Mollie
I’ve never stopped thinking about Chase. In fact, not a day has gone by in the last two years that he hasn’t been on my mind. Sure, I’m still pissed at him, I mean, who wouldn’t be, for dumping me so unceremoniously after getting picked up in the NFL draft, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t care what happens to him.
I remember how my entire body ached as I watched the video of his wreck on the morning news a year ago. When I saw how mangled his car was my heart literally stopped in my chest.
I held my breath, waiting for them to say whether he was dead or alive. When they said he was alive, but not expected to live, I nearly had a breakdown.
I was getting ready for my first day as a third grade teacher at Centerville Elementary after getting my degree from Alabama the previous fall.
After Chase had left college before his junior year, I thought about quitting, too. I called my mom and I was bawling. I came very close to just crawling back home to Centerville to lick my wounds. But my mom reminded me that just because Chase had chosen a different path didn’t mean I had to.
I had wanted to be an elementary school teacher as long as I could remember, and to throw that away over “some guy” as she called him, would have been insane.
“He’s not just some guy!” I remember screaming into the phone. “I love him! He has been my entire life since the tenth grade! We’ve been together four years!”
As she always did when I went off on a hysterical rant, my mom listened quietly, softly told me it would be okay, then sternly told me to quit feeling sorry for myself and get to class.
And that’s what I did. I woke up every day, washed away the tears I’d cried all night, and headed to class.
Each day it got a little easier until finally, the tears stopped and the anger and resentment settled in. I knew that if I ever saw Chase Richards again the first thing he’d see was my fist coming at his nose.
Anger is a wonderful medicine. It pushed me to stay in college and force Chase out of my mind. I got my degree in elementary education, and came home to find a job. I was lucky. Centerville is a small town and the third grade teacher at the elementary school was retiring. I slid right in to her spot and plan to keep it until the day I retire.
I still think about him. It would be a lie to say that I didn’t. Especially today, with the news that he’s being released from rehab in Atlanta.
The buzz around town is that he’s coming home. I haven’t spoken to his mom since before we broke up, so I don’t have a clue what his plans are.
His mom always hated me, so there’s no way I’d even call to ask. And even if I did, she would probably just tell me to stay away from her son.
I think she somehow blames me for Chase’s bad luck. Maybe she thinks if he hadn’t met me his life would have been different. Who knows.
I glanced at the clock on the classroom wall with the smiley face and big hands. It was nearly four o’clock and the kids had gone home an hour ago.
I sat at my desk trying to focus on the stack of papers I had to grade. It was no use. My thoughts were all on Chase. I put the cap on the red marker and tossed it aside. I put folded my arms on the desk and rested my forehead on them. I was always catnapping. With a toddler who kept me up at night and a fulltime job, I stole moments of sleep wherever I could get them.
As I started to drift into that space between awake and asleep, my mind went back to the last time I’d seen Chase.
It was in the hotel room he’d rented for us at the Airport Hilton. He had to catch a plane for Atlanta early the next morning and we wanted to spend every second we could together.
It was a magical night of passion and abandon. Chase and I had been intimate many times since the night I gave him my virginity two years before, but we’d never spent the night in a hotel room before.
It just seemed to fuel his desires and made me do things with him and to him that I had never done before.
Or maybe I knew in the back of my mind that it would be our last time together and it had to be especially memorable.
Either way, drifting off to doze there on my desk, I could feel Chase’s strong hands caressing my body.
I could feel the stiffness and thickness of him in my hand.
I could feel his fingers probing into me, gently at first, then harder, faster, longer.
I could feel his lips and tongue…
I could feel… everything.