Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
I’m standing in front of the mirror, smudging liner under my eyes like I’m twenty again and about to fall in love to some pop song in someone’s old Chevy.
I haven’t worn eyeliner this dark since Owen died.
I haven’t worn it on a date since, well.
Let’s just say my mascara hasn’t flirted in a very long time.
There’s a knock at the door. Not a knock, exactly, a rhythmic tap, like someone trying not to seem eager but failing.
Of course. Noah would be punctual. The man probably sets alarms to water his plants.
In college, he used to show up to study groups five minutes early with color-coded notes and a mechanical pencil he referred to as “Old Reliable.” Meanwhile, I once showed up to a final exam wearing two different shoes and a shirt that may have been inside out.
I think of my beige, neutral, striped boring color-coded closet now and wonder what happened to that version of myself.
I breathe in. Out. My house is actually quiet.
It hasn’t been quiet like this in weeks, and I’m not sure how I feel about the familiar silence being back.
At least it won’t be quiet for long. Matt texted me this morning to say he and one of his college teammates were coming to the big 50th bash this weekend. Which means I should probably hide the emotional support wine by Friday morning.
Viv, who made a miraculous and not-at-all-suspicious recovery the moment Noah left earlier, had insisted on overseeing my outfit like a deranged fashion fairy godmother.
After rejecting seven potential tops for “lacking romantic tension,” she’d poured me into a dark green wrap dress that “brought out my latent sex appeal.” My hair was curled in loose waves that screamed I woke up like this (I did not), and a swipe of berry lipstick had been declared “powerful yet kissable.”
I’d drawn the line at stilettos, opting instead for ankle boots that gave me enough height to fake confidence without risking a twisted ankle and a viral moment.
I looked like someone who’d read Eat Pray Love twice but still paid her taxes on time.
After a final nod of approval, she disappeared with Harper to “work on RSVP logistics” on the back patio.
Translation: drink canned sangria and spy through the window like two underpaid P.I.s.
They had a full night of espionage ahead of them with Marin due back from her date soon.
Now it’s me and the ticking of the kitchen clock and the knowledge that my date is with someone who has known me since the era of Avril Lavigne and microwave ramen.
I do one last check in the entryway mirror. Not bad. The curls are keeping their form in my stick-straight hair. My mascara is doing the Lord’s work. I give myself a firm nod and open the door.
Noah stands there in a navy button-down that fits his body like it was personally tailored by someone who specializes in sculpting forearms. The sleeves are rolled up the perfect amount to make me press my thighs together, Lord knows why.
He’s holding two to-go cups, and I swallow hard as I stare for much too long at the way his long fingers wrap around the drink.
“I brought caffeine.” He holds them up. “Or poetry survival juice. Dealer’s choice.”
I laugh before I mean to. “Look at you, coming prepared.”
“I’ve met you.” He grins. “I remember college. I came emotionally prepared for a night of metaphor and regret.”
“Metaphor and regret is the name of my memoir.”
He chuckles, then leans in slightly, his arm brushing mine, and it’s entirely unfair how fast my nerve endings notice. My skin is a traitor, a teenage traitor in a very uncool mom body.
“If I remember correctly,” I lock the door behind me as we walk to his truck, “you used to drag Owen to those same poetry nights and then immediately undercut the vibe by trying to impress whatever girl you were dating with a hot take about modern verse being ‘culturally overindulgent.’”
“I did not.” He presses a hand to his chest, mock-offended.
“You said spoken word was just therapy with an audience.”
He winces. “Okay, that one sounds familiar.”
“And you said enjambment was an ‘emotional crutch for people who don’t believe in punctuation.’”
“Wow,” he mutters, opening the passenger door for me. “I was kind of a tool.”
“Oh, honey.” I climb into the truck’s cab. “You were a handsome tool. Which is why it worked.”
He shuts the door, and I let myself grin at the sound of his footsteps rounding the front of the truck. I sip the coffee. It’s sweet, steaming hot, just how I like it. This whole thing feels absurd and charming and oddly normal, which is somehow even scarier than it being a total awkward disaster.
He gets in, starts the engine, and glances over at me with a smile that doesn’t feel like a joke. Not a performance. Something soft and maybe slightly hopeful.
“Ready to enjoy poems about heartbreak and seasonal affective disorder with me?” I ask, tilting my head as I lock my seatbelt into place.
“Nothing like existential dread echoing through a converted art gallery. Honestly, I might be more excited about the gallery walls than the open mic. Last time, they had this whole series on rusted bicycles and abandonment. It was incredible.”
Noah shoots me a sideways smile, the kind that says he’s both amused and mildly alarmed. “Define ‘ready.’ Are there snacks? A panic button? A safe word?”
“You could’ve said no, you know.” I nudge him with my shoulder as he pulls out into traffic. “This was a volunteer mission.”
He shrugs with exaggerated martyrdom. “Nah. I figured if I was going to spiral into existential dread, I might as well do it next to someone pretty.”
I roll my eyes. “Charming. Is that on your Tinder bio?”
“First, how do you know about Tinder? Should I be worried I have competition? Second, I don’t have Tinder. I have taste.”
“Oh, please. You once tried to impress a girl in college by quoting Death Cab for Cutie.”
He gasps. “Low blow.”
I grin, trying to hide it behind a sip of coffee. “You’re right. They weren’t even your best sad-boy band.”
Fixing my eyes on the road, I attempt to use my best nonchalant voice. “So, if there’s an open mic, will you be reading something from your emotionally-repressed college journals?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then it’s not a real poetry night.”
We move into downtown, and as Noah starts hunting for a parking spot, I lean back in the seat, already bracing myself for questionable rhymes, overzealous finger snapping, and the possibility that this night might mean more than either of us planned.
I haven’t been to a poetry reading since college, and my heart is battling with my brain. I should be guilty, going to an event with another man. But lately, I’m tired of feeling guilty and sad.
The streetlights cast a warm glow in the truck’s cab.
The windows are cracked and there’s no music, just the soft creak of old shocks and the occasional sigh of wind.
I surprise myself by feeling a strange sense of calm.
Like this isn’t a date-date. Like I’m not dressed for it, even though I definitely changed three times.
It’s just Noah.
My friend, my husband’s college roommate, our mailman, the man who pruned the butterfly garden.
And yet, tonight, he smells a little like sandalwood and something else—soap or cedar or whatever scent they bottle to make you think men who fix trucks also read Virginia Woolf.
We arrive at the poetry reading, and I pause just inside the doorway, drawn immediately to a large mixed-media piece, charcoal and fabric stitched across raw canvas, layered like it was trying to say something its creator couldn’t quite put into words.
“God, I love when a piece feels unresolved,” I murmur, half to myself, half to Noah. “Like it’s still becoming.”
He leans in, studying it with a furrowed brow. “Looks like a haunted quilt to me.”
I laugh, and we move farther in. The gallery glows under the warm, uneven light of mismatched lamps and string lights draped across the ceiling in lazy zigzags.
Someone’s brought a tray of vegan brownies, and there’s a self-serve tea bar labeled Steep Your Feelings.
The room hums with people trying very hard to seem unfazed by metaphor—lots of dramatic scarves, purposeful eye contact, and the occasional aggressive snapping.
Noah surveys the crowd with a kind of fascinated horror. “I forgot that we don’t clap. We snap. So this is where irony comes to die.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been a part of this world,” I whisper, nudging him with my elbow. “It felt weird and wrong to go without Owen.”
“Should I be worried?” he murmurs. “You look like you’re one poem away from resurrecting your ‘all pain is beauty’ college phase.”
I smirk. “Don’t tempt me. I still have a spiral notebook somewhere full of poems about the color gray.”
He shudders. “Did they rhyme?”
“Not even a little. It was all freeform despair. I wore a lot of turtlenecks.”
He lifts his coffee cup in a solemn toast. “To your recovery.”
I clink his cup. “To your survival.”
We settle into two creaky folding chairs in the third row. The vibe is somewhere between open mic night and religious ceremony. Everyone looks ready to Feel Something.
The first poet is introduced as “Blaze.”
Noah leans over and whispers, “That’s either a first name or a threat. Wasn’t that the name of a horse in a children’s book?”
I choke on my coffee. “Maybe. All I can think of is Blaze and the Monster Machines. Pretty sure that was a truck.”
“Pretty sure it’s a horse too.”
I turn my head, fully prepared to argue that Blaze is a monster machine, and he turns his head, presumably to argue his case. His eyebrow lifts. My lips twitch. It ends with my shoulders shaking in silent laughter while I pretend to sip my coffee.
Blaze begins a poem titled “Soul Drain: An Ode to Late-Stage Capitalism.” It is exactly as earnest and deeply felt as it sounds.
He compares to “a leech feeding on the marrow of our collective dreamscape.”
Noah leans closer. “How many leech tattoos do you think he has?”
“Three. Minimum.”
“Do they have names?”
“Oh, for sure. Envy. Greed. And Jeff Bezos.”
He snorts. “You’ve still got it, you know.”
I pretend not to notice the way his voice softens on the word you.
We spend the next few readers snickering into our sleeves like we’re back in college, whispering behind the backs of more earnest souls.
It’s easy. Fun. Like muscle memory. Like we never stopped being whoever we used to be around each other, before we grew up and life changed and we remade ourselves.
Then the next poet steps up, and everything shifts.
She’s older, maybe in her sixties, with soft gray curls tucked behind her ears and a worn flannel button-up over a flowing skirt. She grips the mic stand like it’s steadying her. Her voice is sandpaper smoothed by time.
There’s no puff or pomp to her introduction. “For anyone who has ever outlived someone they loved.”
Beside me, Noah stills. His arm brushes mine.
Her words are gentle but devastating. Grief as the echo left in your bones. Grief as the shape of someone who used to breathe beside you. Grief as a house you still live in, even after all the furniture is gone.
She talks about the way people stop saying their name. The way silence grows teeth. The way the world keeps turning like nothing broke.
By the third stanza, I’m crying.
Not a dramatic, cinematic cry. Just quiet, steady tears.
My cheeks are wet. My breath comes uneven.
My throat closes around something sharp and familiar.
His name. Countless memories—the ones I’ve forgotten, the ones I’ll never let go.
A weight I’ve carried for so long, I stopped noticing how much it was crushing me.
I don’t make a sound, but I feel Noah’s hand move behind me, slow and tentative, resting gently on the back of my chair, then sliding to my shoulder.
Warm. Steady. Not pushing.
Just there.
I don’t lean in.
But I don’t pull away either.
When the poem ends, the room exhales like a single lung.
I do too.
Noah doesn’t say anything at first. He watches me, his eyes soft and unreadable. He’s letting it breathe, instead of trying to fix anything. Like he knows better than to offer words when none will do.
After a beat, he murmurs, “She reminded me of Owen’s mom.”
I glance at him, surprised.
“She used to write poetry.” His eyes are fixed on the now-empty stage.
“Mostly in her garden journal. After he died, I went to check on her. She handed me a bunch of notes tucked between seed packets. Little lines. Tiny griefs. Stuff about how he used to hum when he washed the dishes. How she’d give him a drink of water when he skinned his knee on his bike to distract him from how much it hurt.
How no mother should have to outlive her child. It wrecked me.”
I swallow. “I didn’t know that.”
He shrugs, the movement small. “You were carrying your own wreckage.”
I stare at my hands, folded in my lap. “I think I still am.”
“I know.”
We sit in silence for a minute, surrounded by strangers who are all still pretending they didn’t cry.
“I miss him.” My voice cracks on the last word.
Noah nods. “Me too.”
He leans closer, enough for his shoulder to press against mine. “He would’ve loved this night.”
“He would’ve roasted Blaze within an inch of his life.”
“And made us sit through the whole thing anyway. Out of respect.”
I glance at him. “He always made you tag along with us, didn’t he? He’d guilt-trip you into bad college poetry.”
“I didn’t go for him.” His voice is so quiet, I almost don’t hear his response. “I went for you.”
I look at him then. Really look.
And that’s when it hits me: this isn’t new for him. This feeling. This care. He’s been carrying it for years. Quietly. Without condition.
And I wonder how long he’s known. How long he’s waited without saying a word. Without needing anything from me but my presence.
My healing.