Second Chance Love by Shawn Inmon Page A

alone.”
    “Stalking… stalking you? Elizabeth, come on, you can’t be serious. We were at the gala, I thought we were having a good time, and…”
    “… and nothing. We weren’t having a good time at all. I was miserable. It was my fault, really. I knew I didn’t belong there. I didn’t want to go, but I let Gail and her ‘Don’t be a crazy cat lady’ speech talk me into it.” She took a deep breath and wiped at an eye. “It’s not your fault, Steve. We come from two different places. That’s the way it’s always been, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will always be.”
    Steve shook his head. “Elizabeth...Lizzie. You’re not often wrong, but you’re wrong about this. When I see you, my heart sings. When I’m standing with you, even right now, when you’re so mad you could spit, I know I belong here. That 'different place' of mine, and everything in it, means almost nothing to me if we’re not together. I would give it all up just to have a chance to be with you. I can't promise I won't mess up again, but I will never change the way I feel about you.”
    “Words are fine, Steve. I know you mean them, but I don’t know if I can ever get over…"
    “Get over what? Did Chelsea say something to you?”
    Elizabeth shook her head, but didn’t speak.
    “This is important. This is the most important thing in both our lives. What did Chelsea say to you?”
    She gathered herself, biting her lip.
    “She said that my dress was ugly, and that’s okay. I’m a big girl and I know how women are. She said some other stuff that didn’t really bother me, because by then I was seeing what kind of person she was, but then she said she had talked to your mom and that she had told her about what happened with my dad. She was so gleeful about it...and it hurt so bad…”
    “What?” Gone was the soft-spoken modern evolution of her old friend. This was an influential man of whom someone had just made an enemy “That is bullshit.” His face colored; he moved away for a moment, then stepped close, inside her comfort zone. He locked eyes with Elizabeth and his voice was the old friend's again. “I’m so sorry that I put you in that position. I don’t know why Chelsea, or Mother, or anyone else, would be dredging up stuff from twenty years ago, but I will find out. Chelsea is not my friend. She never has been, and that bridge just burned to the waterline. She’s just one of those women I took to social and charity events to please Mother.”
    Elizabeth didn’t say a word for fifteen long seconds, searching Steve’s eyes. They were the same eyes she had known and loved twenty years before.
    “Why is she like that? I really, truly don’t understand it. I’d never seen her before that night, certainly hadn’t done anything to harm her.”
    “I don’t know,” Steve said, rubbing his chin in thought. “Maybe Chelsea thought she and I had something that never existed. Maybe she’s jealous of you. I told Mother how glad I was to find you again and how I felt. She and Chelsea have always been close. It’s possible that’s what set her off. I don’t know. None of it makes any sense.”
    Elizabeth slowly shook her head. “She was vicious. She wanted to hurt me.”
    “Chelsea’s always had that in her, just under the surface. This is the first time she's used it on someone I love. She will regret that.”
    Elizabeth smiled bitterly. “You know it doesn’t change the basic problem, though.”
    “What problem, Lizzie? I don’t understand.”
    “The problem of you and me and where we are. If I want to go somewhere, I walk. You drive a miniature starship. I can’t even afford a telephone, and you carry some spooky artificial intelligence you call Suzi around in your pocket. Our worlds are so far apart that we can’t even see where the other lives, and that’s what caused all this. It took the form of Chelsea, but if it hadn’t been her, it would have been some other fake, evil bitch that