“We broke up,” he says, just as my head is emerging from the collar.
“Oh,” I say, freezing for a moment before adjusting my sleeves and yanking the hem down around my waist. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Great,” I say, then nearly collapse with chagrin to have used the word for the fourth time. “I mean . . .”
Noah raises his eyebrows.
“Not great, uh . . .” Yikes, I am not equipped for this today. “I mean, I’m sorry, because Ava is a nice person and you’re a nice person, so . . . that’s . . . sad. At the same time it’s good because . . . that’s what you wanted, right? And because it’s resolved now? So, gr—uh, yay for that.”
He nods slowly, eyes on mine.
I hug my arms to my chest, a ball of mortified, mixed-up emotion, but still trying to brazen it out.
“Libby . . .”
“Yes. What?”
“Are you okay?”
“Sure. Fantastic. Why wouldn’t I be?” Ha ha ha ha haaaaaa.
“Well, lots of reasons, actually,” he points out.
This elicits a semi-hysterical bark of laughter from me.
“Seriously,” I say, ironically relieved to be reminded of my myriad other problems. “Pick one.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“But earlier . . . we were talking and . . . I . . .” He trails off, suddenly looking almost as much at a loss as me. “It’s really been a crazy day. And week. But . . . I was extremely happy to see you parked in front of my house.”
“I wasn’t parked, I was just pulled over.”
He frowns.
“There’s a difference,” I say.
“Okay.”
“I’d just pulled over, I hadn’t put the car in park.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“Me neither,” I say, blushing and mad and in pain but also secretly a tiny bit hopeful.
“Pulled over or parked, I was happy because you were actually the person I most wanted to see right then, Libby.”
“Yes, but . . . oh.” I stop as the words land. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Well. That’s good, right? Good, um, timing?”
He just stands there, and so I start babbling. “And it makes sense that it would be me you wanted to see, because I happen to be the one you had confided in about this, and, well, that’s the thing about friendship—there are things I go to Emma about, or Yaz, but then there are things I would come to you about instead because—”
“No, it’s not that,” he says.
“Oh,” I say, intensely relieved to have been cut off.
“Well, it is that, but also,” he says, and takes a step closer to me until we’re parallel on the hill with the trail between us. “Remember earlier, by the water fountain? I started rambling about how you can’t start a building with a roof, and . . . all that stuff . . . ?”
I nod.
“I don’t want you to think I’m a jerk,” he says, eyes searching mine with that super direct gaze of his.
“Why would I?”
“Well, last year, last spring . . . after you and Boris broke up . . . and I sorta . . . expressed a romantic interest in you . . . ?”
“Uh huh . . . ?” I say, trying to stand still despite the elephants that are suddenly stampeding through my insides.
“Well, at the time you seemed to have strong ideas about . . . uh . . .” He looks at the ground and shifts from one foot to another.
“About how long a person should wait to be with someone new after a breakup?”
“Yeah,” Noah says, lifting his eyes.
“I had this idea that I should go through some kind of . . . respectful mourning period.”
“Yes, that,” he says.
“Which I now realize was ridiculous, because I was so over Boris already. I just didn’t want to hurt his feelings by moving on too fast. Obviously I shouldn’t have worried,” I say with a grim smirk.
“Nope, ol’ Boris recovered pretty quick.”
“And then you went off and fell for Ava.”
“I wouldn’t have,” he says defensively, “but I thought it was just your nice way of telling me you weren’t interested.”
“Well,” I say, taking the plunge, “you were wrong.”
“Okay,” he says, “so what about now?”
“Now?”
“Yeah. Does this mean you’re no longer a believer in the ‘respectful mourning period’?”
“I think it depends on the situation,” I manage to say.
“What if the situation was that I wanted to be with you?”
All the breath goes out of me in an audible gasp.
“I’m not saying right now today,” he rushes to clarify.
Why not?!
“That would be a little speedy,” he says. “I’m just saying . . . what would you think about that?”
What I think is that if he so much as touches me I will catch fire.
“Take your time,” he says. “I’m only dying five hundred times per breath here while I wait.”
“I want to,” I say. “I really want to. You have no idea.”
“But . . . ?”
“My life is a mess and you’re leaving.”
“Succinct analysis,” he says, shoulders dropping in seeming discouragement for a moment before he regroups. “I do see your point. Both points. But look, the mess part I can handle.”
“You don’t know that. It’s not just Perry, my family is a lot to handle—they’re . . . it’s really . . . worse and weirder and more dysfunctional than I even knew.”
“That doesn’t scare me,” he says, leaning forward, all problem-solving earnestness now. “We had some very messy times around here during the divorce. I get it. And I’ve known you a long time, so even if I don’t know the inner sanctum stuff, I know the players. I know you. I won’t run screaming.”
“You don’t understand, my dad is . . . there’s something really wrong with him. More than I realized.”
“What I said still stands,” Noah says. “People go through stuff, are going through stuff all the time and it’s not the . . . that’s not the exception, you know? Like, it’s not that ‘real life’ is only when nothing is going wrong. It’s all real life.”
It’s killing me to keep raising these objections when all I really want to do is throw myself at him, but I have to. For the sake of my heart and our long friendship, I have to. For the sake of not jumping into this without clear expectations on both sides, I have to. For the sake of not bursting into flames and then becoming needy and clingy and desperate, I have to.
“What about the you leaving part?” I persist. “You just went through this with Ava—you don’t want a long-distance relationship during your gap year, and I can’t go to Europe with you, not that you’re asking. But I mean, is this a fling you’re suggesting? That ends when you go?”
“I don’t know,” he says, hands shoved in his pockets now. “My feelings aren’t really fling-ish. They’ve been around too long. But I guess if a fling is all the stars are aligned for, I’d take it.”
I know what he means. There’s a big part of me that wants him under any circumstances—a day, a week, three months. I already let one chance pass me by and lived to regret it. But I am scared, too—of entering into this when everything is so crazy in my life, of getting hurt, of being so bad at relationships/screwed up about sex that I ruin it, and most of all because I’m not sure I can be with Noah in a halfway measure.
“I don’t know if I’d be good at having a fling, Noah. But of course, we could be totally sick of each other by August, and then it would be great to say, ‘hey, that was a nice fling,’ and then off you go to Europe.”
“Or we could be madly in love and impossibl
e to separate by then,” he says. “And in that case we’d figure it out. We won’t know unless we give it a shot. I mean, we haven’t even kissed. Maybe all this is premature. Maybe we’ll kiss and it’ll be bad and all the chemistry will fizzle.”
“Yeah, right,” I say, trying to keep my eyes from dropping to his lips, and not succeeding.
“Well, probably not,” he says, and gives me a smile that says he noticed.
“Are you trying to get me to kiss you?” I say, and for a few moments all my worries and objections fly out of my brain.
“I honestly wasn’t, at this exact moment,” he says, his voice husky, “but I find myself suddenly not picky about the timeline.”
I swallow a thousand butterflies and feel myself taking a step toward him just as he does the same, and yes there are reasons not to but I don’t remember them at the moment and I don’t care, I want to kiss Noah and he wants to kiss me, and . . .
Ping!
My phone pings and also vibrates with a text, and we both stop in our tracks.
If it’s Jack I will kill him.
“Ignore it,” I say.
“Agreed,” he says.
But. It could be Mom.
“Actually . . .” I say.
“You should check it,” he says, stepping back, the nearness of him leaving me in a whoosh.
“Right.” I pull the phone out of my back pocket, look at the text, flush, and then swear under my breath.
“What’s up?” Noah says, looking concerned.
It isn’t from my mom or Jack. It’s from Kyle, and even though there’s nothing problematic in it, suddenly I feel physically ill.
“It’s nothing. Just. Someone from work. Uh. Checking on me.”
“Are you okay? You look weird all of a sudden.”
Kyle. Stupid Kyle. He’s just trying to be nice but he picked the worst moment and now I want to throttle him—not just for the interruption, but for making me think about him at all. Because Kyle and Noah shouldn’t ever exist in the same moment—in the world or in my head. What happened with Kyle makes me feel so gross that it threatens to taint everything. Even this. Especially this.
“I’m all right. But actually, I should probably be ready to get back in case my mom . . .”
“Hey, it’s fine, no rush,” he says, and reaches out to touch my cheek. “Let’s finish stomping.”
* * *
—
A few minutes later my mom does text, telling me the coast is clear and that I should come home now. Back at the house I give Noah our modem but decide to keep Dad’s phone since that’s easy enough to hide.
And then we’re under the giant maple tree on his driveway, standing unnaturally far apart, with everything uncertain and undecided between us.
“You’d have thought I was a jerk if I kissed you today anyway,” Noah says finally, shifting the modem from under one arm to under the other. “Not as much of a jerk as if it’d happened before I broke up with Ava, but still.”
He looks so unsure of himself all of a sudden, and yet so adorable and beautiful, standing there framed by the cedars that line the drive, and the ice-and-navy sky behind him.
“You’re not a jerk, Noah. You’re one of the best people I know.”
“Well, thanks, but I know you have a lot going on, as your phone was so kind as to remind us. So maybe it’s not even fair for me to have brought it up. I just didn’t want to wait, in case . . .” He’s been looking at me, but now his gaze drops.
“In case . . . ?”
“In there’s a chance it could work.”
“I think there’s a chance,” I say, feeling a smile sneaking onto my face. “I just want to be careful.”
He looks back up, smiles.
All this goofy smiling, even in the middle of a crisis.
“How about this,” he says. “Could we agree to think about it?”
“I’m going to be thinking about it anyway,” I admit. “So, sure. Let’s agree to officially think about it.”
“Excellent.” He lets out a breath I didn’t know he was holding, and his goofy little smile breaks into the biggest, most heartbreakingly gorgeous smile, and I barely manage to stop my hands from coming up to clutch at the place over my heart.
We stand there grinning again, like cupid-slain dorks (or maybe that’s just me), and then he says, “How long do you think the thinking part should last?”
I start laughing, and he shifts the modem from one arm to the other again.
“I don’t know.”
“Are there rules?” he asks, and I detect mischief in his tone.
“Rules?”
“Like, am I allowed to try to influence your thinking?”
“In what way?”
“Well, some combination of rational argument, charm, chocolate, maybe some hand-holding?”
“You want to hold my hand?”
“Maybe. If you’ll let me.”
Hand-holding has never sounded so hot.
“When would this hand-holding occur?”
“Randomly?”
“Okay,” I say, knowing full well that if we start holding hands in public that it’s as good as posting relationship status. “Surprise me.”
“I will.”
“I really should go,” I say, glancing toward the car, but not going. “Wish me luck.”
“Okay. Good luck,” he says, and then he comes forward to give me a hug made quite awkward (but still sweet) by the modem, and then I somehow manage not to stumble on my way to the car, and not to take out any shrubbery as I back out of the driveway.
20
STOWE FAMILY UTOPIA
Not quite sure what a “clear coast” could mean when it comes to my dad, I approach the house with caution. My caution turns to concern when I see a pile of furniture—from Jack’s room if I’m not mistaken—at the edge of the yard, like it’s been put out as trash.
I let myself in on tiptoe, half expecting to have to duck flying objects, but right away I realize there’s no need for quiet. There’s an ’80s metal ballad blasting in the basement and my dad is down there somewhere, singing along.
What on earth.
“Hello?” I call out, and Mom appears from the family room in a threadbare shirt and paint-spattered overalls that I sincerely hope are not her wile-working clothes. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is I saved our bacon,” she says in a low voice, though she still looks worried. “At least for now.”
I inhale. “It smells like paint.”
“Your father has had to drop everything for an urgent project,” she says at normal volume. “He’s painting Jack’s room.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now,” she says. “Because we have our first renters coming next week!”
“What? Really?”
“Yes!” she says in a loud, excited voice, while simultaneously shaking her head.
“You made up fictional renters?” I whisper to her.
“They’re not fictional,” she whispers back. “I’ve had some people inquire, because the Inn fills up. And I did tell someone we could be ready as early as next week, and that I would send them photos. But . . . I may have implied to your father that they’re coming on Monday.”
“Wow.”
“He already had the paint, and he’d taken half of his stuff out of there, I just . . . moved up the timeline. Hopefully this will keep him busy long enough for you to resolve your work situation.”
“Yes, but what about the other situation?”
“What other situation?”
“That he’s . . .” I drag her by the elbow into the family room. “Mom, we can’t go on like this. The troll thing is so much worse than all his petty arguments. He was already prone to picking fights with people, but maybe the social consequences held
him back a bit. On the internet, though, there are no visible social consequences, plus it’s addictive.”
“He just needs to be distracted from it, honey,” Mom says. “Not to worry.”
“Oh, I’m worried.”
“One thing at a time,” Mom says, patting my arm like this is going to help. “The room down there will need a few coats of paint because the paneling is dark. That should take most of tonight and tomorrow, and maybe even part of Saturday. Plus I helped him pull the furniture out of there, and lo and behold the bed frame broke, and there are stains on the dresser, so I helped him haul all of that up and out to the front. Then I went online and ordered a bunch of furniture—a bedframe, a side table, and an eight-drawer dresser, all the kind you have to assemble yourself. It’s being delivered tomorrow, and putting it together should keep him occupied through the weekend.”
“You’re insane,” I say, moving to the front window and looking out at the curbed furniture.
“If not, I’m thinking we could do a garage sale,” she says, coming up beside me. “A garage sale would help pay for the new furniture at least.”
“Wow. Okay.”
“I said I’d handle it, and I’m handling it. What do you think I do all day at the Inn?”
“I’m really starting to wonder!”
“I handle things. Come up with creative solutions, deal with unreasonable people, find quick fixes.”
“Okay, but . . .”
“By the way, I’m going to pack his office stuff in boxes and put them in the garage, supposedly just for the short term because we’re crunched for time, but that can be his next project—finding everything and sorting through it. Of course he’ll be mad, but that’s survivable.”
“He’ll still have his computer, though. Has he noticed the internet isn’t working? Or that the modem is gone?”
“Not yet. I was thinking now that you’re home I could go down and help him, and block him from leaving Jack’s room if necessary, while you go on the computer and delete whatever it is he’s managed to write about Perry.”
He Must Like You Page 17