Page 11 of Starting Our Chance

I should get in my car and leave while I have the chance. Two eyes, the color of a stormy sea, cut to me, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe. The raw emotion in Duke’s face was palpable. I took an instinctive step toward him. The next moment, however, a fist collided with one of his eyes.

It was the last shot that Dylan got on Duke, who was now raging mad and took less than ten seconds flat to lay the ass-wipe out on the pavement of the parking lot.

Walking calmly toward me, Duke didn’t give his victim a backward glance. I braced myself for his presence, but Duke sidestepped me, grabbing my elbow. I instinctively knew that his intentions were to escort me to my car, all without paying me a second look.

Disappointment flooded my chest as I fell into step alongside those long, lean legs.

Dylan’s voice came, slurred but hard. “You’re a fucking tease, Loretta Jane!”

Wrenching my arm from Duke’s grip, I sprinted back to Dylan who was trying to get on all fours—too drunk to stand with the wind knocked out of him, and I did what Duke would not do: I kicked the bastard’s head with my dainty, albeit expensive, pump.

“Fuck you, Dylan.” I leaned over him and made sure he heard me. “This is over. I was an idiot to think I could reason with you. Don’t call my house again. I want nothing to do with you—and that was the only thing that I came here to say tonight.”

“You fucking tease!” Dylan coughed out as the blood poured from his damaged nose.

I was about to kick him once more when a firm yet gentle touch on my shoulder pulled me back into something warm and familiar. Looking up, I saw the hard lines of Duke’s face as he jerked his head to the cars. “Best you be getting home, Lore.”

I did just that.

~*~

WHEN I PULLED INTOthe drive and shut off the engine, I saw that my mama had her gentleman caller over for the evening. Sneaking up to my room, I began to do some stretches in the dim light of my lamp. I could have taken the bastard. That thought kept bouncing around in my mind. Whereas most people in this town would remember me as the talented dancer who went north to dance on the big stage, what they didn’t know was that I had also studied Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as a self-defense tactic once dance had paid for the accounting degree I held so dear.

Even though there wasn’t a jiu jitsu club down here to work out at, I could still do the basic drills and strengthening exercises by myself. My room might be small, and therefore lacking the space to do any kind of twirling, but it was big enough to indulge in a much needed work out.

As the sweat began to bead on my forehead and trickle down into my eyes, I felt the tension in my body relax.

Maybe Mama wasn’t coming up after all. Good, maybe she didn’t hear about my disastrous dinner through the grapevine.

So, I continued my workout and thought for the millionth time about my mess of a life and my state of affairs. I was lost to thoughts about redeeming myself and returning to the Big Apple when there was creak in the hallway. I knew what that meant. I should have known better than to think I could slip into bed without facing Mama. She was here to lecture me as if I were a babe in britches again. I knew I had messed up. I was a full grown adult for crying out loud, but I had gone to try and handle something I knew better than to handle. And when I heard that telltale knock on my door, I let my mama in before returning to my push-up and handstand combinations.

“I just want to say one thing,” my mama said, getting straight to the point.

I told her to go ahead while I was parallel to the floor. My voice was laced with caution, but my mama was anything but scared.

“Whatever mistakes you think you made up north, winding up broke down here is something you can recover from. Trying to start up with an old flame, however, when he was so bad for you—”

“No.” I crashed hard from the handstand. I sat there rubbing my head and bristled up at the curvaceous figure of my mother. “I learned my lessons. I took my fall. Don’t mistake tonight as my continuing spiral into oblivion. Dylan and I are not and never will be an item. Yes, I was foolish enough to think that I could reason with him—to make him stop calling me and to tell him I wasn’t interested.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that. I think Duke will be, too.”

“I don’t care what Duke thinks!” I screeched. “He might have been a big brother to me before, but I don’t need or want that in my life right now.” I returned to my push-ups, then walked my hands into down dog, pulling my legs into a straddle and then a handstand. I held the pose for sixty seconds before falling into a plank, lowering to the ground and pushing up.

“You just mind whose heart you play with, Darling, or one day you might break something you were meant to hold.”

“Mama,” I croaked. “Stop it! There is no love life for me here. I got burned up north. I’m over men right now.”

“Sure, you are, that’s why every night you sit outside watching the Johnson’s property like a hawk.” Then my mama latched onto my other statement. “And what happened up north?”

Shit, think fast. Thankfully, I was in a handstand, counting under my breath. I didn’t have to answer until I went down in a plank. “A whole lot of bad life lessons wrapped in one guy is what happened. I’m healthy, unhurt, and a better woman because of it. And that is all I’m telling you.”

Whatever blessed angel was on my side caused my mama to drop the conversation. She blew me a kiss and reminded me that we had to be at church early to set up coffee before Bible Study. And when the door closed, I quit the grueling workout and collapsed back onto the mat.

That was too fucking close. I lowered myself to the ground and arched my back into a scorpion. I suddenly realized that I needed to create a story of events so that if I had to tell her something, she wouldn’t smell a rat. Because my mama could never know the truth of what happened in NYC and why I was hiding down here.

~*~

A LITTLE WHILE LATER, I sat in my darkened room and looked across the pasture and wondered. What I had told my mama was true—I didn’t need or want a man in my life right now. But it was only in the dark of night when I could look at that house next door, when I could open the floodgate of memories filled with potent emotions that I let myself go into a sea of dreams.

Duke had been that good friend that had always been there for me—and I for him. My parents had always had enough to splurge on dance. And I had used that gift to launch myself. But Duke had never had that life.

Looking out across the pasture, I hated to think what he thought of me.

Mama was right. I did still like him. Those feelings had been buried under everything else in my life—and now that I was acknowledging them, I was worried about what he really felt for me. I pulled out my phone and sent him two messages.

Me: Thanks for your help tonight. I owe you, Duke.

Me: Hey, if you get a chance, the moon is brilliant over the pasture tonight. Take a peek.

I then peered out of my window, hoping like hell to get some sign that he had received the texts, that he had been open to my suggestion, that what my mama had said was true, and that he felt the same pull toward me as I felt toward him.

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