Free Last Chance by A. L. Wood

is his . Something he has repeatedly made clear to me. Although I have no idea how he has come to such a notion. She hasn’t ever, nor does she now show any keen interest in him. She doesn’t bring him up in any of the numerous conversations we have had about the band.
    Honestly , she makes it a point to ask about the band in whole. Never singling one person out. I almost think she despises the guy, and I wouldn’t blame her for how he treated her on the tour bus. It was probably a week of hell for her.
    Also I still think that Ryan was part of the reason she consumed all of those pills. She was thrown into a world she had no knowledge about, and was supposed to comply with whatever plans we had.
    I should have done more than I did. I shouldn’t have gone out with the guys that night. I have a feeling something monumental went down and maybe if I had stayed , I could have protected her. Stopped her from leaving which would have eventually stopped her from harming herself.
    I catch her most days in a daze of thought. If it wasn’t for the counselor she was seeing , she wouldn’t have an excuse to leave the house. She would have laid in bed shutting the entire world out, including myself.
    Fuck she tries to get me to leave every day, even though I know she doesn’t truly mean it. She just wants to prove to herself that she doesn’t need anyone. That she can survive on her own without ever letting anyone in.
    Princess breaks me out of my racing thoughts.
    “ Hey! Have you been listening to anything I have been saying?” She asks.
    “No, sorry I was thinking about band shit. What did I miss?”
    “I was saying that maybe tomorrow we could go shopping. You only go out when I go out, and you could use some clothes. Besides you only have four outfits you have been wearing every four days. I’m sick of seeing you in the same thing, and it’s another reason to get out.”
    “I am fine with the clothes I have , but if you want to go out, we can go shopping for you. We need a fan in that hot box room of yours, since you won’t agree to turning on the central air that the apartment complex supplies.” I say, internally smiling. Happy that today she has made a choice on her own to go out, and that she is already making plans to do so again.
    “Its really not that hot, you exaggerate.” She smiles back.
    “So says the person who has dealt with summers in New York her entire life. I’ll have you know, I wasn’t raised with annual summers like you guys have here. My summer was like a spring for you.”
    “Where were you raised? Alaska?” She asks.
    Of course she is spot on. I was raised in the Alaskan town of Cordova. It was close to the border of Canada and Washington. My dad worked on a commercial fisher, and my mom was a stay at home house wife. The general American family then. Now for the normal American family to survive, both parents have to work.
    I reply to Natalie. What harm could it do in telling her where I was born and raised? It’s not like I would be telling her where my family was now , or that I haven’t seen them in years. Since everything went down.
    “Yeah smarty. I did live in Alaska. A tiny town called Cordova. Our hottest summer there was like sixty degrees. I can remember being excited as hell for a day that warm. So for me , weather here is like living in the Bahamas.” I tell her, while Layla listens from the back seat.
    “It’s really not that bad. I have been to the Bahamas and that’s way worse. Now that heat is unbearable. If you aren’t drinking ten glasses of water a day, you’re bound to get dehydrated.”
    I decide I don’t want the discussion to linger any longer on home, so that it doesn’t make Natalie think the floor is now open to ask any more questions. Nicely slamming the door on the topic, I quickly divert the conversation onto another topic.
    “So tell me, where do you call home?”
    “For now, home is Boston.” Natalie says.
    I had a feeling that they are not