Second Chances in New Port Stephen - Chapter 15

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Second Chances in New Port Stephen - Chapter 15

In the original graduation photo, he was smiling, but he remembered it being a smile of relief. It
had felt almost manic, the way he wanted to claw his way free while sitting in that back row at
graduation with the rest of the W’s, Nick just a few Williamses away. Some people had weird
dreams about going back to high school because they forgot to take some test or pass some
class, but Eli’s nightmares of Port Stephen Prep were different. When he dreamed of PSP, he
saw everything exactly as it had been. No monsters, no surprise tests, no naked speeches in
front of the class. Every detail was true to life, right down to the horrible feeling that something
was wrong. And no one could tell him how to fix it.
“Eli? Hey, you in there?” His dad snapped his fingers in Eli’s face a couple times.
Eli tore his attention away from the school and back to the present. “Yeah, sorry, I—got
nostalgic, I guess.” Deep breaths, he reminded himself. The worst had already happened; right
now, he was taking a graduation photo twenty-five years after the fact with parents who loved
him and were trying their hardest to show it. Plus he wasn’t wearing an itchy floral dress under
the graduation gown this time around. Maybe the rest of his life was a wreck, but in the big
picture, it was a pretty great glow-up.
Max lifted the old photo, squinting into the sun and gauging the Port Stephen Preparatory sign
in the background. “Okay, I think that’s about right. Stay there, Eli. Aunt Cora, you’re on his
other side, yep, there you go. Uncle Wendall, your eyes are kind of closed in the original. Do you
want to do that again now?”
“I think a little improvement is fine. I’ll try not to blink.”
“All right.” Max tucked the photo away in a back pocket and lifted the camera into position. “Big
smiles. Even bigger. There we go!” The digital shutter sound rang out as Max snapped away.
Eli had his arms around his parents’ shoulders as they posed, and he hugged them closer to his
sides as Max took the photos. “Thanks for this,” he said.
“Our pleasure, honey.” Cora sniffed against his shoulder. Eli was worried she was going to start
crying again and ruin the photo, but instead she just said, “Gosh, that lavender does smell nice.”
Eli ended up smiling wider for the new photo than he ever had in the originals.

-- 93 of 228 --

After Max wrapped up the photo shoot, they piled back into the car. Eli felt like a little kid again,
sitting in the back seat with his cousin. Not in a bad way, especially when Wendall said, “Who
wants ice cream? We can stop by the Twistee Treat.”
“The Twistee Treat is still in business?” Eli blinked. “I always thought that place was a drug
front.” He had probably seen a grand total of four cars in the cone-shaped ice cream stand’s
parking lot over the years.
“No, no, it’s good. They have a yummy key lime pie flavor; I’m going to get that,” Cora said.
They pulled into the drive-through and ordered: key lime for Cora, vanilla with a chocolate dip
for Wendall, caramel turtle for Max, and raspberry for Eli. Wendall snapped a selfie of all four of
them to replace the old ice cream one that had sat on the sideboard.
Max inhaled the last of the cone and turned back to the camera. “Some of these shots came out
really good. Look.”
Eli focused on the camera’s preview screen that was shoved in his face. The one Max had
chosen showed Eli and his parents huddled on the sofa with Eli holding an old pumpkin-shaped
bucket. He had three lines drawn on either side of his nose with Cora’s eyeliner as whiskers. It
was an homage to a Halloween photo they’d taken when Eli was eight. He’d wanted to go as a
cat very badly for some reason. In the new photo, they were all caught in the middle of a laugh,
Eli’s dad looking at them both fondly.
“Wow.” He zoomed in on their faces. “We look so happy.”
“Must be nice,” said Max with patented teenage energy. Eeyore was getting a run for his money
with this one, Eli thought.
He felt a twinge of guilt looking at the photo, about not just the silly argument they’d all had
over the ornaments but skirting the truth about the bike and tiptoeing around the topic of Nick.
After the day they’d shared taking all these pictures, Eli felt so much closer to his parents.
Maybe he couldn’t be honest with them about everything—broaching the subject of his
puttering career was still too big a mountain to climb at the moment—but surely he could be
up-front with them about what was going on with Nick.
“So, uh, that bike?” He leaned forward so that his head was between the two front seats. “Nick
actually dropped it off for me yesterday. Said his dad had got it at a yard sale, figured I could
borrow it while I was down here.”
“Oh, how thoughtful,” Cora said. Her tone seemed carefully pitched to sound excited.
“I always liked Nick,” Wendall said. He turned onto their street, signaling even though no other
cars were around.

-- 94 of 228 --

“Yeah.” Eli glanced over at his mom, then at his dad, who was concentrating on pulling into the
carport with laser precision. “It’s been pretty fun reconnecting with him. You know, talking
about the good ol’ days, remembering
all the laughs we had as kids.” He flashed to that weird, quick kiss during their night swim: the
dark water, the starry sky, Nick’s mouth on his.