Chapter 9
Nora remembers another storm when she was younger, when her parents were still alive, when she felt normal. Nora’s mom didn’t like going into the basement in the dark, so the three of them gathered in the hallway under the row of family portraits lining the walls. Nora’s dad brought sleeping bags, pillows, and a lantern to make it feel like camping. It did a little bit, from what Nora remembered.
Her dad told stories about the weirdest funerals he had ever attended, and her mom pretended to be appalled, as if she hadn’t been right next to him when the events occurred. Seven-year-old Nora giggled as if drunk aunts tripping over gravestones were the silliest thing she had ever heard. This was how their dynamic worked. Her dad said silly things until he made Nora laugh, and she could be a tough audience. Nora’s mom would be the one to answer questions to clean up the mess. Nora’s dad had been a fun person, and sometimes there’s a lot of cleaning up to do around fun people. Her parents weren’t the lovey-dovey types, but Nora remembers nights like that when they seemed as happy as any couple could be, even while waiting for a tornado to pass.
This one should have passed by now. She had once again waited out another storm alone, and the slimy feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that it wouldn’t be the last. Maybe she would always be here in the dark in the hallway of her dead parents’ house. Maybe there was nothing else. She had tried to embrace it, hadn’t she? Maybe there was more she could do to make it her own, since it was her own now. Replace the thirty-year-old wallpaper. Replace the family portraits in the hallway. Etsy probably has a lovely print of Sam Malone she can frame. He’s the other resident of the household, after all.
A thunderclap makes Nora jump. Rain hammers on the roof and against the windows. Nora picks up her phone and opens the podcast app. She scrolls through episodes before tossing her phone out of reach. She should have thought to charge it before the power went out. She isn’t one of those people with a portable phone charger ready to go. Well, she has one somewhere, but it had become useless fairly quickly because she lost the charging cord first, followed by the charger itself. Instead, she is one of those people who knows that there’s a fifty-fifty chance that the power will go out and she’ll choose to do nothing to prepare for it.
She did think to buy a box of wine on her way home to make sure she wouldn’t run out. With the lantern lighting her path, she goes to the kitchen and manhandles the cardboard until the plastic nozzle appears and releases the wine into her glass.
The rain and wind begin to die down outside, so Nora relocates from the hallway floor to the couch. Just before her timer goes off, Garrett calls.
“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“How are things there?” he asks, ignoring her question.
“The power is out. I’m sitting in the dark.”
“Do you want some company?”
She would have loved some an hour ago. “If you mean you, then yes.”
“I’m on my way. I’ll be there soon.”
Nora lights another lantern and fills another glass with wine, assuming he’ll be in the mood for a drink. She wants to be a normal person and forget about his behavior earlier tonight, but she also wants to yell at him for being negligent. Maybe she should flip a coin.
She takes her mind off this debate momentarily by calling tocheck on her grandpa, Ms. Annie, Jean, and Margaret.They’re all fine. None of them want to talk long, so they can save theirphone batteries. Nora almost asks them when any of their phone batteries have gotten below eighty percent, but she doesn’t.
Garrett pulls into the driveway, and Nora takes a lantern to meet him at the door.
“I’m very happy to see you,” Garrett says, wrapping his arms around her.
Nora jumps back. “You are soaking wet! Were you just standing out in the rain?”
He shrugs out of his raincoat. “It was coming down pretty hard earlier.”
“Garrett,” Nora starts. She doesn’t know what to say, and she really doesn’t want to fight, so she shakes her head and leaves him standing in the foyer by himself.
He follows her through the dark living room to the couch, where she hands him his glass of wine. He takes a sip. “Go ahead.”
“Go ahead what?”
“Say whatever you want to say.”
“I don’t want to say anything.” She takes a drink of her own wine.
“I know you’re mad.”
“I’m disappointed.”
He barks out a laugh. “In my experience, ‘disappointed’ has always been worse.”
“Well, what were you thinking, Garrett? Maybe a tornado doesn’t mean anything to you, but you shouldn’t be in the car. That’s like the most basic rule.”
“I was perfectly fine.”
“Thank God. Literally.” She clasps her hands together and closes her eyes. “Thank you, God, for sparing my idiot boyfriend’s life tonight.”
He puts a hand over hers.
“My parents died in a car accident. It was not easy to sit here while you drove into a tornado. If your boss expects that from you, you need a new boss.”
“I’m sorry I worried you, but I was not driving into a tornado. I was safe.”
She intertwines one of her hands with his. “I don’t know that I’ll ever believe that in these sorts of situations. I want to ask you to refrain from putting your life in danger.”
“You’re going to have to trust me sometimes.”
“It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s the universe.”
Garrett pulls her closer to him. “I really don’t want my job to come between us.”
She can’t read his face very well by lantern light. Nora wouldn’t have made it in any century without electricity. “Why do you think it could?”
“Nights like tonight.” He leans his head against hers and kisses her softly above her ear. “Sometimes I have to go places and miss things. I’m good at my job. It means something to me. I feel like it’s what I’m supposed to be doing, as weird as that sounds when I say it out loud.”
“It’s not weird to like your job.”
“And honestly, I’m not willing to give that up so I can go to a random birthday party in the middle of the week or make it home by a certain time or whatever else might come up.”
She considers this.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m trying to decide if it should bother me more than it does. I don’t like you putting yourself in danger, but the rest of that isn’t a huge deal to me. I don’t have much going on that you would miss. I’m usually just sitting on the couch.”
“See, I can’t tell if you mean that or if you’re actually saying something else.”
“What else would I be saying?”
“That you’re sitting home alone, and I should feel bad about it.”
“I’m sorry—”
“You have to stop apologizing for everything.”
“But what if I really am sorry?” She sits up to look at him. “I’m not manipulating you. You asked me to trust you, and you need to trust me, too, even though I’m not the one driving into tornadoes.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Well, I do worry about you. That’s the whole point of this conversation. I spent hours worrying about you.”
He takes a deep breath. “Can we back up and start over?”
“Start over from where?”
“I don’t know. Whenever it was in the conversation that you started getting mad at me. I would like to go back and redo it.”
Nora laughs. “I don’t think it works like that.”
“Says who?”
“Most people.”
“I don’t want to fight.”
“Neither do I. Look, I’m glad you like your job. We can figure all of that out. But I’m never going to be fine with you risking your life when it could be avoided. I don’t think you would like it if I did that.”
“I’m a better driver than you.”
She leans away from him and crosses her arms. “Will you please take this seriously? Maybe this is what happened with your other girlfriends. I’m trying to have an honest conversation, and you’re ignoring my side of it.”
He tries to take one of her hands, but she doesn’t let him. “I’m not ignoring you,” he says. “I’m sorry about what happened to your parents and everything that came after that. I’m sorry you’ve had to do it alone. It’s not fair, and you didn’t deserve it.”
Her cheeks redden. She hates this feeling. Like she’s one of the dogs in a Sarah McLachlan commercial. “I don’t need your pity. Once it runs out, you’ll be bored with me. I’ve seen it before.”
“Look at me, please.”
She does as he asks, and he stares into her eyes, willing her to see the truth. “Do you honestly think I’m with you because I feel sorry for you? Is that what you really think?”
“I don’t know what I think.”
He startles her by taking her face in his hands. “Is it not obvious that I love you, Nora? I am sorry that you’ve had bad things happen to you. But I’m pretty sure I loved you before I knew any of that. I know this is way too fast, but it’s how I feel. I can’t help it.”
Nora watches enough soap operas that she should have known this was coming, but she’s caught off guard. With her mouth open.
“You don’t have to say anything back,” he says. “That’s really not how I planned to have this conversation, but I’m tired, and, well, it’s the truth. I’m not going anywhere. I do hear you, and I promise I’ll think about your feelings next time.”
She lunges forward to kiss him. To keep him from changing his mind. She wraps her arms around his neck to pull him closer. His hands are in her hair before she realizes she forgot to respond. “I love you, too, Garrett. It’s way too soon, but I feel it, too.”
Nora didn’t know that she’s been waiting for a conversation like this, for Garrett to tell her how he feels, to be ready for the next step. Other boyfriends have said that they loved her in the past: one in high school, a guy in college who said it only when he was drunk, and then Charlie. She doesn’t doubt that they loved her in those moments, but something always happened for them to change their minds. Drifting apart, sobering up, death.
She prays to anyone listening that this time, things will be different. That he’ll be the one who stays.
She climbs onto his lap, straddling him against the couch, trying to get closer to him. She pauses long enough to unbutton his shirt and toss it aside, so she can touch his bare skin. She can’t see him in the dark, but something feels different. Maybe she should have noticed the night before, but she was too preoccupied with him being in her house and in her bed and finally sleeping next to her after all of the nights apart.
“Have you been working out?”
He smirks. “Yes. I had some angst from missing my girlfriend that I needed to get out.”
“I dug up the backyard.”
“What?”
“I’ll show you tomorrow. Could you kiss me, please?”
He pulls her shirt over her head, and they’re kissing again. His hands travel up her back and down past her waist, pressing her against him.
Nora can’t take it any longer. She stops long enough to snatch the lantern off the table a little too harshly, leading him down the hallway through piles of pillows to her bedroom and onto her bed. She runs her hands over his body, and she can’t believe he’s hers.
Garrett reaches for her bra, then hesitates. “We still don’t have to do this now.”
“I want to.”
“I’m not trying to pressure you into anything—”
She puts a finger to his lips. “Trust me.”
They take off one piece of clothing at a time, until there’s nothing between them. His lips are on her neck, and her mind is running away with itself. What if she doesn’t remember what to do? Or if she does something weird? Or if she’s not enough after all this waiting?
She pulls his face to hers and kisses him deeply, silently begging him to distract her. She groans when he presses his body against hers, and then his hand is there, making her forget anything that had worried her in the first place. When she looks at him, she still can’t believe he’s real. He is hot, but it’s more than that. He loves her.
“Will you hurry up, please?” she asks as he reaches for a condom in the drawer of her nightstand. She had purchased them when she bought the box of wine without knowing she would need them so soon.
He laughs as he rolls back to her, tearing open the package. “No, I will not be hurrying at all anytime soon.”
True to his word, he’s slow and sure, and every time Nora starts to disappear in her head, he finds a way to bring her back. During the less romantic parts, like when Nora’s calf starts to cramp or when Garrett’s hand gets tangled in her hair, they laugh at each other and at the weirdness of it, and Nora is amazed that she can reach this level of joy, something she thought was lost after everything that had happened.
Afterward, Garrett holds her close and runs his fingers up and down her arm.
“I love you,” she whispers.
“I love you, too.” By the sound of his voice, he’s falling asleep. She had been angry at him earlier, and she tries to arrange that in her mind next to the happiness inside her now, but she can’t quite remember what they were fighting about in the first place.