Page 33 of One More Chance
But she found me anyway.
Her smile scythed through the darkness and her voice coiled around my guilt, but I couldn't understand the words that slithered off her tongue. Disgust crawled up my throat as she drew nearer. I turned to vomit.
I woke with a gasp. Sweat coated my body as I turned over and dry heaved. The bedroom in the rental felt sterile, unfamiliar, and cold. The silence of the rental tried to return, but the rain outside still fell in a steady patter.
What in the hell?
No one ever tells you about this part. After the rubble settles from what you've destroyed and you’re still breathing? Still waking up despite every wish to just disappear? The quiet becomes a living thing that feeds on your regrets. It whispers everywhat ifyou tried to bury. In my previous life, Old Me had convinced himself that he'd chosen the right path. But this time? I knew what a complete fucking idiot the Old Me had been, and reliving through his mistakes was giving me cataclysmic PTSD.
I should have stopped when Angie had said hi to me. I should have admitted to myself that she was nothing more than an insecure wound I never should’ve opened.
I reached for the bottle of water on the nightstand, remembering how the Old Me in my previous life would have been reaching for a bottle of scotch. Or bourbon. Or anything, really.
There were several years when the Old Me hadn't been picky, just needed to wrap himself in a drunken blanket for any chance of sleep. I wasn't an alcoholic, not in the clinical sense, but Old Me had developed a severe dependency not long after this point in his life. Yet one more thing that nearly a decade of therapy had helped me with.
The doorbell rang. I froze, water bottle in hand. No one knew I lived here other than Sloane, who was in another state. I got out of the bed, threw on a shirt, and walked to the door. I pressed my ear against the wood, but heard only the sound of rainfall on the other side. I opened the door a crack.
There was no one there.Weird.
Then I looked down and saw it: an envelope, white and pristine, sitting on the welcome mat. I flipped it over to see just one word written in red lipstick:
LEVI
Fuck me. I stared at my name: sharp and accusatory lines bled into the paper. I turned the envelope over. My fingers trembled as I opened it. Inside, a single photo slipped out and my breath caught as I realized what it was.
Sloane.
I could tell it had been taken through our living room window. The distinct white border of a Polaroid camera framed the image. Sloane was sitting on the couch reading. Her face was calm, untouched by makeup, her legs tucked under her. She looked peaceful. She looked serene. She looked...watched. The photo reeked of invasion, obsession,and malice. How the fuck had somebody gotten so close without anyone seeing her?
On the back of the photo, scrawled in the same red lipstick, was a warning that made my world tilt:
If I can’t have you, no one will.
Angie.
This crazy bitch. I looked up and nearly jumped out of my skin. Across the street, she was standing in the rain under a flickering streetlight.
Are you fucking serious?
Her blonde hair was slicked back, she wore a long black trench coat she'd buttoned up to her throat, and her blood red lips curdled into a too-wide grin. She stood next to the cherry red sports car her daddy had bought for her, its lights off and engine idling. She raised her hand and waved as if we were old friends; as if she hadn't been the driving catalyst for Old Me to destroy his life.
How did she find me?
I stood frozen on the porch.
Your company truck is in the driveway, you fucking idiot.
I should have slammed the door and called the police, or at least tossed the note out like the trash that it was. But something held me back; a gut feeling that if I made any moves then things would get a hell of a lot worse.
Without taking her eyes from me, that manic smile still scrawled across her face, she slid into the driver's seat with a methodical and eerie calm. She revved the engine, winked at me, then drove off intothe night like a shadow melting into the road. I watched her taillights vanish.
Cause that's not freaky as fuck.
I retreated back into the rental, my heart thundering against my ribs. Each floorboard whined under my weight as I paced and I knew I couldn’t sleep now. My pulse hammered in my head. My guilt clawed the walls of my ribcage as it gnashed its teeth and howled through my thoughts. My sin stalked the streets smothered in red lipstick.
I paced from room to room as if I was trying to outrun something that I didn’t have the courage to name, but I knew what it was: fear.
Fear of the unknown variable in this new life. This Angie… she was not the woman I remembered, not the woman from my previous life. She was some darker thing now, calculated and cruel, a warped reflection of the Angie I knew.
