The Second Chance
By Adrienne D’Nelle Ruvalcaba
©2013 Adrienne D’nelle Ruvalcaba
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Percy smiled across the table at Lena as he appreciated the glint of her white teeth against her perfectly tanned skin. Even in the dead of winter, Lena’s skin could never be described as pasty. She spray-tanned just as religiously as she attended aerobics classes at her father’s gym. She’d been a personal trainer for over a decade, and her body was a shining example of perfect health and fitness. Her chestnut colored hair glistened in the soft lightening of the restaurant. She tucked one lock of her remarkable hair behind her ear as her blue eyes met his.
“I think somebody might finally get lucky tonight,” she faux-whispered with a huge grin.
Percy’s temperature went up a few degrees as her foot nudged his under the table. “So you don’t want to kill me for taking you on a weekend getaway to Montreal in the middle of winter?” he asked with a smile.
“Please,” she rolled her eyes. “Florida is too hot, and we both needed a break. Besides, I’ve had my eye on you too long to pass on such a golden opportunity.”
“You’ve had your eye on me?” Percy asked with a chuckle.
“Honey, I’ve been watching you since your first training session in Daddy’s gym six months ago. You’re actually the first guy I’ve ever asked out on a date. Of course, if your sister Jamie hadn’t told me you were a little shy, I might not have bothered.”
“That’s incredibly flattering,” Percy said as he reached across the table to take one of Lena’s perfectly manicured hands in his. She let out a girlish giggle and squeezed his hand in what could only be described as a death grip. Her gel manicured nails momentarily dug into his fingers, but he grinned and bore it until enough time had passed for him to retract his hands without seeming insensitive.
Lena had an overabundance of physical beauty, there was no denying that fact, but he still felt like he was struggling to learn what kind of person she was on the inside. Since asking him out a few weeks ago, she’d been the aggressor in their budding relationship. When he went out on dates with her, he often felt like he was being dragged along by a strong current.
She still enjoyed going to nightclubs, something he hadn’t even enjoyed in his college years, and she frequently invited him to tag along with her and her entourage of shallow fitness buffs. He’d relented a few times, but on those occasions he’d felt too old and out of place to enjoy himself. As a man in his mid-thirties, he had very little in common with the twenty-something, club-hopping crowd. Despite being a few years older than him, Lena seemed to fit right in with them, or maybe it was just that she was determined to hold onto her youth in any way she could now that she was approaching the dreaded age of forty. He’d certainly seen enough of his older sister doing the same thing. The fact that his sister Jamie and Lena were good friends led him to believe that there must be something more to her than a hot body and the ability to dance to frenzied techno music all night long. He’d asked her to spend the weekend in Montreal with him in a final effort to peek beneath the exterior that was quickly losing its luster.
“I had a good time at that museum today,” she said, interrupting his thoughts.
“Which exhibit did you enjoy the most?” Percy asked with an inner sigh of relief; maybe they had something in common after all.
“Oh, I don’t remember. They were all pretty good,” she said, and then in the next breath she asked, “What do you say we skip that orchestra performance tomorrow night, and hit that little club we passed on the way to the hotel?”
Skip the orchestra performance? Skip the entire reason they’d flown to Canada for the weekend? “Maybe we should sleep on it and decide tomorrow?” he suggested with a smile that felt forced. He hated to think that he’d wasted so much time and money on something that she wasn’t even remotely interested in.
For the next hour, he politely listened as she talked about many of the same things she’d expounded on during their previous dinner dates. She told him again about her ex-boyfriend, the nightclub owner who wanted her back. Of course, she assured him that it was never going to happen now that she had him. Percy had to suppress a cringe at that statement, because he wasn’t so sure he was “had” by her. She then switched to the subject of her latest haircut. She’d been forced to find a new stylist, because her last one had moved away. She went on for almost ten minutes about the difficulties of finding a good stylist in the Daytona Beach area. She then moved on to a detailed rant about her teeth. Apparently, her dentist hadn’t been able to schedule her for a last minute whitening appointment yesterday, and she didn’t think her teeth looked their best. Percy had been doing his best to listen without judging, but when she started complaining about her teeth he’d had enough. He looked up to assure her that they were perfect, as she well knew, but then he caught sight of something, or someone, that made his body go completely still. Time slowed to an excruciating crawl as his eyes met the eyes of the woman who had walked out on him almost five years ago.
Anna Mae Jenkins, the modern woman with the old fashioned name that went back three generations in her family, was sitting just across the restaurant, but there might as well have been an ocean between them. At one time, he would have called her the love of his life, but after she’d left him without so much as a whisper of warning, he’d sometimes thought of her as cold, unfeeling, heartless even. There was no question of whether or not he’d made a mistake; she hadn’t changed a bit in five years. When he saw the recognition flit across her delicate features, he felt a keen sense of satisfaction. She hadn’t completely erased him from her memory.
“Percy!” Lena’s shrill voice brought him back to the present. “Why on Earth are you hovering like that? Do you have to go to the bathroom?”
At her words, Percy sat back down. Apparently, his legs had a mind of their own. He didn’t even remember half rising out of his chair when he noticed Anna. He tried to go back to listening to Lena, but more than half his attention was now focused on the woman across the room. As he struggled to make sensible responses at the appropriate times, he watched the waiter approach Anna with her check. She didn’t look at him again as she pulled out her wallet to pay. She handed the waiter her money with a smile, and then she immediately stood up to leave, all without even a hint of a glance in his direction.
Percy watched as she strode towards the exit. He remembered her walk very well. It was a perfect mixture of a feminine hip-sway and the alpha-male strut, and it oozed confidence and empowerment in a way that was difficult to ignore. As she neared the exit, Percy remembered the day he’d watched her sashay across the stage to get her law degree from Yale. She’d been the only African American woman in their graduating class, and she’d also been his live-in girlfriend at the time. She grasped the door handle, and suddenly the thought of letting her walk out on him again filled Percy with panic.
“I’ll be right back,” he said to Lena as he all but ran towards the door. He hardly noticed the blistering cold as he looked around for Anna. “Anna!” he called out to her when he saw her a short distance down the sidewalk. She immediately stopped and waited for him to catch up to her. She looked like she’d fully expected him to come after her, and had resigned herself to the encounter, no matter how unpleasant it might turn out.
When he reached her, she faced him with that silent, expectant look he remembered so well. He opened his mouth to speak, but had to shut it several times. He’d fallen asleep every night for months after she left him, imagining what he would say to her if he ever saw her again. He’d rehearsed a multitude of speeches filled with all the things he’d wanted her to know, but at this moment, the
only moment that really mattered, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He couldn’t ask her why she’d left, because he already knew exactly why. He couldn’t ask her how she was doing, where she lived or worked, or even what she was doing in Canada of all places; those questions fell into the realm of small talk, and Anna Mae Jenkins didn’t do small talk.
Just when the silence between them was on the verge of becoming unbearable, she smiled and said, “I’d offer you my coat, but it’s way too small, and you and I both know you wouldn’t take it. You always were the consummate gentleman.” And just like that, she was disarmingly funny and instantly charming. Those were two of the qualities he’d loved most about her.
He cleared his throat and said, “I still am.”
“Certainly gentleman enough not to keep your date waiting. Goodbye, Matthew,” she said quietly, and then she turned and continued down the sidewalk.
“Why are you walking?” he asked as he caught up to her again. “Don’t you have a car?”
“I’m in town on business, and my hotel is only a block from here,” she said with a calm glance in his direction.
“At least let me walk you back before you say goodbye again,” Percy insisted.
“Only if you promise not to cross examine me,” she said with a note of humor in her voice.
“You have my word,” he said as he fell into step beside her.
On the short walk up the block, Percy didn’t ask Anna a single question, and she didn’t volunteer any information. He would have given almost anything to know what she was thinking during that short but emotionally grueling stroll. Blood rushed in his ears, and he had a feeling that if he said the right thing the outcome could possibly change his life. When the hotel doors loomed ahead of them, Percy stopped walking and grasped one of her hands. She looked up at him with a wealth of uncertainty clouding her eyes. She didn’t try to snatch her hand away, but it rested very precariously inside his, like a nervous little bird, prepared to fly away at any moment.
He took a deep breath to steady his heart before he said, “Relax Anna, I just wanted to tell you that I understand now. It took me a while, but I read everything in that box you left for me, and I found a different job with a better company, a company that I’m sure you’d approve of. Even if we never see each other again, I thought you should know.”
When their eyes met again, he thought he saw tears lurking just out of existence. She smiled at him and gently squeezed his hand. “Thank you, Matthew,” she said. For a moment, she looked like she was about to say something substantial, but she smiled again and said, “I’m glad to see you’ve found someone who makes you happy. Goodbye, Matthew.” With those words, she turned away and entered the hotel. Percy stayed there and attempted to gather his thoughts before he turned back toward the restaurant. Not only had his mood changed, but he felt his entire state of being had been altered in that short encounter.