Chapter Ten #2
I blush, but I don’t feel quite comfortable to comment. I shouldn’t vibe with these people like my immediate response is to. It’s not like I knew Noah as long as they did before losing my memories, anyway. I was a blip in his life, but if what I wrote was true, it was the best blip in time.
But what good is living to my best if I can’t remember it?
Link and Branda agree, saving me from having to speak.
“Well, let’s head on inside. It’s hot as blue blazes out here,” Link complains, already walking toward the house. We follow him inside.
The air conditioning kisses my face as I leave the sticky July heat behind me.
The house is immaculate with its vaulted ceiling, arched windows, spiral iron-clad staircase, and minimalistic color scheme and tones.
It’s a house that screams that this family comes from money, but it’s not ostentatious.
This place is a whole other universe compared to Ashton’s eclectic home, though I guess Noah had a role in creating the contradicting rooms.
“Can I get you some tea? Water? Coffee?” Branda asks as Ashton and I sit down on the suede brown loveseat.
“I’ll take some tea,” Ashton comments.
“I was asking Esme. You know where the tea is,” Branda quips, then she turns a sweet, hopeful smile on me. “So? What will it be?”
I sneak a glance at Ashton, who nods in encouragement for me to answer. He doesn’t look put off by his sister’s sass, only mildly amused.
“Coffee, please. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Make that two cups,” Link hollers from down one of the hallways on the right side of the home.
“Got it, Daddy.” And with that, Branda nearly skips across the dining room and into the kitchen tucked away on the far left of the house.
Ashton releases a breath followed by a laugh. “I don’t know why I miss her when she’s not around.”
“Do you want me to make you some tea?” I offer.
“Nah. Just wait. She’ll come out here with a steaming cup of peach tea. She just likes to pretend she doesn’t enjoy hospitality.”
“Does she still live here?”
Ashton nods. “She says someone has to look after Dad and Grandma, and that she’s perfectly content being the one to do it. Says she doesn’t want to get married. That she’s happy in her singleness. She’s only twenty-five. Plenty of life ahead of her.”
“Hm.” Happy in her singleness. I think back to ten years ago when I was seventeen and gearing up for high school graduation.
I was so focused on finding a husband that I ran into the first arms that welcomed me.
Lane did a number on me with his subtle manipulation and chipping away at my ideas of love.
I took a little time after we ended, and I didn’t find a man who wanted to marry me until Bryan came along.
Safe, bland Bryan. And we all know how that ended up, though I wonder what manipulation I’m missing from my time with him if he actually told me something along the same lines of what Lane told me.
But then Noah apparently popped into my life and was going to give me the happily ever after I’d always wanted.
It wasn’t until after the accident—no, the attempted murder—that I woke up with no recollection of my adult life and realized I could chart a new path forward.
I was forced to pave new roads. Make new brain connections.
“Esme?” Ashton’s concerned voice tips me from my thoughts. He’s sitting up and twisting toward me.
“Lost in my head,” I say with a weak smile. At that time, Branda walks into the room holding a mug.
“Only because I love you,” she says through a smirk, holding the plain black mug out to Ashton. He takes it with two hands, though he glances over at me as if to say, “Told you.”
“Coffee is brewing,” Branda continues. “How do you take it?”
“Black,” I respond, and because I think she will appreciate the lame joke, I add, “like my soul.”
A slow grin creeps across her face. “I like you, Esme.” Then she bounces back into the kitchen. Literally. It’s as if she’s walking on those old Moon Shoes.
“I don’t want to worry you,” Ashton whispers, leaning closer to me so that I can hear him. “But I’m 99 percent sure Branda is going to do everything within that five-foot-two frame of hers to get you and Noah back together after we find him.”
I choke on an exasperated breath, coughing a few times before gaining my composure.
That’s what I get for immediately bonding with someone, I grimly think to myself.
But would it be so bad? I was attracted to Ashton when I met him.
I swoon over Noah’s looks according to my novel, and, well, he looks like Ashton, too.
Also according to my novel, I immediately bonded with Noah.
Maybe I will again? Maybe we will still have some connection that withstood the test of my memory?
And now you’re just allowing your whimsical, romantic side to take over. Save it for the novels, Esme. Real life isn’t a romance book.
“Esme!” Link appears from the hallway, and I turn to smile at him. An elderly lady with a gray bun atop her head and a shimmering gold shirt highlighted by her white dress pants stands beside Ashton’s dad. “This is my mother, Lois. She’s excited to meet you.”
“Hush, boy,” Lois says in a no-nonsense voice, briefly whacking Link in the leg with her bejeweled cane. “I can speak for myself. Now, stand up, girl. I want to look at you.”
Scrambling to my feet to accommodate the daunting woman, I make a move toward her, but I accidentally step on the edge of my skirt.
The sudden slickness of the fabric under my foot against the hardwood floor sends me careening backward until I’m sprawled on top of Ashton’s lap.
One of his knees jabs into the middle of my back while the other rests underneath my upper thigh.
My head is lolling against the armchair of the couch, and above me, a mug of tea held in a firm grasp floats across my vision.
“Thanks for not spilling the scalding liquid on me,” I say through a groan masquerading as a laugh. “Those are some cat-like reflexes you’ve got there.”
Ashton’s amused face comes into view as I lie there contemplating if facing Lois is something I am capable of doing now. “Do I also have a body like a pillow?”
“No,” I state without thought. “Your body is like a—” I pause, remembering where I am and who I’m with.
This man is not Noah, and regardless of the slight attraction I once harbored for Ashton, it’s no longer present.
Ashton is, however, quickly becoming a confidant.
A friend. And friends don’t comment on the chiseled, perfectly sculpted condition of another friend’s body.
Embarrassment blossoms through my veins, and I slowly close my eyes.
In a whisper I pray Lois is too old to hear, I say, “You can just pour that tea on me now. I’d like an excuse to leave and save a morsel of my dignity. ”
“Dignity is overrated, girl. Now are you going to keep using my grandson—the wrong one, mind you—as a lawn chair or are you going to get up and let me get a good look at you?” Lois’s words are sharp, but not unkind.
She’s just like Grannie Bertha—blunt, truthful, and sarcastic in the best of ways.
And for some reason, I really want to impress this woman.
She’s got that energy that demands respect and cooperation.
Get off my brother’s lap, Noah growls.
As I start to haul myself up, Ashton uses his free hand to act as leverage against my back.
Within awkwardly silent seconds punctuated with my heavy breaths, I’m back on my feet and lifting my skirt, walking with renewed confidence toward the thin, mouthy woman.
I’m a good half a foot taller than she is, but her steely gaze makes me feel like I’m nothing more than a toddler.
Still, I drop my skirt, square my shoulders, and jut out my hand.
“Hello, I’m Esme Jenkins. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.
Ashton—and, er, Noah, in the past it seems, spoke highly of you.
” I vaguely recall a moment in my book where the characters discuss their families, and Noah’s character loved his grandmother deeply.
I’m surmising it was a real conversation.
“Hmph.” Lois and her bejeweled cane walk three circles around me as she eyes me up and down, occasionally grunting or harrumphing.
Finally, she stops in front of me, looks me dead in the eyes, and gives me the biggest dentured smile.
“It’s so good to meet you, sugar. When Ashton said he’d found you and that it seemed you were gaining your memory back, I told that boy he’d better bring you to meet me.
Noah spoke so highly about you in his text messages and writings, and now that he’s run off, you’ll be the one to bring him back to us. ”
The loading wheel above my head spins and spins as I reconcile the doting woman with the one who circled me like a vulture moments earlier.
“Well, go on now. Say something.” Lois pokes me in the thigh with the bottom of her cane.
I clear my throat and say the first thing that comes to mind. “I’m sorry you lost him because of me.”
“Nonsense, girl.” Lois pokes me again, but then Link gently lowers the cane and tosses me an apologetic smile. “The Good Lord has a reason for everything. And my grandson is acting how he feels he needs to in order to cope with his darkness.”
I open my mouth to apologize for being the source of his pain, but Lois cuts me off with a whack of her cane against my thigh. “And don’t you apologize for his depression. You are not the source of that, either.”
Overwhelm sets in as this seemingly loving family looks at me with hope and expectancy in their eyes as if I’m their savior, as if I am the only one who can bring Noah—a man I don’t remember, or, well, barely remember I guess—back to them.
My brain is spinning and my chest is tightening, my breaths coming short and labored.