Alissa Tupa, 21 March 2005

A Chance?

Lynley had just risen from the couch to take her dishes from lunch into the kitchen when she heard a knock at the door.  It was unusual for anyone to just show up at her house unannounced. Please do not let it be him.  After the confrontation last night she was a bag of nerves.  She set her dishes back down on the coffee table and edged her way around the furniture to her front door.

            Why don’t I have a freaking peephole?  She pulled the chain off the door, released the deadbolt, took a deep breath, and pulled the door open.  Yep, it was him alright, looking as handsome as ever.  Despite his good looks, she was furious at him for having the audacity to think he can just come over uninvited.  “How did you find where I live?”

            “I called information.  Can I come in?”  he asked casually.

            She stepped aside and opened the door further to allow him to enter.  “What do you want, Matthew?”

            He walked over to her couch and sat down.  She followed and sat in the loveseat.  “I just wanted to check on you.  You seemed upset last night and I was worried that I had something to do with it.”

            She could not believe her ears!  Was he really so full of himself that he thought that after five years she was still hung up on him?  Although it may be true, she didn’t want him to think it.  She had thought she handled herself pretty good last night, but maybe not.  “I’m fine.  I wasn’t upset.  I’d had a bad day yesterday and a headache, that was it,” she lied. 

            “I just wanted to make sure.  I was also hoping that we could get together while I’m here.” 

            “Why?  You want to rekindle something?  You want to catch up on old times? Why do you want to get together, Matthew?”  She didn’t mean or want to sound so rude, but she was so hurt by the fact that he had left her all those years ago.

            “I don’t know, Lynley.  I saw you last night and I just wanted to see you again.  I’m sorry about the past and I don’t want to repeat it if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

            “Oh, so you’re moving here?  Or you just want to visit as friends and nothing more?”  She noticed her voice was growing shaky.  Please do not let me start crying.  Please Lord, she prayed. 

            “Lynley, you know there’s not always work here for me.  That is why I had to leave in the first place.  Look, it’s been five years and this is the first job that’s been in Odessa since then.  I just thought that we could get together and go out to dinner or something.”

            “I don’t think so.  I’ll be honest with you, I was devastated when you left and it took me a while to get over you.  Now that I have, I just don’t want to be left in the same situation that I was left in before.”

            “We were younger back then.  You were still going to college and I could not support both of us.  I had nothing.  I couldn’t promise you a life.”  

            “See, that’s just it.  You had promised me a life.  I thought that I was going to go home with you and we were going to move in together and maybe get married, but when you left you just said that we’d visit each other soon.  We kept in touch for a while, but then you became harder and harder to reach until we never talked at all.”

            “It was hard,” he pleaded.

            “Nothing is easy, Matthew.  Apparently you just weren’t into trying and I didn’t mean that much to you.”

            “Maybe I didn’t give it a hundred percent, but that doesn’t mean that I did not love you, Lynley.  I did love you, very much.”

            “Matthew,” she said rising from the couch, “I don’t want to begin anything new or resume where we left off.  It was good seeing you again and now if you’ll excuse me, I have things I need to do today.”  As she was speaking she walked to the front door and opened it.

            Matthew rose from the couch with a look of disappointment on his face and said nothing until he was on her doorstep.  He turned to look at her, but she would not meet his gaze.  “I’m sorry about the way things ended up.  Maybe you will change your mind and we can get together.”  He turned and walked away.

            Lynley closed the door, walked to her bedroom, threw herself on the bed, and began crying.  Why is it the people you love the most can make you the maddest?  She was so mad and so hurt by him leaving her.  How could he still get to her like this?

            She remembered when he left.  She had arrived at his apartment after he got off of work, just like she did everyday.  When she walked in, she could tell something was wrong.  He told her that he had to go back to Houston to work and that he would be leaving the next day.  He was not supposed to be leaving for a few more months, so it was a total shock to her.  They both broke down crying.  The original plan was that when he went back home, she would leave with him and they would move in together.  However, he decided that it would be best if he went home alone and came back to visit her soon.  He felt that it was too soon to move in together and he had thought they would’ve had more time to plan for it.  What could she do?  She loved him so much she would have left the next day on such short notice if he would’ve wanted her to, but apparently, he didn’t.  She spent one last night with him and the next day he packed his things, told her he’d see her soon, kissed her goodbye, and left.

            Lynley finally finished crying some time later and got up to wash her face and reapply the makeup she knew she had cried off. 

            Matthew felt awful.  He could see the hurt in her eyes and it made him feel like a jerk that he was the cause of it.  He knew she still loved him.  It was written on her face when he ran into her last night.  He still loved her too.  How could he get her to forgive him and to trust him again?  He knew he didn’t handle things well when he left before, but until this job came up, he didn’t know what to do to correct it.  He didn’t want to be without her anymore and he had to figure something out to win her back.