Chapter 19 #2
“What’s his name?” I barely manage to get the question out. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. Someone who just got the wind knocked out of him.
“Noah.”
Noah. My son’s name is Noah.
“When can I meet him?”
She laughs. Not the laugh I remember, the one that used to fill my truck on summer nights. This one is hollow. Bitter.
“You can’t. There’s no need.”
Something snaps in me. “What the fuck do you mean I can’t? I have a son. A son that you kept from me. And you’re telling me I can’t meet him?”
“What makes you think he’s yours?”
The words hit like shrapnel. I watch them leave her mouth in slow motion. Pain spreads across my face before I can catch it, and I see the small flash of satisfaction in her eyes. She wanted that to hurt. It did.
“You’re telling me you cheated on me? Is that it, Jojo?”
I’m beside her before I think it through.
Her perfume hits me first. No, not perfume.
It’s the flowers. It’s her. It’s the same scent that clung to my pillowcase for weeks after I left.
My heart starts hammering. Over the years I’ve wondered if I’d built her up in my memory, made her more than she was.
Standing this close, I know I didn’t. If anything, I sold her short.
The memory comes uninvited. Our first time. Her dorm room. The Burberry cologne she bought me, the same one I’m wearing now because I never stopped. Her whispered I love you, Liam. My forehead against hers. The way her body moved with mine like we were writing a song neither of us had heard before.
You’re forever my girl.
Her face is flushed. Chest rising faster.
“Why are you flushed, Jojo?”
“Please stop calling me that.” She’s begging now. The tough front is cracking.
I step away. Lean against the opposite side of the counter, giving her room she didn’t ask for but desperately needs. “Sorry.” The word tastes wrong. Too small for everything it needs to carry.
I start messing with my lower lip again. She stares at my hand like she wants to rip it away from my face. Some things never change.
“Did you cheat on me?”
She won’t answer. Won’t even look at me. But I know. I’ve always known. She didn’t. She’s just making me work for the confirmation, punishing me with silence because she can.
“You don’t get to come in here and demand answers, Liam.
” The fire is back. She straightens up, spreads her arms wide, gestures to herself, to the shop, to everything she’s built without me.
“You’ve been off playing rock star. You’re the famous Liam Page.
You left this. You left me. There’s no room for you here. ”
I laugh. Can’t help it. “That’s not very hospitable of you. Whatever happened to the old adage that you can always go home?”
“People don’t disappear without a freaking phone call or letter for ten years. People don’t show up at your dorm and break up with the one they said they love and never return phone calls.”
Her hands cover her face. She didn’t want this.
Didn’t want to crack in front of me. I can see her fighting the tears, shoving them back down through sheer force of will.
She’s shed enough over me. I know this. I’ve always known this, and it’s the thing that keeps me up at three in the morning staring at hotel ceilings.
“People change,” I say. It’s the lamest, most pathetic response in the history of language, but it’s all I’ve got.
“I don’t want to do this with you.”
“Right now?”
“No. Never.” She shakes her head. “I have nothing to say, Liam. You said what you had to that night and you didn’t wait to hear what I had to say or answer any of my calls. I don’t have to listen to your excuses, and I definitely don’t owe you anything.”
She turns away. Starts putting things behind the counter. Busying her hands so she doesn’t have to give me her eyes.
“You expect me to walk away knowing I have a son?”
She snickers. The sound guts me.
“Yeah. I expect you to walk out the door, get on your fancy bike, and go back to your celebrity girlfriend and back to wherever it is you came from. There’s nothing here for you and I don’t want you hurting my son.
I don’t want him to know you just so you can walk away and out of his life for the next ten years. ”
She wipes a single tear. Just one.
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
Her head snaps toward me. “Oh my god, Liam, from everything I just said you pick out the girlfriend part?”
She’s right. Of course she’s right. But I needed her to know. No one else. Just her. Always just her.
“We’ve moved on and you’re not part of our lives. Noah doesn’t need you, he doesn’t even know you, so please just go and don’t come back.”
I nod. There’s nothing left to say that won’t make this worse. I can’t look at her as I walk past. My body moves on autopilot, around the counter, toward the helmet sitting where I left it. The gloves. The armor I wear so the world can’t see what’s underneath.
“See you around, Josephine.”
The name tastes like ash. I’ve only called her that once before. The worst night of my life. Until now.
The bells chime behind me. Cold air hits my face. I throw my leg over the bike, jam the helmet on, fire the engine. The vibration runs through me, the only thing holding me together.
I pull away from her shop. In my mirror, through the glass, I can just make out a shape crumpling to the floor.
I ride faster.
“Hey,” Josie says as she tugs on my arm. “Are you with me right now?”
I clear the memory from my mind. I don’t know why that particular part of my life came through and I wonder if it’s because of Sterling and how I feel about my father and finding out I was one. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.”
“I asked if you wanted to walk through the park?”
I take her hand in mine and we cross the street. The crew has been busy in the park, setting up for the haunted house that’ll run the week leading into Halloween. Josie points out the displays she did, and honestly, they’re the cutest things I’ve ever seen.
“I’m excited for the triplets to come over and trick or treat,” I tell her.
She pulls me to her and looks into my eyes. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
I nod and look over my shoulder at the parking spot.
“I think all the questions I answer, and with that caller potentially being my father, has me thinking a lot about things. When we stopped in front of the shop . . . that day . . . the first day I met Noah and then came to see you, it all came rushing back. I was a fool for leaving you behind.”
Josie cups my cheek. “It all worked out.”
“Because Mason died and I happened to see a newspaper article about it.”
“I believe you would’ve come back, regardless. Ten years is a long time, Liam. We’ve worked through all of that and have come out stronger. We’re better because of it.”
She kisses me softly.
“I know you missed those years with Noah, but you’ve more than made up for them. You need to let yourself accept that.”
She’s right, which doesn’t come as any surprise.
Still, it’s hard sometimes especially when I look at my son with his children.
He’s getting to experience all the firsts of life with them and that’s something I missed with Noah.
Sure, I got those with Paige, but I also think those days hurt Noah more than he let on.
That couldn’t have been easy to witness, knowing I wasn’t there for him.
“Come on, Rockstar. Let’s go to the bar.”
We walk to the truck, holding hands, and greeting anyone we pass. I grab the handle to the driver’s side of my truck and motion for her to get in.
“Oh yes, just like high school.” She laughs as she scoots to the middle.
“Some things don’t need to change,” I say as I start the truck, and then put my arm around her. I drive to Ralph’s using one hand, turning corners with some effort, because I refuse to remove my arm from her shoulder.