Hope's Chance(3)

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 mother 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 had 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 down. 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 wherever 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.”