Second Chance Friends by Jennifer Scott Page A

you.”
    â€œOkay.”
    Joanna had stepped out of the aisle and started back toward the jogging path, her heart already heavy in her chest. This was a mistake. Coming here was such a colossal screwup. How could she have expected it to go well? How could she have expected it not to break her heart to see Sutton again?
    â€œHey, Joanna?”
    She turned. Sutton hadn’t moved from her spot.
    â€œYou sure everything’s okay?” Sutton asked. She took a few steps toward Joanna.
    â€œYeah, everything’s great.”
    â€œYou sure? It’s just that I asked around and nobody’s heard anything from you in like over a month. You’re not, like, sick or anything, are you?”
    Joanna felt a sad grin tug at one corner of her mouth. As happy as she was that Sutton had cared enough to ask around, she was suddenly embarrassed that people were talking. She didn’t know what exactly she’d expected—that she could really just disappear for a month and nobody would notice?—but she found that she didn’t like Sutton to think of her as weak, flawed. She wanted to be everything to Sutton, even if she knew she would never allow herself to be anything to Sutton.
    Of course, had nobody noticed that she’d disappeared, how would she have felt about that? To be so disposable.
    â€œI took a . . . sabbatical,” Joanna said lightly. “I’ve been away.” Not technically a lie. She’d been away from everyone else. It was a sabbatical of sorts. It had been meant to be a time of rest.
    â€œOh, I bet that was nice,” Sutton said. “I would love to do something like that. Did you go somewhere fabulous? A beach, I hope?”
    â€œNah. It was—”
    Fortunately, the music ended onstage, and Stan began bellowing for the whole cast to assemble onstage, bailing Joanna out.
    â€œOh, shoot,” Sutton said, biting her lip and turning toward the stage. Joanna’s heart leapt—Sutton’s lip-biting habit was part of what had attracted her so much. “Stan is on the warpath today.”
    â€œSounds like it,” Joanna said. “You probably shouldn’t get caught talking to me. I’m not his favorite person right now.”
    Sutton rolled her eyes. “Who cares what he thinks, anyway? He’ll get over it. Word is he’s doing
Grease
next summer. You have Pink Lady written all over you. Maybe even Frenchy.”
    Joanna felt herself blush. “More like Riz. But I doubt he’ll forgive me between now and then.”
    â€œWell, I hope you at least try. You’re really good. And . . . I really miss you,” Sutton said. Stan barked her name, standing on the stage and shading his eyes to look into the house.
    â€œNobody’s paying you to gab, Adelaide!”
    â€œNobody’s paying me at all, Stan!” she yelled back, and then turned back to Joanna and giggled. “It’s fun to give it back to him sometimes.”
    Sutton turned and edged her way down the row of seats, back to the middle aisle. “Come back, okay?” she hollered over her shoulder to Joanna before jogging back to the stage.
    Joanna stood in the grass, her heart beating so hard she could feel her pulse in her toes. She watched as Sutton’s hair fluttered behind her, as she took her place back on the stage, as she seemed to turn her eyes directly to Joanna, even from there. Joanna’s legs felt too weak to climb even the shallow hill back to the walking trail. She wanted to sit back down, to watch Sutton dance and listen to her sing and think about all the things that they could be together,all the subtle hints that Sutton had dropped. She was into Joanna—Joanna could feel it. She could hear it, Sutton’s desire, thrumming beneath her sentences, could feel it beating against her face every time Sutton turned her eyes to study her.
    She knew it, yet at the same time, she was afraid to allow herself