57. Noah
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
NOAH
RECOMMENDED LISTENING ‘TUM SE HI’ BY MOHIT CHAUHAN
I am in a blur, a daze as I kiss Queenie, the love of my life, so tight not even air can get between us. When we finally break apart, her eyes are shining. The whole galaxy beams out of her.
“I love you,” she whispers again. As if she knows I need the reassurance. Even though I’m beginning to believe her. Believe it. Our love .
“I love you too.”
She smiles, a funny, broken little smile. “Good.”
A throat clears behind us. I whirl around and face my father. The man I had punished for as long as I’d punished myself.
Queenie lays her head on my shoulder, her arms around my waist. A warm, comforting bundle of love and warmth around me. I try and look for words, for something…
“Noah,” Dad says brokenly.
Somehow, without me being aware of it, I lurch forward, he does too… and we are holding each other tight. Endlessly. I breathe in the scent of the man he’s always been – expensive cologne, quiet luxury, and sweat. I remember the hundreds of other times he’s hugged me. The night mum passed away he spent the whole night holding me. Sobs racking his huge frame. As I tried valiantly to not cry.
He's hugged me absently and fondly, in every way possible.
“Dad.” My voice cracks too. Right down the middle. Like my cold, lonely heart. “Dad, you’re here.”
“I had to come. After your call. Bel has come too, but she thought…” He leans back and gives me a worried look. “She knows you need time to process?—”
“I don’t,” I assure him quickly. Immediately. “I want to meet Bel. And Thalia. Is she here?”
“She’s in school. But she wants to talk to you too. She’s dying to,” Dad tells me gruffly.
Wetness pools in my eyes. I knuckle it away. “I’d like that. I’d like that heaps.”
Queenie squeezes my waist. My anchor. My beacon. I hold her tight, squeezing her tight to my side.
“Have you met Queenie, Dad?” I ask him softly.
Queenie laughs and so does Dad. They share a conspiratorial look. “We actually have. She’s a keeper, isn’t she?”
“I’m keeping her for sure.”
Queenie blushes and stammers out a greeting. I let her voice float and wash over me. But I just look at my dad. At the small and big changes in him. His hair greyed the year mum was being treated and he’s never bothered to color it. His shoulders, always so broad and lean, are a little more rounded. Like the weight of the world is a bit too much for him. And his face is lined, with fatigued eyes, but he’s still Calvin Dumaine. Lawyer to filthy rich billionaires.
I tune back in when Queenie eagerly points at my chest. “And he might even get selected this week. After he plays the Triskelion Cup.”
“It’s a big might. A huge one, love,” I murmur. For form’s sake. Although I don’t deny the idea is tantalizing. The only one I have wanted for so long. Except, I might still play professional cricket with the Marvels, won’t I? And maybe…maybe it’s enough. For a start.
“It’s a certainty.” Queenie grins. “I told Chachu he needs to select you if he wants to be in my life.”
“You did not!” I am incredulous.
She grins again. “I didn’t need to. Although, I will if he doesn’t. Triskelion needs a winner right out the gate if they want this horribly exclusive camp to be successful. And you, Noah Dumaine, are a winner.”
Dad chuckles and hugs her and murmurs something to her. She dimples prettily and casts me a shy look.
As I look at my girl holding my dad, all our friends in the background, with a lovely melody playing on the jukebox I think, I just might be. I just might be a winner, after all.
What do you know?
Queenie goes back to Coach Devgan’s place that night. But she calls me the second she hits the bed, and we spend the whole night talking to each other. Silly nothings. And deep truths. And everything in between. We make plans for our future, our shared future and hope it will come true.
I’m going to bloody well fight till it does.
Queenie
The next ten days, the last days of summer, pass by too quickly. I try to hold onto each of them, each minute and second, in the palm of my hands. But I only have memories.
Like, the memory of watching Calvin Dumaine weep unabashedly when he watches his son jog out to the pitch and swing an opening boundary in the first Triskelion Cup match. The stands are only a quarter full, but our cheers ring to the rafters. Up to the sky and beyond.
The Barrons Bay Challengers win the match, of course.
And Noah, sweet, romantic, dramatic Noah, throws rocks on my bedroom window in Chachu’s house later that night. Climbing the drainpipe to get into my room. I finally pull him in, shriek-yelling he is going to injure himself pulling this dumb stunt.
Our kiss, so deep and luscious and endless, is a perfect slice of heaven.
I even meet Noah’s family. Isabelle Dumaine is a sweet but strong woman who keeps her man in line. But she is also fashion-obsessed and wants to buy me business casual outfits for lunches with the De Rossis when I visit them in Australia. It’s proof of how much I love Noah that I agree with her and smile dutifully when she talks about pencil skirts and stiletto heels. She means well but I am very much a comfy pants and sneakers kind of girl, and I am not changing for anyone, not even the billionaire De Rossis.
The Dumaines leave after three days of laughter, tears, hugs, dinners, and love. It is beautiful to witness the healing of a frayed relationship that never truly broke.
I move back to the cottage that night. Much to Chachu’s grumbling. And the mafia don look he gives Noah when he hands my bag to him. But Noah is nothing less than deferential and respectful with him. Same as he is with my parents that night on video chat.
Amma-Appa are very surprised to see me introduce a buff Australian cricketer as my significant other. But they take the news well, all things considered.
Ares and Fox eat all the pies I bring home.
Fox crushes me into a bear hug after the second match, the T20 match, because I catch the ball he hit for a six, for the winning Pennington Knights. Both teams are tied for the Triskelion Cup now, having won one match each.
After he puts me down, he smacks a kiss on the cheek too.
Noah shouts, “Take your hands off my girl, you barbarian. Go get your own.”
Fox winks at me. “Why settle for the rest, when I can kiss the best?” He comes in close again, but I push him back. He steps back immediately, respectfully.
He sounds charming, like he’s just messing around and this is Fox, so I don’t mind at all. But then he looks behind me, spotting someone and the mask slips for a moment. Revealing a hard, unyielding man with stony eyes underneath.
I frown. Turn back to check out who’s there. It’s just Mischa, talking to Ares near the boundary line.
It has to be my imagination because Fox hasn’t even met Mischa so far and has no reason to feel strongly about her. I have no time to explore this unsettling thought any further because my man sweeps me into his arms.
The next match, a five-day test match, will decide the very first Triskelion Cup winner. It’s three days later. All of which, Fox spends away from the cottage because Ares and Noah call him the ‘great betrayer.’
I don’t have much time to worry about Fox because I have so much school reading to catch up on. If I am to rejoin classes for the fall semester, I need to complete assignments, take extra quizzes and try and join the other students who are already ahead of me in the neurobiology courses, which is going to be my undergrad specialty.
I even made my first appointment with Thorndon’s counsellor to talk about the Dolly incident. One of the main reasons I behaved the way I have is because I never properly processed what happened to my friend. To me. I just reacted and resisted dealing with it. Which worked, until it didn’t.
Now, I owe it to myself to do the inner work. Noah deserves it too.
Mischa, too, is busy with finishing her reading and assignments for the summer, so she doesn’t come to the matches anymore. The Archer boys show up when they can, work schedules permitting.
So, I attend the fifth and last day of the test match, with my textbooks and highlighters and only absent-mindedly pay attention to the score.
Life, this summer, is finally perfect.
“Can I talk to you, Queenie?”
I freeze, my highlighter stopping on the section of the amygdala in the textbook I’m reading. Swotting, like Noah teases me.
Maybe I shouldn’t have jinxed the gods and used the P-word.
I look up cautiously, slowly.
Veronica Washington sits a seat away from me. She looks as unlike a Barbie as I do. Her hair is straggly, and her eyes are puffy and rimmed red. She has no makeup on, and her Varsity Cheer sweatshirt has holes. She looks a wreck, in short.
“Hey, are you okay?” I ask her, immediately.
Tears fill her eyes and spill over. “You’d ask me that after what I’ve done to you?”
I hesitate. I don’t know how to answer her. Yes, she was horrible to me. And it hurt. A lot. But that doesn’t mean I am okay with seeing her brought low. That’s not me as a person.
But, a tiny part of me is vindicated. Seeing her brought low like this, with open pores.
“I…” She bites her lip.
“Do you want water?” I pass my bottle to her.
She toys with the cap and speaks to it, instead of me. “Dean Granger told me what happened last week. She showed me the statements from Dolly and the other students. I…” She swallows, hugely. “When I confronted Dad, he admitted to everything. He said he’d gaslit you, destroyed your reputation around campus so no one would believe you, because he was afraid of all this coming out. He apologized to me…to me…” Her pink mouth twists bitterly. “For lying to me all this time.”
Veronica raises her eyes to me now. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know. I couldn’t know but it’s no excuse for what I did to you. For my part in it.”
I nod; my throat thick. Both at her obvious contrition and agony and my memory of the last few months.
“I have cut off all contact with him. And I’ll be providing whatever testimony the Dean’s office wants me to, against my father. I’ve moved out of his house too. I don’t…I don’t want…” She shudders. Deeply.
I go on instinct. I move one seat closer to her and put my arm around her shoulders, in a sideways hug. “I’m sorry, too. I really am. This is not your fault. And I hope…I hope…” I swallow too.
I don’t know how to console her. What do you say to the daughter of a serial abuser and assaulter? How do you provide them with any kind of safety?
“But it is my fault. What I did to you. How I treated you. The way I turned my friends, the other students against you…it is my fault.” She wipes at her streaming eyes. “And that video? God, that video. If I’d sent it out, I’d be no less than that evil monster.”
I sigh out a shaky breath. “But you didn’t. You listened to Noah. And you didn’t.”
“I was shit scared of Noah. It’s not the same thing.” She’s still pitiless, except now it’s turned on her.
“Veronica, listen to me.” I shake my head when she starts to protest. “No. Listen to me. Your dad is the monster. The real villain. Yes, you played your part. You were an effective mini-villain. But I don’t think you’re a bad person. You just trusted the wrong person. Your father,” I emphasize gently, “Who you are supposed to trust. He…he…abused you too, right? By constantly lying to you. By making you believe he was the victim.”
She nods, slowly. “Yes, but…”
“But what you need is therapy. Lots of it. I know I do. This is too much for the human brain to handle.” I give her a tiny smile.
Veronica searches my face intently. “How can you forgive me so easily? I was vile to you.”
“I spent a lot of time holding a grudge against you. Against myself. Against the system. Your dad. And I stopped being happy. Being myself. I don’t want to waste any more time doing that. I just don’t,” I answer baldly. “Maybe I’m stupid to reach out to you. Maybe you really are your father’s daughter. But that’s on you, Veronica. I won’t make it about me anymore.”
I don’t need therapy or the wise words of a medical professional to tell me this. Whatever I choose to do, is on me. What I choose to believe and how I choose to act is on me. And I choose to act on faith. Seeing the best in others. But, more importantly, trusting myself when they don’t turn out to be what I want them to be.
That is what this last year and especially this summer has taught me.
I can be a failure, but I’m still okay. I’m still enough.
She shakes her head and wipes at her tears again. She’s messed up and imperfect. There’s even a slight chip on her front incisor. “I am not my father’s daughter. I won’t ever be again.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” I squeeze her shoulder.
The stands cheer and I look at the field. Someone’s hit a boundary off deep square leg, on the other side of the stadium.
“Come on!” I yell and clap. “Let’s finish this. Come on, Challengers!”
I sit back down.
Veronica gives me a small smile. “You really love him, don’t you? The captain? Noah? Teddy told me you’re here for every single one of his matches.”
My heart thuds wildly, then settles against my ribs. “I really do. One of the reasons I am not wholly mad at you is because you brought me him and I love him with everything I am. So…” I trail off.
“That’s nice.” Veronica reaches out and squeezes my knee with her bony hand. “I’m happy for you, Queenie. I really am.”
As I settle on my seat, I choose to believe her. Now it’s up to her, to prove me wrong.
And, with that realization, the last little bitter, vengeful, vindicated part vanishes. Healed by this wild catastrophe of a summer.
Veronica stays for a little bit longer before leaving me with a knee squeeze and a sincere goodbye.
Now, this is the strangest thing to happen all summer. Moronica is not such a moron, after all.
Ares takes a wicket, and I am immediately swept up in the game. I abandon my reading and concentrate on the game.
It’s over twenty nail-biting minutes later. I scream and cheer because Noah and the Barrons Bay Challengers have won the very first Triskelion Cup.
It’s not even a real cup; it’s a freaking bowl – which the coaches joke about. But they hand the cup to Noah and his team, and they are cheering him too. I know my uncle and he is proud of this wonderful young man.
As he should be.
My Noah is the best!