Chapter 9 #2
It shouldn’t have surprised me that she’d bring up our little game. It’d been a huge part of our lives back then.
“We used to play this game, Effie. We called it The Challenge, and it was a little competition we had going.”
If this was her way of trying to break any remaining ice between us, she’d just taken a sledgehammer to it. But while that old game was partly what bonded us, it was also what had ended us.
“A little competition is putting it mildly.” I sighed as I looked up at the ceiling. “That game was…something else.”
Effie looked between us. “How do you play?”
“We’d leave each other challenges on bright pink notes. Pretty simple. But we took them seriously.”
“Very seriously.” I chuckled. “Too seriously.”
“It all started when your father took a sticky note from our kitchen drawer and passed it to me one night during dinner. It said, Enter the contest. I’d been talking about how I was afraid to enter this photo contest because I didn’t think my pictures were good enough.”
Effie’s eyebrows shot up. “What kind of photos?”
“I used to take photos of horses for fun. My family always told me they were really good, but I never believed them.”
“They were really good,” I said. “I remember the one of that horse stealing the other horse’s food.”
Chloe blushed. “Anyway, I ended up entering the contest.”
Effie leaned in. “Did you win?”
She shook her head. “No. But it was good practice in learning how to put myself out there and accept failure.”
“So how did it become a game?”
“Well, after that, I left him a note with a challenge of my own,” Chloe said. “And so it went from there. He technically started it, but I was the one who made it a thing. Some of the challenges were really simple. But over time, they got a little more…advanced.”
Chloe and I looked at each other.
Effie’s eyes were like saucers. “Like what?”
I smiled at the memory. “Like I knew one of Chloe’s fears was interacting with strangers. So one time, I challenged her to go up to strangers in a store and start a random conversation about birds.”
“That’s silly.” Effie turned to Chloe. “Did you do it?”
“I sure did.” She grinned. “And your dad taught himself how to play the guitar in one week. He kept talking about how he wished he knew how to play. So I figured challenging him to start learning it was one way to get him to bite the bullet. Otherwise, he might never have tried.”
I nodded. “That one actually ended up benefiting me because I never stopped.”
“Over time, we developed some rules. Once you got one of the neon pink sticky notes,” Chloe explained, “you had one week to fulfill the challenge.”
“What was the prize?” Effie asked.
“There actually weren’t any prizes,” I told her.
“It was a pride thing,” Chloe explained.
Effie scrunched her nose. “What do you mean?”
I chuckled. Effie was smart, but she didn’t understand the meaning of pride yet.
“Like, we did it just to say we could and feel good about it. That was the prize.” Chloe turned to me.
“Those little challenges made me a stronger person during a very impressionable time in my life. For the most part, they taught me that if I put my mind to something, I could accomplish it, no matter how hard it seemed at first. That’s something I carry with me even now. ”
“Tell me what else you made him do…” Effie said.
Just as Chloe was about to open her mouth, I interrupted. This conversation was getting dangerously close to touching a nerve, so I needed to put a stop to it. “You’d better go get cleaned up, Effie. We got home late, and you haven’t done your homework.”
“Okay.” She pouted as she reluctantly left the table.
She could’ve talked to Chloe all night. Chloe had that effect on people.
Once I knew my daughter was out of earshot, I turned to Chloe. “I’m sorry for cutting short the conversation about Naomi earlier. I don’t want to get into it in front of Effie.”
“Understandable. I’m sorry if I caused trouble for you with Naomi.”
I shook my head. “It’s my fault for not telling her you were staying here.”
Chloe tilted her head. “How did the conversation end?”
Looking down at my hand, I pressed my fingertips together. “She told me as long as you’re living here, she and I are done.”
Her mouth hung open. “I can’t believe that.”
“Honestly, I think it’s for the best. I didn’t really have the energy for a relationship right now.
I’ve tried and failed before, too. Every girlfriend I’ve had since the divorce wanted to be the priority in my life, and for obvious reasons, that’s not gonna happen right now—probably not for another decade.
So while Naomi running into you might’ve been the catalyst, ending things with her was inevitable. ”
“A partner shouldn’t add to the burden of your life. They should ease it.”
Somehow, I couldn’t imagine that ever happening for me. “Wise words.” I raised a brow. “You memorizing your fortune cookies again?” I winked.
Chloe balled up her napkin and threw it at me. “I used to save all of my fortune cookie messages—just in case someday I could look back and realize one of them was prophetic.”
I nodded. She’d kept them in a little jar in her bedroom. “Did they give you any important clues yet?”
“Well, they certainly didn’t warn me I’d be moving in with my frenemy.” She smirked.
I flashed her a look. “I’m your frenemy now?”
“I’m kidding.” Chloe played with the straw in her drink. “Thank you again for your help today. I couldn’t have done all that without your truck.”
“Anytime. You probably don’t want me tagging along every day, but whenever you need more stuff carted away, it’s not a problem.”
“I’ll be good for a while, but thanks.”
Chloe was harboring a lot of hurt and resentment over her family situation.
I couldn’t blame her. But despite the fact that her father had apparently moved on with another woman after his divorce from Judy, I knew he loved his daughters very much.
It had to have been difficult for him to know that Chloe was in town, refusing to see him.
But I understood why she needed to protect her peace.
“What?” she asked.
I guess I’d been staring at her a beat too long. So I broached the subject. “You’re really not gonna visit your father at all while you’re here?”
“This again?” She rolled her eyes.
“I just feel like…maybe you’re avoiding him because it’s painful, but you might regret it if you go back to Chicago without seeing him. I remember how close you and Phil were.”
Her face reddened. “He abandoned my mother and married someone else, Evan.”
“They were divorced, though, before Judy started showing symptoms, right?”
She crossed her arms. “The timeline is a little fuzzy to me, but I have a hard time believing my mother’s diagnosis wasn’t a factor.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t wrong Judy. All I’m saying is that shit happens, and if you don’t forgive him, it’s probably going to fester until it makes you sick.”
A flicker of understanding reflected in her eyes as she nodded. “I hear you. I’ll consider it.”
I didn’t want Chloe to have the same regrets I did. When my mother was at her sickest, I’d thrown myself into high school sports to escape the pain, rather than spend as much time as possible with her. “I’d give anything to have one more day with my mother, you know?”
“I do,” she murmured.
“I wasted so much time being lost in my own head as a teenager, time I could’ve spent with her, asking her questions, soaking in her wisdom. I’d do so much differently if I could go back.”
After my depressing admission, Chloe sighed. “You helped me at the storage unit, bought me dinner, and gave me solid advice. Makes sense that I’d return the favor today by ruining your relationship with your girlfriend.”
“What can I say? You’re savage with that French braid.”
She laughed and pulled at the elastic at the end of it. “You just reminded me that I can finally take it out now that Effie’s seen it.”
I watched as she closed her eyes, a slight moan escaping her as she released the tension of the braid.
She moved her head back and forth and shook out her long mane.
The braid had formed small zig-zaggy waves throughout her hair, which was longer now than when she was younger. It was silky and gorgeous.
“Does it look crazy?” she asked as she massaged her scalp.
“Totally crazy,” I said, still half in a daze from admiring her.
As I sat there, longing to run my hands through her silky hair again, longing to do a fuck of a lot more than that…I reminded myself how dangerous it was to even think those thoughts.
Her phone rang, and as she answered, she lowered her voice and excused herself to her room.
Who the hell was that?
Despite my curiosity, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.