A Hope and a Chance(74)
Author: Jennifer Foor

Buffy tried to stay out of mine and Chance’s relationship. It wasn’t because she wanted to, but because she didn’t want to be involved if my father ever found out.

He and Chance started doing more together. At night, they would have a few beers and watch sports highlights on television. Some days when it was nice, my father would pull Chance from working on the house and take him golfing. I think Chance would have enjoyed it more if he didn’t always have to look over his shoulder for the idiot Trevor, every time he was at the Country Club.

As he and my father continued to bond, we struggled with the certainty that my dad finding out about our relationship was not going to go over well. We’d even had several arguments about that such topic.

I hated fighting with him, but I knew that the closer it came to me being eighteen, the closer I was to possibly losing my boyfriend. Since I’d been working hard to rebuild a relationship with my dad, and keep a close eye on my mother I couldn’t imagine losing Chance. We had to find a way to convince my dad that we were better together.

Things had really changed in the last two months for me. Mark had been a completely different person. He not only included me in some of his outings with his friends, but he wanted us all to be a family more around the house. Hope and I both took advantage of the situation, knowing we could be together all of the time. The hardest things were not being able to touch each other. Some nights after dinner we would sit around for hours shooting the shit. It was never that our conversations were boring, but it was hard to know that we could be somewhere else alone.

Hope was my girlfriend, no matter if we had to hide it or not. She knew how important she was to me and that was as good as things could be for the time being.

The wedding was fast approaching and Buffy seemed to be freaking out more on a daily basis. Her newest conquest was to have Hope involved with everything possible. Part of me was happy that they were so close, but I felt like she was keeping me away from having alone time with Hope.

Buffy made it her life mission to save money, so traveling to several towns away for something cheaper was always what she ended up doing. She would take Hope around with her for the company, and they wouldn’t get back until late in the evening.

Mark didn’t seem to mind. Some days we would both take off early and go to the golf course, or sit around watching football and drinking beer. The subject of Hope and I never came up and I wasn’t even sure what I would say if it did.

I still had no idea how we were going to confess about our relationship. Since we have been together for many months now, it would be harder than at first. Sometimes I regretted prolonging the inevitable.

Hope seemed to be content with our situation. Sure, we both wanted to be able to be out in public without wondering who would see us, but we also appreciated the time we did get to spend together and it made it even better.

She had adjusted well to her first semester of school and I made it a point to help her study whenever we got the opportunity. Mark encouraged it, so it was necessary that we did what he asked.

We had about one more month of walking on eggshells and then we could come clean about our relationship. I had already registered for the next semester and made sure to take as many courses with Hope as I could. I already had taken most of her normal classes, but we chose several that we could take together.

I figured that Hope would complain about school, but she never seemed to struggle. My plan was once she turned eighteen, and college started back up after the New Year we could stop hiding our relationship and live together. I hadn’t really mentioned it to her yet, but I planned on doing it the next time we were alone.

Again, everything depended on how her father took the news. At this point in our relationship I knew that if he went off the deep end, and kicked me out of the pool house Hope would come with me wherever I went. I hated the idea of that, but the truth was Mark had told me to stay away from his daughter, after we had already been together.

I hadn’t heard from Hope all morning since she went out for her fitting with my sister. I’d been out at the hardware store with Mark picking up some new windows for the front of the house. He and Buffy decided to replace them all at the same time.

We rented a trailer and piled them all on it to get them back to the house.

I’d been busy this morning and it kept my mind off the little amount of time I’d seen her this week; but there was something that I needed to talk to her about before she heard it from my sister. I didn’t think it would be a big deal as long as Hope knew ahead of time.

My sister had decided to invite all of her friends from back home to the wedding. There was only one problem that I had with that; it was Susan.

Susan had been a friend of my sister’s since they were in kindergarten. She used to spend the night with us every weekend and she even went on family trips. When I became a teenager and started noticing girls, she was the first crush I ever had. I used to try and sit close to her just to get a whiff of her hair. At first she thought of me as the creepy kid brother of her best friend, but as my body started to change, so did her opinion of me.

One night after a football game I tagged along with my sister to a party a senior was throwing. I didn’t know anyone except Buffy and Susan, and my sister was already up some guy’s ass as soon as we got there. Susan stayed back with me and fed me beer after beer. Finally, after a few hours she asked if I wanted to go upstairs and lay down. I agreed and headed up there thinking she was just being nice.

I was wrong.

Susan threw herself on me, and I wanted it even more than she did. After that first time, we continued to sleep together until I left for college. We never were a couple, but when my sister finally found out she flipped. She didn’t talk to Susan for months, saying she deflowered her brother. It wasn’t like that, but Buffy never got over it. During the time when I’d gotten into all the trouble, Susan came back into our lives saying she knew I could never do anything so horrible.

Buffy begged me not to get involved with her, and honestly, I never wanted to, but Susan never stopped trying.

I needed to tell Hope about Susan before she came to stay. Hope’s birthday was one day before the wedding and I couldn’t let something from my past ruin it. If Hope heard it from anyone else, she would think I was hiding something. Finding the time alone with Hope was becoming scarce and every minute she was with Buffy, I feared she would find out.

43

For the past two weeks I’d been alone with Chance only three times. We saw each other daily, but private time was just not happening. Our quick kisses and sneaky embraces continued, even though our late night cuddling seemed non-existent.