Hope's Chance (2 page)

The pool yard was landscaped with tall grasses and lots of unique rocks. Several lounge chairs sat around the pool, and the entire
vicinity
was privacy fenced in. Attached to the far end of the pool
was a building. Since my father had given me the go-ahead to look around, I took it upon myself to venture inside.
Assuming that it was just a pool house, I barged in the door. 

I was wrong.

The most handsome piece of man I had ever seen was bent over, pulling off a pair of swimming trunks. As the door shut behind me, he turned around, shocked!

Chapter 2

Chance

It was hard for me to believe that in the last year I had ruined my life and possibly my future. My full ride to Penn State University had been revoked. If my mother were still alive she would be
kicking my ass, still after six
month
s.  What happened was a horrible tragedy and the dean of schools did what he had to do
. In one night I had managed to destroy everything I had worked so hard for.

Now I live
d
with my sister, in a pool house in her back yard
at that. We were always close and she never questioned me when I had confessed what happened that night. I couldn’t lie about something like that, but making someone believe me wasn’t that easy.
Not when it was on every television station and in every newspaper.

So my sister set me up with a place to live, and a job that would last me at least a year. Her new sugar daddy had bought an old fixer upper an
d they had bi
g plans for what they wanted the house to become, inside and out.

I hadn’t held a hammer since high school, but thankfully it ended up being like riding a bike. After a few days work, I got the hang of things. Plus working by myself gave me a lot of time to think about the mistakes I had made to get me to this very predicament I was in.

My friends had all but disowned me, insisting that they couldn’t be friends with someone like me. Someone that could do such heinous things and get away with it for so long. It hurt so much. In the long run
,
I guess they were never really my friends. If they were, then they would have known I wasn’t capable of those things.

Even my girlfriend, who I had dated since my freshman year at college dumped me, claiming the pressure of being involved with me was too much
and yada yada
. The truth was that her parents forbid her from having anything to do with me. They had the nerve to call me a street thug,  and a common criminal on several attempts I had made to contact her at their place of residence. She had finally written me a letter asking me to
never contact her again, or they
would be forced to get a restraining order against me.
Her father had warned about the same plan that day as well.

For the first few months after the trial
,
I secluded myself in my
sister’s
apartment. It was over top of the bar that she danced at, so after work she would bring bottles of liquor to bury the pain with. It was the only real time I was able to sleep while still living in Pennsylvania.

After she met Mark
Ryan things changed. She stopped working at the bar, and soon spent all of her time with him. Within six months they were shacked up and planning on the big move to Virginia. Because of them,
I was given a fresh start here in a new state. Eventually
,
maybe I could make new
friends and have a future that my m
other would have been proud of, instead of the one that had put her in an early grave.

For the past two weeks I had been working on the inside of the house. It had been vacant for almost a year and Mr. Ryan got it as a foreclosure. He said it was a steal, but I just took his word for it. Anything over five grand was too expensive for me. I had blown my mother’s entire life insurance on lawyers, trying to keep myself out of jail. I hated that. The fact that my mother had worked so hard for us to be independent and successful and never hurt for anything, made me feel like such a failure.

But, I
was
trying to make things work. I got the most important rooms in a livable shape, and even got the
cabinets
installed in the kitchen before the granite countertops were delivered. There was still so much to do, but I didn’t have a deadline, which was good since most of what I was doing was foreign to me. I found myself looking up how-to sites before I started a new project. It was a good thing that the internet ha
d
evolved into a place where you could learn how to do anything.

I had planned on fixing some shingles that were missing on the roof today, but my sister and Mr.
Ryan
asked me to take the day off. They claimed that they had someone “very special” coming over and that they didn’t want to be disturbed with the sound of the hammer slamming against the roof. It was fine. I never really relaxed on the weekends. Sitting in the small pool house just made me think of what my
life could have been.  On most
nights I would drink myself to a drunken stupor and eventually pass out.  My sister feared that one night I was going to get so drunk I
would fall in the pool and die
.

Even though I had the day off
,
I still woke up at the crack of dawn. I
weeded the front garden next to the driveway and painted the mailbox. While I had the can of paint out
,
I decided to touch up the white parts of the fence around the pool. The sun was hot, even early this morning, and I found myself sweating profusely as I finished touching up the fence. I sat myself down on a lounge chair and soaked up the rays, telling myself it was too early to crack open a beer.
I had to wait until
twelve at least that
is what everyone says.

When I felt like my balls were literally sticking to the side of my legs, I decided to grab a pair of swimming trunks and jump in the pool. Even if the company was already here, I wouldn’t be bothering them. I avoided jumping in and causing big splash sounds. Instead, I just floated around the pool for a while in pure silence.

When my hands started to prune up, I climbed out of the pool. Realizing all of the towels were in the pool house, or main house, I hurried to get inside. The morning breeze was still cool, even with the sun shining dow
n.  I made it into the pool house
within seconds and immediately started to strip out of my wet bathing suit.

When I heard the door at first, I thought it was just my sister, but as I turned around I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“What the Hell? Who are you and what are you doing in here?”
I yelled while trying to cover myself in the front, but it was obvious she had already seen everything I had.

She threw her hands over her face. “Oh my God, I am so sorry! I didn’t know somebody was in here.
My father said I could look wher
ever I wanted. Seriously I had no idea.”

She turned her entire body around even though her hands were already covering her face. I grabbed a dry pair of boxers off the couch and slipped them on. “You can turn around now, I’m decent.”

I was still slipping on a pair of basketball shorts, but at least I was covered. “So who is your dad?”

She cocked her eyebrow. “Why? Who the Hell are you?” She asked defensively.

“I’m Chance, Chance Avery.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And why are you in my
father’s
pool house? Does he know you are in here or do I need to call the cops?” She threatened.

The last thing I needed was trouble with the law my first month here. “No, no! I am Buffy’s brother. I am doing work for Mr. Ryan. I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

She sighed and looked down to the ground. “Figures. Considering he hasn’t been a part of my life for a while now.”

I was ready to tell her to get out, but there was something about her that made me feel sorry for her. “Why don’t you come sit down for a minute. I’m sure after seeing my bare ass you could use a drink. So what will it be?”

“What do you have?” She asked.

“
Bourbon
and coke.”

“Wow that is some variety. Surprise me!”

I gave her a half smile and headed to the tiny kitchen a
rea. I was pretty sure that the people who li
ved here before rented out this pool house. It had one bedroom, a kitchen,  a small bathroom and a living room, but it was perfect for me. It
wasn’t
like I entertained, or even had friends at all.

I decided to get her a bottle of water I found in the door of the fridge. My sister had bought them insisting that if I drank soda all day in the sun I would get heat exhaustion.

When I returned to the living room, I sat on the chair facing her.

“Hope.” She said.

“Huh?”

“My name is Hope, Hope Ryan.” She said as she took the bottle of water. “Thanks for this. I didn’t know if I could handle the bourbon after the breakfast I just had.”

“That bad huh?”

“No offense, but your sister isn’t much older than me.
I guess I just wasn’t prepared ya know?” She said as she opened the bottle of water and drank half of it down.

I had managed to pour myself half a glass of bourbon and had already taken two sips. The ice clattered in the
bottom of the glass, and I
swiveled it around with my hand. “Nah, it’s cool. My sister can be hard to understand at first. She has a good heart though.”

She smirked but said nothing. “What?” I couldn’t help but asking.

“Nothing
! W
ell I was going to say something, but you will just get mad probably.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it wasn’t nice to start something and not finish it.” She looked up at me. Her eyes were like crystals and they glowed against her dark complexion. Summer had just started, but she was already tan. Her hair had streaks of different browns, but it didn’t look like it came from a box, it appeared to be natural highlights. She was strikingly beautiful.

“Fine, I was going to say that she really likes the color pink.
No, not likes, LOVES the color pink.
” She blurted out.

I wanted to defend my sister, but something about this girl made me feel like she was just trying to break the ice. I hadn’t had a friend in so long that I couldn’
t be an asshole;
I needed this. “I never noticed. She likes lots of colors. So, what colors do you like?”

Did I really just ask that?

“Not pink. Anything but pink.” She declared without even thinking about it.

“Okay. Are you always like this?”

“Like what?” She asked
innocently
.

“I don’t know. Flip. Sarcastic.”

“How would you feel if you hadn’t seen your father in a year, or talked to him? How would you act if
he invited you over and ignored you because he was busy staring at his new eye candy’s fake tits?”

I was halfway into a large gulp of bourbon when the word “tits
”
came out of her pretty little mouth. The liquor went flying everywhere. Once I stopped gagging from the utter shock
,
I turned back to face her. She had stood up from the couch and had her hands on her hips. “Look, I am really sorry that I barged in on you getting changed. Had I been told that someone was living out here I never would have bothered you. It was nice meeting you Chance. Have a nice life.” She said as she walked out of the pool house.

I got up and walked to the window, watching her head back toward the house, while I finished my drink. I was pretty sure I would need a couple more after our unexpected meeting just now, but first I needed to talk to my sister.

Chapter 3

Hope

After I had come barging back into the main house from my unexpected meeting with Chance, all I wanted to do was go home. My father was back in his recliner watching golf again, while Buffy filed her nails with her feet draped over the end of the couch. I had to laugh at that. My father and mother used to yell at me over and over for sitting like that on a couch.  How could he have changed so much? And why hadn’t he come looking for me after brunch was cleaned up?

I didn’t
hesitate
as I made my way into the family room and announced I was leaving.

My father turned and gave me a smile, while Buffy came racing over, planting a big hug on me. I patted her a few times on the back and pulled out of her embrace. “Thanks for brunch. It was nice meeting you.”

Not really!

As soon as I made it out of the driveway I began to cry. I couldn’t have held back the tears even if I wanted to.
At one point I had to pull over to the side of the road, because I couldn’t see through the tears that had filled my eyes.