Chapter 28
I WOKE UP THIS MORNING to two texts. One was an invitation to Jake’s annual post–spaghetti dinner end-of-summer party, and the other was a reply from Nora. No words. Just a red pin, dropped onto Google Maps in the middle of the farm’s woods.
I weave through the trees, glancing down at my phone every so often to make sure I’m staying on course.
Everything around me is some shade of green, until finally I catch sight of a pop of colors through the trees in the distance.
As I step out of the tree line, the colors take shape into the form of wildflowers.
Hundreds of them, and in the center is Nora.
The girl who saved my life.
The girl I haven’t been able to get out of my head all week long.
The girl who, even if I can’t remember how, knows me better than anyone.
She stands up off the ground the second she sees me.
“Hi,” I say, noticing the thick patchwork quilt she has laid out on the ground. On top of it is my backpack, unzipped, with the orange shoe box peeking out. The closer I get, the more nervous I can tell she is. “Do you mind if I sit?”
“Okay,” she replies.
I walk through the flowers and plop down cross-legged on the edge of the blanket, and after a beat she sits down opposite me.
“I think this is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life. So many different flowers all together.” I smile, looking around us at the ocean of color.
“We planted all these together in the spring. It was actually your idea,” she replies.
“Smart lady.” Both of us share a small smile, but then Nora shakes her head.
“Nora.” My eyes flick down to the shoe box beside her. “Will you tell me about us?”
“Um.” She lets out a deep breath, her head hanging slightly. “Okay.” She nods as she sets the box down between us. She seems different, almost… hopeless. The back of my neck feels too hot, so I put my hair into a bun with the yellow hair tie off my wrist as she reaches into the box.
The first thing she pulls out is the flattened popcorn bag.
“This is from our first real date. We spent ninety-eight percent of our time right here, but we drove into Pittsburgh a few times so we could, you know, actually do something out in public.”
“We really bought our popcorn and stuff there?” I ask, slightly surprised that I would splurge on the movie theater prices.
“Please. We weren’t idiots. We swung by Rite Aid on the way and snuck in the rest of our haul under our coats. Like I’m going to pay seven bucks for a pop.” She rolls her eyes.
I laugh, nodding in approval.
She holds up a football ticket. “The night we met. You know about that.”
Replaying the story in my head, it sounds like so much more than a silly meet cute to me now that I know the truth.
I can imagine it, the two of us wandering through the halls of Central Catholic.
Lying down side by side in the center of our wooden basketball court, her hand sliding into mine and sparking all the way up my arm, just like in the field.
“Why are you smiling?” she asks, pulling my attention back to her hazel eyes.
“You know when you were telling me that story in the meat shop… I was kinda jealous,” I admit.
“Really?” she asks, and I look away, embarrassed. “Wait, like jealous of what, exactly?”
“I don’t know. I guess like, the way you felt about, well, me. I’ve always wanted that, but it just never…” I shrug. “It never felt like something that was going to happen for me.”
“This is so weird.” Nora flops backward on the blanket, looking up at the sky. “You’ve said that to me before, almost word for word.”
Finally, I see a hint of a smile pulling at the corners of her lips.
“Well, at least I’m consistent. What else?
” I ask, before I can say what else I’m thinking.
That I was also jealous watching her talk about her feelings for someone like that, because deep down, even if I couldn’t admit it then, I wanted her to be talking about me.
I slide the box over to her as she rolls onto her side and props herself up on her elbow.
“Okay, umm.” She digs around inside until she comes up with a handful of Polaroids, some of which I still haven’t seen.
“We decided in the beginning to only take photos of each other this way, so no one could accidentally see them on our phones or something.” I expect her to hand them to me, but instead she starts flipping through them.
“I actually haven’t seen some of these for a long time. ”
I watch a smile spread across her face, wider and wider with each one. She snorts out a laugh, holding one out for me. “This is one of my favorites.”
I squint at it. It’s definitely a photo taken here, the crick filling up most of the frame. But other than a whitish blur hovering over the water in the middle ground, there’s nothing particularly significant about it. “What is this?”
“You don’t recognize yourself?” Nora laughs again, waiting for me to figure it out.
I look again, and—oh my God. I can just make out my long brown hair billowing out behind the blur that is me, mixing with the tree trunks. But wait… I quickly hold the photo against my chest, my jaw dropping open as I meet Nora’s eyes.
“Am I…” I lower my voice. “Am I skinny-dipping?”
“Yeah, are you scandalized?” she asks, teasing. Flirty.
I grin, my eyes wide. “Kinda! I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“That was your idea too,” she tells me without looking up from her stack of photos.
“Bullshit.”
“You’re right. It was mine,” she replies, and I Frisbee the photo back at her. She bats it down onto the quilt, laughing.
We spend the next little while passing photos back and forth, Nora telling me about each one. It’s so odd, almost unsettling to be looking at all of these memories I feel like I wasn’t there for, but if there’s one thing I’m sure of… it’s that I look happy.
“We really had some fun out here, huh?” I ask as she hands over a selfie of me clinging to her back, our smiles blown out by the flash.
“We did,” she replies, dropping the stack of photographs back into the box.
“I wish I could remember it all.”
“Me too.”
“But… I’m glad we’re here now,” I add, meeting her gaze. “Together.”
“You are?” she asks, her eyes slightly crinkling at the corners, still cautious.
“I am.”
With that, her eyes trace mine in a way that makes my heart race.
She pulls out a couple more things. A novel whose cover features a girl lying on a bale of hay that we supposedly both like a lot, and a winning lottery ticket that we found in a parking lot and never cashed.
“Wait, why didn’t we turn it in and get the seventeen dollars?” I ask, inspecting the three matching fried eggs lined up in a row on the grid.
“We decided to wait and do it right before we, uh…” My eyes flick up from the lottery ticket to find her looking at me, uncertain again. “Before we left.”
I take a deep breath and pull my knees tight into my chest.
“What was I going to tell my parents? My mom?” I ask, a little scared to hear the answer.
“You weren’t going to tell them anything,” she replies.
“What do you mean? I was just going to disappear?” I ask in disbelief, and she nods. “But it’s… my mom. I wouldn’t do that to her.”
“I’m sorry, Stevie. It’s just… what you decided. You wanted to cut off all contact,” Nora says.
She’d be sick. I mean… she’d die.
What was I thinking? I must’ve really, really liked Nora. I must’ve liked her more than I’ve even been imagining. More than I even think is possible.
I want to try this. I know I do, but Nora needs to understand that things have to be different this time. I know I’ve dreamed about maybe going to UCLA someday, but I can’t go now. I want to take this slow, and slow does not include California.
If we’re going to try this, she needs to understand no matter what I decide or when I decide it about coming out, I can’t let my relationship with my mom crumble again.
“You—” she starts, but I interrupt her. I’ve got to get this out.
“Nora, whatever I did or planned, I can’t do that again. I can’t lose her, okay?” I ask, realizing how desperate my voice sounds. “I mean, she’s like… my best friend. And we’re in such a good place right now. I can’t do that to her. I won’t.”
She looks at me for a long moment, biting her lip. “I won’t ask you to,” she says finally.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath and let it out with relief. “Okay.” And then I ask: “Well, what about you? What was your plan?”
“Was I going to tell my mom?” She shrugs, letting out a weak laugh. “You haven’t even come close to seeing the worst parts of that lady. No. I never even considered telling her. You weren’t the only one who wanted to keep us a secret.”
Jeez. I wonder what that means. I’ve seen the way her mom talks to her. How much worse can it get?
But then my heart sinks as I realize something else. Nora finally had a plan to get out of here and away from her mom and… I ruined everything.
“Nora, you could still get out of here. You could still go to California. Without me, I mean.”
She lets out a huff, shaking her head like I just said the most ridiculous thing. “You still have no idea what you mean to me. I wouldn’t leave without you. I… I told you once I want to be with you more than I want to be away from here.”
She reaches out, her hand hovering over my leg, maybe to see if I’ll pull it away, but I don’t. My skin lights up at her touch in a way that I suspect could never get old. As I set my hand on top of hers, her hazel eyes dart up to meet mine, questioning.
I nod and her eyebrows settle back into place as a giant smile finally breaks out on her face.
“Are you serious?” she asks, her eyes welling up.
“Yes. But We. Can’t. Tell. Anyone. Everyone has to think we’re just friends,” I say.
There’s no reason for my friends and family to know, before I even know myself if this is what I really want.
“And I’m serious about my mom. I’m not letting us grow apart again.
” I try to keep a straight face to show her how serious I am, but I can’t help but crack a smile as she scoots closer to me on the quilt.
“I want to keep this a secret as much as you do. In public we can be friends, strangers, whatever you want, Stevie,” she says, slipping her free hand into my hair and tugging my lips toward hers. “But here…”
She kisses me, softer this time, like she’s still afraid she’ll scare me away. Even so, my stomach lifts, giving me that lightness that I felt in the middle of the field the other day. Then she pulls her lips away, leaning her forehead against mine. I open my eyes to find hers still closed.
“I love you,” she whispers. The words send a panic up my back, even though they sound so beautiful coming from her.
Less than a second later, her eyes fly open.
“I…,” I start, but don’t know what to say.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean… well, I did, but…”
“It’s fine. Really. I just… I’m not—” I feel my face go red.
“No, no, no.” She waves her hands in front of her. “I shouldn’t have said that. It just kind of slipped out. Please, don’t say it until you really mean it. No pressure at all. Even if it’s seven years from now.”
“Okay,” I reply, liking the idea of still being with her seven years from now. She’s cute.
She reaches out to take my hand again. My face still feels red-hot, but my stomach is going wild.
It’s so incredible and so confusing. All of this.
She loves me, but I just kissed her for the first time a few days ago.
She remembers all this stuff that I don’t, an entire relationship that we’ve had together that for me is only just starting.
It must be hard for her to look at me and see the person she loves, but to also have it not really be her… me.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, hanging my head as she rubs circles against the back of my hand. “I’m sorry that I forgot us. That I might not ever remember.”
“You know what? I’m not.” She lifts my chin up with her finger, leaning into me again. “It just means I get to make you fall in love with me all over again.”
“You sound pretty confident,” I say, pulling my head back just enough to tease her.
“I know.” She smiles into my lips as I melt into her.
Something tells me she isn’t going to have much trouble with that.