22. Chapter 22
twenty-two
Noel
“ D o you really think I can do it?” Jamie and I are standing in line for another drink alone after leaving Em and Cara to their date. The card she gave me is practically buzzing in my cross-body purse at my hip.
He looks down at me with an amused smile while his fingers flirt with the hem of my sweater. “Why wouldn’t you be able to, Noe?”
I bite my lip. “I’ve done murals before in school. But this is a bigger job than anything I’ve done. More complex.”
“I bet the last one you did in school was bigger than the one you did before that.”
“ Yesss .”
“That’s how it works, right? Opportunities keep getting bigger the more of them we take.” The line moves forward, and his hand presses to my back, moving me with it. “I think you should stay here and paint your flowers.”
“Move to the beach and become an artist? That’s a little pie in the sky, don’t you think?” I laugh a little, but really I’m asking. Of course I know what he’ll say. He’s bold even when he has no reason to be. What I used to call reckless. Not anymore.
“You’re already an artist, so I don’t see why it would be.” The cashier waves him over, holding out my rum hot cocoa and Jamie’s bottled water. “We’re going to keep talking about this,” he says, letting his hand trail over my hip as he passes me.
He’s been touching me all night, his hand on my thigh as we drove here, then firmly clasped in mine when we walked up to Em and Cara. There’s no tentativeness anymore, no wondering if fate is going to take a hard left. It’s arrived.
“So tell me what scares you about it?”
My eyes snap to his, sure I accidentally said that out loud, until I realize he’s picking up our previous conversation. He hands me my cocoa and I flip the lid, blowing on it a few times before taking a sip. It takes me that long to articulate it. “I think I’m worried I’ll like it too much.”
He snorts. “So the worst case scenario is you accept the job and end up happier than you were before?”
That I fall in love with something I can’t keep? Yes. That is the worst case scenario.
I look up from my cocoa to find Jamie’s eyes on mine, his full attention on whatever I’m about to say.
His face slips so easily from amused to intense, and it has this funny way of pulling me with him, straight into confessions I usually hold a lot closer to my chest. “I think…” I say carefully.
“I think I’m still learning how to want things.
When I was growing up, everything was ruled by the things my mother wanted.
I just got used to going with the flow, being happy with whatever was left. ”
His nose scrunches and his lip curls up. It’s an expression somewhere between confusion and distaste. “What’s she like? Your mom.”
I blow out a breath. “She’s… difficult to explain. If you met her, you’d probably love her.”
“Why’s that?” he asks in a tone that sounds more like “I doubt it.”
I chew my lip, considering how to describe a lifetime with Elena Kasey.
“Have you ever shown up to a party late, and found everyone around you is already having the time of their lives while you’re still sober?
And you get the immediate feeling you need to keep your wits about you because someone— someone —needs to be responsible.
But you’re also so tired because you need a break too, and why should it be you all the time?
“That’s what life with my mother is like. She’s always having the time of her life, and ever since I was a kid, I’ve been making sure she has a glass of water or a ride home. Metaphorically, I mean. It’s usually a lot more expensive than an Uber.”
“Sounds like you were a very good kid,” he says, taking my hand and starting toward the water edge.
I sigh and tip my head back. “That’s what she always said. She used to brag that her life didn’t have to change much when I was born. She used to tell everyone what an easy kid I was, how even as a baby, I never cried. I think it was the other way around, though. I was easy because I had to be.”
“Why?”
“It’s just, she had me young, and she had a lot left to do, so we did it together. I guess there’s really only ever been space for one of us.”
Jamie nods, slowly pulling to a stop when we’re at the edge of the point. He wraps his arms around me, settling my back against his warm chest, and I sink into the comfort of it. “Maybe it works out for her this time,” he says quietly. “The van thing, and you get to have your turn.”
I soften my response with a laugh. “It literally never works out. Somehow she got in her head that the world is an oyster full of endless pearls. And when she realizes the particular one she’s chasing is plastic, she comes back.”
“Maybe it doesn’t work out for her then.
But maybe it works out for you in the in-between.
I know it’s hard to break dynamics like that, ones that were set when we were kids.
Trust me, I’m pretty sure my brother still sees me as a delinquent teenager no matter how successful Fortune is.
But your mom’s not here right now to take up that space, Noe.
You’re holding it for her assuming she’ll need it back.
I’m not saying that’s not a good assumption, just that right now, while it’s empty, you can fill it with whatever you want.
If she comes back, well, you do what you have to do, but you do it from where you are. ”
I let that advice wash over me, mix with the affection I have for the person giving it.
Here, in Maine, has always been my space.
That’s why I loved it here. A few months of in-between that I got to fill with what I wanted.
That part hasn’t changed, I realize. I’ve been avoiding it for two years because I was afraid it wouldn’t be that for me anymore without Nana, but as soon as I came back, I found it waiting for me.
I found him waiting for me.
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just… that was really wise.”
Jamie laughs awkwardly, and I tip my head to see his cheeks pink. “I don’t know about that.”
“No. It was. What you said about how your brother sees you. Why do you think that?”
He blows out a breath. “When I was younger, I had a really hard time in school. I wasn’t on meds yet. Adderall.”
“You have ADHD?”
“And dyscalculia.”
“What is it?”
“It’s like dyslexia but with numbers. I try to store a number in my head to, like, track how many beers I’ve poured of each kind, or keep score in a game, but they just…” He makes a fluttering motion by his temple. “Disappear.”
“That’s why you donate money to the children’s learning center,” I say, remembering the sign from his launch.
He shrugs. “I was in college when I got diagnosed. It would have been helpful to have something like that when I was younger.”
I look up at him, eyes wide. “ College ?”
“A professor of mine saw me writing numbers on my hand. It was an applied math class, so it was pretty mortifying. Turned out he had the same issue. Hooked me up with a counselor, and I took some tests. I got a prescription and a pamphlet.”
“Brewing,” I say. “It’s calculus though, isn’t it?”
He smirks. “I don’t do that in my head, Noel.” I push his shoulder with mine. “I’ve never had a problem with advanced math like that anyway. Quiz me on times tables though, and I’d better either have my phone out or a third grader nearby to cheat off of.”
He laughs, and I notice the small shake in it, the way his dimple only flashes instead of stays.
“You’re embarrassed by it,” I say, and wow, Noel. Way to stumble upon a wound and dig.
“I’m not,” he says firmly. Then, “Not the way I used to be. I’m more… eternally frustrated by it. When I was a kid, it was worse. My mom used to hide my homework from Wes’s dad, stuff it in her purse on the way home from school. She was embarrassed by it.”
Something flares in my chest, a protective urge.
Jamie’s face inspires all sorts of adult thoughts, but it’s easy to imagine him as a kid when I look at his eyes.
They spark and smile even when he’s frowning.
His wild streak intimidates me sometimes, but right now he’s reminding me that Peter Pan was actually just a lost boy.
“Anyway, I made it harder than it had to be. In all of my teenage wisdom I chose to deal with it by fucking up harder at life than at school. I was so afraid people would think I was stupid, I let them think I was trouble instead. Turns out that was a harder reputation to shake.”
“Small city,” I say quietly.
“Right. One night… ” He hesitates before blowing out a breath.
“I was at a party meeting Wes of all people. I only just walked in when it got busted up by the cops. I hadn’t had a chance to get myself into trouble yet, so it was mostly just a hassle, until they started pulling kids aside, checking IDs.
Anyone underage, like me, they started giving those tests, you know?
To see if you’ve been drinking. Walk a straight line, all that.
I did what the cop said. Then he asked me to count backwards from twenty, and fuck, he might as well have asked me to perform brain surgery. I couldn’t do it.”
“What happened?”
“He took me in. Cuffed and everything. I did the breathalyzer test at the station and cleared myself, but I still had to sit in a cell and wait for Wes’s dad to come get me.”
“Shit.”
“It was humiliating, getting hauled in like that.” He swallows roughly, then as if on instinct, he puts on a smile meant to lessen the weight of that admission. It’s only half of his regular one, though, and my heart throbs with an ache so deep, I feel it in my toes.