That bleak outlook lives in our shared gaze only for another few moments. Then the crease in his brow eases up, and I let a small smile through.
“But none of that is true,” he acknowledges. “I wasn’t actually insulting his memory by hanging out with a work friend.” His chuckle is a nice surprise. “It’s not like I was trying to forget Cliff ever existed. Who could?”
With my own light laugh, I agree, “That’s right.” After a deep breath: “And…you know, it’s been almost two years. On one hand, it isn’t a long time, but on the other hand, it is. Things aren’t the same now as they were at first, or even a year ago, ‘cause we’ve been adapting bit by bit in all kinds of ways. We’ve had to.”
As a specific example occurs to me, I puff out a breath.
“I didn’t react wonderfully to that guy at work today, but—” I shrug, “—but I didn’t completely fall apart either. If it had happened three or four or five months ago, though, that might not have been the case.”
Beckett slips a gentle squeeze up my arm. “Hey, you did great.”
I tip a smile up at him.
He gives it back to me. “But I know what you mean. Every other time Blaze asked me to hang out, I knew I didn’t feel like it, and then…this time was different.”
“Yeah.” With a reassuring pat at his side, I promise him, “It makes sense that you would feel a bit strange around new friends, but you weren’t feeling that way because you were doing something wrong. You’re perfectly fine.”
His smile grows, and he glances at my cheek so briefly that I would’ve missed it if I had blinked.
I’m hopeful he’ll smack a kiss to that place—not counting the hiatus of his months with Jenna, it’s not a terribly uncommon thing for us to do these days. Whether it has been a show of support or comfortable affection, both of us have long welcomed a cheek or forehead or temple kiss.
But even though it looks for the longest few seconds like he’s going to belatedly return the one I gave him at home, he doesn’t go through with it.
He just says, “Your kind words are still worth everything, you know.”
Love that though I do, disappointment skips through me.
Oh well. Beckett doesn’t owe me a kiss on the cheek just because he looked—
I register the light breath he’s taken just before something starts sweeping along the curve of my ear—his cool fingers smoothing back a bit of my fallen hair. A shiver spills straight down my spine from the tickle of the unexpected action.
He jerks his hand away.
“Oh, sorry,” he rushes out. “Sorry about that, Ellie. Your hair was just—um—”
I nod, feeling oddly breathless, and agree in my own rush, “It’s a mess. I didn’t bother fixing it before we came here, so it’s coming loose a little.” I gesture around my temples and ears and the nape of my neck. Then I add stupidly, “I’m sorry.”
He nods, too, then shakes his head. “Yeah—but no—why are you sorry? It’s adorable, not a mess. But it is coming loose in some places, you’re right, so I…thought I’d….”
My cheeks are ablaze, and shyness is creeping up on me, and I don’t know why.
He has touched me like that before, I think. Maybe not super recently, but in the last two years? Surely.
I can’t recall a time, though.
All I can think about is how he is also blushing.
Talk about something being adorable.
And now our compliments from this afternoon are coming back to me, because it really is unfair how handsome he is.
And even bashful, this guy is just…I mean, could he be any sweeter?
Could this moment be any sweeter?
“What?” he asks with his gaze shifting over my face.
I realize I’m grinning.
“Nothing,” I reply.
Amusement touches him. “Well, I don’t believe that.”
“It’s really….” Now laughter is bubbling up in my chest, and escaping, and making him smile. “I don’t know. You’re just—Beck, you’re so—”
Laughing now, too, he prods, “What?”
Well, there’s no way I can explain him to him, at least not right now.
I fan at my warm face and get myself under control enough to chuckle out, “You’re just…one hundred.”
“One hundred,” he repeats, intrigued.
I nod. “You’re one hundred percent. A grade of one hundred. The top of the zero-to-one-hundred scale.”
His bashfulness is fully gone now, just like mine.
With his usual ease, he says, “Thank you. I’ve never been called that before.”
“Absurdity. I should’ve told you sooner, I guess.”
“I hadn’t expected to hear it at all, so no complaints here.” He thumps my shoulder. “Just a reminder: you’re also one hundred.”
‘A reminder.’
As it occurs to me, I say, “No one has ever called me that either, actually.”
Even if anyone had, there were many times in the last two years when I didn’t even hit double digits.
But right this second, I do feel like I’m at one hundred percent—or close to it, at least. I know I’ve felt like it in other good moods we’ve shared, too, especially with Theodora around.
It’s really nice.
“Look at us,” Beckett says with a slow shake of his head and a curve of a smile. “A couple of oblivious hundreds.”
I suck on my teeth. “I know. Blind to our own sparkle.”
“Oh, do I sparkle?”
“You do, yes.”
“Well, no wonder Theo likes me so much.”
At that, I finally get around to showing him the picture I took of her and my mom. He gets a kick out of the tiny cookies she made. Then he tells me how they discovered earlier that chocolate-dipped pretzels are only half candy, and I laugh at learning she hopes I’ll let her eat more of them in light of this information.
Between this talk of food and the rest of our wait, we’re practically drooling by the time we get taken to a booth.
As we sit, I notice he feels far away now. We spent so long standing right in front of each other that having the spacious table between us feels weird to me. And I’m kind of chilly, too, without him close.
I don’t mention it, though, because it’s not like he’d want to come sit next to me.
Well, he might, some part of my mind counters. Beckett never has a problem sitting near you. Why would this time be different?
While I open my menu, I look up at him. He’s concentrating on his own menu, and even with his coat still on, he has his arms crossed in a way that makes me wonder if he feels chilly too.
I decide to ask, “Beck?” right as loud laughter erupts from the full booth behind me.
He glances this way—but not because he heard me, I realize when he resumes looking over the list of appetizers. He also thought those people were loud, that’s all.
I try again. “Hey, do—?”
Now I’m drowned out by noisy conversation rising up from somewhere else close by. I look over and see the empty table nearest us is being occupied by a group of several people, most of whom aren’t using their inside voices.
Yes, it’s clear Beckett still hasn’t heard me. Especially when he has to raise his voice to ask, “Noelle, you wanna share an appetizer?”
All right, I’m not about to spend the next hour-plus like this.
I pull out my phone so I can text him.
ME: Hi. Wanna sit beside each other? I tried to say something to you twice already and I kept getting lost in the noise
In short moments, he’s checking his incoming message. Smiling about my name being on the screen. Laughing at what I’ve said.
After he pockets his phone again, he sheds his coat and tosses it aside. Then he slides sideways to get out of his seat.
Delight leaps through me. I scoot over and free up more space next to me.
“Coming over?” I manage to ask where he can hear.
&nb
sp; “Definitely!”
Once he’s settled at my side, he angles himself so he can see me. For a couple seconds, he does nothing but study me and breathe deeply.
Then he says, “That’s better,” at a normal volume. Just like in the waiting area, we’re close enough to each other to talk beneath everyone else.
It is better.
He nudges me with his elbow. “At first I thought I was crazy for feeling like you were on the other side of the world, but it turns out I wasn’t.”
I chuckle. “Neither of us was crazy. I felt the same way.”
The weightlessness is back in his eyes.
It’s back in mine, too, I know.
And the ghost of my shiver from earlier is back in my spine, for some reason. That odd, breathless shyness takes hold of me again too.
But only fleetingly. Then I’m left feeling as comfortable with him as always.
“Yes to the appetizer,” I finally answer him. I need some food big time.
“Awesome.” He turns his attention to my menu since his is still across the world. “All right, let’s see….”
We get an appetizer picked out and ordered once our server stops by to greet us. Soon, we’ve got glasses of water in front of us and a fried onion on the way.
After we decide what we want for our entrées, I turn to Beckett, clearing my throat. He copies me, eyebrows lifting attentively.
“So,” I say, “wanna hear a story about when I was a kid and thought I knew how to safely jump out of a swing?”
—
It’s nice how I never get tired of being with Beckett. Nice how he never seems to get tired of being with me.
I haven’t felt that way with very many people in my life, and it’s so…steady. It makes me feel really steady to know we have such an effortless connection with each other—not just because of the inherent security in that connection, but because I like Beckett. He adds things to my world that no one else can.
Sometimes I’m reluctant to think that, since I’m mainly comparing him to my lifelong best friend and the man with whom I fell in love and had a child.
It’s true, though. Ceceli, Cliff, and Beckett could never be one another, could never bring the same thing to the table. My bonds with each of them have been precious across the board, but they have also been unique to the person. For better or worse, that’s how relationships are.
There were times when Beckett being Beckett was painful because the side of the scale that was Cliff’s was demolished beyond repair; things didn’t feel steady at all without him. But these days, Beckett being Beckett is perfect. Like I recently told him, he is exactly what he should be, exactly what I want him to be: himself.
Even when being himself means kicking my entire ass at Dr. Mario and then pacing his living room with raised arms while he announces his triumph to the universe.
“Ellie is not as good at video games as Beck!” he proclaims. “Let it be known that she should always prepare for defeat when she takes up a controller against me.”
“The video games you like stress me out!” I complain. “My brain quits talking to my fingers when I play games with you!”
He waves a, ‘Nonsense,’ hand at me. “Excuses, Noelle Anna-Kate Bright. Dr. Mario is, like, the simplest game ever.”
I gasp. “Excuse you! You and Cliff played video games all the freaking time when you were younger, and I did not.”
It’s with the nerdiest confidence that he saunters back to where he left me on the couch. “I’d tell you to get good, but….”
I dropped my controller on the floor a minute ago after my embarrassing loss, so I bend down and snatch it back up. “Hey, you know what? I will get good. Come on, let’s go again!”
We start up a new match.
And I lose again.
And again.
And again.
And it cracks us up more and more every time.
And from beside me, he finally takes my head in his hands and pushes a kiss onto my cheek.
“I don’t care how bad you are at video games,” he says against it. “You’re still my favorite person.”
“I don’t care how bad you stomp me at them,” I say back. “You’re still my ocean.”
It feels like the pause button gets hit on his amusement.
It takes me a second to remember he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve never mentioned this particular thing to him.
I’m sure he’ll ask about it now, though.
He lets go of me, draws back enough to mute the Dr. Mario music and allow us to comfortably look at each other.
Indeed, he asks, light and curious, “What does that mean?”
In a way, I feel shy once again. I always figured I’d keep this to myself. As special as it is…I don’t know. We’re open with each other, but I’ve never gotten the urge to verbally illustrate the picture in my head of him rescuing me after Cliff’s death flung me into a freefall.
I could backtrack now. Could say, ‘Nothing. Nevermind,’ and he would tease me but ultimately respect it.
But the more I look at him, the more I think I do want to share it with him.
So, with a measured breath and a lift of my shoulders, I get ready to explain.
“When Cliff died, I felt like…like something had run up behind me and pushed me over the edge of a cliff. Out of nowhere, there wasn’t anything under me—I was just falling away, and no one could grab my hand and pull me back up, and everything was a terrifying blur, and I was sure I was gonna die next because it all felt so….”
I lick at my drying lips and blink away the ache forming behind my eyes.
After I let out a sigh that relaxes my shoulders, I tilt a smile at Beckett.
“Then there you were. At the bottom. Water I could survive in instead of rocks that would’ve destroyed me. I turned out okay because you were there.”
Now that I’m done talking, I can hear the slight stumble in his breathing. It interrupts his inhalations, interrupts his exhalations, anew, anew.
And I don’t know how a person’s eyes can hold so much emotion.
Then again, I don’t know how my chest can hold so much emotion either.
One thing is for sure: it wasn’t stupid to tell him all that.
He seems to be thinking of how to respond, and I don’t mind. I wouldn’t easily come up with words after hearing something like that about myself.
While I wait, I let my attention drift from one place on him to another. From those eyes to the way his brown hair is unassumingly styled away from them, so his face is being shown off and complemented at the same time. Next, I note his five o’clock shadow (or whatever o’clock it’s supposed to be), then the scar on his left cheek from that one specific time his dad attacked him—from the ugly cut I patched up.
It has just dawned on me that his long-sleeved shirt is the perfect shade of dark blue when, “I’ll always catch you,” meets my ears.
I bring my eyes back up to his. The honesty I find in them is simple and soft.
“Always,” he repeats. “No matter how far down the bottom is.”
A warm buzz spreads through my chest, filling it like…like I don’t even know what.
Even though, “Thank you,” isn’t a good enough response, it’s all I can find the breath to say.
He shrugs one shoulder, his gaze steady on me. “Gladly. I don’t wanna be an ocean for anyone else.”
It’s funny how I hadn’t been worried he did want that, or that he’d think me overemotional, or that he’d feel awkward, and yet his words still deeply comfort me.
I say, “Good. I don’t want anyone else to be an ocean for me.”
The closed smile he graces me with matches the air about him: simple, soft, steady.
I take my time enjoying it before I return it.
Then I ask, “Can we play a different video game?”
“Sure can.” He looks away from me, picks up his controller, and exits Dr. Mario. I watch him start chuckling. “Now,
what else is gonna be fun to beat you at…?”
My scoff turns into chuckles of my own. I nudge his arm, and he nudges mine without delay.
And to think I found him sweet for not making fun of me when I told him my swing-and-ant-pile story….
Someday, though, I’ll beat him at this stuff. I really will. Maybe just once, but I’ll do it. Then I’ll bust out his middle name while I sashay around the room and herald my triumph to the universe.
Noelle “Ellie” Anna-Kate Bright, Temporary Video Game Queen.
Yeah. Life goal right there.
- 8 -
N O E L L E
three years ago
Even though I’ve always loved kids, I wouldn’t say it was a rigid life goal of mine to become a parent. Sure, Ceceli and I would coo like crazy over random cute children we encountered, and we’d see baby clothes in Target and talk about how we couldn’t wait to have little darlings of our own, but it wasn’t something I actively sought. I didn’t have a five-or-ten-year plan for myself with a nuclear family worked in there somewhere. Enjoying life as it came at me felt like enough.
However, now that I’m a bit over a year into being a mom…well, in a way, it feels like everything before this wasn’t enough. Feels like I had been missing a part of me and didn’t know until it fell into place.
“Oh my goodness!” I say brightly to Theodora, unable to keep from grinning. She’s standing at the coffee table I’m sitting next to, and her little hands are holding on while she bounces up and down in her yellow dress, as if she likes the Final Fantasy music coming from Cliff and Beckett’s video game. “Look at you go! Are you gonna be a dancer like Mommy?”
She laughs squeakily and starts stomping her socked feet.
“Or more like Cece, perhaps?” I muse.
She echoes, “Cece! Cece!” the best she can, in what I will label as agreement. Then she blows a very messy raspberry, which has me grinning all over again.
I prop one elbow on the coffee table and send my other hand over to pat her back while she continues boogying. Ugh, babies are so adorably soft and squishy, I almost can’t stand it.
Delicate Page 14