A Hope and a Chance(3)
Author: Jennifer Foor

Fat chance! This was the last place that I’d ever call home.

He remained seated when I got up and ambled toward the French doors leading to the pool yard. When I shut them behind me, I couldn’t help but close my eyes and take a deep breath, thankful I’d made it through the meal without stabbing either one of them with a fork.

The yard was landscaped with tall grasses and lots of unique rocks. Several lounge chairs sat around the pool, and the entire perimeter was privacy-fenced in. Attached to the far end was a building. Since my father had given me the go-ahead to look around, I took it upon myself to venture inside. Assuming that it was just a pool house to change and store chemicals, I barged right inside.

I’d been very wrong.

The most handsome piece of man that I‘d ever seen was bent over, pulling off a pair of wet swimming trunks. The beads of water glistened over his skin. Like slow motion, I watched as one left a trail while sliding down to his crack. When the door shut behind me, he turned around. His eyes widened and my presence was definitely made known. I didn’t know what to say, as I stood there taking in his rock-hard physique.

I-COULD-NOT-STOP-LOOKING.

He had a tattoo on his arm that I couldn’t quite make out. Both of his ears were pierced and I was certain that those eyes were a shade of brown. His tan skin kept beckoning me to peek, and it was with much regret that I began to actually lick my lips and bite down on the bottom one.

I’d never reacted like this before in the presence of a man. It was both highly embarrassing, and way out of character. After my last relationship, I’d come to feel as if guys only wanted one thing. I knew it wasn’t right to judge one personal experience on all of them, but it was what I knew.

Still, something about this man in front of me was so beautiful that it intrigued my curiosity. I wanted to know who he was, and what he was doing there.

2

It was hard for me to believe that in the last year I‘d ruined my life, and possibly my future. My full ride to Penn State University had been revoked. If my mother were still alive she’d be kicking my ass, still after six months had gone by. What happened was a horrible tragedy, and the dean of schools did what he had to do, due to the drastic circumstances surrounding it. In one night I’d managed to destroy everything I’d worked so hard for.

I’d once strived for greatness, excelling in every aspect of my existence. Now I lived with my sister, in a pool house in her back yard at that.

We were always close and she never questioned me when I’d confessed to her what happened that night. I couldn’t lie about something so horrendous, but making someone believe me wasn’t that easy. Not when it was on every television station and in all of the local newspapers.

After I’d been kicked out of school, lost my job, and left without a penny to my name, Buffy saved me, like she always seemed to do while we were kids. My sister set me up with a place to live, and a job that would last me at least a year. Her new sugar daddy had bought an old fixer upper and they had big plans for what they wanted the house to become, inside and out.

I hadn’t held a hammer since high school, but thankfully it ended up being like riding a bike. After a few days work, I got the hang of things. When I wasn’t sure about something, I’d watch how-to videos until I felt confident to get the work done appropriately. It wasn’t like they were entrusting me with big jobs. The contractors had been in and out of the place since before they even moved in. I was more or less the go-to for small repairs.

Working by myself gave me time to think about the mistakes I’d made to get me in this very predicament. At times I considered running away from it by ending my life, but knew that was the pussy way out. The damage was done. I had nowhere to hide, and even in death I think it would haunt me.

All my friends had disowned me, insisting that they couldn’t be associated with someone like me; someone that could do such heinous things and get away with it for so long. It was a devastating blow. In the long run, I guess they were never really my friends. If they were, then they would have known I wasn’t capable of becoming the monster they all thought me to be.

Even my girlfriend who I’d dated since my freshman year at college dumped me, claiming the pressure of being involved was too much, and yada yada. I’d heard the same crap before. The truth was that her parents forbid her from having anything to do with me. They had the nerve to call me a street thug and a common criminal on several attempts that I’d made to visit her at their place of residence. She finally wrote me a letter asking me to never contact her again or they’d be forced to get a restraining order against me.

For the first few months after the trial, I secluded myself in my sister’s apartment. It was over top of the bar where she danced. After work she’d always bring bottles of liquor upstairs to bury my pain with. As short-lived as it was, it took the edge off, and at least made me think that I didn’t care. It was the only real time I was able to sleep while still living in Pennsylvania.

After my sister met Mark Ryan things changed. She stopped working, and soon spent all of her time with him. Within six months they were shacking up and planning on the big move to Virginia; and because of them, I was given a fresh start in a new state. Eventually, maybe I could make new friends and have a future that my mother would have been proud of, instead of the one that had put her into an early grave. Maybe I’d be able to play baseball again. I knew a career doing what I loved was far-fetched, but I at least wanted something to hold on to.

For the past two weeks I’d been working on the inside of the house. It’d been vacant for almost a year before Mark had gotten it as a foreclosure. He said it was a steal, but I just took his word for it. Anything over five grand was too expensive for me. I’d blown my mother’s entire life insurance on lawyers, trying to keep myself out of jail. I hated that; the fact that my mother had worked so hard for us to be independent. She only wanted us to be successful and never hurt for anything. All of it made me feel like such a failure.

Like everything in my life so far, I was trying to make my new situation work. I got the most important rooms in livable shape, and even assisted with getting the cabinets installed in the kitchen before the granite countertops were delivered. There was still much to do, but I didn’t have a deadline, which was nice since most of what I was doing was foreign to me. It was a good thing that the internet had evolved into a place where you could learn how to do anything.

I’d planned on fixing some shingles that were missing on the roof, but my sister and Mark asked me to take the day off. They claimed that they had someone “very special” coming over, and that they didn’t want to be disturbed with the sound of the hammer slamming against the roof. It was fine. I never really relaxed on the weekends. Sitting in the small pool house just made me think of what my life could have been. As much as I appreciated having my own space, I got lonely easily. I’d gone from being sociable to having nothing at all. That kind of adjustment wasn’t simple. On most nights I would drink myself to a stupor and eventually pass out. My sister feared that one evening I was going to get so drunk I would fall into the pool and drown.