Falling into a Second Chance by Alie Garnett
Chapter Thirty-Four
By morningthere were more cars in front of Agatha’s house. He saw a Land Rover and the white Jeep, so he knew it must be Lucy and Harper. Once again, Chris decided to go over to see if Agatha would talk to him. His morning call to her went unanswered, as had his one the night before.
In the house, he headed for the voices in the kitchen. Harper was the first to notice him. She was elbows deep in the bowl of something slimy and brown and was not happy to see him at all.
“Get out of here, asshole,” she spat out as she pulled a piece of something from the bowl and slammed it on the baking pan in front of her. Splattering herself with the slime as she did it.
“You heard her,” Lucy said as she peeled potatoes.
“Did you talk to her?” he demanded It looked like everybody was in a bad mood today.
“Yes, and you are a fucking asshole. Leave.” Lucy actually through a potato at his head, a whole potato.
“Can I at least know why I’m an asshole?” He put up his arms to fend off another flying vegetable.
“Something about my sister not being good enough for your friends!” Harper reached into the bowl, and he hoped she wasn’t in the throwing mood as well.
“I messed up! I was eighteen! I didn’t know her address, and she never came back to school so that I could apologize.” This time he let a potato hit him in the chest in hopes that the chicken Harper was mixing didn’t come his way.
“So you admit you said it. Did you mean it?” Lucy demanded, another potato in her hand.
“No! I liked her for years. She was the one who didn’t notice me. We weren’t friends or anything, but I knew her and liked her,” he admitted, and this time, no potato came his way.
“Prove it,” Harper said.
“How?” he asked. It wasn’t like he had anything in writing.
“Anything,” Lucy said, tossing a potato in the air and catching it.
“Okay. When we were in the fifth grade, she had a Smurf backpack, and I wrote my initials on it in blue. I didn’t think it would be so obvious since I wrote in blue marker, but it was. She never knew it was me who did it.” He shrugged. It wasn’t as if they would believe him, and the backpack was in a landfill somewhere by now.
Harper quickly went to the sink and washed her hands. “Why did you write your initials on it?”
“Because we had the same initials. I was going to write CL + CL but accidentally wrote CAL. I didn’t know her middle name and chickened out on writing the rest.” He watched the blonde leave the room, still drying her hands.
“Okay, what else?” Lucy asked, not caring that her sister had left.
“I was going to ask her to the big fall fifth-grade dance but also chickened out on that,” Chris said, wishing he had not been such an idiot back then. He wouldn’t be standing there trying to prove he had feelings for Agatha if he had just not been so scared then.
Harper rushed back into the kitchen and tossed a blue bag on the table and said, “Prove it.”
Looking down at the bag, he actually questioned whether he had done what he remembered doing. After all, it had been over half a lifetime ago. Grabbing the bag, he flipped it over and was relieved his younger self had made such a bold statement.
Pointing to the letters, Chris wondered why this was important. He didn’t even know if Agatha ever knew what he’d written. A few weeks later, she’d come to school with a red backpack. He had never seen the blue one again. Until now.
“Right here.” He pointed the letters out, still just as visible as when he had written them.
Lucy picked it up and kind of squinted at it and asked, “Is he right?”
“Yes, but I didn’t need the backpack to prove it. The bag was mine. I beat the tar out of her for writing on it after she swore she didn’t. Agatha can’t not draw on things. But in my defense, CAL are also her initials, just not the correct order.” Harper plunged her hands back into the bowl of slime.
“Did you talk to her?” he asked once again, hoping that this was proof enough to get past these two gatekeepers. He wanted to talk to Agatha, not her sisters. He wanted to prove to her that he’d always liked her, not just now.
“Yes, and you are an asshole,” Lucy said, going back to her peeling.
“I know that, but I need to talk to her and explain that I love her.”
“She thinks once your friends know about her, you’ll dump her again,” Harper stated, slapping another chicken into the slime.
“No, I want to marry her.” It was the truth. It had just taken her leaving to get him to admit how much he wanted her and for how long.
“What?” Harper asked, dropping a chicken on her shoe. She kicked it off and looked at the slimy thing.
“I never want to be without her. I want her and Poppy in my life forever.”
“But Poppy isn’t your kid.” Harper looked at her sister warily. Tough crowd.
“I don’t care; she is Agatha’s kid, and I knew the night she brought Poppy home that if I wanted Agatha, I had to take Poppy too. I knew I wanted Agatha, so accepting the kid was easy. It doesn’t hurt that she looks just like her gorgeous mother,” Chris said.
Both women were staring at him like he had grown another head. Did they not think he would want the baby? Did they think that low of him?
“So, she thinks I care what my friends think? That it would change my feelings for her?” he asked.
“Yes,” Lucy admitted, turning from her sister finally.
“Does she still work for you? Can you get her to work for you?” he asked the two.
“We can.” Harper crossed her arms.
“Then I want to hire you,” he stated. An idea started forming in his mind.
“When?” Harper pulled her hands away and looked at her slimy shirt and jeans as if she had forgotten how dirty her hands were.
“I need a week,” he said. “Call me when you have an open date. Serve anything or nothing. I don’t care. I just want her there.”
Chris hurried out of the house. He was on a mission, a mission to get the love of his life back.
