Chapter 7 #2
She started stapling little rainbows with her students’ names and birthdays to the board.
For a second, I was overcome with sadness.
I didn’t have a birthday board this year.
I wouldn’t get to celebrate birthdays or any of the other milestones of kindergarten.
And I didn’t have Jaime right there next to me—all because I wanted to drop out of my life and reconnect with the only place that had made me feel like I belonged.
Jaime snapped me out of my thoughts, saying, “You should go.”
“Go where?”
“You should go to the football game.” Still busy placing and stapling her rainbows, she didn’t spare me a glance. “You can’t take a year off just to sit in a big old house and drink wine and eat microwaved rice every night.”
“I don’t eat microwaved rice every night.”
“I like how that’s the part you’re disputing.
” She gave me a quick grin. “You wanted to live in the sweet little small town, doll. You wanted to get back to your granny’s farm.
You’re there, now you need to do it all the way.
Go to the football game. Eat from the food trucks.
Cheer for the home team. All of it. If you’re not going to do that, you should pack up immediately and come home.
You can live with me. You can sub in any district around here until you find something permanent.
But you cannot stay there and do nothing. ”
I stamped my foot on the kitchen floor. “But Jaime—”
“But Shay,” she interrupted. “I have confirmed with my own eyes that you’re alive and well enough to put on a pretty shirt and go to that football game. It’s time for you to get some real practice with living again, doll. Go. Get there. Do something real, even if you hate it.”
* * *
I wanted to say that nothing about Friendship High School had changed in the years since I graduated, but like everything else in this town, it had a fresh new look.
The 1960s-era building with its flat roof and brown exterior had been replaced with a three-story structure, all windows and clean lines and solar panels.
Where there had once been a dusty, pitted field better suited for the wanderings of geese and bunnies than any form of athletics now stood a shining sports complex.
Since coming here to Friendship, I’d had it in my head that I’d run into people from high school all over the place.
People other than Noah. I figured it would happen at the grocery store or the library or maybe the coffee shop in town where I ate a balanced breakfast of iced coffee and cookies when I ran out of pudding cups.
To this point, I hadn’t seen another familiar face.
I guess it made sense. This wasn’t the kind of small town people struggled to leave. Friendship wasn’t remote or isolated, not in any true sense. Of course I hadn’t bumped into anyone from high school in the produce section. They’d moved on.
Not that I was complaining.
I’d had friends in high school but it was mostly the superficial kind of relationships, the ones where I’d catch glimpses of their lives on social media now but I had to pause and remind myself how I knew them.
With that cheerful thought in mind, I strolled along the track loop, taking in the food truck options. The school’s clubs and intramural sports had tables set up in the middle and the booster club was selling t-shirts.
I had to admit, it felt good to do something. Before the debacle with the ex, I went out all the time. I was an outgoing person, dammit. I was social. I liked being around people.
Now, I spent most evenings walking the Twin Tulip grounds while listening to audiobooks or podcasts and drinking wine from a stainless steel water bottle.
If I could exhaust myself enough, distract myself enough, I wouldn’t have to think about all the bruises and broken things.
But this felt good. Strange good, like I didn’t know what I was doing here but neither did anyone else.
I followed a string of students in marching band regalia into the building and asked them to point me in the direction of the restrooms. Once I was alone in a stall, I glanced at the time on my phone. Another half hour until game time.
“A healthy stream is at least ten uninterrupted seconds.”
I glanced around the stall. Was this person talking to me ?
“If you’re not consistently urinating for ten uninterrupted seconds, you should consider pelvic floor therapy.”
Again, I looked around as if I’d find some explanation for the woman who seemed to be speaking to me.
“Okay,” I said tentatively. “Thanks?”
“Do you find you often have interruptions in your stream?”
“I—” I squeezed my eyes shut for a second.
I’d had a lot of weird conversations in public restrooms. A lot.
This was the weirdest by far and that included the time someone asked me if I’d meet their friend because they believed I was her long-lost twin who’d been separated from her at birth.
Spoiler alert: I was not her twin. “I’m good. No worries.”
“In my professional opinion, it doesn’t sound like you’re all good,” she chirped.
“Are you…listening to me pee?”
She laughed. “Occupational hazard.”
“Or intrusion of privacy,” I muttered. I finished up, thankful for the noise of the flush for drowning out any additional comments.
Until I stepped out of the stall.
On the other side of the door stood a tall, slender woman. She aimed a huge smile at me. “Hi. I’m Christiane.”
I had to scoot around her to get to the sink. “Hi,” I said over the water.
“I’m a physical therapist. One of my specialties is pelvic floor dysfunction. Here’s my card.”
I held up my wet hands with a pointed stare. Then I moved toward the paper towels, turning my body sideways to shimmy along the stall doors because this woman was committed to standing in the most inconvenient spot possible.
“It’s never too soon to tune into your pelvic floor needs,” she said.
I forced a smile as I dried my hands. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks for the chat.”
I grabbed the card and damn near sprinted out of there. Jaime was never going to believe this story. She’d question my sanity. My sobriety too.
By the time I made it outside, the marching band was playing an old Miley Cyrus tune and the area was rapidly filling with people. I meandered back toward the food trucks, determined to make a selection before they sold out.
I’d nearly waded through the densest part of the throng when I heard “Shay!” and a small body slammed into me from the side.
Looking down, I found Gennie, her hair tied in lopsided pigtails. “Where did you come from, my friend?”
She squeezed my waist for another moment. Then, “Come on. Noah’s over here. He said I could look around but I had to be able to see him at all times but then I saw you but I don’t think he’ll be mad that I went far away.”
Oh, god. He was going to start flipping food trucks if he couldn’t find her.
“Let’s get you back to where you belong.” I took her hand and urged her to lead the way.
We found Noah deep in conversation with a woman at the boosters’ table though he didn’t look like he was enjoying it.
He had his arms crossed over his chest and his jaw locked tight enough for me to notice it from several yards away.
He replied with decisive nods though the deep grooves around his mouth suggested he didn’t care for the discussion at hand.
The minute he spotted me and Gennie crossing the track, he held up a hand, saying, “You’ll have to excuse me,” and strode toward us.
“I found Shay,” Gennie said.
At the same time, Noah asked, “What did I tell you about staying where I could see you?”
“But Shay almost missed us,” she said. “And you told me to look for her with both eyeballs.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, his ears were turning a fascinating shade of red. Fascinating.
He glanced at me, a quick up and down that swallowed up my jeans and cute top before settling his gaze on Gennie. “There are a lot of people here. I don’t want you wandering off. Okay?”
She heaved out an enormous sigh, saying, “I guess so.” Then she grabbed my hand and started twirling. “I gotta dance, Shay. Watch!”
“Dance it out, girl. I’m watching.” I gestured to the sports complex, saying to Noah, “When did this all go in?”
He ran his gaze over the stadium seating. “Six or seven years ago.”
“Big improvement.”
He nodded. “Yeah. They built the new high school on the old fields, and once it was ready, moved the kids in and demolished the old high school. Then they did all of this.”
I hummed in agreement. “Is it weird being back here? At all? Or have you grown accustomed to it?”
“It’s only weird when people purposely remind me of high school.”
“Like I am right now?” I asked, laughing.
“No.” He smiled and shifted his weight so that his shoulder brushed mine.
“When they make a point of saying they remember when I was student council treasurer and that must be why I was able to keep the orchard and the dairy from going under. Yeah, a budget of five grand with extensive faculty oversight is certainly comparable. Or they ask if I remember when I was the manager of the basketball team but left the bag with all their jerseys in the locker room for the championship game up in Woonsocket. Because everyone loves that story.”
“How did you keep the orchard and dairy from going under?”
“You asking that is a sign you’ve been kidnapped and are in need of rescue,” he replied.
I shot an elbow at his upper arm. It felt more like a brick wall than human flesh. “I’m actually interested.”
He seemed prepared to tease me a bit more but then his eyes widened and a look of complete dread crossed his face. I looked over my shoulder to follow his gaze. As I turned, he roped an arm around my waist and leaned in close enough for his beard to scrape my cheek.
What the hell?
“I know it’s insane to ask this but if you can go along with me for five minutes, I will personally plow and plant your fields whenever you want it. Okay?”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. Not when those words went in one ear and landed right between my legs.
“Just follow my lead,” he whispered. “Please.”
I had no idea what was happening but Noah was so close and he was holding me so tight that it didn’t matter. And that please had rumbled over his lips in the very best way, like an apology begged a moment before sinning.
Still, I was too stunned to form words. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had taken me into their arms like this.
But more importantly, I didn’t remember it ever feeling so divine.
There was a whole marching band performing on the other side of the complex, a kid dancing and twirling around me, and several hundred people nearby, though the only thing I could focus on was the hand gripping my waist.
Jaime was going to I told you so my ass off.
But then I heard “Hello there! Helloooo! Noah! Over here!” and I froze. I recognized that voice. The incessantness of it.
“Just go with me on this”—his words were urgent on my cheek—“and I’ll do anything you ask of me. Anything at all. You name it, it’s yours.”
I bobbed my head as Christiane came into view, two young kids trailing behind her. Noah let out a breath and brushed his lips over my cheek. The only thing I could feel was heat, everywhere, all at once.
When was the last time someone had kissed my cheek? When was the last time I’d felt it deep in my belly? And when was the last time a kiss had been anything more than an obligation, a box ticked off in the basic affection column?
Christiane reached us with a full, glossy smile. “Noah!” she chirped. “I called last week. Did you get my message? About a playdate at the swim club? I thought I’d hear back from you. Where have you been hiding yourself these days?”
“Christiane,” he replied.
Her gaze shifted toward me and with it, her smile dimmed. “And my dear new friend! I didn’t catch your name.” She glanced back at Noah, saying, “We met in the little girls’ room. Just now.”
His fingers flexed on my waist, his beard bristly as it passed over the shell of my ear. “It doesn’t sound like you met if you don’t know her name.”
Well, shit. I mean, holy shit . I couldn’t dissect that sentence down to its aggregate parts or explain a single reason why it worked as well as it did for me. All I knew was there hadn’t been a single sexual thought in my mind for months but that tide was turning fast.
“You know how I can get carried away.” She waved a hand at us. “How do you two know each other?”
“We go way back. High school sweethearts.”
He shifted, hooking his thumb in my belt loop and sliding his hand into my pocket.
He splayed his fingers over my belly roll and thigh crease.
The only things between us were the thin lining of my pocket and some bikini briefs, and everyone for twenty feet around had to be aware of that.
It was all over my face and projected above my head like a cartoon thought bubble.
There was nothing covert about that move of his.
I wasn’t sure if neck biting would be next and, honestly, I wasn’t opposed to it.
“Oh, really?” She turned a critical eye toward me.
“That’s so funny since I don’t remember you ever mentioning a significant other.
Not even once. Not one time.” Her gaze turned into a frowny smile, the kind of expression people used when they wanted to meet a threshold of basic manners while also communicating that they rejected everything about the situation.
“I just don’t remember hearing anything about that at all . ”
“Didn’t see how it was any of your concern,” he said, the words closer to a growl than anything else.
But it wasn’t just a growl. It was predatory, almost possessive.
And I knew it was ridiculous to say that because this whole moment was ridiculous but he was drawing circles on my belly roll while not so politely telling this woman he wanted none of what she was offering.
If this wasn’t the outer banks of possessive, I didn’t know what was.
Bite my neck, honey. Just do it. Don’t make me wait.
He dragged his fingers over my cheek, tucked some hair behind my ear.
“Have you decided what you want to eat?” he asked, low, grumbly, perfect.
I didn’t know when the grumbly had transformed from mildly amusing to fully arousing but I was here now and not interested in leaving.
“Hmm? I want to get you fed, sweetheart.”
I wasn’t proud of it but it felt like my nipples were probably visible from space.
“Not yet,” I murmured.
“Then we’re doing that now.” He scooped up Gennie, settling her on his hip. “See you later, Christiane.”
Noah steered us toward the food trucks, his hand still deep in my pocket. I was floating and melting and also buzzing with electricity.
And Noah Barden was the cause of it.