Chapter Seven #2
Jeremiah struggled to open his eyes. His mouth was dry and tasted of the previous night’s liquor. His limbs felt like they were weighed down with sandbags. “W-what?”
“It’s Pop,” Amara said.
His vision cleared, and he realized his sister was crying. Jeremiah hastened to sit up. His hangover pierced his skull.
He followed Amara to Pop’s bedroom. Percy and Robin were standing in Pop’s doorway. Robin held her hand to her mouth as Percy rubbed her back in slow circles. They turned to look at Jeremiah and Amara.
“He’s gone,” Percy said, eyes red. “I don’t know what happened, but he’s just…gone.”
Jeremiah blinked, sure he’d misheard his brother. He still didn’t believe him, even as he moved past Percy and Robin into Pop’s bedroom and saw Celeste standing by the window, wiping her eyes as she talked to the 911 dispatcher.
Jeremiah couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Pop’s bed, where he knew he’d find his lifeless body.
He’d just talked to Pop the night before.
He’d planned to apologize in the morning for stupidly walking out on him mid-conversation.
Pop wasn’t supposed to die. He was supposed to defy death and live forever.
He was infinite. He hadn’t even been sick. So how could this have happened?
It wasn’t until later that Celeste revealed Pop had been having heart trouble, and that he’d asked her not to tell anyone.
He hadn’t wanted the rest of them to worry.
Because that was the type of person he’d been.
Selfless, who cared more about the rest of his family than he cared about himself.
At first, Jeremiah had been riddled with sickening guilt that his argument with Pop had caused the heart attack.
But from his autopsy, they learned that Pop’s heart attack had most likely developed gradually throughout the day with subtle symptoms, which meant that, without medical attention, it had been inevitable.
Pop was irreplaceable, and Jeremiah missed him all the fucking time.
He stared at the house as he and Noelle walked up the driveway.
His heart was in his throat. He didn’t know if he was ready to step through the front door again.
But it was too late to turn back. He was already here with Noelle, who was looking up at the house in awe, and he’d made a promise to pay her.
They walked up the porch steps, and Jeremiah inhaled deeply before he turned the knob and opened the door.
They stepped inside, and errant grains of sand crunched beneath their feet.
Flip-flops were scattered in the hallway, and one of his nieces had left a water gun abandoned at the foot of the wide staircase that led to the second and third floors.
To their right, navy blue and white furniture was arranged in the living room.
The windows were open, letting in the summer breeze.
A sense of belonging and nostalgia washed over Jeremiah. Even if being back at the house was complicated, it would always feel like a constant base in his life.
“Hello?” Jeremiah called out. No answer. To Noelle, he said, “They’re probably in the backyard. I’ll show you where we’ll be sleeping first.”
He carried their suitcases upstairs, and Noelle followed behind him, observing the paintings of boats and fish and whales that lined the staircase walls.
“My mom loves a nautical theme,” Jeremiah said. He pointed at a painting of two dolphins jumping out of the ocean. “Amara painted that in middle school.”
Noelle smiled at the painting. “I love it.”
On the second-floor landing, she paused in front of a large, framed photograph of him and his family from many years ago, standing in front of the Heart Beach house.
In the photo, Jeremiah, a toddler, squinted one eye and cheesed at the camera.
Beside him, Percy held his hands clasped in front of him and smiled brightly like it was picture day at school.
His two front teeth were missing. Behind them, Celeste held baby Amara in her arms, and Pop and Grandma Minnie stood on either side of Celeste.
The house looked different back then. There had been no wraparound veranda, white stone walkway, or a third story.
Those additions had come later when Jeremiah was in middle school.
“Wow, the house went through some changes,” Noelle said.
“My grandpa had a lot of work done to it over the years. He initially bought the house for my grandma in the seventies. She loved to swim, and he wanted her to have a place to go where she could be closer to the beach.”
“That’s really romantic,” Noelle said.
“Yeah. He never remarried after she died. I don’t even think he dated anyone. If he did, it wasn’t serious enough for him to bring them around the rest of us.”
At a young age, Jeremiah was able to see the kind of love that his grandparents shared, and it had set an example for him to never settle when it came to love.
He’d had short-lived flings over the years with women he’d really liked.
But he hadn’t felt a deep love connection, not like the one between his grandparents.
He fell quiet, and Noelle glanced over at him.
He had a feeling that she was about to ask if he was okay again.
He summoned a smile and continued on, past his mom’s bedroom, Percy and Robin’s bedroom, and the bedroom that Ashley and Harper shared, up to the third floor, which housed his bedroom, Amara’s room, a bathroom, and a small sitting room that Amara used when painting.
“Here’s where we’ll be,” he said as he pushed open his bedroom door.
He gazed around the room. His queen-size bed was made, and the large flat-screen television mounted on the wall was spotless.
An old LeBron poster from when he’d played with the Cavs was still tacked to the wall, and his old longboard leaned against his closet.
He’d originally bought it during one summer in high school when he and Danny had adopted longboarding as their new personalities.
This bedroom was a time capsule, a place where Jeremiah preserved the artifacts and phases of his life.
Other than the changed bed set and sheets, most of this room had gone untouched since he’d last been here two summers ago.
Noelle gasped and immediately ran over to the bay window and reading nook. She sank down onto the soft cushion.
“Oh my God, I would kill for one of these reading nooks!” she said, bringing her knees up to her chest. “Can you imagine reading here for hours, unbothered?!”
Jeremiah laughed, happy that the nook pleased her.
He observed her delighted smile, and also took a moment to take in the rest of her too.
She looked beautiful. Her pants hugged her hips, and she wore some kind of lotion or body oil that made her skin shimmer in the sun.
He’d checked the charges she’d made on his card, and the amount she’d spent had been less than what he’d expected.
Earlier, she’d tried to return his card to him, but he told her to keep it until the weekend was over.
He left their suitcases by the closet and joined Noelle at the window, drawn to her.
He leaned past her and inhaled the beachy, almost tropical scent of her perfume.
He swallowed thickly as he reminded himself that she was here with him for professional reasons and nothing more.
He forced himself to look away from her beautiful face and he peered outside into the backyard.
Right away, he spotted Celeste showing the event planning team where she wanted the tables placed.
She was wearing a white linen top and pants set and a white wide-brimmed beach hat.
His niece Ashley ran up to Celeste and bounced on her toes as she spoke.
Then she glanced up and saw Jeremiah and Noelle watching from the window.
“Uncle Miah’s here!” Ashley said, pointing and waving.
Celeste whipped around. Her eyes were concealed behind her large sunglasses, but she smiled so big, there was no way to deny her happiness. Or her relief. She’d probably been worried that Jeremiah wouldn’t show up.
He smiled and waved back. To Noelle, he said, “I guess we’d better get downstairs.”
He held out his hand for her, and she let him pull her up off the reading nook.
“I think we should probably hold hands in front of my family,” he said. “Is that cool?”
“Cool.”
She entwined her fingers through his, and he tried not to pay too much attention to how nice it felt to hold her hand.