One Little Chance (Sweet River)

Chapter 5

JANUARY 13TH, 2023

Me

Are you at your shop dad? I’m at Coffees & Commas and want to grab you a big thank you coffee for all the unpacking and furniture building!!

Dad

You don’t need to do that, but I’d love to see ya. I’m here! Tell Claire at the front and she’ll come get me.

W eeks later, after I’d moved into my new place on the same block as my old dream house, I went to visit my dad at work. He owned the auto shop in town. He’d been putting in hours helping me unpack, hang art, and build furniture, so one wintry afternoon, I decided to bring him a warm coffee as a small gesture of thanks.

Snow was on the ground as I scurried through the parking lot. I greeted the receptionist at the front desk so she could let my dad know I was there. I turned away from the desk toward the lobby when Gabriel Hernandez, leaning on a crutch, and Emma, Jordan’s girlfriend, who was suspiciously never with Jordan, greeted me. Gabriel was charming as ever with his dark curls and charisma. We started to chat. It was friendly enough, but my mind was screaming at Emma through the small talk, Are you still dating Jordan? Where is Jordan? Is Jordan single?

Emma wasn’t sharing any updates, anxiously toying with her long blonde hair and laughing along to Gabriel’s chatter.

I had to finally bring Jordan up myself. “How are you? How’s Jordan ?” I had an inkling that maybe things had blown up around the time I moved back to town, hence his red-rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks on Christmas Eve.

“I hear he’s doing well…” Emma said, and I was about to burst from lack of explanation until bless her, she added, “We’re actually just friends now.”

I didn’t want to say I was happy or ecstatic, but I was relieved—and maybe a reckless kind of hopeful. The conversation was a blur after that, ending shortly after, but its effect on me lingered.

My mind reeled… Jordan was single . What did that mean? Did that mean anything at all? Was it allowed to mean something to me?

I left Dad’s shop in the afternoon, snow coming down thick like fog while I drove home. As I turned onto my block, my heart tugged in my chest until I drove straight past my new place, not stopping until I arrived in front of that old dream house down the street where all my old dreams still lived. I hadn’t forced myself to box them up and carry them out yet. Maybe someday the house could still be mine? No one else had claimed it yet.

Putting my Corolla into park, I recognized the white truck parked in front of the house across from me.

The truck’s engine was loudly running. I squinted and saw Jordan laughing in his front seat . My chin dipped down. Oh, so funny, Jordan catching me revisiting our old spots.

I unbuckled and stepped out of my car with him stepping out of his at the same time.

He rubbed his hands together in the cold. “Fancy meeting you here?” he said. His sandy hair was messy like he’d tousled it before sliding out of his truck.

“I live down the street now in one of those townhouses across the park.” I gestured behind me as if that explained my presence here. Snow crunched under my boots.

“Remember how we used to come here all the time as teenagers? We’d dream about the future and talk for hours. I guess I never stopped. I still come by here to think,” he said. “Is that weird?”

“No, not weird at all. I was planning to come here to think, myself.” If I was still coming back to our old spots, at least he was, too. Snow landed on my hair and my clothes. He dusted it off his coat.

I gave a little shiver, the cold seeping through my puffy white coat.

“Truck Chat?” he asked.

Truck Chats , our old term for long talks we’d have in his truck. It was a different truck back then than this fancy new model I was currently climbing into. But the term still filled my chest with a familiar warmth.

A fight? We needed a Truck Chat. Just watched a good movie we needed to dissect. Truck Chat. Stressed about school? Truck Chat. Planning the holidays? Truck Chat. Needed a pep talk? Truck Chat.

“I’ve been long overdue for a Truck Chat,” I said, relaxing into his front seat. I was hit with the familiar piney, spicy scent I’d always known as Jordan’s. A scent that still showed up in my dreams.

Here he sat blood spikingly close, his breath fogging up the window shield, grinning at me like we were old friends, smelling like my teenage dreams. A Truck Chat, like no time had passed.

“How’s it being back in town?” he asked, waking me from my thoughts.

“It’s been exactly what I needed.” I warmed my hands with the truck heaters. “I’ve been eating at all my favorite spots. Catching up with everyone. It’s pretty wonderful how Sweet River welcomed me back like no time has passed.”

“Eh, in the grand scheme of things, you were here longer than you weren’t.” Jordan shrugged, still able to shrink my fears in one sentence.

“Sometimes, it feels like my time away was mostly me piecing myself back together.” I sighed.

“I can’t imagine you being anything but that bold Sophia I always knew,” he said. “I know how hard things were for you, though. It must’ve taken time.”

“It took a few years, but I did some growing that makes me proud. It just felt like I needed to get away from everything to do it.”

“You needed to be repotted for a bit?” Jordan nodded. His five o’clock shadow was sharper than I’d ever seen it.

“Sure. Now, I’m ready to dig my roots into Sweet River soil again.” I peeked out the window to the ripple of gray overhead.

We hadn’t spoken like this in years. My heart was a hummingbird in my chest. Jordan cleared his throat.

“I’ve got to ask.” His voice was low. “What brought you back to our Sweet River soil?”

“I finally stopped fearing how badly I wanted to come home.” It was honest, maybe too honest, but this was a Truck Chat, wasn’t it?

“Scared of little old Sweet River?” Jordan said in mock surprise. “Summer festivals and coffee shops and—” I crossed the console and gave him a shove. “There’s a whole lotta history here, I know.”

“I missed these chats,” I admitted. I missed you .

“We spent a lot of time in that old truck of mine,” he said distantly like his mind was far away in a memory.

I swallowed back my visceral reaction to the memory of how we used to tangle up in the back of his truck and kiss across consoles. “Uh-huh,” I murmured, my skin suddenly warmer.

“Remember that long drive to Galveston?”

“Yes. I said I wanted to watch the sunrise over the beach someday.” I played with the zipper on my coat. “So you decided to drive me to the beach the very next morning.”

“You were not happy about that wake-up call.” He was grinning wide and boyish.

“Well, you did come knocking at my window at three a.m.”

“I thought you’d tell me to go home, honestly.”

“I wasn’t going to ever turn you away,” I said through a lump in my throat.

I could still hear us laughing groggy and giddy as we drove along the darkened highways. Playing twenty questions to stay awake, singing country music to each other, his Tim McGraw to my Faith Hill.

I could still feel our sandy feet in the cold morning sand, watching the sun come up over the bay in pink blush and turquoise.

Jordan was playful and giddy as he made my dreams come true. “You know, Rogers,” his favorite nickname for me, the one that felt like a comforting kiss on the forehead every time he said it. “I’m just so happy to have you here in my arms,” he’d said, my back against his chest, his arms encircling me, my fortress of forearms and warm skin.

“It was a sad day when I had to turn that truck in,” Jordan said finally, his head hanging low. “I needed a bigger, newer model when I started the business.”

“I’ve seen that ad for your home construction business all over town since I got back,” I said admiringly. A picture of him and his dad with tool belts on was slapped on nearly every bus and store window.

“You can’t escape me, huh?” he joked, but he had no idea how true it was. Jordan was around every corner, ads or not. And, even when he wasn’t, here I was driving down the street to revisit our memories.

“I take it work is good?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s fun,” he said, his eyes looking nearly gold today. I knew how bad he’d wanted it. “You get hired at Sweet River Elementary?”

“I did. I took over for someone who left on maternity leave in January. A sweet class of second graders,” I said, then chuckled. “There are a couple of, uh, unruly kiddos. But there always are.”

He smiled. “I can picture you tussling with ‘em.”

“You know I can tussle,” I said, chin up.

“Oh, I know. I remember you out there during flag football taking on the big boys.”

“Or how I’d always beat you on the track.” I couldn’t help bringing it up. Crimson flush spread from his cheeks to his ears, the way it always did.

He shook his head. “There’s the Sophie smack talk.” Sophie . It was probably an accidental slip but hearing him say it felt like winning a medal.

“What some call smack talk, others call truth,” I said. A car drove past us, slow on the snowy street. “How’s…” Could I ask about Emma? His love life?

He narrowed his eyes, reading me like a favorite book. “You’re feeling nosey, I see?”

“Always.” I gave a big smile.

“That question requires a little liquid assistance.” He reached for his bag. I raised a brow as he pulled out a thermos. Oh, I knew that thermos.

“Your nana is still sending you off with hot cocoa on cold days?” I laughed. “You’re twenty-six—nearly thirty.”

“Only on the days I stop by to bring her lunch or take her to her nail appointments. She’s not driving anymore, you know.” He poured a little cocoa into the lid that also doubled as a cup. He took a sip before offering me one.

Steamy milk chocolate with the perfect hint of peppermint warmed me down to my toes. “Still the best,” I said after taking a sip.

He held the lid in his hands as he said, “Emma and I ended it back in December. Right before Christmas.” Definitely the reason for the sad Christmas caroling.

“How long had you two been…a thing?” I asked, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice. It wasn’t fair for me to feel jealous, but feelings never do play by the rules.

“We’d been together for a couple of years,” he said. “ Not eight years . But not nothing.”

“I’m also single,” I offered. “My breakup had been a long time coming, though. Doomed from the start, some may say.”

“Mine was a long time coming, too, I think. I was trying to ignore the signs, thinking I could force it into what I wanted,” he said quietly, reflectively. “I think she felt like I was trying to make her into someone she wasn’t.”

“Who?” I asked. The word out before I could remember to hold it back. I never could hold anything back with him.

He grinned like I already knew the answer. “The girl my dreams come true with. Who wants what I want. Old house, noisy kids, and weekend mornings with syrup and pancakes.”

“Who wouldn’t want those things?”

“She didn’t.” He tapped the thermos thoughtfully. “You didn’t.”

I let out a breath like I’d just been punched in the throat. It wasn’t that simple .

“I’ll be okay. I can survive this fender bender of a breakup after the way my heart was totaled after the car crash of us,” he said this plainly like it was just the facts. As if my eyes weren’t filling with tears.

I blinked them away and looked out the window. “I’m sorry.” Which heartbreak was I sorry for?

He put his eyes on mine and said, “Thank you. Really.” He looked out the windshield thoughtfully. “It’s all taught stubbornly hopeful me that I’ve got to be patient and wait for the right person. The one where our dreams and our desires line up. I can’t force it from sheer force of want . When it’s right, it’ll be natural.”

I wasn’t sure what I was allowed to be feeling in this moment—I’d been the one who totaled his heart. Someone who’d taught him that he might want our lives to align, but that desire alone couldn’t make it so.

But what if they aligned now ? We were both still parked outside the same dream house, weren’t we?

“Just ’cause I want someone to be the one, doesn’t mean she is, right?”

“Right,” I said it so softly, I wasn’t sure he even heard me.

L ater that night, I tore into the cardboard box where I kept my most valuable mementos and artifacts. Sorting through the old postcards from my grandparents and ticket stubs from trips, until my fingers touched the letter I’d read so many times I knew it by heart. It was the letter Jordan sent the autumn of our breakup. It was water stained from my own tear drops.

Dear Sophia,

You drove off a few days ago. It honestly feels like you took my heart right out of my chest with you. I was praying this morning at church and said to God, “It feels like everything is falling apart.” Then, I thought, what I’m feeling can’t compare to how you’re feeling. Everything for you really is falling apart.

I know how badly your dad hurt you. You asked me if I think he regretted your family since he fell in love with someone else, and there’s no way, Sophie. I know your dad is obsessed with you and Orlando. But I’m not the one to ask. He’s got your answer. Call him and ask him that. Or call him and yell at him.

Or call Orlando and talk about it. Come back and see your mom. Don’t shove it all away.

I know you, Sophie, you want to race toward the goal, and your goal right now is to avoid the hurt. I know it hurts, but I’ve seen you over the years. You’re strong enough to handle it.

Maybe you’re right and handling it without our relationship distracting you will make it easier. I hope so. But if you realize you need my help. Or you change your mind. I hope you remember that I’m always here for you, Rogers.

I’m so sorry about your parents. I saw the movers at your house yesterday, and it made me break down in tears. All our memories making dinner in your kitchen with your mom or when we were kids playing hide and seek in your backyard. It kills me. I’ve enclosed a few leaves from the oak tree in your backyard since I know you won’t have time to say bye yourself.

I know how much you have on your shoulders right now, and if our relationship feels like any added weight, I understand. I’ll be whatever you need, even if that’s just a happy old memory.

Love you forever,

Jordan