18. Noel
18
Noel
N oel sat slouched in the armchair in his suite, watching a game he had no interest in. Maybe he should call it an early night. He needed his head on straight in order to deal with John again tomorrow. “One more day,” he muttered under his breath, and then he’d have the weekend off and he’d be spending as much of it as he could with Addison Wedgewood.
“If she’s feeling better,” he reminded himself. Her cancellation of their plans that night had been a major disappointment, but he’d forced himself not to entertain any negative thoughts about why, just to take her reason at face value. She hadn’t been feeling well, period.
He checked his phone again, but there was nothing from Addison. There was, however, the unanswered text he’d gotten from Aunt Gigi that had come in more than an hour ago. It had stirred up the embers of anger and resentment inside of Noel, and he’d found himself unable to come up with an appropriate response.
Bruno is asking for you again. I promised him I’d tell you. I understand if you don’t want to come.
He stared at the words, recognizing them for what they were. She hadn’t said “if you can’t come.” She knew he would be there if he wanted to be there. But she also knew without having to ask that he did not want to be there, and she didn’t begrudge him his reasons.
Noel turned off the television and headed for the bathroom. He’d already finished the book Addison had given him, a moving tale of coming of age during the Great Depression, but he had Book 2 in The World on Fire series he could dig into. Had Addison read them yet, he wondered?
An hour later, his eyelids were growing heavy, but the story of the intrepid freedom fighters in The World in Darkness had him locked in. The book took the reader deep into the belly of the earth, traversing the miles and miles of mine shafts that led from one underground community to another, small towns that had sprung up out of the dark as humanity found ways to survive below the scorched surface of the earth. Noel didn’t even have to try to imagine what it was like down there. He’d been into the mines himself so many times, and reading the books gave him an odd sense of déjà vu. The descriptions and scenes were so profoundly accurate that it felt a little like traversing a parallel universe.
He jerked awake with a start, his heart pounding, his forehead damp with sweat, and his hands balled into fists. The book lay facedown on the blanket beside him where it had tumbled from his lap when he drifted off. Noel kicked off the covers and swung his feet over the side of the bed, pushing up to sitting, forcing himself to come out of the dream completely.
He’d been racing through the shafts, his headlamp growing dimmer at every turn, lost and terrified of what was coming after him. Sometimes, he’d caught glimpses of a raging, open-mouthed Bruno charging after him in the dark, other times, an army of undead creatures that had scrabbled their way out of hell itself. The tunnel he’d been in when he’d crashed out of the dream and back into his suite had taken a sudden, sharp descent into a black pit that echoed with the tortured calls for help from people stranded below, buried in rubble. It had felt like a chasm of hopelessness opening up at his feet, and behind him, John Sheridan stood with a phone in one hand, a short-handled miner’s pick axe in the other. Noel had turned to face him, but John’s headlamp had burned so bright and hot that it had blinded him. He’d raised his arms to cover his eyes, the movement knocking him off-balance, and he’d felt himself begin the terrible tumble backwards into the pit.
“Lord, please,” he murmured, covering his face with his hands. “Help.” He didn’t know what else to ask.
The last few days in the office had been a study in walking on eggshells. All three of them were on their best behavior, chatting little and staying busy. But the tension was so thick that it was like trying to walk underwater.
John kept his phone out on his desk in a visibly prominent spot, almost like he was mocking Noel. Why didn’t the guy turn the recording in? Or was that not the point? Was he just trying to keep Noel guessing?
Paula, he’d noticed, had found more than one excuse not to join John in his office to talk, and the few times they’d exchanged more than a few sentences, they’d either done so on the phone, or she’d stood in the doorway of his office, almost like a line had been drawn that she was suddenly afraid to cross. It was odd, Noel thought, but maybe the woman wasn’t quite as blinded by the man’s machinations as Noel had originally assumed.
Noel wasn’t interested in playing games, so he didn’t pretend that everything was just fine the way John seemed determined to do. He came in, picked up any messages or paperwork Paula had for him, then headed to his own desk where he plugged in. If John’s goal was to stress Noel out by not addressing the elephant in the room… well, he was succeeding. But there was no way Noel was going to give the man the pleasure of knowing it.
Needless to say, his office had become the last place on earth Noel wanted to be. He was having difficulty finding satisfaction in completing his tasks, in balancing the books, in planning and preparing budgets. The thrill of ferreting out problem areas and creating solutions seemed to elude him these days. He was beginning to hate his job.
Noel stood up and stretched, rotating his head right and left, working the crick out of his neck from falling asleep reading. His stomach grumbled, not from hunger, but from stress, and he headed to the kitchen for a glass of water and an Alka-Seltzer. He wasn’t sure if the stuff even worked, but it gave him something to focus on.
Something had to give. This couldn’t go on. His sleep was disrupted on a regular basis, and Noel was not the kind of guy who could go night after night without a full seven or eight hours of shut-eye. He was meeting his deadlines at work, sure, but there was no sense of achievement there. Not like back when he worked audits for corporate. One of the things he’d loved about working for corporate was the ever-changing aspects of his job. He and his team would travel to different hotels or resorts, perform their external audits, create tasks and systems to be implemented, then move on. Each new assignment brought new challenges, new faces, new circumstances, and Noel had thrived on that. He’d known taking an internal auditing position would come with a little of the drudgery of monotony, but he hadn’t expected it to feel like this.
“Maybe I’m just not cut out for permanency,” he said aloud as he watched the activated seltzer tablet fizz crazily in the tumbler of water. “Maybe I made a mistake in taking this position.”
Noel sighed and dropped into one of the chairs at the dining table. “I don’t know how to fix this,” he said, then took a big gulp of the soda water, his jaw tightening against the medicinal tang of it.
He should just confront John. Ask him what they could do to get to the other side of this.
Noel shook his head. He had a feeling it was too late for that. The gauntlet, so to speak, had been thrown down the other day, and there now seemed to be a chasm between the men, one with no way across.
Exactly how things felt between Noel and his father.
This was Bruno’s fault.
It was always Bruno’s fault.
His father’s request had made him want to punch something. Worse, it had made him want to punch John, and that had been even more unnerving than the thought of Bruno asking to see him. His rage felt like it sat just below the surface these days, like it might only take a spark to ignite, and then it would burn like a wildfire out of control.
That could never happen.
He couldn’t let it.
He wouldn’t let it.
He would not become his father.
G ood morning, Noel. Just wanted to let you know I’m feeling better. I’m at work today.
Noel closed his eyes and sank back in his chair after reading Addison’s text a second time. His relief was so great that it almost scared him.
Her cancellation of plans last night had been a major disappointment, but he’d forced himself not to entertain any negative thoughts about why, just to take her reason at face value. If she said she hadn't been feeling well, then he needed to believe her.
His phone pinged again. Thank you for your prayers.
He needed to respond. I’m so glad to hear it. And thank you for letting me know. I was worried. Was that too much? He didn’t care. He sent the message.
A few moments later, her response came through. I’m better. Please don’t worry. Can we try again tonight? Or should we just plan on getting together tomorrow?
“Yes!” Noel declared in a loud whisper as he sat forward in his chair and spun around so that John and Paula couldn’t see him interacting with his phone. Not because he was doing anything wrong, but because it was none of their business. Somehow, he’d made it through the week without any more incidents with John, and he wanted to keep it that way.
He did not feel like waiting until the morning to see Addison again. In fact, he was going to have a hard time waiting through the rest of the day to see her this evening. How about dinner at the Lux Solaris here? They make an amazing apple cobbler and serve it on very fancy plates. He’d had the dessert with his meal several times; he couldn’t get enough of it.
It took a few minutes, but Addison finally responded with, I actually make a pretty mean apple cobbler, myself. I don’t have any fancy plates, but would you like to come to my place for supper, instead?
“Yes!” he exclaimed again. “Absolutely, yes.” Of course, that wasn’t what he sent her. He sounded much cooler in his text message. That sounds great. What can I bring?
The conversation ended when Addison texted that a line was forming at her counter. I’ll see you at 6:30.