42. ROXANNE
Chapter forty-two
God, this boy.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a second, my heart so full, I think it might really burst out of my chest this time. Noah gets me. Not only gets me—he’s crawled inside my skull and set up camp. Even Steph, witness to my Star Wars phase when I thought I’d marry Han Solo, can’t touch this level of connection.
Leaving him post-battle is tearing me apart, molecule by fucking molecule. It doesn’t feel right anymore. Not freedom—more like self-amputation. I’m abandoning a vital organ in this dustbowl hellscape.
What other choice do I have? I can’t stay here and let myself get stuck into the same old shit that’s been slowly draining the life out of me for years.
I won’t.
That’s when the classic Wishmore Freak-Out kicks in. It starts with taking deep breaths, a strong grip on the steering wheel, and chewing on the inside of my cheek until my teeth feel sore.
This is how I keep my shit together when I think about the fact that Noah Jackson has now seen me naked. All the way naked. And it was good .
Really fucking good.
Naturally, I’m freaking the fuck out.
I can’t get the way he looked at me out of my head, like I was the second coming of Christ, but sexier. I’d give my left tit to see that look again. Seriously, maybe even the right one too, just to make sure. Fuck it, take my spleen.
I keep driving. It’s motion, it’s purpose, and it’s a reason to keep my focus on staring out the window, otherwise I’d be sitting passenger side, fidgeting awkwardly with my hands in my lap. Driving has been the one thing stopping me from thinking too long and hard about the fact that I am really confused about everything right now.
Why does it have to be so freaking complicated? Why can’t I ride this high without analyzing every tiny thing? But that’s me—the girl with the plan, always looking ten steps ahead while everyone else is eating their checkers.
It’s fine. You’re fine. Everythings going to be fine. It always is fine, I keep telling myself over and over as hot air blasts in my face.
This was not in the playbook.
Noah and I were supposed to be a band-aid over our wounds to help each other blow off steam and heal and forget. For a while, it helped me do that. It helped to numb the pain, the heartbreak, and the claustrophobia of being stuck.
“Or... or you fall in love.”
Well, Tyler nailed it. I chugged that Noah Kool-Aid like there was no tomorrow.
I’d slam my fist against the steering wheel if Noah wasn’t right here, witness to my secret nervous breakdown in the passenger seat. Right now it seems like we should go ahead and end this thing, because falling any deeper into the stormy ocean of Noah Jackson’s eyes and drowning in the undertow is a one-way ticket I can’t afford, not when I’m this close to getting out of here. I’ve got a plan for crying out loud. Win Battle of the Bands, graduate, take the money and run. Four steps to freedom, no pit stops, no detours, and definitely no distractions.
Especially not the tall, dark, and handsome variety who help me forget too much of my own troubles that I forget entirely about the plan.
Now I’m terrorized. Petrified of how much I feel for him, of how much it’s going to hurt when I have to say goodbye. Because it’s coming. It has to.
Slamming the brakes on this thing between us is the absolute smartest move. Yet even as logic pleads its case, I really like making things difficult for myself, because I know instead of letting bygones be bygones, I won’t stop.
I’m in over my head, and I don’t know how to swim my way back to shore. Worse, I’m not sure I want to, even if someone threw me a life preserver.
I blink hard, pushing back the burn in my eyes. This can’t be what I’m thinking about right now and I need to save it for my diary. I have to focus on the road and getting us home.
We’ve been marinating in this silence for twenty excruciating minutes, and I can tell something’s eating at Noah, too. It’s obvious by the way he’s sucking his bottom lip into his mouth, drumming his fingers against his thigh, and staring off through the window.
Gee, wonder what it could be.
Everytime I glance over, he looks on the brink of saying something, mouth opening and closing, but he never does. I don’t have a single clue what to say either.
I want to ask him how he’s feeling, but you know that feeling when you’re with someone and you can tell that something’s off? And you’re afraid to ask because the truth might be worse than what you expect? That’s why I’m gripping the steering wheel tighter and tighter as I drive, my face frozen in a practiced mask of fake chill.
Everything’s totally, completely fine.
Fuck my entire life, honestly.
My eyes glaze over again, blurring out the white dotted lines on the road, and my head empties as the opening piano notes of The Best of Times fill the car.
My throat constricts, a rope of memories tightening. This song is always guaranteed to have me bawling my eyes out, and all those emotions of the past are rising to the surface, on top of everything else.
I reach over to switch the station, but Noah’s entire face lights up from the other side of the car.
“Hell fucking yes!” he crows, already starting to sing, outstretching his hand and twisting in his seat toward me.
I laugh out a watery sound and my fingers curl tighter around the wheel. My dad used to always sing this song. It’s one of the last home video tapes we have of him, and to hear Noah sing those same lyrics in his place feels... I’m not sure.
Bittersweet and beautiful and weird .
I don’t really have time to pinpoint it, because when that high-hat comes in, everything else fades away except the song and the memories that come along with it.
I can’t quite tell if it’s a good feeling or a bad one, but it’s definitely something. Then my heart starts to pump faster, sparks fizzing through my forearms, and I realize what it is now.
I feel alive.
I glance at Noah, trying to appear less excited than I am, and watch as his knees bounce up and down, his feet tapping out a beat on the floor.
“My dad loved this song,” I mumble, the words lost under the music.
His head whips around, grinning at me. “What?”
I don’t want to repeat myself, now questioning that I could piss on the moment and sound annoying and completely ruin the mood. Except right now, my dad is smiling down from whatever dive bar in the sky he’s haunting, and I want to embrace it.
I want him and everyone to know the things that make me feel something so deep, to share a piece of myself and a piece of Brian Wishmore. I want to open up my heart and soul to ensure they feel it too.
“This song,” I repeat, reaching over to turn the radio dial all the way up, “I said that my dad loved this song.”
The music plays on and Noah’s grin is blinding, brighter than the headlights shining on the road. He closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath right before he lets it rip, waving and moving like a singer on stage. He’s a good singer, always has been, with the kind of voice that made you want to believe he was singing only for you.
When he starts playing the fake piano against the dashboard, bobbing his head forward, he rolls his window down and sticks half his body out to sing out to the trees.
“Noah!” Once the freezing wind whips past my face, getting my hair tangled up in my mouth, do I realize I’m grinning from ear to ear.
I know exactly what he’s doing. It’s a Noah move, taking something heavy and emotional and turning it into a chance to be a total goofball.
I reach over to yank at the back of his shirt as he continues to pull out peals of laughter from deep inside my stomach. This dickweed is trying so hard to make me happy, even if it means falling out of the damn car.
He’s having the time of his life, singing and drumming, leaning back into the car and belting out the lyrics to the ceiling.
Noah’s eyes slide over to meet mine, and I know the silent question he’s thinking without saying a word: “Is this working?”
My grin softens, but never fades. Yeah. It’s working.
He swipes his hand through the air, clutching his chest, and those blue eyes drill into me, demanding that I join in. Leaning closer, he rests his elbow on the middle console, and points his finger at me.
“Come on, Roxanne.”
“Eat my shorts.”
He half-sings, half-shouts, punching the air when I shake my head no. His singing voice drops then, that bottom lip of his pushing out as that curl falls in his eye.
What else could I do but crack?
Fuck it. I floor the gas pedal and throw my head back and scream the song with him. The sound tears through the air, laughter and memories and some healing passing through my off-key notes. Noah’s smile gets even bigger, and my voice rises above the roar of the engine as we speed down the highway.
It feels like… god, it feels like flying.
I’m no trained singer, but I can’t deny my love for it. I start off soft and cautious, dipping my toe in the musical waters, and once I get the taste of it, once I feel the vibrations of my voice, I dive in head first, hitting every note and every word.
Water spikes my lashes, the tears turning my eyes into tiny reflecting pools, but it’s not at all because I’m sad. No way. With Noah grinning beside me, the song becomes a celebration instead of a memorial. A big, fat, neon-bright fuck you to the grief that’s been holding me down for so long.
He keeps passing me the imaginary mic—his fist—and we take turns trading lines. The whole time, he’s looking at me with such an open expression that tells me it’s okay to feel whatever I need to here.
Just let go.
When I croon the last line of the chorus, my voice cracking on the high notes, I don’t hold back. All my emotions spill into those drawn out notes—the sadness, nostalgia, but also relief. A sonic cleansing of the soul that brings me down to my knees.
Well, as close to my knees as I can get while operating a vehicle.
It goes on and on until Noah breaks out an air guitar, and I, not one to be outdone, have to use the steering wheel as my drum set. Honestly, if we weren’t in a moving vehicle, I’m convinced Noah would be climbing up on the roof of the car and backflipping off it.
He’s definitely a born frontman, and it shows whenever he fully commits to the drama, throwing his head back as his voice bends to the high notes, and my ribs hurt from laughing so hard. I have to grip the wheel tight to keep the car straight as he gyrates and thrashes.
The song builds to its epic climax, and Noah smiles with his whole fucking face as he focuses on his voice, teeth flashing white in the dark. It lights him up and something wiggles deep in my stomach at the sight of his dark hair backlit by the street lamps, all of it blowing back from the wind as he tilts his head up to the roof.
There’s a new quality to his voice that I’ve never heard before, how he shapes the notes to sound so gentle. It’s in the softness of his nose, the line of his jaw, and the veins across his hands that look more spellbinding than ever.
His eyebrows pinch as he keeps his voice steady, and his tongue comes out to wet both of his lips that are drying out from the window. The harsher wind quickly whips his two curls against his eyelids, and I’m lost in the rise and fall of his chest, his smell traveling across the small space, his hand splayed against his thigh, and his energy radiant.
Beautiful.
He’s so fucking beautiful.
It’s right when he looks back at me and sings out the final notes, that the twisted up emotion inside me unwinds up from the bottom of my stomach, something like a parasite moving steadily higher into my neck, filling me up and tightening my throat. I swallow against it, and have to look away quickly, unless I want the feeling to flood over my head, drag me under, and make me drive off The Moonbridge.
For the rest of the ride home, The Plan is the last thing on my mind, because I was never supposed to fall in love with Noah Jackson.