Chapter 9
Noah
It's the greatest night of my life, and I recognize the irony.
Not only am I dead, but she died too. That should make this night horrible, because she deserves to live.
But having her here with me again? There's no greater promise for the afterlife than to spend it with those you love.
I loved other people, people who can come join us in their time, but none like this.
Not the way I loved her in life, and even more in death.
We lay in the light of the melted candles and the Christmas strands, her head on my chest as I run lazy fingers over her spine, afraid that if I stop touching her even for a second, she may slip out from beneath my touch and I'd lose her again.
Nikki has fallen quiet, and I'd hope that it was just sleep, except for I have learned that whatever we are, we don't sleep. Whether we're ghosts or angels or just our bare-naked souls, we shed the cages of mortality, and that meant leaving behind old habits.
"Penny for your thoughts?" I tease, letting her hair slip against my fingers and delighting in the delicate touch of something so simple.
"I'm worth far more than that." She objects, her voice playful despite the fact that she doesn't move. "My head's a mess."
"Tell me about it, then." We have time, after all, for her to try and untangle all of her thoughts.
She does move now, sitting up so that she can see my face. Now I see hers, too, beautiful, ethereal, but troubled. The downward curve of her lips tells me everything her eyes try to hide.
"What is this... existence?"
"Heaven?" I suggest.
It certainly wasn't heaven before her. Before her, time stretched and spanned and looped. A year felt like an eternity. It made my entire life look like the blink of an eye by contrast. Watching her, smelling her, being so close but unable to have her... that was hell.
But she's here now, in my arms like she always should have been. I can't think of that as anything other than heaven.
"It's not what they said." She sighs, her eyes sweeping the dark corners of the church... the church where I was murdered and she was... "Have you seen anyone else? Since you've been here, I mean..."
It takes me a moment to realize what she means... why she's asking.
"Nobody... until you."
The disappointment in her eyes guts me. "My father?"
She doesn't have to ask anything more. I already know what she wants, what she needs, and I'm already shaking my head.
"It's just been me all this time. I think maybe I was waiting on you so that we could go to the next place together..."
Her silent appraisal of me makes me feel worthless, even in spite of feeling valued just moments ago.
"You think there's something else? Something after... this?"
I hope there is. But if there isn't, I'd be okay with it, because she's here with me. She's all that I need, but I am not all that she needs. I can't be; she had too many people she loved, in different ways.
"I think that I've been waiting for you all this time because I wouldn't go without you." It's the truth in the most gentle way I can give it to her. I've had a lot of time to try and figure it out, and that's the closest I can get to understanding wherever we are... whatever we are.
Nikki shakes her head and buries her face in my chest, breathing me in as she clings to me like a life raft.
"I thought you left me..."
I know she did. I watched her cry herself to sleep asking why. I listened to her yelling at me on a moonless night, telling me she would never forgive me for this.
"I would never." I still won't. I don't care what's after this if she isn't with me.
A gentle sob vibrates against my neck, and she clings tighter to me, so I give her the minute to feel.
"Noah..."
I hold her against me, hating myself for delighting in her presence. Her mother will be distraught. Her brothers won't understand. Her sister won't even remember her by the time she's our age. Nikki's death is a fucking tragedy... not an accident, not a mistake, not a cruel hand dealt by fate.
I don't think she's even had a chance to process everything that happened to her before she died; a therapist would probably be a great idea right now, but something tells me they don't have grief counselors for the dead.
It's a shame, cause that would probably be a lucrative business.
I guess we're just supposed to be at peace here.
When her sobs taper to a small sniffle, I pull away from her enough to see her beautiful face, the sorrow and the grief, the rage and pain, the injustice and the disappointment.
"I want to show you something. Will you walk with me?"
She nods without even hesitating, and she doesn't question me as she slips into her dress and I tug on a pair of jeans. She doesn't even object when I slip my fingers between hers and lead her to the front door— the big glass one she stumbled out of for the last time so soon before her death.
I feel her fingers tighten in mine as I lead her around the building, following the footsteps in the snow that are mostly filled in by now. It's a gentle snowfall; the flakes drift lazily around us, but they cover the tracks that lead out here to where her life ended.
The slightest sliver of dawn is on the horizon, threatening another day.
Our lives may have stopped, but the world hasn't.
And as we grow nearer to the spot where hers ended, I realize it's not just the world that hasn't stopped.
The musical element from the snow globe lies in the snow, just the tip of it peeking above a fresh blanket of it.
As I lift it out of the snow, the sound grows louder.
It's distorted, more whiny and less melodic, pausing like it wants to give up before playing for a few more seconds.
Nikki stares at what's left of the snow globe cradled between my hands... my last gift to her. It wasn't meant to be the last, though. It was supposed to be the first gift of the rest of our lives... it's why I had this made for her.
"Noah?" The space between her eyebrows creases as I fiddle with the compartment, searching for the little lever that would discharge the center from the snow globe, letting her see what was so special about this gift.
"Do you like the song I chose?" I laugh, tipping the pedestal of the snow globe upside down so that I can get to the compartment more easily.
"I did." She nods when I glance up to grin at her. "But it's a little creepy now..."
"A thousand years." I laugh. "It wouldn't be enough."
"No." She agrees, smiling softly now. "It would be a good start, though."
"So would this." I tell her, brandishing the ring that I'd had tucked away inside the hollow cut out photo of us.
The moonlight is still strong enough to glint off the silver and make the small diamond shine between my fingers.
Nikki gasps.
I had a whole thing planned for this... giving her the gift on Christmas morning with her family crowded around us.
I'd planned to be sitting beneath the tree with her in my arms when she opened it, and pretending that there was something wrong with the gift so that I could pull the ring out and drop it into her palm.
I'd even imagined what she would say, her confusion, and how her mother would squeal at the mere sight of the ring.
But all of that is gone, taken from us the same way our lives were. So, I guess I can do this the right way.
I drop on one knee, reaching out for her hand. She lets me hold it, using the other one to cover her mouth... exactly how I expected her to.
"Nicolette... I've loved you from the moment I heard you laugh at a joke that wasn't funny... since before I even knew you. And I will love you ‘til the end. ‘Til time stops."
She stares at me with shock on her pretty face, her eyes swimming with tears. "You had that ring there the whole time?"
"A whole year." I nod. "I planned to do this last Christmas, but obviously..." I clear my throat, not wanting to bring up the fact that I never got the chance because I had been murdered.
"You wanted to marry me?"
"I still do." I nod. Of course, marriage would probably look a lot different now, in death. We talked about babies and a dog and the perfect little house and even where we'd have our wedding.
Now those things aren't possibilities for us... but it doesn't mean I can't still love her like my wife. And I do still want to.
"Noah..." She shakes her head the slightest bit, and I don't know if she's answering the question I haven't asked.
"Marry me.” I slip the ring onto her finger, and she admires the glint of it in the moonlight. “It doesn't have to be official to be real."
She stares at me like she's trying to decide what that means. But she knows. Because she knows she died, and she knows that what we did shouldn't have been possible, but it was.
"I wanted nothing more than to marry you..." She swallows, her hand gripping mine softly. "When I was alive."
"Death doesn't have to change us. We can leave this behind and move forward together. We can get back what we lost."
"You mean what was stolen from us." Nikki's voice is hard, cold. "We can't get that back, Noah. We can have something, but we can't have that back."
I stare at her, trying to understand what exactly she's saying. I knew I would marry her from the first date. I planned my proposal no less than fifty times, imagining different scenarios. But I never imagined she would say no.
"I love you... more than anything." Her soft fingertips cup beneath my chin, dragging my eyes to meet hers. "But we can't pretend we're alive when we're not. I can't pretend death is fair for either of us."
It's not fair. I know that.
We've been robbed of so much.
"I'll follow you anywhere, Noah. Til the end. But I can't follow you yet."
"Why?"
"Because..." She shakes her head. "I'm not going to let it go. I can't..."
"You can't go back." I remind her. "You can't change it."
"I don't need to change it." She sighs, letting her head fall forward onto my chest. "I just need to feel like I didn't let it happen..."
"Nikki. I..."
The words stick in my throat, because I don't know what to even say about it.
Our best friend betrayed us both. It wasn't bad enough that he killed me, he had to go and abuse my girlfriend too?
He drugged her and violated her trust and her body.
And worse, still, he stood by and let his friends do the same.
"Noah." She smiles softly, a sad little tip of her lips. "I can't go forward. I'm too angry."
"I'm mad too." I promise her. "I wish I could—"
"I'm done wishing and hoping. I wished for a long time that someone would get through to Nick, that he'd realize he could be better than the company he kept. The joke's on me."
I want to tell her it's not... that the joke's on both of us, because we both fell for it. But she speaks again before I do.
"Not for much longer."