Chapter 5
JUDE
I sprint over to where Nora lays sprawled on the ground.
Both her hat and her glasses flew from her head in the fall and lay strewn down the row of books. The hat was why I hadn’t recognized her before. We’d almost left.
“Nora!” I exclaim, reaching down and peering around her head. No blood. I take a long deep breath, forcing myself to calm down. She’s knocked herself out. That’s all.
Vaguely, I notice my knees are wet. We’re in a puddle of water.
We were in this row before, our coats dripping onto the floor.
It’s our fault.
“Dad?” Cap asks, his voice shaky. He’s standing a few feet back from us, staring at Nora in horror. “Did we kill her?”
My chest heaves.
Fuck, I’d said that out loud.
“No, buddy. She’s gonna be okay.”
Please, let her be okay.
“Maybe you can get some help, though?”
My guy nods vigorously but doesn’t move.
“Like, over there? Where all those people were?” I point out to the main area.
“Oh,” he says. “Okay, yeah.”
“Just tell the librarian guy, okay? Don’t talk to any—”
But he’s already disappeared. Worry cramps my chest. I remind myself Cap knows all about stranger danger; he’ll be fine. Still, this is a shit situation. I thought I’d feel bad if I showed up and she didn’t want to see me. But this is worse.
I lean down and stroke Nora’s cheek. “Nora? Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
I’ve been around plenty of guys who’d been knocked out on the tennis court before, including me. Plenty of other people need first aid of other types at the hotel, too. I once had a guest have a heart attack on the golf course. I did chest compressions, and somehow, he made it.
I’m good in a crisis situation. I can handle it.
Except…those people weren’t Nora. Nora isn’t helpless, but shit, I don’t know. She is so little and so soft and so much more…breakable.
“Fuck, Nora, please wake up,” I whisper. “I knew I was going to shock you by showing up here, just didn’t know you’d faint at the sight of me.” I grimace. “Wake up and slap me or something, Nora.”
That’s what I deserve after the way we left things.
“Sorry. That was supposed to be a joke.”
It’s what I do when I’m nervous, which isn’t often. I played pro sports without so much as a flutter of nerves, at least by the end.
Not at the beginning.
As I sit there praying for Nora to wake up, I hear my old coach’s voice. The one who nearly broke me.
Your brain can’t handle more than one thing at a time, Jude, do you hear me? Focus. That’s the only fucking way!
But he was right. When I don’t focus on what’s most important, I lose. I do things like kissing my best friend. I need to hold that focus so tight, nothing gets in at the seams.
My hand wrapped around the racket.
My son.
Nora throws that all out of whack.
“Nora,” I whisper. “I need to know you’re okay.”
I’m not focusing. But I’m scared shitless I’ve done some kind of permanent damage to our Nora.
I bend down, ostensibly to whisper in her ear, like that’ll make her register my words.
But for a moment I’m stuck—her shampoo smells different.
Something floral and spicy. But she still smells like her underneath that, and it makes my whole chest hurt.
And instead of asking her to please wake up, I say, “This has been one of the worst years of my life, Nora, and I vowed I wouldn’t have bad years after the accident. I miss you.”
Then I kiss her on the cheek.
When I pull away, her eyes are open.
“Nora!” Relief floods through me like a goddamned firehose.
“Jude?” she croaks.
“Yeah, Nor. It’s me. Thank Christ.” I cup her face. “How’s our Anne of Green Gables?”
“I’m not wearing the braids, Jude,” she whispers.
Her hair is spread out behind her like orange fire.
“Yeah. Well. You made me watch the show, so now you’re stuck with it.” Without meaning to, I brush her hair back from her face once more, feeling the silky strands slide through my fingers.
“Two different versions,” she whispers.
“You know I’m still mad the latest one was cancelled.”
I’ve missed her so much I tried reading the Anne of Green Gables books last summer when Farrah was around, needing to remind myself of what it was like to spend time with a woman I actually wanted to be around. Who wasn’t one of my sisters.
But it hurt too much to read more than a few pages. All I could think about was Nor.
She smiles. Her eyes are wet.
“Let’s get you up,” I say. “Unless you’re hurt?”
She stretches, and I try not to look at the way her back arches off the floor, how it sends this hot little tingle down low like Nora’s movements sometimes do.
“I think I’m okay.”
I help her to sitting. I’ve got long fingers, and they span nearly her whole back. Has she always been this little? She used to complain about being scrawny, but to me, she’s perfect.
“Where’s Cap?” she asks, making me snap quickly out of wherever my brain had wandered off to. It does that a lot, especially around Nora.
Cap. Shit. “I’m not actually sure,” I confess.
“What?” She moves to stand, then cries out, cringing, with a hand to the back of her head. “Ow.”
She is hurt. Fuck. I ease her back down.
“He’s here somewhere; he went to get help.”
As if we conjured them, footsteps patter down the hallway, and a moment later, Cap appears with that grouchy-ass librarian who tried to tell us to get lost earlier.
“Good work, Cap.”
“Cap!” Nora exclaims, but she isn’t quite looking at him. She can’t see him without her glasses, I realize. Cap runs toward her and jumps.
I have to wrap myself against her back to keep them both from falling, and for a moment, I’m holding both of them in my arms.
My heart feels like it’s melted into mush.
“Oh buddy,” Nora says, her voice cracking. She’s crying. “I missed you so much.”
The librarian stands there a moment, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. Then he squints down at Nora. “Your friend promised there’d be no more trouble!”
He doesn’t care that she nearly cracked her head open. “Hey!” I say, moving to stand, but Nora puts a hand on my thigh as she gets up, completely distracting me.
“Sir,” she says, clutching Cap against her. “I slipped on the floor in your library. That’s not exactly causing trouble!”
For a moment, both of us stare at Nora, so different with her hair and no glasses. I’ve never heard this level of assertiveness from her.
“Yeah,” Cap says, “we should sue you!”
The librarian rears back. “Sue!” He takes a step backward, and I noticed a vague crunching sound, but I’m too distracted by the sight of Cap’s wet eyes.
He was crying too. How could I have missed that? I get to my feet, coming in close beside him.
I should have tried harder to see her before this. Cap needed her. We should have visited in the summer. Except…she didn’t want to see me. She’d made that clear.
She probably still feels the same way; I’ve just knocked it out of her temporarily.
“I—I” the librarian sputters. “We don’t…that’s not—”
“Do you want to sue?” I ask Nora.
She sighs, squeezing Cap again. “Maybe later.”
“You’re off the hook,” I tell the librarian. “But maybe send for someone to mop up these floors so no one else gets hurt?”
The librarian presses his fingers to his brow like he had a handkerchief, but forgot he wasn’t holding it. Clearly, he’s relieved the litigious Americans have backed down. “Yes. Yes, a mop…”
He bustles off, leaving the three of us alone.
After we make sure she’s really not hurt, Cap reverts to his excitable self. “Nora, you wanna see our hotel room? It’s really big and there’s a giant TV and a pool and a window where you can see the bridge where they used to put the chopped-off heads!”
“Cap!” I clear my throat, standing. Inviting Nora back to our hotel room is awkward, to say the least.
“Sounds awesome,” Nora said. “But I can’t see anything right now.”
Her glasses. I scan the floor, then grimace as I take in the pile of crunched glass where the librarian was standing. “Uh-oh.”
“He broke them!” Cap exclaimed. “We should definitely sue!”
I frown. “How do you know so much about suing?”
“Uncle Eli!” Cap says as if it’s obvious.
Of course, the oldest of my two brothers, the hot-headed Eli, would be the one to talk to a kid about litigation.
“They’re broken?” Nora squeaks. “Jude, you know I’m blind without them!”
“We’ll get them replaced,” I say, picking up what’s left of them. They’re completely shattered, arms and lenses. Nothing salvageable. Guilt runs over me as I glance at our still-slick jackets. “Sorry, Nor. You’ve got more at home, right?”
Nora’s blind without her glasses; at home she kept a dozen pairs stashed all over her place. Some at my place too. I left them where they were when I found them, as if she’d be back at any moment.
“Of course, but first I have to get home—” Nora screws up her face. She’s going to cry again. This is some kind of record, and it’s all because of me.
“Uh, buddy, can you grab Nora’s hat? And go tell that grumpy librarian to hurry up with the mop? I’ll meet you by the place we came in.”
Cap nods, looking proud to have a real job to do, and after he tosses me her hat, he disappears around the corner once again, hopping nimbly over the puddles.
“I only have three pairs at home,” Nora says. “They’re custom made and if anything happens to them—” She paws at the air, taking a shaky step.
I catch her hand in mine. “At least it’s not the apocalypse.”
Nora’s terrified about the concept of apocalypses, not because of the fire and mayhem, but because of her bad eyesight.
Nora lets out a breath. There’s a hint of a smile there. But that’s all it takes to make my heart buoy.
“Anyway, if it was, I promised I’d take care of you, remember?” I let go of her hand to pull her cap over her head. “In the apocalypse, I mean,” I clarify, brushing her hair from her eyes before I remember myself.
I need to stop touching her damn hair.
“Come on,” Nora says. “I need to get my books.”
I smile to myself. Her books come next in importance after glasses.
I reach for her hand again, squeezing it tight.