15. Chapter 15
fifteen
Jamie
I t’s hard to top the farm . That’s what I tell myself as Noel and I make our way down an unusually busy Commercial Street, dodging tourists with laminated badges hanging around their necks.
She’s in front of me, walking single file so we can squeeze through the crowded sidewalk more easily, which means I can’t even talk to her.
This was not at all what I had in mind when I texted her.
Yesterday in my truck, when she’d asked if I wanted to hang out again, I’d put together a whole plan in my head.
I thought we could walk the cobblestones, breathe in the fall ocean air.
I figured there’d be a band playing on the deck of at least one of the waterfront restaurants, and I could buy her dinner, give myself the same bullshit “this is practically a business meeting” reminder while looking at her under the string lights and setting sun.
But my plan’s been ruined by a cruise ship docked at the pier and a lighthouse tour bus that’s stopped in town for lobster rolls.
When the hostess at the third place we tried said it would be an hour for a table, she might as well have kicked me.
We ended up splitting some poutine and a couple of sodas from the takeout counter of a seafood place.
If it had been a date, it would have been a pretty shitty one, and I’m starting to realize that might be the reason I’m so pissed about it.
Our path clears enough that I can step to her side again, tuck her between me and the buildings that line the water. “So, did you paint my hops?” I ask, shamelessly bringing up yesterday as a reminder that I’m still one for two in the good idea department.
“Mmhmm.”
I want to ask her when I can see them, but there’s a prickly edge to her tonight, something nervous and stiff. I haven’t known her that long but in my job, you get to read people pretty well, and right now, normally sweet and timid Noel is a little pissy.
And I’m irrationally annoyed at the city for not somehow being on better behavior, as if everyone should part around us so I can stand as close to her as I’d hoped when I made this plan.
Another pedestrian decides to pass directly in between us instead of going around, and I feel myself start to approach the edge of my patience.
“Hey, hold up.” I catch her elbow and gesture with my head for her to pull over. “This idea kind of sucks,” I admit. “I’m sorry.”
She blows out a breath in polite agreement. “It’s okay.”
“Do you want to do something else?”
She glances out at the water. “I am getting kind of cold.”
“And kinda annoyed?”
She smiles, maybe the first one I’ve gotten out of her tonight. “A little. But not at you.”
Well, that’s good news, but her confirmation that she’s unhappy lands in the center of my chest.
“Me too,” I tell her. “Here.” I shrug off my hoodie and slide it over her shoulders. She clutches it closed.
“Thank you.” This time when she smiles, her face melts into it’s normal soft, sweet expression, and it renews my determination to fix this. Downtown was a bad idea, but it’s not like I don’t know this city like the back of my hand. I should be able to come up with an alternate plan.
“Maybe we should—”
I’m cut off from thinking out loud when, out over the water, the ship horn sounds, warning the passengers not to miss their call time. Noel and I both turn toward it, and just like that, my original idea gets a new setting—sunset, somewhere quieter. Just me and her.
“Can you see these ships from your house, Noel?”
“I think we could see these ships from space.”
I remember watching them pull out of the harbor from the beach across from Bob’s place, and I run it through my mental GPS, reverse it. “You know, you could probably see your house from here,” I tell her. “If we were high enough.”
She scrunches her nose. “There’s no way.”
My grin splits. “Only one way to find out. Come on. I know how we can get high enough.”
“Absolutely not.”
I laugh. “Come on, Noel. I promise it’s safe.”
When she aimed that skeptical look at me, I was hit with the compulsion to prove this to her. Not because I want to be right, I know I am, but because I think she’ll get a kick out of it.
“Safe or not, it’s illegal to climb a fire escape and—” She gestures wildly to the windows. “People will see us!”
“It’s a commercial building. Everyone is gone for the night.” One arm protecting my ribs, I kick over a couple of pallets that are leaning against the wall. “And it’s only, like, misdemeanor illegal.”
She gapes at me. “Only misdemeanor? Only ?”
Biting my lip to keep from laughing again, I push the pallets into place with my foot, then climb up carefully. From here it’s an easy reach to the extension ladder on the fire escape, and I pull it down with my left arm, then step back to the ground in front of her. “Ready?”
“This is why Fran doesn’t like you, isn’t it? This kind of stuff?”
“That’s offensive. I’ve never even looked at Fran’s fire escape,” I say, but she’s turning on her heel. “Wait.” I catch her around her waist, laughing. “Come on. Don’t you trust me?”
“Not particularly,” she says, but she’s already given herself away, relaxing against my chest, her arm covering mine where it wraps around her.
“Please?” I whisper it with my lips pressed to her hair, which is a sensation I’m not sure I’ll ever get over. The softness of it. The floral scent pressed right into my olfactory system. “I promise it’s safe.”
Noel bites the tip of her thumb, looking back and forth between me and the iron steps. “Can we really see it?”
“Promise.”
She closes her eyes and blows out a slow breath. I see the muscles in her neck and jaw tighten, then slowly go loose. “I am putting so much trust in you right now.”
I know she is, and damn if it doesn’t puff my chest right up.
“Alright, come on.” I maneuver her forward, keeping my hand firmly on her hip for as long as I can. “Up you go.”
“I have to go first?”
“This way I’m between you and the ground. Just in case.”
Her eyes flare, then narrow when she sees my grin. I’m kidding her, of course. I’d never put her in danger.
I wait while she weighs it, prepared to abort this mission if she really puts her foot down, but eventually she starts climbing.
When we get to the first landing, the air is noticeably cooler, tinged with salt.
There’s still a potent ache in my side when I fill my lungs, but I suck it in anyway.
It’s a small price to get this kind of oxygen hit.
In front of me, Noel’s skirt flutters in the new breeze. “This better be worth it,” she mutters. “My hamstrings haven’t had this much action in a long while. Oh my God.” She stops short, and I bump into her back. “Your knee must be killing you. Jamie !”
“It’s fine. Better. We’re almost there now, anyway. No sense in turning back.”
She swallows and keeps going, but her grip on the railing has turned white-knuckled.
“Doing okay?”
“Fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes,” she snaps, but she turns to look at me instead of where she’s stepping, and her toe catches the next tread. She pitches forward.
“Woah.” I grab for the railing with one hand and catch her with the other, pulling her tight against my chest.
“Oh my God. Oh my God .”
“You’re okay,” I tell her. Better than me . I set my chin on her head and squeeze my eyes shut against the throbbing pain where her elbow caught my side.
“I almost fell to my death.”
“You didn’t.”
“Why do you sound like that, then?” she demands. And yeah, I sound like I can’t pull in a full breath because my vision is white with pain. My knee might be on the mend, but my ribs are still sore as hell, and that was a direct hit.
“This was a ridiculous idea. I don’t know why I even—”
“Noel. I will concede the point, but I need a second. I’d rather not pass out this high off the ground.”
“Oh,” she says, looking over her shoulder. “Oh!” She spins toward me and claps a hand over her mouth.
“Fuck,” I choke out, gripping the railings on either side of us and letting my head drop.
“Are you okay?”
“Yup.” Nope . “I will be. Just gotta breathe through it for a second.”
She seems to forget she’s mad, fussing over me instead.
She’s two steps above me, and bent over like this, the top of my head is in her cleavage which is, quite frankly, confusing.
I discovered that night on her porch that pain doesn’t seem to dull my reaction to her, and it’s fifty-fifty whether a pair of broken ribs are worth this little bit of concern she’s showing me.
“You’re a terrible patient,” she says quietly. “Your doctor should fire you.”
I laugh, then wince, and her fingers leave my forearm, brushing the hair off of my forehead where I’ve broken a sweat from the exertion of managing this much pain.
The gesture is so sweet, so gentle, and my heart is lodged in my throat as I watch all of my laughable lies flutter away into the night air, the ones that involve this being some sort of business-related friendship.
If that were true, I wouldn’t have been so irrationally angry about my failed dinner plans tonight. If that were true, I wouldn’t be thinking about using what little bit of strength I have right now to kneel down in front of her on these steps and touch her as sweetly as she’s touching me.
When she drags her nails lightly through my hair, like a dog wanting its belly scratched, I let my head fall into her palm.
Something happens inside my chest that I haven’t felt in years.
A sensation like falling backwards on a trampoline and riding the momentum back up.
It feels so good, and I am so fucking gone.
“Better?” she asks.
“I’ll survive.” My voice is scraped raw with an embarrassing amount of emotion. “Are you okay?” I ask when I’ve unfolded myself slowly, testing how much air I can pull in without pain.
She gives me the sweetest, guilty smile. “I think maybe I was okay the whole time.”
“Maybe.” I feel drunk as I reach for her ponytail, stroking my fingers through to the curled ends before giving it a quick, teasing squeeze. It’s an indulgent risk, a spread of my cards face up on the table.
But when those big gold eyes meet mine again, wide and a little hazy, just like that, I’m reminded of the high of adrenaline that comes with doing something particularly risky.
My blood rushes, and I see it like a flashing neon sign, the same thought that’s been in the back of my head since she came back here: Noel and I were never going to be friends.
She swallows, then shivers. Then because she’s ever responsible, she takes a deep breath through her nose and lets it out slowly, like a silent agreement that whatever we were both thinking would be better to revisit on solid ground.
“Are we going up or down?” I ask, and she pulls her lip between her teeth, looking over the railing. “It’ll be worth it. I promise.”
Nodding, she turns around and keeps climbing, steady and slow, but determined.
Don’t look at her ass, Bishop. You do not get to look at her ass after that.
We make it to the top landing, and there’s a gooseneck ladder there leading to the roof. Noel glances at it, then back at me. “I’m not going up that.”
“This is high enough, but you have to come to the railing.”
Her back is plastered against the brick wall, arms spread. “My heart is beating out of my chest.”
“That’s how you know it’s worth it. Come on.”
Slowly, she points her toe in front of her, then lets her heel drop.
When it doesn’t spontaneously go through the steel, she shifts her weight and takes a step.
The landing is maybe four feet wide, so one and a half more and she’ll get the view we came for.
I put my hand out, and she eyes it with a teasing smile.
“Why do I feel like you’re Peter Pan convincing me to go to Neverland? Oh, God, does that make me Tinkerbell?”
A laugh bursts from my chest making me clutch my side. “I see the resemblance. You’ve got her nose.”
“Her nose ?”
“It’s true. It turns up at the end.” I’d noticed it first thing, how cute her nose was—tipped up and freckled.
I even had a recurring daydream of her doing the nose twitch like Samantha from Bewitched making all of my dreams come true.
I drop my eyes to the little stud in her nostril, remembering it from that night, how it had flickered in the candlelight, and how I’d felt guilty for liking it that much.
“Anyway,” I say, clearing my throat. “I think that analogy makes you Wendy, but either way, they were both in love with Peter.” I bounce my eyebrows.
One eye roll and a few deep breaths later, she takes my hand.
I resist the urge to tug her toward me, instead letting her use me for leverage to do it herself.
She finds the courage, putting one foot in front of the other two more times until she’s beside me, and I take her hands and set them firmly on the railing.
“See, you’re fine,” I tell her, shifting behind her, locking her in.
“I’m fine.”
“Now look.” I point across the water to where a small lighthouse blinks at us, and I know she’s orienting herself when I feel her nod against my chest. “Look for the fishing shacks.” Another nod.
“To the right. There’s the white church.
Behind it, you can see that row of pine trees that abuts your road. ”
“I see it!”
“Look for the hip roof.”
“Which one is mine?”
I have no idea. They’re a blur of gray from here. But I give my best guess from memory of how many houses she is from the turn off. “Fifth one in?”
“Yeah,” she whispers. “I think that’s it.”
Her head tips back, resting on my chest, and I feel like I’ve just been given an award. Despite the nagging ache in my side, I think this was my best idea to date.