AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Second chances don’t come this easy. Will I really be able to have this one for myself?
8
BRADFORD
Iclose my laptop shut and sit, silently, playing Ragnar’s words over and over in my head.
He wants to see me.
He wants to see me?
He wants to see me!
After the fashion show, I had gotten used to the idea that he didn’t want to see me. It made sense. It had been years, and Ragnar had always been a closed-off person. He must have gotten over me. Or if he hadn’t, if he did still have feelings for me, he must have decided he didn’t want to reopen them like I did.
Okay, maybe I hadn’t really gotten used to it. I had decided that I would have to get used to it, which is sort of the same thing, give or take, well, the actual feelings involved in having feelings. The point is, I wasn’t expecting this. I hadn’t even let myself hope for something like this.
Now there’s this. Now, suddenly, the door I thought was closed is wide open again.
So what am I going to do about it?
I put the laptop on the desk and start pacing the room. It’s a neatly decorated room, part of a bed and breakfast that’s surprisingly cozy and feels more like someone’s house than a hotel. There’s a big bed with white sheets and way too many pillows, a lot of paintings and photographs of people I don’t know hung up on the walls. There’s also a bathroom in the room itself, which is a luxury I’m not used to, especially on charity gigs.
“Of all the charity fashion gigs in all the farming towns in the world, he had to walk into mine,” I mutter, trying to do my best Bogart. It’s bad. I know it’s bad. I sound like a half asleep mobster trying to make fun of New Yorkers. Still, it makes me giggle, and that’s something.
I’m excited. There’s no way to get around that. When I thought I would never get to see him again, I tried to convince myself I didn’t even want to. I thought of all the bad things that could happen, all the ways he could hurt me with a single word and not even mean anything by it. But the moment his face appeared on my screen, my heart practically jumped for joy.
This is what I wanted. This is what I wanted the whole time. I wanted, no, I needed a chance to talk to him. Only what is it I actually want to say? That’s the part I still don’t understand.
My brain is whirling around. There is something I want to tell him, or maybe something I want to hear from him. But what is it? Why does this matter so much to me?
I usually think of myself as a pretty simple person. I like my friends, I like getting attention, I like carbohydrates even though I’m not supposed to, and to most people, that’s pretty much the Bradford story. It’s every once and a while, in moments like this, that I realize I’m not. I’m as complicated as anyone, and my emotions don’t make more sense to me than they do to the people around me.
For the twentieth time or so, I reach the room’s window and turn around to keep pacing. I’m going to go crazy at this rate. It’s time to find someone to talk with about this. Much as I regret it, I decide to head across the hall and check in with Alan. He’ll make fun of me, but at least he’ll also keep me sane. And right now, that’s what I need.
I open the door, step out into the hall and then knock three times on Alan’s door while my own closes behind me. The halls are full of more pictures and more nature scenes. The wallpaper has gray stripes on a white background and there’s a thick, faux-fur carpet on the floor. It’s cozy enough, but I wish Alan would answer already.
I knock again. Where is he, anyway? We’re in Green Haven. It’s not like there’s a nightlife.
At that moment, a woman in her forties peeks her head around the corner. She’s the person who owns this place, I assume. She gave us our keys and took us up to our room. I feel a little bad for not knowing her name.
“Are you looking for the young man in Room Three?” she asks, gently. “I think he’s out taking a walk.”
That sounds like Alan. It’s one of his weird little habits; sometimes he just decides he wants to walk and off he goes. I suppose every big model has to have one weird habit. It gives you personality.
Oh, shoot, I think to myself. Is my weird habit Ragnar?
“Okay, then,” I say, not really trying to hide my disappointment. “Well, I guess I’ll figure something else out.”
“Figure something else out?” she repeats. As she speaks, she approaches me down the hallway. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“What? Oh, no,” I say. “It’s fine. I just wanted to talk to him about something.”
She nods. “Well, if you need someone to talk to, I’m always here. If you’d rather keep to yourself, that’s fine, but getting to know people is always my favorite part of keeping an inn.”
“Oh, that’s very nice of you…” I smile apologetically. “I’m sorry, I think I misplaced your name.”
“Mildred,” she says. “But you can call me Millie.”
