Free Unexpected Chance by Annalisa Nicole

single year of my life ever since. I’ve gone from my aunt’s house, to a deadbeat man, to an abusive man’s house, afraid of being alone. Anything was better than being alone. The only good thing I held onto was what that nurse did for my mother. She didn’t know my mother and she didn’t treat her like it was a job that she had to do. She actually cared and held my mother’s hand until her very last breath.
    “Savvy, are you alright?” Aiden asks, leaning up on his elbow.
    He looks into my eyes and it’s then that I realize, I’m sobbing again.
    “I’m afraid of being alone,” I tell him. I don’t know why I just told him that. I’ve only ever shared my mother’s dying words with one other person, Chloe. I think I shared it with her because of what she was going through at the time, and I saw the hurt and hopelessness in her eyes and it was a mirror image of my own.
    “You’ll never be alone again. I promise you that,” Aiden says, turning me around. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me on top of him. He strokes my back and gently pulls my hair off my shoulders. With my ear to his chest, I listen to his heartbeat, and it’s music to my ears.
    After about twenty minutes, he kisses the top of my head and asks, “Do you have class this morning?”
    I lift my head off his chest and look at the clock. I do have class in thirty minutes. I don’t even have time to take a shower. I bring my forehead to his chest and answer, “Yes.”
    “I can take the day off. We can stay in bed all day if you need. I’m not letting go, Savvy.”
    I sigh, because I’d like nothing more than to stay in bed with Aiden all day. But the reason I go to school, the reason I fry my brain with what seems like useless knowledge, is for my mother and for that nurse, Ginger, who made such an impression on my young life. It gives purpose to why my mother died. I will one day be that person to someone else. I will give them the gift Ginger unknowingly gave to me. I was too young and my aunt was a dipshit who couldn’t hack putting her own grief aside for the needs of her sister. If I can give just one person the gift of knowing I cared about their loved one, and gave them final peaceful moments, then everything I lived through will be for something. I will become someone else’s meaning.
    “I need to get to class, I can’t miss a day,” I tell him, and start to get off of him. I never intended to get out of my car last night. My intentions were to drop him off, then I was going home. It really doesn’t matter what his sisters said last night, or the look in Aiden’s eyes whenever he sees me. They’re all better off never knowing I even existed. Aiden doesn’t let me up, he holds me on top of him with a tight squeeze.
    “Look at me,” he says. I lift my face with my eyes closed and plant my chin on his chest. “Open your eyes,” he whispers. I do and look into his eyes. He places both of his hands on the side of my face and wipes the tears away with his thumbs. “You aren’t alone,” he says. “Do you get me?” he asks.
    I nod my head. He lifts his head off the pillow, his lips come to mine, then he sits up. I straddle his lap and touch his morning stubble cheek. “I get you,” I whisper.
    He kisses me again, then pulls away and rubs his thumb on my bottom lip. “We better get going or we’ll both be late,” he says.
    I get off his lap and go to my bag on the chair. He goes into his closet and takes out a three piece dark, navy blue suit, a pastel pink shirt with a white collar, and a blue and pink stripe tie, then sets them on the bed. He takes out a wrist watch and a pair of cufflinks from his dresser and sets them next to his suit. I walk inside the ensuite bathroom and take off the clothes I wore yesterday and slip on a new pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I give my pits a quick discrete smell and pray they don’t smell like a wildebeest sitting in the hot sun in Africa. I slap on some deodorant then go brush