Page 37 of Once Upon A Second Chance

“Don’t sound so surprised,” I mutter, heaving my bag into the truck bed beside a neatly stacked pile of firewood and a cooler.

“I wasn’t.” He hands me one of the cups. “Mostly.”

The coffee is still piping hot, exactly how I like it—black with two sugars. The familiarity of it, the fact thatheremembers, sends warmth curling through my chest.

I take a sip to hide my smile. “You’re awfully cocky for someone who spent three years thinkingDie Hard 2was the best sequel.”

Richard gasps, clutching his chest like I’ve wounded him. “First of all,how dare you—”

“—second of all, you’re wrong,” I finish, mimicking his lecture voice from college.

He shakes his head, laughing as he rounds the truck to the driver’s side. “Get in, heathen.”

The cab smells like leather and the faint, spicy scent of Richard’s cologne. I buckle in as he cranks the engine, the rumble vibrating through the seats. The playlist that starts up is all 90s alt-rock—Nirvana, Pearl Jam, the kind of stuff we used to blast during late-night study sessions.

Richard glances at me as he backs out of the parking spot. “You good?”

No.“Yeah.”

He doesn’t push, just nods and turns onto the main road, the clinic shrinking in the rearviewmirror.

For a while, it’s just the music and the hum of tires on asphalt.

The town blurs past—the diner where we humiliated Rebecca, the gas station where we buy slushies, the turnoff that leads to the lake where we once skinny-dipped during a weekend visit to Mount Juliet sophomore year.

Then Richard reaches over and turns the music down. “Remember that time we drove from school to Chattanooga for the aquarium?”

I groan. “Don’t.”

“We wereso close,” he says, grinning.

“We passed the same Walmartfour times.”

“I had asystem.”

“Yoursystemwas refusing to ask for directions!”

Richard laughs, the sound warm and easy, and just like that, we’re off—trading stories like cards in a game we’ve played for years.

We talk about the time we broke into the campus pool after hours.

“You promised you knew how to pick locks,” I say, nudging his shoulder.

“I did,” he insists, grinning. “Just not quickly.”

“We almost got arrested because you took twenty minutes to open a screen door.”

He only shrugs, like he’s proud of the delay.

We move on to the prank war with his old roommate.

“I still maintain that glitter in his shampoo was justified,” Richard says, smirking.

“Oh, absolutely,” I agree. “But the fake parking tickets? That was diabolical.”

“Says the woman who replaced all his coffee with decaf for a month.”

I grin at the memory. “That was self-preservation. The man was feral before noon.”