Chapter Seventeen
Take me Down ~ mid-August
A knock on my camper door startles me from my book world.
Yawning, I make a mental note to make another pot of coffee to try and pound out the last few chapters of my novel.
Ashton messaged me yesterday and said he and Noah were coming back into town this weekend, which is only a few days away, to meet with me about a timeline for publishing.
On top of that, school starts back next Monday, which means I only have these last few days to achieve my goal of finishing this first draft. Noah has already written his chapters.
I tug at my messy bun and tuck the loose strands in my face behind my ears as I take the few steps to my camper door.
I’m so tired these days because Noah and I have talked for hours on the phone every single night.
He never fails to call me at eight p.m., and we talk until the wee hours of the morning about everything under the sun.
Last night, we conversed about how we came to adopt our faith as our own outside of our parents and Bible Belt culture.
And you know what?
I’ve never clicked with a person like I do Noah Prewitt, and it still astounds me he stepped right out of my novel.
The knock on the door comes again right as I go to open it, and the door knocks into whoever is on the other side.
“Oof.” A loud, masculine groan floats through the air as the door bounces back toward me from the force of hitting the man. It’s Noah. I know because I’m now all too familiar with that baritone from talking to him every single day since I brought him home from Alaska.
I ease the door back open to find him lying on the grass.
Heat that has nothing to do with August in Mississippi overcomes me.
“I’m so, so, so sorry, Noah!” I bounce down the three steps and reach out my hand to help him up.
He laughs as he stands, brushing grass off of his flamingo-pink shorts and yellow Hawaiian shirt.
Though the clash of colors hurts my eyes, this man makes it work.
“Not how I expected to be greeted,” he jests, then he looks at the ground where a bouquet of sunflowers lies. My stomach dips then soars as he picks them up, gives me an easy breezy smile, and holds the slightly mangled arrangement out to me.
I take them, step toward him, place a hand on his chest, and rise to my tiptoes to kiss him. As if it’s as common a thing for me to do as breathing.
Noah grins against my mouth as his arm slides around my back. He presses me into him, not letting me back away. “You know,” he says. “You could kiss and make better the places I hurt where I fell. If you want.”
I laugh, though the images conjured in my head are not fit for the dating stage.
Battling between loving that comment and his obvious show of desire—but knowing I can’t act upon it and need to throw a barrier up to crash my train of thought—I playfully slap his chest and push away from him.
“You rake.” And then it dawns on me he isn’t supposed to be here until Friday.
It’s Wednesday. “What are you doing here?”
Noah runs his hand through his curls, which fall right back into a haphazard state that simply works for him. Then, as if he’s nervous, he rocks back and forth on his heels and folds his hands in front of him. “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion, but I’d like to take you out on a surprise date.”
My heart leaps like a ballet dancer. A surprise date? Planned for me?
“Intrude away!” I state, elation leaking through my voice.
I look down at the beautiful bouquet of flowers in my hand and then remember I’m dressed in a day-old-sweatpants-and-sweater combo that boasts coffee stains and reeks of exhausted, over-caffeinated author.
“Crap. I need to change. How should I dress? I should probably shower. And I need to do my makeup and—”
Noah silences me with a long, delicious kiss.
When he pulls away, leaving me begging for more, he says, “Be ready at five, sweetheart. I’ll come pick you up.
Wear something you feel pretty in.” He plants a kiss on my forehead, the sweetest action I could even imagine, and leaves me speechless as he walks across the yard, gets in his dark blue truck, and leaves.
“What in the romance novel?” I ask myself aloud as I watch him drive down our dirt road. He honks the horn three times as he gets to the stop sign, then he pulls out onto the highway. He disappears behind a wall of oak trees, and I’m left once again wondering how this man is even real.
Once I’m back inside my camper, I check the time and realize I have three hours to get ready. My heart’s beating a little too fast, my skin is a little too clammy, and I’m a lot too distracted to focus on writing. Instead, I call my best friend.
“Sammie? You busy?” I ask as soon as she answers.
“Just doing laundry. What’s up?”
“Noah kinda just showed up on my doorstep, and I about knocked him out, but that’s not pertinent to the story. Point is, he gave me flowers and told me he was taking me out on a surprise date tonight and to wear something pretty and be ready at five.”
A beat of silence, and then, “Be there in fifteen.”
Thirty minutes later, Sam finally arrives. She’s throwing my clothes everywhere as she digs through my small closet at the end of my bed, looking for only God knows what. I told her I wanted to wear a simple sundress, but she said that wasn’t going to cut it.
“Seriously, Sam. This is Whitney. Where in the world could he take me that I need more than a simple sundress?” “He could take you to Jackson. There are fancy places in the city.”
“He said ‘pretty,’ not ‘fancy.’”
Sam stops, her hands grabbing one of the felt hangers. She drags out a mini black dress, one that I haven’t worn since, well, I don’t remember. It belongs to the three-year memory hole.
“I’ve never even tried that on,” I state, crossing my arms like a child.
Sam waggles her brows. “Yes, you have. You wore this bad boy on your first date with Bryan.” She frowns. “At least the first one after you told me about him.”
I scoff, throwing my hands up. “Then I definitely don’t want to wear it out on my first official date with Noah.”
“But you don’t remember that date, and you didn’t have a good time with Bryan anyway.”
That catches my attention. “Sam, why did I even date that man? I have my assumptions, but did I ever confide in you about them?”
Sam drops the dress onto my bed and sits down as I stare at her from the bedroom steps.
She sighs, fiddling with her short blonde hair.
“You were pretty closed off in that relationship, which is why we haven’t told you more information about it.
You weren’t in love with him; that’s for sure.
We could all see that from a mile away. Like I’ve told you before, I think you were settling.
When you finally told me about him, you said he was sensible, had a decent income, and was kind, to which I replied that you needed more than sensible and kind.
I told you that you needed romance and passion.
” She scrunches her nose. “Then you told me that romance and passion were only meant for heroines.”
I soak in her words as I move to sit next to her on my bed, a defeated slump in my shoulders. “In that time, did I ever tell you what Lane once told me? I know I didn’t tell you before I lost my memories, but did I ever open up about it?”
Sam shakes her head.
“Before Lane dumped me on Valentine’s Day, we had been doing a lot of arguing.
He had started going full days without talking to me, never planned dates outside of me going to his apartment and watching movies, and a bunch of other things like not telling me he loved me or not even bothering to get me little gifts like he had used to.
Of course, I noticed it all. But when I brought it up to him one day, he laughed at me and told me that we were past all of that.
The romance. He said I was his, and he was mine, and that was that. ”
“What a fusty, barren-spirited, abomination of a man.”
“Okay, Miss Shakespeare.” I laugh, then continue my story.
“Determined not to believe that, I kept bringing it up. I was kind, gentle, and respectful in my approach, but no matter, it always ended in him ghosting me for a few days until I ended up practically begging him to talk to me and kept telling him how sorry I was for even mentioning it again. Then, when he broke up with me, he told me that my expectations were too high and that I wanted a fictional man, not a real man.”
Sam curses, her fists clenching at her side. “I never liked that guy.”
I laugh at the truthfulness of the statement. If only I would have listened to her warnings about him sooner, maybe I would have saved myself from a lot of heartache and self-doubt.
“Judging by what you all tell me about my missing years, I don’t think I fully healed from what he said.
When I woke up from the coma, it still all felt too fresh.
But I woke up, you know? I had a new appreciation for life, and well, I wanted to try and believe that passionate love could exist. That it could exist for me.
I think it’s why I wanted to write the book so badly.
It was a place for me to pretend that Esme could find a reckless, passionate, all-consuming love. ”
“And then it became real,” Sam says slowly, catching on to where I’m headed.
“Then it became real,” I reiterate, pursing my lips and nodding.
Tears push against my eyelids as I confess the truth to Sam.
“And I’m scared, Sammie. Because my brain has been effectively manipulated into believing that kind of love is not real, yet there’s a real Noah.
With a real love. And a real big heart. Full of romance.
He makes me feel all the things, Sammie.
Every night when we talk on the phone, I’m giddy with butterflies over what new thing I’ll discover about him.
He sweeps me away even when he’s not actually here.
I like his voice , Sam. I hate Bryan’s voice. ”
We laugh, and the tears find their way through.
“I just,” I continue through the stuffiness setting into my nose, “I like him. A lot. And I think I might love him. But that’s impossible because I’ve only known him for a couple of weeks.
I’ve only been in his presence for less than that.
And we haven’t even gone on a real date. ”
Sam is quiet for a while, letting me lean into her side as she strokes my gross hair that’s in need of a serious washing.
Finally, she says, “Love isn’t about how much time you spend with someone or the amount of dates you go on.
Love is impossible to put into words. It catches you off-guard and defenseless when you least expect it to.
Love makes sense of things previously unclear while muddling things you once thought you understood.
” Sam laughs, pulling me closer into her.
She smells of lavender and lemon; I can tell she was cleaning before she came here.
“You know my story with Ethan. We were engaged one month after we started dating.”
“But the two of you have known each other y’all’s entire lives.”
“Never once did I look at him as anything romantic until he did that play with me on a dare. But Meme, when Ethan put his hands around my waist, pulled me close, and locked eyes with me, completely breaking character, I knew. Right then and there, I knew I’d marry him.
I know it’s cliche, but it’s also true. When you know, you know. And you don’t know until you know.”
Do I know? Noah seems to know. I seemed to know when we were on the island. But now?
YES!
The word is shouted in my head like a crazed fan screaming at a Taylor Swift concert. But it’s not fictional Noah talking. It’s me.
Tears sober up fast. “Hypothetically, if I did possibly know I potentially wanted to marry him, how do I overcome the fear that, one day, he’ll stop putting in effort and I’ll expect too much?”
“You can’t know the future, Esme. But do you think the Lord will lead you to a married life full of blandness and boredom when you’re a woman whose heart and passion overflows more often than the Mississippi River?”
I don’t know, I want to say. Because if I say no, that’s admitting the Lord wasn’t responsible for Lane. I was. I chose to stay with him even when all the Holy Spirit told me to do was run. I chose to stay even when my family said they didn’t like him.
Instead of answering, I stand and pick up the black dress. It’s a sweetheart neckline number with a cinched waist and flare skirt made of rayon. Classy, feminine, and gorgeous. I hold it up to myself as I face my mirror.
“Sam?”
“Yeah?” She stands and looks toward the mirror.
“What shoes should I wear?”
A slow Grinch-style smile crawls across her face. “I think we’ll go with those glittering pastel orange strappy heels you bought on a whim and never wore. Since you like that color now and all.”