Her Second Chance At Love

ce crawled by with excruciating slowness fo

f, meticulously orche

n New York, secured a modest apartment in a quiet Brook

e precise details of her plans. She could not risk

r secret, h

o be finalized, an invitation a

she had been too mired in the unhappiness of her

A desire, perhaps, to reconnect with the person

familiar faces, now etched with the passage of a decade, some radia

club friends greeted

ge!" one of them, a woman named Lisa, excl

, about ambitious art projects an

d, "You know, Amelia, we were all convinced you harbored a colossal crush on Ethan Caldw

used to fill the margins of your sketchbook wi

eck. She had believed her adolescent infatu

l these years, after everything that had t

nrequited devotion, laid bare so ar

mile. "Did I? It was

te hope that had been the fuel for her disastrous mar

d herself, murmuring an ex

mly lit corridor, leaning against the floc

cipated. It was a reminder of the naive girl she had been,

was tr

head sn

ement was absent. In its place was an unguarded curiosity, a look of such genuine inquiry it was

learly o

owards her at a deliberate pace. "All those years, all those altercations, your purported 'su

oice, no mockery. Just a stra

racing. This was a complicati

ntention of giving him any further ammunition,

now, Ethan," she said,

wall, intending to walk pa

ory. And in a few d

m, but he shifted his posi

ice possessing a surprising ur

fleeting expression she had neve

sked, his brow furrowed. "All those yea

at the irony. He was

n," she said, her voice firm. She sidestepp

ter her, "Am

ab and fled, his confused, frustrate