10 #2
Noah looked at his dad when he answered. “It was interesting—”
“How interesting can it be, changing people’s diapers all day?” Marty called from where he was stabbing his finger into a bowl of M I knew that.
That was part of why I didn’t answer. And the other part was because I was still trying to feel like this was real.
Because it had that same feeling of an unfinished conversation, like we’d never stopped doing this.
The epic fight with Noah’s mom at the rehearsal dinner.
The meltdown after Jonathan threatened to cut Noah off if he didn’t move back.
God, everything—every single fucking thing—with fucking Marty.
But we had stopped doing this. There’d been years when we hadn’t done this.
Years I hadn’t seen Noah. And so it was like seeing my reflection in a mirror, only it was some version of myself from years before.
The guy who made it worse after every family event.
The guy who picked at every little insult.
The guy who hammered and hammered and hammered.
The guy who was always saying what everybody else should do.
Some of that, if I was being honest with myself, probably hadn’t changed all that much. But some of it had changed. I’d changed. A little, at least. I hoped. I’d spent a lot of my life running away from anything that made me uncomfortable. And getting angry was just one way of running.
So, yeah, there was still this voice inside me that wanted to tell Noah to stop crying, that it wasn’t his fault, that his brother was a piece of shit and his parents were the two biggest mind-fucks to ever walk the planet, if you didn’t count my mom and dad.
But instead, I said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
A wet laugh escaped him. He touched his eyes again; the tears had stopped, and they looked puffy. “I’m sorry, there must be something wrong with my hearing.”
I bumped him with my hip, and he stumbled.
But I still had my arm around his waist, so he didn’t fall.
It startled a laugh out of him, though, and I smiled a little too.
He settled against me again, and this time, there was no crowded countertop, no tight quarters.
He was a few inches shorter. He was so fucking thin.
He looked like he was made out of air and glass, and my chest hurt when I looked at him, but he was soft where he pressed into me, and warm.
And then my arm was around his shoulders instead of his waist.
“It’s okay to get upset,” I said.
He made a sound that could have meant anything.
“You don’t have to do anything with it. What you’re feeling, I mean. You can just feel it.”
“Who are you?” he said, turning his face up to mine. He had full, pink lips. And they were only inches away from mine. He murmured, “And what have you done with Howie Cartwright?”
I didn’t say anything to that because I didn’t know what to say.
He settled his head against my shoulder again, staring out at the street as he spoke quietly. “I know my dad doesn’t—doesn’t respect my job, I guess is one way to say it.” Noah’s voice turned wry. “Or as he likes to put it, that I’m wasting my life.”
I didn’t say anything to that either.
“And Marty is—” Noah blew out a breath. “He’s Marty. He’s—whatever. I mean, he’s never going to change.”
I wasn’t convinced about that on my part, because I had a feeling Marty could change pretty damn quick if he had the proper motivation. That might have been why I said, “Maybe your dad should cut off his trust.”
“He already has,” Noah said with what was almost amusement.
Then he was silent. “I just wish—” Noah’s voice caught, and when he spoke again, it was rough with emotion.
“This man died today. Mr. Vickers. He was so sweet. And he didn’t have anybody there.
Nobody. So, I sat with him for, like, an hour after my shift ended because I knew nobody was coming. ”
“Noah.”
“It’s fine.” Noah shook his head. Out of the corner of my eye, tears glistened on his cheeks, but his voice grew stronger. “It’s fine. He wasn’t awake; he didn’t even know. It was for me, not for him. But I liked him, and—”
And it hurts, I almost said for him. Because I’d forgotten this, too.
How it cut both ways. All the things that made Noah a good nurse—the kindness, the compassion, the sensitivity—meant he brought it all home with him.
That was one of the things we’d bonded over in the beginning.
Because cops brought their work home too. And other people didn’t understand.
“Anyway,” Noah said in a different voice. Bright. Like Christmas lights on a fake tree. “I’m a wreck, but that’s definitely not news to you. God, how bad is my face?”
His eyes were still rimmed with red. His nose was raw. The glitter on his cheeks made him look like something I’d caught in another world and dragged back to this one, and now, with his face turned up toward me again, I could feel his breath on my neck.
And I was at half-mast in my fucking trou.
I cleared my throat. I tried not to think. About anything. And finally, somehow, I said, “You look perfect.”