One Little Chance (Sweet River)

Chapter 3

DECEMBER 31ST, 2022

N ew Year’s Eve night, Orlando and I met Dad and his wife, Heather, at our small town’s New Year’s Eve Celebration in our bustling downtown. I wore a thick cream sweater dress and a navy knit hat. We arrived to find crowded streets and excitement as thick in the air as the scent of hot chocolate and caramel popcorn. Live music boomed as we weaved through the crowds.

Orlando twirled me to the music until we ran into old friends. Everyone was talking a mile a minute catching up. Dad and Heather bought hot drinks to warm us up. We were swapping stories about silly past Christmas gifts when my eyes landed on someone dancing across the way. I squinted to see Jordan’s girlfriend, Emma. Her long blonde hair and bright blue eyes matched the photos of her I’d found on some of his tagged photos online. I searched the faces standing with her for Jordan’s, but he wasn’t there. She was with the Hernandez siblings. I knew them from school. I pulled my coat tighter around me in the winter night air.

We rushed to the fireworks show as the crowd chanted the countdown. Five, four. We found a spot squeezed in the sea of people. Three, two, one .

My dad kissed me on the forehead at the stroke of midnight. “Happy New Year, my girl,” he said under fireworks exploding overhead.

I slid an arm around his waist. “Happy new year, Dad,” I whispered into his fluffy coat.

“I’m so happy you’re home,” he said. His voice was nearly lost under the booming fireworks, but I still heard him. Another piece I’d thought was broken and lost forever, safely in my hands again.

“Watch out, Sweet River. Sophie’s back this year,” Orlando shouted, giving my arm a little nudge. I crinkle my cold, pink nose at him.

W alking back to our car, I quizzed Orlando on his college life back in Austin. When I recognized the big, white Ford F-150 parked in front of our own car, Orlando didn’t notice as he climbed into the driver’s seat of his Jeep. He was still chattering away unaware who that truck belonged to—since he hadn’t been obsessively keeping up with Jordan via social media and mutual friends—but I stayed on the sidewalk for an extra minute, because what if…

My eyes landed on Jordan walking toward his truck, looking up at the stars overhead. His eyes took a moment before they settled on me.

He stopped in his tracks as our eyes locked. We hadn’t spoken since I broke up with him on his parent’s front porch that fall when we were both eighteen. What’s a good icebreaker when you run into your first love?

“You’re back.” He spoke first. His voice was rugged, making mist in the air.

I nodded. The fuzzy ball on top of my knit hat bounced with the movement.

“For Christmas?” He kept looking away like it hurt to look at me.

“For good,” I said, my heart rocking against my chest. Taking him in after all this time, new creases lined around those same hazel eyes, his sandy locks had grown out a little shaggier, and stubble shadowed his jawline.

His gaze finally locked on mine. “For good?”

“It was time to come home,” I said. I’d known I’d probably wind up talking to Jordan eventually, but it still felt so surreal to feel his focus on me again.

“This week just keeps…” His voice trailed off. “You…”

“I…” Do I apologize for ghosting him after all this time? Do I make a joke ? Do I ask him to go grab a coffee and catch up? Do I ask what else happened this week?

I couldn’t shake the image of his swollen eyes on Christmas Eve from my mind, and now, his remark about this week.

“Are you okay?” I asked like a reflex.

He laughed humorlessly, kicking a shoe against the crunchy leaves scattered at our feet. “Not really.”

I stepped closer, wanting to find some way to comfort him. “I don’t want to add to anything?—”

He shook his head, quieting me. “Sophia.” His voice saying my name took the air out of my lungs. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. You being back home is… surprising is all. We can be friends, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I should’ve felt relief at his words, but instead, it felt like someone snuffing out something I hadn’t realized was still burning in my chest.

He opened his driver-side door, then called out, “Welcome back, by the way!”

T hat night, I tossed and turned, tangled up in my sheets. I hadn’t anticipated the memories and feelings talking to Jordan would rustle up. His presence was still a force around me, affecting my gravity. I thought those feelings had been giddy teenage things. Maybe Jordan made me feel like a teenager again at twenty-six? Maybe how Jordan could take up residence in my mind was another one of those things that wouldn’t ever change.

I still went back to that October night I broke it off all the time, like tracing an old scar with my fingertips.

While the two of us were on his front porch, Jordan’s eyes wrinkled in concern when he answered the door to me and saw my tear-stained cheeks. I was supposed to be hours away at school.

I’d driven all day across the state to talk to him.

He’d consistently been there for me the past few weeks after my parents’ divorce, even as I ignored his calls and pulled away. Now, I was here beside him but as far away as could be.

“Sophie,” he breathed out after I ended things. The two of us held ourselves against the crisp October air. “Don’t do this. Don’t do this.” He knew I was spinning out of control after the wrecking ball of news about my parents. About my dad and a stranger.

I was desperate to somehow scrape together some new life that didn’t hurt so much. Like I could tape something new up over all the pain.

I drove home sobbing with the icy realization that the person I wanted to call right then to comfort me was Jordan. The person I wanted to hold me until I stopped crying was Jordan. The person who knew me well enough to love me through this was Jordan. I’d cut ties with my boyfriend and the best friend I’d ever had in one fell swoop.

But Jordan loved a different me. A me who was dreamy-eyed and hopeful, who thought she’d marry her high school sweetheart.

Two peas in a pod , his mom used to say about us.

Even if he could love this other version of me, and I knew he’d try—Jordan meant trips back home. And home hurt. I didn’t think I could handle it.

Classic Sophia, always racing toward the goal, the prize, even when everything screamed to slow down. Always pushing harder and asking for more, even when the prize at the end of the race was a broken heart.

It took a few years for everything I’d taped up over my hurt to fall apart.

My new boyfriend, Tyler, was the perfect distraction. His life as a musician was all-consuming for the both of us. He dropped out of school to pursue his career. Our relationship together consisted mostly of me meeting him on tour stops and in recording studios in between classes. I was more than happy to let both our lives revolve around him. It felt easier than actually dealing with my own needs and wants.

It was strange to go from a relationship where Jordan’s love felt so specific to who I was and who he was with me to a relationship where I felt like a supporting role. It felt easier. I could hide away my hurt. I could lick my wounds and cope in whatever unhealthy ways I wanted, and it went unnoticed and unchallenged.

Jordan would’ve pushed me to call my mom. To check on Orlando. He would’ve noticed that I cried every time my dad’s favorite singer, Thomas Rhett, came on, and he definitely would have asked why I kept playing his songs anyway.

Tyler seemed to think I’d never been close to my family, and I let him believe it. I shared the story of my parents’ divorce sparingly like hazardous, dangerous materials.

Our relationship was about him and his music, his family, his fans, his dreams, and I could just float in and out as we pleased. I invested little, barely even my feelings, but reaped affection and distraction.

After college graduation, he asked me to marry him on stage at one of his shows, and it was so loud with the crowd chanting for me to “Say yes, say yes, say yes!”

I said, “Yes,” but I wasn’t sure he even heard me. He turned to the crowd with a triumphant fist in the air after he slipped the ring on my finger. The applause rang in my ears long after I left the stage.

During our first and only year of marriage, I barely saw him. I finally realized that everything about us was surface and shiny, but not durable, not real. As I peeled the layers back to rediscover myself, Tyler grew more distant. He married a woman I didn’t even recognize when I looked in the mirror. He didn’t marry me.

As Tyler called to cancel trips back home, over and over, I realized, I didn’t know him either. The two of us picked each other like a temporary antidote—me wanting him as a distraction from my real life and him wanting me to bolster his ego when he wasn’t on the road.

He didn’t even come back to sign the divorce papers or talk to the lawyer. Everything was done from the road. His final goodbye was sent via email and with a heart emoji.

I didn’t regret him as much as I regretted running away from my problems, my family, my home, and myself.

In my first year after the divorce, I met with a therapist and admitted aloud, “I loved Sophie from Sweet River, but I ignored her voice for so long I don’t know how to recognize it anymore.”

She nodded along then said, “Maybe you should start talking to yourself more then? Because Sophia may be in Dallas right now, but she’s still the girl from Sweet River.”

I spent each week that year re-learning myself in my tiny apartment in Dallas.

Did I still love to run? I hadn’t run since high school. I bought myself running clothes, and the first time my feet hit the pavement, my entire body went warm with joy.

Did I miss church? I found a church across town and slipped into the back pew, tears stinging my eyes as we sang an old hymn.

Could I forgive my dad? I’d ignored phone calls and visits for so long. It’d become an old bruise I avoided. Finally, after years, he and his wife drove across the state to spend the weekend with me cooped up in my little apartment overlooking the cityscape. His new wife, Heather, actually made me laugh and taught me how to make cinnamon rolls. Dad was still Dad, I realized, just a lot more imperfect and human than my younger self let herself see. I handled our relationship carefully but made room for him in my life again.

It took a few years, but I found myself again. Sophie from Sweet River could exist anywhere, I learned, and if I ran away from home, it could still make its way to me.

I was driving back to my apartment from work one day, on the phone with my brother Orlando, when he asked, “If you could live anywhere in the whole world, where would it be?”

It wasn’t some tropical island or European city.

My mind immediately went to that old house down the street from Sweet River Elementary. The house Jordan and I would drive by, dreaming of a future together in those walls. I had the words he’d said when they were seventeen memorized like a favorite passage in a book.

I’ll fix that house up for you someday. You’ll be able to walk to school to teach every morning. Hang twinkle lights at Christmas. We’ll paint it any color you want.

My old dreams were still alive, still twinkling like stars that hadn’t faded. A heartbroken girl had crushed them in her fist, but an older, smarter version of her was unfurling her hand, sifting through the remnants, reassuring her, “Don’t worry, things break. But we can fix them.”