by Anna Edwards
“I know. But if you want dinner with me you’ll come to my place, and I’ll cook.”
Noah rubs his chin. “You drive a hard bargain, but I could use a home-cooked meal.” He winks at me.
“I don’t work tomorrow, so here’s my address,” I murmur, pulling my notepad out of my pocket and jotting my details down. “Come by around five,” I tell him, ripping the page and handing it to him.
Noah takes the paper and pulls out his wallet, folding and slipping it inside. “Pretty early for dinner,” he says with a smile and slight confusion.
“See you tomorrow.” I say nothing more.
Noah’s never met Pipper and he knows nothing of my history. It’s not that I want to surprise him, but it’s too much to explain here when I’m at work, and I refuse to leave Pipper with anyone else when I actually have free time to be with her.
Noah opens his mouth to say something else before apparently thinking better of it. “Tomorrow,” he murmurs, following me out of the room and making his way toward the exit.
Chapter Five
NOAH
Standing in front of Gracie’s door I’m transported back to my fifteen-year-old self. I don’t know why I feel so nervous. Gracie, Charlie, Lorna and I lived in a small town where we grew up together, by the time we hit high school we were as thick as thieves. The shift into college split us, but we’d been heading that way for a while anyway. Lorna and I had been a couple for three years, the same as Charlie and Gracie. When we split, we didn’t want it to affect our group, so we remained friends.
Was it difficult? Not really, no. We were friends first and the relationship was a typical teenage thing that more often than not comes to a natural ending. We were happy just as friends and both felt like it was a natural transition.
Charlie and Gracie were still together when we left for college, but they’d been arguing for the last year. Charlie more often than not spent time away from us, he had a new group of friends. He’d started taking drugs and as much as Gracie, me and even his parents tried to pull him out, he seemed to sink deeper. Our relationship as best friends had been fracturing for a while, but when he stole my granddad’s pocket watch and hocked it for drug money, it became nonexistent.
Lorna and I went to different colleges. She studied at Northwestern and I chose UCLA. As far as I recall Gracie had a scholarship to the University of Phoenix, but I didn’t stick around so I never kept in touch.
“Hey,” she greets me, wrenching the door open and wiping her hands down a flowery apron she has wrapped around her waist. She blows a strand of hair out of her eyes and when it returns to the same place, she uses the back of her sticky looking hand to push it away again. It flops back down.
“Here, let me,” I offer. Pulling her silken lock between my fingers I tuck it behind her ear.
“Mommy, I want to finish the cookies.” A pretty tinkling sound comes from behind Gracie, quickly followed by a head of soft brown hair with bright blue eyes which poke around her legs.
I freeze. I can’t help it. I feel every joint in my body lock up.
“Noah, are you okay?” Gracie questions quietly.
“I’m fine,” I manage to force out.
“Pipper, honey, why don’t you go clean up ready for dinner,” she says softly, bending down to her daughter.
“But the cookies…”
“… will be evenly spread out on the baking tray we have set aside and popped in the oven by me. They’ll be done before you know it.” Gracie finishes Pipper’s sentence without taking a breath. It’s pretty impressive.
Pipper seems to consider this for a moment before nodding and walking away.
“Noah, what’s wrong?” Gracie fires out the question the minute Pipper’s gone.
I rub the back of my neck. “Can I…” I nod toward the door, “… come in?”
Gracie looks behind her and then back at me. “Okay, but if you start freaking out again you’ll have to leave,” she tells me, completely serious.
“Understood,” I answer, stepping inside the apartment. “So, you have a kid?” I ask possibly the most stupid question of my life.
Gracie raises her eyebrow. “Looks that way, huh?”
I can’t tell if she’s joking or being serious, so I go with a straight answer. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t realize. Although, the early dinner at your place makes more sense now.”
Gracie sighs. “I suppose I should have told you at the hospital, but I was working and—”
“It’s fine.” I hold up my hands. “You were working, I bombarded you. Gracie, you don’t owe me an explanation.”
She nods. “True. But I’ll give you one once Pipper’s in bed if you still want to stay?”
I grin. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Chapter Six
GRACIE
“Oh, yes, she did. Your mom put pink food color in all the glue pots, and so Billy Winn had to use pink glue if he wanted to stick his rocket together,” Noah finishes telling Pipper about another one of my childhood misdemeanors.
“So, he couldn’t say pink was only for silly girls after that, huh?” Pipper asks.
“No, he definitely couldn’t.” Noah winks, tapping her on the end of her nose.
“Noah,” Pipper starts, pausing, seemingly to consider her eight-year-old words.
“Yes, Pipper,” he answers her.
“Do you know my daddy?”
The blood must drain from my face as quickly as my mouth drops open.
“Erm, I… I…” Noah splutters the words looking at me. “Gracie are you okay?” His worried eyes pull me from my stone-like state.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I reply then look to Pipper. “Can you go and wash up, brush your teeth and get into your PJs please, baby. It’s nearly bedtime. I’ll be in to you in just a minute,” I tell her softly.
All thoughts of her previous question seem to have disappeared from her head as she bounds away. Turning back just before she walks from the room she looks at Noah. “Will I see you soon?” she asks him.
Before I can answer her, he does. “I can’t wait, sweetheart,” he replies with a soft smile that melts my heart.
She rushes off and I turn to Noah. “I’m going to put her to bed, after that I’ll grab us a beer each and we can talk.” I look at him pointedly. “Really talk.”
He nods. “Sounds good, Gracie.”
I pad into Pipper’s room and she’s already flaked on the bed, still in her clothes and not a drop of toothpaste in sight. I smile softly at her and take a moment to watch my baby as her soft breathing fills the room. Slipping her dress over her head, I pull on PJs and tuck her into bed. She doesn’t stir once. With a soft kiss on her forehead and a final look, I creep out of her bedroom and shut the door.
Grabbing two beers from the fridge, I take a deep breath and ready myself to tell Noah my story.
“Here,” I say offering him his beer. He takes it, twisting the cap off and swigging some down. Seating myself on the sofa next to him, I do the same before placing my bottle on a coaster on the coffee table.
“She’s Charlie’s,” I blurt out and I’m glad he wasn’t taking a swig of beer because the shock seems to cause him to have a coughing fit.
He composes himself, staring at me. “She’s all you,” he returns softly, looking toward the door.
“Thank you. I like to think so.”
“Does he know?”
I shrug. “He did when I was pregnant. He left soon after.”
Noah frowns, looking down at his beer he picks the label away. “Shit. I’m sorry, but I’m not surprised.”
He meets my gaze again and I smile sadly. “We moved in together when I found out. We managed four months before he left me.”
“Motherfucker.”
“With twenty-one thousand dollars of debt.”
His eyes blaze as he stares at me like he wants to kill someone. “The fuck?” he growls out.
“Yeah, he convinced me to take out loans to pay for
the house we moved into, as well as a car for him, baby stuff, decorating. Plus, I had to find eight thousand for college as I couldn’t manage the course I was taking and needed to switch out, losing my scholarship in the meantime.” I shrug. “The only thing I kept was the eight thousand for college. The rest…” I shrug again, “… he took the car we bought and cleaned out the bank accounts. I was left with fifteen hundred in my own account with the rent due which was nine hundred.”
Noah stands and threads his fingers together at the back of his head. I watch as his T-shirt rises and I spy the muscles of his abdomen. His body is the last thing I should be looking at, and the thoughts running through my head are absolutely not what I need. Still, I can’t help but peek.
“What did you do? I mean his parents?”
I shake my head. “His dad died not long after college started, and his mom—”
“What?” he urges.
“She blamed me.”
“For what?” he barks.
I hitch one shoulder. “For him becoming a drug addict.”
“Is she fucking mental?” he barks again.
“Noah, Pipper’s sleeping,” I chastise him.
“Sorry,” he mutters, sitting back down on my sofa.
I huff out a long breath. “I guess she needed someone to blame, she lost her only son and her husband.”
“No… fucking… excuse,” he mumbles.
He was right. Sandra, Charlie’s mom, was the closest thing I had to a mom myself. Having been raised by my Uncle Edger after my own mom passed when I was ten, I had always looked up to Sandra. Our friendship group fell on two sides. Lorna and Charlie who had both parents and grew up relatively normally. Then there was Noah and me. My situation with my mom and my Uncle Edgar. Noah’s dad was an asshole who verbally and physically abused him until his grandad caught wind and took Noah to live with him. His dad disappeared after that, and he never met his mom. Fucked up families seemed to be my forte.
I shrug. “Whatever.”
“So what? Charlie disappears and what happens to the debt?” He questions.
“I moved into a shelter temporarily. As soon as I could, I found a part-time job and managed to rent a bedsit. I bought all the baby stuff I needed just before Pipper was born. I finished college which wasn’t easy, and with daycare and living costs…”
“What?” Noah asks when I remain silent for a little too long.
I look down and feel the flush of my cheeks as embarrassment starts to swallow me.
Noah grips my chin and tilts my head up, so our eyes meet. “Hey, this is on him. It’s all on him. Okay?”
He doesn’t let go until I nod in agreement.
“I now owe fifteen thousand dollars,” I admit quietly.
“So, you’re telling me that he left you twenty-one thousand dollars in debt. Pregnant and with living fees and daycare, and all the other crap that no doubt has come up over the years, and you’ve managed to pay off six thousand dollars?”
I nod, my cheeks are still hot from my revelations.
“I think you’ve done pretty damn well,” he states, sitting back against the sofa and folding his arms across his chest. I watch his muscles bulge and once again chastise myself.
Noah and Charlie were best friends. I was friends with them both as was my best friend, Lorna. We had a crush on Noah back around sixth grade, but the boys had a different girlfriend every week back then. In ninth grade, Noah and Lorna ended up going steady. It seemed natural that Charlie and I would end up together too. Charlie wasn’t anything to sniff at, he had just as many girls after him as Noah did. But as he got older, and after the drugs started to take their toll, his physical appearance wasn’t the same. He was drawn, greasy, and his eyes sunk into his head. His personality changed too. Bottom line, he wasn’t Charlie anymore. Or at least not the seventeen-year-old Charlie we once knew.
“Thank you,” I reply, a small grin playing on my lips. “I think I’ve done pretty well, too.” I agree, looking over my shoulder toward Pipper’s closed bedroom door. “So, you’re back here,” I inquire.
Noah runs his fingertips along the bottle, and I follow the pattern, imagining how they would feel against my bare skin. It’s been years since I’ve been laid. This is what happens when you haven’t gotten some for a while, and you spend more than two hours in the company of a hot man.
“I was living in Glendale, moved here eighteen months ago. I guess you moved out of town too, huh?” he questions.
“Yeah, I know we’re only thirty minutes away from our old town, but it makes all the difference, you know?” He nods. “They all know I’m the little-lost niece of Uncle Edgar and the one who got knocked up by Charlie Dempster. I think, because of his mom, a lot of the town believe I’m the reason for Charlie becoming hooked on drugs,” I admit.
“Yeah, well, that town was always backward in coming forward. They’ll be living in the nineteen-fifties for the rest of their sorry lives,” he snarls.
“I like it here,” I state looking around. “It’s a quiet town, but one where not everyone gets in your business. My apartment is only small, but it’s perfect for us,” I tell him.
Noah looks around the room and back to me. His eyes search my face for something before he tucks my hair behind my ear again. It’s tender, it’s also a movement he’s made twice now, and twice I’ve loved it. He stares at me, his big brown eyes heated and needy. I edge myself forward and lean into him, he does the same but before anything can happen Noah’s phone, which is sitting on the coffee table buzzes with an incoming text. It makes us jolt apart and I glance over, only seeing the name Claire appear on the screen before Noah shuts the phone down.
“S-So….” I can’t control the stutter as I try to calm both the blood whooshing through my body and my heart rate at the same time, “… you like it here, too?” I ask a stupid question to dissolve the sudden tension.
“Yeah, I’ve enjoyed living here I have to admit. Just wish I didn’t have to travel over twenty minutes back toward Glendale just to go to Starbucks.” Noah chuckles, clearly amused by my awkwardness.
I laugh back at him. “Buy a thermos and take your own coffee.”
He seems to think it over before nodding like I’ve given him the secrets of the universe. It’s cute and with his eyes alight, him biting his bottom lip, and his hair still falling forward, he reminds me of the teenager I once crushed on.
“So, tell me about you.” At my words, Noah stiffens. It’s something he seems to do a lot when certain things are brought up. “Noah?” I whisper his name in question.
He shakes his head. “Not much to say really.”
“Oh, come on, Noah,” I press, wanting desperately to ask who Claire is.
“You know my grandad died. I lived in his house then went off to college, came back and moved to Glendale. Then eighteen months ago, I decided to move here and I found a great workshop.” He smiles and it’s both wide and genuine. “I had already started my business and was doing okay, so I just moved it here.” He shrugs. “That’s what I’ve been doing.”
I nod. Something tells me he’s not revealing everything, but I won’t force it out of him, not yet.
Chapter Seven
NOAH
I can’t stop thinking about Gracie.
It’s almost as if the teenage feelings I had for her have come back in full force. I can’t seem to control my heart or my dick, both of which have reverted to a fifteen-year-old me.
I’d always had a soft spot for Gracie. Lorna was assertive and almost aggressive in her persona. She had dark brown hair—which was never really my thing—and she was willowy, slim and a cheerleader. I know the guys panted after her, but I always liked curves. Lorna came onto me at a party, I pushed her away. The next day she saw me looking at Gracie and told me I was wasting my time. Gracie had a thing for Charlie.
Three weeks later, and after being told by Lorna that Charlie had hooked up with Gracie, I took a chance and started seeing Lorna. She was pretty cool
and a steady girlfriend was what I wanted at that time. Plus, it suited us all to be dating best friends. We fit. And at fifteen, it was enough.
Maybe now is my time, though.
No. Who am I kidding?
She’s going to want more kids.
I could see the other evening how she dotes on Pipper and that little girl is fucking amazing. Of course, she’ll want that again. Why the fuck would I think otherwise?
“You know if you stare at that wood much longer you might burn a hole in it?” Donnie calls from the doorway as he lets himself in. Lassie raises his head to look at Donnie, before quickly dropping it back down again. “I thought you were pretty much healed?” he asks, stepping up next to me and nodding toward my hand.
I look down at it. “I am. Stitches are due out next week.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
I sigh and pull over one of my wooden stools, parking my ass.
Donnie has been my best friend since we met at UCLA. When we were getting ready to leave, I had nowhere to move to. Nowhere I belonged. That’s how I ended up living in Glendale. It was Donnie’s home and it quickly became mine. That’s also where I met Claire.
When I needed to leave Glendale, Donnie moved with me, said he needed a change.
“Claire called,” I tell him and his head whips my way, his teeth grinding. “And texted,” I add.
I try not to smile, not because it’s funny, but Donnie’s reaction to Claire always amuses me. He’s angrier with her than I am at this point. Personally, I’m not sure I care anymore.
“What the fuck did that bitch want?”
I shrug, popping open the cap of my water. “Her text just said she wanted to talk,” I answer taking a swig. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and continue, “I didn’t answer her calls. Don’t think there’s much to say anymore.”
He hangs his head. “Do I need to intervene?” he asks.
“Do I look like I’m upset?” I reply.