Chapter Twelve

For all these years, Harper had managed to avoid even attempting to spy on Noah on Facebook. She didn’t even know if he was on there. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to know about him, about his life, whether he was married or dead or had joined a cult. It was much, much easier to pretend he didn’t exist.

But now, dammit, she could not eradicate thoughts of Noah from her brain. She almost felt like that stupid schoolgirl who was waiting for the high school quarterback to call after the one time he glanced her way. Only she hadn’t even given Noah her number. And she’d made it clear she was off-limits. And she didn’t know if she never wanted to see him again or wanted a command performance, stat. Though she was afraid the latter was what she was after. Crap.

She was sitting at the bar in her kitchen. She’d poured a tall glass of wine, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened her laptop. She clicked on the favorites bar and opened up to Facebook, the giant time suck that seemingly swallowed human beings whole, never to be seen again. Sadly Facebook seemed ready-made for a girl who was home alone on a Saturday night. A girl who’d yet to hear from the man she should have been pining for a little more than for the untrustworthy ghost from her past.

She was a little disappointed that Danny hadn’t even sent her a text, but then again, who knew how these things were supposed to unfold? Maybe she should be glad he didn’t view her as an insta-booty call. Maybe it was respectful that he was allowing some time before reaching out to her. Some time. It had been a full week. That was kind of like an epoch when it came to dating. Or at least it should be. She could have even called him but she was simply not that girl. It would have felt a little forced to glom onto him like that.

The screen opened onto her homepage, and she scrolled up to the top bar and typed in Noah’s name. Immediately a link popped up, and she clicked on it. Phew. He had it set so that everyone could see his posts, which would make her subterfuge imminently more achievable.

She was about to look through his photos but was instantly drawn in by the first one she saw: Noah and a child, their faces covered with shaving cream or something. They were both smiling in the selfie. The next one showed Noah licking the child’s face. Obviously not shaving cream. Must be whipped cream. But who was this child? He looked to be about three or four years old. Wait. Three or four. Oh my God. That’s why Noah left me! He got some other girl pregnant! Clearly while we were together. Oh God, oh God, oh God. He was fooling around on me even before he left? And I thought we were so happy. What a bastard. What a dirty, rotten bastard. It was bad enough he left me, but now I know why and honestly, I could kill the man.

It was too late to call anyone, so she typed a message to Allie.

SOS. Go check out Noah’s Facebook page. You’re not gonna believe it. He’s a freaking baby daddy.

She couldn’t bear to look at any more of Noah’s alternate life. The one that could and should have been hers, had he not betrayed her even more than she’d realized. She shut her laptop and rested her head on the countertop as tears filled her eyes.

~*~

Everything had seemed so perfectly normal that final day they spent together. Harper and Noah had gone to dinner at their favorite restaurant; then they walked along the boardwalk. Afterward, they went out to a small private beach that only the locals knew about and spread out a blanket between the sand dunes, which hid them from anyone who might also show up at the beach. They’d made love beneath a blanket of stars, brilliant pinpoints of light that seemed like beacons calling them into the stratosphere.

Afterward, they lay curled up together, talking about the usual things: Noah’s departure for law school later in the summer and how Harper was reluctant to leave Verity Beach, even though she’d likely have to move to the Raleigh-Durham area to get a better job.

“I wish you weren’t going to be so far away,” she said, swirling her finger along his chest as she talked quietly. He was planning to attend school in Washington, DC, which meant long road trips.

“Let’s not think about that right now,” he said. “Who knows what could happen between now and then.”

In hindsight, those words were a bellwether, but at the time she thought nothing of it.

The next day, Harper texted Noah to see if he wanted to go for a run on the beach. He said he had something he had to do, so she ran without him. She called him later in the afternoon to see if he wanted to do something, and she got his voicemail. A few hours later she called again, and nothing. Finally she went to his house, pounded on the door over and over, but no one answered. By then she had gotten scared—she even called the police to be sure there hadn’t been an accident.

The next morning she found a letter in the mailbox with her name on it. She ripped open the envelope to find a cryptic letter with no explanation.

Dear Harper,

I know this will come as a shock to you, and I’m really sorry. I can’t explain things right now, but I want you to know that I’ve decided to get away for a while. I needed to figure a lot of things out. I hope you’ll understand, and even more so I hope someday you’ll forgive me. Please know I’m not doing this because of you, but because of me.

I love you,

Me

Harper couldn’t begin to count the number of times she read and reread that letter those first few months after Noah ran away, trying to find some stupid clue about why he left the way he did. It was like trying to divine tea leaves—futile yet impossible to stop trying. She tried to grill his mother to no avail. She was equally clueless about it and likely even more upset. It was hard to explain to her family and friends how deeply the betrayal affected her—it was visceral, to the gut. Sure he said it wasn’t about her, but that’s ridiculous. It had to be about her. Otherwise he’d never have left. There was something about her that wasn’t worth sticking around for. And the worst thing was, she had no freaking idea what that could be.