D. Graham - What Are The Chances?

“Are the sunglasses really necessary in the rain?” I asked.

“I have a rock-star image to uphold. Apparently we’re destined to go on a world tour.” She stood and pointed at me threateningly. “You better have some sort of juicy romance details by the time I get back. This is your last hoorah.” The band thanked me for breakfast and filed out the kitchen door. Sophie paused at the doorframe. “Hey, Kailyn, if we see Riley Rivers we’ll tell him you want to marry him. Okay?”

Ecstatic, Kailyn grinned and pressed her fists tightly against her chubby, freckled cheeks as she nodded.

“And Deri, if you don’t get busy with someone soon, I will put up a billboard on the highway to advertise that you’re open for business.” She winked. “Okay?”

“Break a leg. Literally,” I sneered.

“Psychics shouldn’t say shit like that.”

“Oh my God.” I stood abruptly and the stool scarped across the linoleum. “Sorry. You’re right. What if my vision has something to do with your trip? Maybe you guys shouldn’t go.”

“You saw rain and water. It’s kind of vague.”

“And someone falling and drowning.”

“We’ll drive carefully over bridges. And I’ll check the location for life vests on the ferry. I promise. Try to have a vision about the band getting discovered by a music exec.”

“Sophie, seriously. Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

“We’ll be fine, and if we’re not, at least you can take comfort in the fact that you tried to stop me.”

Knowing there was no way to convince her to not take risks, I shook my head and sighed. “Be careful.”

“I will, and if I meet a girl named Lindy, I’ll kick her ass for you.”

“Aw, you’re so sweet. But I don’t care that he has a girlfriend. I moved on, remember?”

“Yeah. Sure you did.”

“Seriously. I have. Any idea when you’re going to move on and let the pipe dream go, too?”

She flashed me a peace sign and disappeared out the door. I watched through the windows as she ran back through the rain to the van, covering her long, black hair with her arms. A thick, grey mist had rolled in over the mountain and gave the dark silhouettes of the giant cedars and Douglas firs a ghost-like appearance. The fog swallowed the van as it drove away, which I hoped wasn’t a bad omen. I gave Kailyn a plate of food to take next door to her dad and promised to play checkers with her in the afternoon. She exited out the kitchen door and walked across the parking lot to their house with big, wide strides that made her body sway exaggeratedly from side to side. The rain didn’t seem to bother her.

As I headed to the lobby, my phone buzzed with a text. It was from Trevor: Save me a muffin?

Considering that I had moved on, receiving a text from him really shouldn’t have had the effect on my body that it did. To force my old feelings for him back below the surface I reminded myself he had a girlfriend and I was leaving for Toronto at the end of the summer. Then I responded: They’re not as good when they’re not hot out of the oven.

Trevor’s reply dinged right away: Been thinking about your famous apple cinnamon muffins the whole time you were gone. Looking forward to it.

I smiled and shook my head as I typed back: Weird that you spend that much time thinking about muffins.

Did you miss me?

My breathing halted and I stared at the screen of my phone. Why? Why did he ask things like that? How is a person supposed to respond to a question like that? No, I didn’t miss you because you have a girlfriend and I’ve actually been trying to forget about my feelings for you all year. Or, yes, I missed you. I miss you every single day. I always have, and I can’t imagine ever not missing you.

Before I had a chance to come up with an appropriate response that couldn’t be misread, my phone rang. It was him, so I answered.

“Welcome home,” he said. His smile was audible.

“You too.” Not wanting to touch on the “did you miss me?” question I said, “I was hoping you’d come over for breakfast so I could hear how the road trip was.”

“Yeah, sorry. I want to hear about your trip, too. But we have a Search and Rescue training thing all day today. It starts in a minute.” I waited for him to ask me to hang out or meet up somewhere, but instead he asked, “Are you still planning to go to U of T?”

“Uh.” When I first received the acceptance letters from both schools, I had been leaning towards the University of British Columbia to stay close to everyone. But the University of Toronto offer also came with a scholarship, so the financial factors, combined with my reluctance to move in with my mom in Vancouver, pushed me to make an impulsive decision to move across the country. “I accepted the scholarship at U of T.” After a weird silence I added, “But since UBC accepted me, too, I can still transfer. I have until the end of July to withdraw from U of T if I decide not to take the scholarship.”

He was quiet for a few seconds before he said, “Well, you should probably take the money, but if you decide to stay in Vancouver and go to UBC, you can live at your mom’s during the week and I’ll drive you up here on weekends.”

Right. He hadn’t heard the news about the Inn yet. And saying it out loud made it real, which I had hoped to avoid for as long as possible. But he was going to find out eventually anyway, so I said, “The sale of the Inn went through last week. The new owners take over in September. Whichever school I choose I will have to move out of Britannia Beach.”

“Oh.”

I waited for him to say more because “oh” wasn’t enough of a reaction to tell how he felt about it.

After another long silence he said, “I’ve gotta go, Deri. The training is starting. Is it all right if we talk later?”

Talking about it probably wasn’t going to make it any easier, but I said, “Yeah. Okay.”

He said goodbye. I sighed and hung up as thunder cracked outside and the rain pounded down harder. Scenes from my vision flashed through my mind again and I panicked when I realized it might have had something to do with Trevor training in the storm. My hands fumbled to call him back, but he didn’t answer.

“Excuse me, miss. What is there to do in Britannia Beach when it’s raining?” a guest asked me as his two kids climbed on the antique chairs and rolled around on the wood lobby floor.

I hesitated because the real answer for a family with two little kids was, not much , but obviously I wasn’t going to say that. My thumb tapped the send button on the text I wrote to Trevor. I told him about my vision and pleaded with him to be careful. He had witnessed my visions in the past and would definitely take the warning seriously, but I was worried he wouldn’t get the message in time. The man lifted his eyebrows, impatient for me to answer his question.

“The old copper mine runs tours from the village.” I pointed over my shoulder in the general direction of the mine.

“We did that yesterday.”