Page 48 of A Chance at Forever

Dad came in with a stack of dishes and sat them next to the sink. “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing. Why?”

Dad gave me a knowing look. “You’re quiet, and it looks like something is on your mind.”

What could I say? That my ex—my high school sweetheart—was hanging around my shop? That he’d said something that made me doubt the last ten years?

“Does this have something to do with Mark?”

It had everything to do with him. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to my dad about it. “Have you ever done something you regretted?”

“Well, sure. Not telling your mother I loved her every day.”

“Oh Dad. I didn’t mean to bring up anything painful.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I just wanted to answer honestly. I think you feel that way when it’s too late to change them.”

He handed me the dishes. I rinsed and placed them in the dishwasher. When we were kids, we didn’t have this luxury, and we’d fight over whose turn it was to wash the dishes.

He was quiet while we finished up. Then I filled the sink with warm water to wash the larger pots that didn’t fit in the washer.

Dad turned so that he was leaning against the counter, his gaze on the side of my face. “Is this something you can’t change?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have regrets about telling Mark no all those years ago.”

“I just realized I wasn’t entirely truthful with him. I didn’t tell him about Ellie.”

“Ah. We’d just found out.”

“I wanted to respect her wishes. She told us not to tell anyone.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean Mark. He was part of our family back then.”

“I thought she did,” I said as I scrubbed the pot. “I think he thought I was rejecting him when I thought I was telling him I couldn’t leave. He took it to mean that I didn’t want him.”

Dad was quiet for a while, the only sound the water sloshing in the sink. “You were kids. Teenagers. Feelings were bigger. And you were quick to take offense.”

“To assume something that wasn’t true. Because I have this awful feeling we didn’t communicate clearly that night, and—”

Dad grabbed the shiny pot and set it aside. He took me by my shoulders and turned me so I faced him. “Do you still like him?”

Tears pricked my eyes as I thought about how I felt when he was nearby. How I enjoyed his company and loved the way he cared for me. “I never stopped.”

“Then you owe it to yourself to talk now. Lay everything out on the table.”

“What if he leaves again?” That was the ultimate fear. That Mark would never stay in Annapolis. That he always had something bigger out in the world to pursue. I’d never leave. Not with an established business and most of my family firmly rooted here.

“You won’t know if you don’t talk. You’re older now. Wiser.”

I wanted to clear up any misconceptions about how much I loved him, how I wanted to be with him, how I longed for him to say we could be together long distance. It would have sucked, but it was better than the alternative, not being in each other’s lives at all. I missed the support he provided when he helped me with my family. I missed his love.

“I don’t think it was the right time for you then,” Dad said.

“But it is now?” I asked skeptically. What if the timing was all wrong again? What if we weren’t meant to be together? Maybe we were destined to be ships passing in the night, never in the same town long enough to form a relationship.

“You won’t know if you don’t talk to him.”

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