Chapter 7 - What Ifs

I had left Amelia’s at a little after eleven.  As I turned the key in the ignition to turn on my car, my cell began to vibrate.  It was Trish, according to my caller ID.  With one swift motion of my fingers, I activate the talk option on my smart-phone.

“Where have you been?”  She demanded in her usual annoyed tone.  “I’ve been trying to call all night.  You had me worried sick!”

“Sorry, Baby.”  I said but not really meaning it.

“Where were you?”  She demanded again.

“Out.”  I answered.  She snickered.

“Out where?”  She pushed.

“Trish.”

“Chris.”  She mimiced my tone.  I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, fighting the urge to hang up on her.

“I’m on my way home right now.  I was out with a friend I hadn’t seen in years.”  I tell her.

“Was it with that Amelina girl?”  She asked.  Could she have been that stuck up and self-involved that she couldn’t even be bothered to get her name right?  As ridiculous as they may seem, I knew the answer to that question was unfortunately, yes.

“It’s Amelia and yeah.”  I told her.  “Listen, I’ll talk to you tomorrow when you get back, alright?”  And with that, I hit ‘end call’ and hung up without giving her a chance to start an argument which I knew would end up returning again tomorrow upon her return.  Might as well argue once and get the drama done and over with.

I got home and headed for my bedroom.  I lay in bed, with my boxers, feeling lonely.  I thought about the last few days, about earlier today; the harmless flirting, the water fight, the sweet moments and the heartfelt conversations.  I tried rationalizing why my brain was stuck on Amelia when I should have been thinking about Trish.  Although consumed with thoughts of my childhood best friend, I couldn’t shake thoughts that had formed moments after we took our spill in the grass.  The child in me had come out and I didn’t recall a time where I had truly laughed that much in recent times.  As I brushed that wet strand of hair away from her face, the thought of kissing her had formed in my mind.  Friends don’t kiss friends.  I had reminded myself.  There’s no way I could try and pursue anything with Amelia.  I had to get that out of my head completely.  There’s no way that she’d ever see me in that light.  Not in the immediate future anyway.  I decided, in the here and now, that I rather have her in my life as a friend than not at all.  I had already lost too much time with my idiocies of the past.  Once I had those thoughts organized and processed, I finally felt the wave of sleepiness I had been craving come and take me away.

The next day, I had decided to stop by the local bistro and say hi to Missy.  I asked her for her large batch of pancakes and two chocolate milks to go.  I took them over to Amelia’s, knowing all too well, that women on a mission have a tendency to jump into things and forget to eat.

“Good morning.”  I say and smile at her still puffy eyes from her night’s sleep.  I loved her fresh out of bed kind of look.  It made me…  You’ve got to stop this!  The thoughts were beginning to form.

“What’s this?”  She nodded at the package in my hands.

“I thought I’d get your day started with breakfast from Missy.”  I tell her.

“Pancakes?”  She asks me and I nod.  “I love you so much; you have no clue right now.”  She says and then slaps her hand up to her mouth blushing.  “I…”

“Don’t worry about it.”  I laughed at her reaction to her own words.  “I’d love you too if you showed up on my doorstep with these pancakes, looking like you do right now.”  That seemed to have put her at ease but made my stomach twist in knots when I noticed a slightly deepened blush on her face before it fading completely.  She walked me to the kitchen where we sat down and talked about what she had planned for the day.  She had told me that she was still trying to figure out who had mowed her lawn while she had been out yesterday morning.  I couldn’t help but smirk as I stuffed a large bite of my pancake in my mouth.  I saw her notice my smirk.

“It was you?”  She says, her eyes brightening.  I nodded.

“I knew you meant to take care of that and after pulling you away from it all, I felt I owed you a thank you for choosing to hear me out so I came by early for coffee with Mom and Dad and decided to surprise you.

“How’d you know where I went?”  She asked me.

“That…”  I began.  “Was purely serendipitous despite how it may have seemed.”

After breakfast, I helped her shuffle furniture around and we got started on painting her living room, pausing from time to time for refreshments.  When the time for lunch had come, she left me to head to the kitchen and make us a couple sandwiches.  She came back with a tray of ham and swiss sandwiches on chiabatta buns and two glasses of lemonade.  After we were seated on her front porch and had started eating, a thought had entered my mind.

“Mia?  Can I ask you something?”  I blurted out before I lost the urge or the nerve.

“What is it?”  She took a sip of her lemonade.

“Have you ever thought what might have been if our friendship had remained intact all these years?”  It was a question that I had asked myself through all these years.  It’s not like we’d really know.  If someone ever invented a remote to rewind time, much like in Click, that movie with Adam Sandler, I’d be the first to buy it just so I could rewind time to that day where I found her on my doorstep and have a do-over.

“Every now and again.”  She paused and looked at me.  It seemed like she too wouldn’t have minded a different outcome between us after all these years.  “Why?”

“I was just wondering.”  I said, avoiding her line of vision wishing I had left the subject alone despite my dying to know what she would have done differently.

“Come on, Chris.”  She urges me.  “Something must have made you ask me that.  It’s a little ‘out of the blue’ for a question, don’t you think?”

“I just wanted to know if I was the only one that had given it some thought, it’s all.”  I explain to her.  She nodded but I could tell that those wheels in that head of hers were turning processing it all.

“So what did you come up for us, had our nasty turn of events never happened?”  She asked me casually, sinking her teeth into her sandwich.  When I didn’t answer, she opened her mouth to say something but then though better of it.  We ended up finishing our lunch in silence, looking at anything but each other.  She got up quickly and took my plate out off my lap, took my unfinished glass of lemonade, set everything on the tray and rushed back to the kitchen.  Was it something I said?  Or maybe it was something I hadn’t said?  For the life of me, I had no clue what women wanted but I knew Amelia; at least, I used to.  I knew she wanted an answer to her question and the fact that I hadn’t been able to give it to her without any thought bothered her.  I got up and walked back inside and found her standing by the kitchen sink, staring out the window, hands on the edge of the counter supporting her upper half.

“We would have been right here, together.”  I say before I had the chance to filter my words as I leaned into the side of the kitchen’s doorway, watching her.  She jumped slightly.  She turned to face me but leaned back against the counter.  “I’d like to think that we would have remained best friends and eventually, maybe we would have ended up together.  Or maybe not but the one thing I know for sure is that in this moment, I would have been here no matter what.”

“Did you just say that you actually pictured us together?”  She asked with a puzzled expression on her face.  I loved that look on her face; it hadn’t changed since we were kids.  I smirked and my feet began to move toward her and my breathing became heavier yet still relaxed despite the butterflies that had begun to swirl about my stomach.

“So what if I did?”  I looked at her.  She looked at me and somehow, I couldn’t help but wonder why she didn’t hold a look of surprise to that revelation.  I stopped only to stand a few feet away from her.  “What did you picture if we had always remained friends?”  She blushed.

“Honestly.”  And I held her eyes with mine as I inched myself closer to her slowly, our faces now only inches from each other’s.  As she opened her mouth to speak next, Murphy’s Law dictated circumstances and my cell began to ring in my back pocket.  It’s just my luck.  Amelia turned her head away from me and moved away quickly as I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone to see who it was.  Damn Trish!  I slid my finger on ‘talk’ to accept the call, cursing my girlfriend.  Yeah, your girlfriend.

“I thought I’d surprise you and come home early but what do I find?”  I hear in my ear.

“I don’t know.  What?”  I say sarcastically, pretending that she’s talking in riddles.  “An empty house?”  I finally answer her.

“Precisely.”  She tells me.  “Where are you now, Christian?”  When I didn’t answer right away, I heard Amelia’s front door open and slam shut but coincidently, I heard the same noise through my phone.  What the hell?  Oh no!  Trish walked into the kitchen and stood before us, her face red with anger, her overly expensive stiletto heels tapping the floor annoyingly demanding an explanation.

“Are you seriously telling me that there’s nothing going on with you two?”  She looks at me and then stares Amelia down with an accusatory glare.

“There isn’t.”  Amelia says quickly.  “Have you not seen a man and a woman being friends before?”  I couldn’t help but do a mental happy dance for Amelia and her sarcasm.  I was impressed that time had given her the slitted tongue she needed to stand up for herself.

“Actually, I haven’t.”  She answered flustered that someone had the gall to attempt to put her back in her place.

“Must be because you’ve slept with all of yours, huh?”  Amelia said.  At that point, Trish made a move toward her and I had to jump in front of her to stop her.  I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the front of the house, giving Amelia a quick apologetic look.  I could tell that all she wanted to do was defend me but it wasn’t her battle, it was mine.

“Trish, you’re treading way over the line.”  I tell her.

“What am I supposed to think?”  She argues.  “I leave for a day and you ignore my calls and when I come back, I find you playing house with that bitch back there!”

“Her name is Amelia.”  I tell her firmly.  My blood was beginning to boil.  “Now woman, I expect you to treat my friends with a bit more respect than you’ve shown her and if you can’t deal with her being in my life, then I suggest you take a hike because Amelia’s not going anywhere!”  I was now one octave short of yelling.  “I never thought of you as one to get jealous, Trish.  It’s not becoming of you and frankly, I’m tired of your spoiled rich girl priss antics.  As a matter of fact, I think it’s time we end things.”  That sure shut her up.  I had had enough of her.  If my mother could see me right now, I’m sure she’d be cheering on the sidelines like she used to for my high school football games.

“You can’t be serious?”  She began and walked up to me, pushing her body against mine.  “Baby?  Surely you don’t mean it?”  She says in a sweeter tone, meant to seduce me but it only made the bile in my stomach churn, I turned my face away from her and pushed her lightly away from me.

“I want you out of my house first thing tomorrow morning at the latest.”  I tell her.

“But where will I go?”  She asked.

“I don’t care.  I’m sure there’s a millionaire somewhere in this town or the next one over that’s willing to put up with you.  As for me, I’m done with you.  Goodbye Trish and leave the keys in the mailbox when you’re done.”  I push her out the front door, slamming it shut on her and locking the deadbolt.  I hoped to never hear or see her again and as for Amelia, I owed her another apology.  Seemed like I had been doing a lot of apologizing these days.