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Part of me wondered if I actually had it in me to get behind the wheel again. But a bigger part of me wanted to at least try if Tommy was offering. His presence made me feel the most relaxed I’d been in a while and made me believe that having him in the passenger seat would give me the extra push I’d needed.
“It’s a date.” I stuck my hand out for him to shake. The biggest smile broke out across his face as he wrapped his hand around mine.
“It’s a date.”
Tommy
That night after I dropped Maggie back off at her house, I stayed up staring at my profile page. The way Maggie had been so willing to try to move past her fears by letting me help her get comfortable with driving again stirred something inside me. If she could find the courage to push past one of the hardest moments of her life, I felt like I could do the same. We were starting to become a team, after all. If she was going to walk through hell to get out on the other side, I needed to as well.
My finger hovered over the three dots in the upper corner of the first photo I had of Sutton on my page. I hadn’t kept them because I had hoped we would get back together. I knew now that I deserved better. I had kept them almost as a sick reminder of how fucked up I had let my life get before. But it was time to move on from that. To let myself fully heal and start fresh.
Without another moment of hesitation, I deleted the photo and all of the others I had of her as well. With each one that disappeared from my screen, I felt lighter, as though each photo had been a weight pressing down on me.
Everyone makes mistakes throughout their life and I was no different, but everyone also deserves a second chance. I never thought I would be deserving of a fresh start. I thought I had laid out the building blocks of what my life would be, but eventually I grew tired of keeping up the charade. With moving to a new city and away from the people that I had surrounded myself with in the past, it felt like I was finally breathing fresh air. Maggie seemed to be a piece of that. Being around her made me realize that I wanted something different for myself, and I was beginning to think it was in the shape of a curly-brown-haired woman.
But if I really wanted to pursue Maggie in the way I wanted, I needed to do this the right way. It was never that I needed to prove to Maggie that I was a different person. She had never looked at me in a way that made me feel broken. I needed to prove to myself that I could be a different person, that I was a different person.
I needed to prove to myself that I was worthy of a girl like her.
“All of the kids here come from homes below the poverty line in Chicago,” the director of the Boys & Girls Clubs told me. “We try our best to provide an after-school meal for them daily, but we don’t have enough funding to do it consistently. It’s enough to keep the after-school events running.”
The director was taking me on a tour of the building, showing me their amenities and what they had to offer the community. It warmed my heart how much they gave with how little they had to give. But what impressed me more was how grateful these kids were to have a proper pair of shoes without any holes or a dinner in their bellies.
It made me hate my old self even more because of how entitled I had acted. However, I was beginning to realize that I needed to let my past go. If I wanted to move toward the person I wanted to be, I had to stop beating myself up over something I could never change. What was done was done. There was nothing I could do to fix that. All I could do was be me and prove to myself that I could live up to the promises I had made to be better.
Chicago was quickly starting to feel like home, and I wanted to give back to a community that had welcomed me with open arms. The Cougar fans hadn’t dismissed me when I first showed up in the city. They had given me a chance, which was all I wanted. I could do something with a chance. Just like all these kids needed was a chance. They just needed someone to give it to them.
“How much funding do you feel like you lack to do the things you really wish to do for these kids?” I asked the director as we watched a group of boys throw a baseball back and forth. The gloves looked old, with rips in the leather. The baseball even looked like it had seen better days.
“Honestly, even ten thousand could do wonders. We would be able to guarantee meals for the next month after school and maybe even replace some of the gear the kids have now.”
I watched one of the boys playing catch. When I was his age, I had dreams of playing in the MLB. For him, his biggest dream right now was making sure he was safe and could play catch with his friends. I wanted to give them all the same chances to reach their dreams that I had. Or maybe even dream something bigger for themselves.
“How does a million sound?”
The director sounded like he choked next to me.
“And I plan to make that same donation amount yearly. Will that be enough?”
“Enough? We could do so much with that. We could get new computers and help teach classes that they may lack at their schools. We could equip them enough to maybe even start a team that they could play on. We could guarantee meals for them and even for their families.”
The director turned toward me with tears in his eyes. “You would change lives.”
“I want to give them the same chances I had. Everyone deserves to have the same chance. Even a few second chances.”
“Chicago is extremely lucky you chose to come here,” the director continued. “You see, I was nervous having this meeting with you today. I wasn’t sure how serious you were about all of this. But now I’m sure you’re an angel in disguise.”
“I’m no angel,” I tell him. “I’m just someone trying to do better every day.”
Maggie
The roar of the engine and the snores of Olivia provided the background noise for our flight to the East Coast. We had a three-day-long trip to New York City for a series, and the only thing that was on my mind was that with every minute that passed, the closer I was getting to Luke’s childhood home. Every year the team traveled to the Big Apple, a quick thought about him would flutter across my brain before leaving like a moth once the light had gone out. I wasn’t sure why this year was different, but the thought of being this close to where he grew up was emblazoned on my mind, never far from the surface.
I thought about it all the way from the airport to the hotel, unable to focus on anything else. Even during the game that night, I found myself wondering if his parents were at the game. They were big fans of the New York Reveres. With every picture I took, I scanned the crowd with my camera, like I was going to spot Luke’s dad with his oval glasses and wiry hair or his mom with the same eyes as Luke and the warm smile she gave everyone she felt needed one. But none of the faces were familiar and I was left feeling like I was spiraling even more than I ever had been before.
By the end of the game, I was wondering if I was truly going crazy or if something bigger was happening. It was as if Luke had been standing over my shoulder yelling at me from the moment Tommy had kissed me at the Red Cross event. It didn’t feel like he was angry because of the kiss, it felt like he was angry that I was letting my past get in the way of somebody that could be my future. I would have expected nothing less from Luke. He probably was tired of watching me put my life on hold for the past four years, locked away in my apartment with my movie collection and cheap wine.
It was strange that I was beginning to think of Tommy as someone that I could have a future with. I had shown him the ugliest parts of myself and he had stuck around, unfazed by my scars. I had expected we’d be closer, after that night we shared those pieces of ourselves with each other. But part of me knew that in order for me to be able to truly let Tommy into my life, I needed to make amends with my past.
