Second Chance

One of the things Dusty liked about his job was the fact that it was easy, and he could think about almost anything else while he performed his tasks. On this day, his mind was taken up with Scottie Jorgensen... or whoever she was. Before he went off to his job, he spent an hour online googling the young woman and her parents. Nothing Scottie said to him the night before was different from anything he read, and, in fact, what she had told him was much more detailed.

He was planning on going back to the old Travers place after work, although in truth he didn't expect Scottie... or whomever she was, to show up again. Just in case, though, he would pick up a pizza to take with him.

Dusty lugged his stuff out to the same spot as the night before as the sun was setting. He didn't see any signs of anyone else in the area. The sun was completely down when he opened the pizza box and pulled out the first slice. He was three slices in when he heard someone walking toward him. He turned around and was greatly pleased to see the young woman... Scottie walking toward him.

"You seem pleased to see me," she said as she sat down on the ground next to him.

He lifted the top of the pizza box and pointed. She smiled broadly, grabbed a slice and took a bite.

"Oh, that is so good!" she enthused, her eyes closing as she chewed. "Tony's?"

Dusty chuckled.

"Tony's was gone before I was even born, Scottie. My parents have told me about Tony's... best pizza ever, according to them. This came from Roberto Nocella's. I wouldn't bring fake pizza out to you. I don't want you to think I'm some kind of idiot," he said.

She smiled around a piece of pizza, her green eyes lighting up.

"So... you can taste the pizza?" he asked hesitantly.

"Well, yeah," she answered quickly. "Why wouldn't I taste..."

She stopped talking in mid-sentence when she realized what she was about to say. Dusty was staring at her in silence.

"Wow. This is pretty far out," she finally said. "I'm... but I'm not. You can see me and talk to me... and I can taste pizza. I don't get it, but I guess being here sure beats not being here."

"Well, where were you before I got here. Where did you come from?" Dusty asked.

Scottie looked confused. The wheels were turning in her head, but Dusty could see she wasn't getting any answers.

"I-I wasn't anywhere," she answered. "I came from... right over there."

She pointed to a spot a few feet away from where the two sat.

"I was just there. All of a sudden, I was just there... Damn if I can explain it... any of it," she said. "I can remember meeting you last night, then the last thing I remember before that was after the prom... I can remember all sorts of stuff from before that, too: school, my parents, friends, all sorts of things like that. But there's nothing between when I fell into the puddle until last night. You told me last night I had been... gone for 51 years, but none of that makes sense to me."

"It doesn't make sense to me either, Scottie," Dusty said. "According to my phone you're... well... you drowned 51 years ago, but here you are... and you're eating pizza. I'd be freaked... if I wasn't so... freaked."

"No, don't be afraid of me, Dusty. Please. You're the first person I've talked to in... a long time, apparently. Don't leave me now," she said.

"Hey, I might be freaked, but I've got to tell you I don't spend many Saturday nights alone with a beautiful girl eating pizza. I'm not leaving. Trust me."

"My dad used to tell me not to trust any boy who says, 'trust me,'" she remarked before dropping her head.

"My dad, mom... what h-happened to them? Do you know?" she asked softly, her voice catching.

Dusty hesitated. He knew where this was going.

He knew what the names of Scottie's parents were from reading her obituary the day before. He googled the obits of both one at a time and read the info to her. He could see her eyes well up with tears. She was fighting hard not to have those tears leak out.

"I've got so many questions to ask, but the first one is about that little box you keep looking at. What is that thing?" she asked.

Dusty thought about her comment for a few seconds and then laughed out loud. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and held it in front of the two of them. He then spent 10 minutes giving Scottie a quick history from the princess phone to his iPhone, taking a quick detour to explain about computers.

"Get out of here!" she cried. "That's so Rod Serling crazy stuff there."

"Who... or what... is Rod Serling crazy stuff?" he chuckled.

"Twilight Zone? Night Gallery? Sci-fi, horror-type stuff. Futuristic shit," she laughed back, enjoying Dusty's discomfort.

"Okay, here's an easy one. What's happened in Vietnam? If it's been 51 years, we're not still fighting over there, are we?"

"We lost that one, sort of. No, we're not still fighting over there," he said.

"What happened to the Beatles since the break-up?" she asked as soon as he finished answering her first question.

"Well, they all had pretty good solo careers, but John Lennon was shot and killed in 1980 and George Harrison died from cancer in 2001. I can show you some of their performances on my phone. Here, look."

"That thing does music, too? You can read obits and history and you can play music and little movies. Can you actually make phone calls on it, too?" she asked.

The two finished the pizza and sat together talking for hours, until Dusty could see that Scottie was flagging.

"Umm, I'm not sure what the protocol is here, babe," Dusty said. "Normally, I'd offer to drive you home..."

"How about we just go sit in your car..." she said.

The two got up and got into the back seat of Dusty's car. He covered them both with a blanket. They talked for a few more minutes before Scottie drifted off. Dusty watched her sleeping for a few minutes before he, too, fell asleep. Again, he was alone when he woke, even though he never felt nor heard her leave the car.

Dusty met up with several of his close friends Sunday afternoon at Gary Scatini's home as they watched a baseball game. The conversation got around to the prom and the weekend's events. The other four boys had gone to prom and spent the weekend eating out and taking in a play.

Three of Dusty's friends reported they had sex with their dates during the weekend. The friend who didn't have sex fought with his date twice during the weekend, and they ended the weekend having broken up after dating for three months. Two of the other three rated the weekend as great; the third said it was just okay, even with the sex.

Dusty sat quietly listening to his friends; the outsider because he didn't go to prom. After a few minutes, that difference was pointed out to him in the usual way of teenage boys: insults and disparaging talk.

"So, goody two-shoes, have a good weekend with your right hand?" sneered Ralph Gibbs as the others laughed.

Dusty briefly thought about telling his friends about meeting a new girl, but then he realized he shouldn't since there was so much he couldn't explain.

"Very funny. You know I'm left-handed," he wisecracked back.

"You should have taken Joanne. That's all I'm going to say," Gary Scatini jibed.

Dusty considered not going over to the old Travers place after eating dinner with his parents... for all of 30 seconds. He didn't want to miss spending time with Scottie, even if everything didn't add up in his mind.

Dusty again gathered up some snacks and drinks from the kitchen and took off for the Travers place as the sun was heading down. After two days, he already knew that Scottie wouldn't show up until it was dark, and that she liked snacks.

"Hey, handsome, just in the neighborhood again?" Scottie said as she walked up to Dusty as he sat playing a video game on his phone.

"Hey yourself, red," the young man enthused, referencing her bushy long red hair.

"So did your friends enjoy their weekends?" Scottie asked as she sat down. "Ooh, Good & Plenty. I like those."

"I think two out of four were definites, one was a maybe and one was a definite no," Dusty said.

"Are you having regrets about not going?" she asked before putting several pieces of candy in her mouth.

"Actually, no. If I would have gone, then I wouldn't have met you," he said.

The woman smiled, leaned in and gave him a soft kiss on the lips. He noted that she tasted of licorice from the candy, but she had a light fragrance of perfume as well.

"Mmm... that was nice. Are you wearing perfume?" he asked.

Scottie broke into a wide smile.

"I didn't put on anything since I got here... but I was wearing White Shoulders the night of prom," she said.

Dusty leaned in to the woman, inhaled deeply and then kissed her back stronger than she had kissed him. His tongue reached out, touching her lips before she opened her mouth to admit the welcome intruder. She moaned into his mouth as the kissing continued, growing more passionate.

Clothes were gone when Dusty stood up, took Scottie's hand and led her into the back seat of his car.

"I'm sorry, I should have brought my tent," he whispered. "I wasn't thinking..."

"Shut up," Scottie whispered back, mashing her lips to his.

He threw the blanket over both of them.

The pair had just finished making love for the second time. Scottie was laying stretched out on top of Dusty's body, giggling softly. His arms were around her body, his left hand squeezing her soft, somewhat muscular left butt cheek. He then realized she was no longer giggling, but was instead softly crying.

"Thank you, Dusty. That was supposed to have happened that night... Thank you for making me a woman," she sniffled. "I guess you could say I waited a long time for the right boy to come along."

The pair kissed gently, then did a second with more heat.

"Thank you for the privilege of letting me be first," Dusty said. "And for being my first."

Dusty then realized that they had been at this for some time. He picked his phone off the floor of the back seat to find out it was 11:52.

"Oh shit! I've got to get rolling. I'm going to be late for curfew. I've got school tomorrow," he announced, then pulled up short.

"Uhh, Scottie, where do I... take you?" he asked. "I can't just leave you here."

"Well, first, I think we need to get dressed," she laughed. "Then you just need to go. This is where I belong. I'll be okay. I can't leave the property, and nobody else but you can see me..."

"Or hear you, touch you or... make love to you?"

"Yeah," she whispered with a shy smile.

Dusty wasn't expecting the question when his mother asked while the family ate dinner the next Friday night.

"So who's the girl you've been spending every evening with for the past week, Arnold?" his mother asked.

Dusty choked on his food. His father grinned at him.

"Yeah, the FBI has nothing on your mother," Bill Dustwicz said to his son, the grin firmly planted on his face.

"How do you know I'm seeing a girl?" Dusty asked his mother.

"Oh please, Arnold. You've been grinning like the village idiot since you came back from camping out last weekend. It's got to be a girl. The last time you grinned like that was when you fell in love with Susan Mason in kindergarten."

"Mom, that was kindergarten. That was a dozen years ago," Dusty said, turning red with embarrassment.

"So who is she? Who are her parents? Do we know them?" Ellen Dustwicz asked in rapid succession.

Dusty knew that he couldn't answer his mother's questions without sparking further questioning.

"Uhh... her name is Scottie. She's from North Amaro, one town over. You don't know her parents," Dusty fibbed, rising from the table to take his used plate into the kitchen.

"You know you could bring her over some time so we can meet her," his mother called out as he started to ascend the stairs to his bedroom.

"Yeah, like that's going to happen anytime soon," his father said to his mother.

"Hey, my mom wants to meet my new girlfriend," Dusty said to Scottie later that night at the old Travers place property.

"So I'm your new girlfriend now?" Scottie asked in response.

"Wait... oh, please don't tell me you told your parents we had sex?"

Scottie's eyes filled with tears. Her face took on a look of horror.

"No, babe. I'm close with my folks, but I'd never do that. Ever," Dusty responded.

The two talked and shared snacks before moving inside Dusty's tent to again have sex. Scottie expressed thanks to the young man for bringing the tent and the extra blankets.

"Not for me... nobody except for you can see me, but everybody would be able to see you..."

"That wouldn't be good," he said, blushing.

"Where do you go when we're not together?" Dusty asked after a moment's silence.

The pair was cuddled up together with the young man's right arm around the young woman's body, her head laying on his upper chest. He felt her head move and he moved a bit to look into her green eyes.

"I-I don't go anywhere, I think," she responded kind of blankly. "I don't exist anywhere until I'm with you, as far as I can tell."

"I've felt the same way for the past week, you know," he answered.

She smiled brightly. Her green eyes made the young man's heart soar.

The two had been having sex every day since their first time.

"So you're not going to be hanging out here waiting for me if I don't show up?" Dusty inquired.

Scottie got a hurt look on her face. Dusty knew what she was thinking immediately.

"It's not what you think, babe," Dusty said quickly. "I play on a softball team, and we play twice a week starting next week and running into September. The games are in the evening, so on those nights I won't be coming around."

"Oh, okay. You need to do stuff like that. You can't be hanging around with a dead... with me... every single day. You have a... life to live... and you need to do that. I understand completely," she said.

Dusty suddenly understood Scottie's reluctance. He felt bad.

"I-I can drop off the team. That's what I'll do," he said.

It was Scottie's turn to understand.

"No. You need to play ball with the guys," she said. "I don't want to be known as the clingy girlfriend. I-I wouldn't have been that girl back when... back in the day."

This time they both smiled.

Dusty was over at the old Travers place five out of seven days each week, camping out there Friday and Saturday nights. Both he and Scottie enjoyed falling asleep in each other's arms on the weekends, although he was always sad to wake up alone on those mornings. He knew he was falling in love with the woman, despite the problems that created.

Dusty was just finished mowing the five-acre yard that belonged to his uncle, Kingston Ranier, on a hot July Saturday morning. He had been mowing the property for extra spending money since his uncle and his wife had moved into the house on the outskirts of town two years ago. Uncle King had married the beautiful Rae Ann and moved to the house several years after he and Aunt Traci divorced.

"Hey, kiddo. How's tricks?" King said to the young man as he handed him a can of Pepsi and opened his own can.

The two talked for several minutes while drinking their soft drinks. Dusty was King's favorite nephew, and he tried to stay in touch on a regular basis.

"Got a girlfriend, Dusty?"

Dusty blushed every time his uncle asked that question, which was every time they saw each other. For one of the few times, though, Dusty could answer him affirmatively.

"Yeah... sort of," the teenager said.

"Let me see," King said, holding his hand out for Dusty's phone. "You kids live your lives on these things. Photos, bud."

"Umm. I don't have any pictures, Uncle King," Dusty said, knowing that he'd never be able to tell his uncle the truth that Scottie didn't show up in any photos.

"Oh, come on. Selfies? Something?" King said.

"She's really camera-shy. Every time I raise my phone up to shoot, she threatens to cut me off... oh, sorry. I didn't mean to go there," Dusty said.

"It's all right, kiddo. I get it. You are being careful, right?" King said.

"Yeah, yeah. Of course," Dusty said quickly.

"Hey, wait a minute. I've got something to give you," King said.

King went inside the house and came out a few minutes later carrying a long, thin box. He handed it to the young man and nodded. Dusty opened the box to reveal a greenish egg-shaped stone wrapped in gold with a gold chain attached.

"Someday when you find the right girl, give her this," King said.

"Wow. I can't just take this," Dusty said. "This looks expensive. Why haven't you given this to Rae Ann?"

King looked uncomfortable for a bit.

"I could never give this to Rae Ann," he explained. "I had it made special for Traci for our 20^th anniversary... right before she told me she wanted a divorce. I just threw it back in a drawer... and it's been sitting there for several years.

"It's a beautiful piece, don't you think? But I could never give it to anyone in my family. I hope the woman you give it to is the love of your life."

"Thanks, Uncle King."

Two weeks later Dusty and Scottie were lying entwined after what Scottie thought was an amazing night of sex. Dusty's face was covered with the woman's juices, and he was smiling widely.

"Where did you learn that?" Scottie asked. "Who taught you that?"

"Don't worry, babe. Nobody taught me that. I did some reading... I thought you deserved something... special," he said proudly.

"Special, huh? I call that amazing!" Scottie gushed before she planted a hard kiss on Dusty's lips.

"I love you, babe," he said softly.

Scottie broke down sobbing and Dusty pulled her tighter into his body.

"I love you, too," she said softly between sobs. "I never... I..."

Dusty kissed her passionately.

"It's okay, babe. I get it... sort of... not really, I guess."

The next Friday night, Dusty had a surprise of another kind for Scottie. After removing her clothes on the way to what appeared to be another lovemaking session, Dusty reached under a blanket in the tent and handed Scottie a gift-wrapped package. She immediately broke down in tears.

"Oh my God, Dusty. You didn't have to get me anything," she wailed. "You've given me so much just by being here for me, day after day."

Dusty hugged the naked woman, then gently thumbed her erect nipples, causing her to shudder and him to chuckle.

"Yes, I did, babe," he said, smiling broadly.

Scottie cried harder when she unwrapped the gift and discovered the necklace.

"It's beautiful, Dusty. You can't give this to me," she said. "You need to hold onto this and give this to someone..."

"You are that someone, babe," Dusty rejoined. "This was given to me by my uncle, who told me I needed to give it to the love of my life. That's you, Scottie."

The woman cried for several more minutes. Dusty finally kissed her, took the necklace, unclasped it and put it around her neck. Once it was clasped again, he turned her around so she was facing him, wearing nothing but the gift.

"Perfect. It even matches your eyes," he enthused.

"I'll have to take your word for that, since I don't have a reflection nor do I show up in photos," she said.

The two kissed passionately.

Dusty was pacing in their usual meeting spot at the Travers place when Scottie showed up. They greeted each other with their usual passionate kiss, followed by a bone-squeezing hug. They had spent so much time together in the last two months that the woman could easily tell something was weighing heavily on her boyfriend's mind.

"What's the matter, baby? Talk to me, Dusty," Scottie said.

Dusty handed Scottie a Coke. Distracted for a moment, he smiled as she took a sip. He always got a charge out of how much Scottie liked the soft drink, even though she was...