had warned that she was going to have a busy week and her messaging wouldn’t be as frequent as normal, but I still wanted to hear from her.
It was fucking stupid, but I wanted the karmic reassurance that agreeing to meet Sarah hadn’t suddenly just pushed Layla away.
I guess I was being selfish. I guess I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. But fuck it—this was the only person I would have made such a request for, and this was not me wanting to have my cake and sleep with it too. This was just meeting for coffee on Saturday like I had with Morgan today.
What the fuck could go wrong?
You, of all people, know better than anyone to ask that question. You know that the answer always extends well beyond what we can anticipate.
I texted Layla and asked the start of her week was going.
I was about to shut the phone off when I saw that she had read the message, the read stamp showing up almost as quickly as it had been delivered.
I almost wondered if she’d been reading our conversation from earlier when I sent that; was that a good sign or a bad sign?
Damn, getting Sarah back in my life is making me crazy.
“Hey, busy,” she wrote back. “I’m in Chicago.”
Chicago? For that job?
Is it… it is that probable, isn’t it?
“Chicago?” I wrote back, trying to be lighthearted. “You went somewhere colder than New York right now? Are you secretly a polar bear?”
I then sent her a GIF of a polar bear shivering, hoping to keep things lighthearted enough to draw a laugh from her.
Instead, I just got “Yeah, it’s a bit cold.”
She was definitely being distant. She was definitely not as engaged as she had been on Friday. Had I… had I pushed her away just like that? Was karma really on me for Sarah Hill?
Or, fuck, had Layla created a fake email for Sarah?
It only sounded ridiculous when my background and story wasn’t taken into consideration. I’d seen too much shit go down for me to dismiss the idea so quickly.
Still, regardless of whether it was all made up or if she had orchestrated a plan to test my fealty to her, I decided I wasn’t going to press her on the issue.
I didn’t need to be texting her such questions while feeling like the old 12 year old; I needed to be seeing when she’d be back so I could see her and Sarah shortly apart.
There wasn’t a much better way to determine which I liked more or which I needed more than that.
“For sure. When do you get back?” I wrote.
This time, not wanting to seem like I was on my phone all the time, I put it in my pocket and ignored the buzzing that came within a minute. This was already a sign that agreeing to Sarah had fucked with my head; I never played by these silly rules of who texts who and when. And yet, here I was…
I couldn’t help myself after about five minutes, though. I pulled out my phone.
“Thursday.”
OK, so it’s soon. It’s not “never, because I’m moving here.” She’s still distant and there’s still something going on. But you can see her before you see Sarah. And if it goes great? Then you can cancel with Sarah or keep it very short and strictly platonic.
If you’re able to control the preteen inside of you that needs that validation, that is.
I immediately wrote back.
“Can I see you when you get back? Or maybe on Friday?”
This time, I didn’t put my phone away on some guise of needing space or to not look desperate. There was no reason to, either, because the bubble showing that Layla was texting had popped up.
“Yes please,” she wrote, along with about three different facial emojis.
I actually laughed when I saw that. I had read way too much into it. The twelve year old had gotten nervous and didn’t know how to handle it, but there wasn’t anything he had to handle. He had just had to make a move to ask her out, and then the rest would fall into place accordingly.
“Sounds like a delight,” I wrote with a kissing emoji, feeling uplifted by her response.
She simply sent back a blushing emoji, which was the perfect cap to our conversation.
Things wouldn’t be so bad after all. I’d get to see Layla again, I’d be more assertive and aggressive in what I wanted, and then I’d get to satiate the young kid inside of me while moving on as an adult quickly.
That was the best case scenario, at least.