Don't Let Go

Noah Ryan was my first love. He was my first everything. He was my first boyfriend, daring me to climb to the top of the monkey bars in the second grade and then kissing me square on the mouth when I did. He brought me special rocks he picked out and held my hand in the lunch line.

 

In later years, Noah would give me my first beer, first cigarette, and first real kiss during Truth or Dare. He was the first one to break my heart, then steal it again. He was the first boy to ever tell me he loved me, the first one I ever loved back, and the one I gave my first time to. We both did. Fumbling and awkward and passionate in the pouring rain one late April night, driven by young love and raging hormones, we learned what making love was.

 

And what making life was.

 

He wanted to marry me. In all his teenaged wisdom, he was ready to give up his lifelong dream of being a soldier and just stay there and be a family. My mother said no. My parents were devastated and mortified, of course. All the things you would rightly feel upon finding out your pure-as-the-driven-snow angel has given up the goods and gotten herself knocked up. They had loved Noah up until that point, but all that went out the window. My dad went lunatic crazy, his Cajun blood sending him to angry places he didn’t need to go, but the thought of his baby being violated sent him past reason. It didn’t matter how many times I used the words “consensual” and “in love”—I never got further than that. As soon as he’d hear the L word, he’d go off wanting to kill the boy that ruined his daughter.

 

That child would have been twenty-one years old when my dad died, and another year older when my mother followed him. In all those years they never spoke of it to me—the grandchild they passed up, arranging for the adoption to happen the second it was born, with the records sealed. Not even nine years later when Hayden and I finally had Becca. It was easier for them that way, I supposed, pretending it never happened. I couldn’t pretend that well. I had the memory of a son I’d never hold, and never know. And the image of Noah’s tortured expression as he let go of my hand to see his son and they wouldn’t let him. The sound of his pleading and the tears soaking his face.

 

I lost it for a while as well, but it was too late. The baby was gone. And then so was Noah.

 

And now here he was. Back in a town that had mostly forgotten. At a time I’d never forget. Stirring everything up again.

 

That was unfair, I thought, to think that. He wasn’t to blame for what his presence stirred up in me. And I wasn’t my parents. I did think about my baby boy on every holiday, every Mother’s Day, and every time I’d see a young man resembling Noah. Every first that Becca had, I’d wonder about his. I wondered about his life, if he was nearby or far away, and if he loved dark chocolate like I did or licorice like Becca. If he had an artist’s hand or a sniper’s eye. But I especially devoted January 29 to him in my heart. His birthday.

 

Why would Noah pick now to make his grand entrance? Was he even aware of it? Was summertime not good enough? Or any of the other eleven months?

 

I sat in the dark after Ruthie left for the evening, soaking up the quiet and thinking way too damn much. I knew I needed to go home, but even though it had been mine and Becca’s home for four years since I inherited it, today nothing felt like mine. Like I was going back to my mother’s house to be judged again. The logical part of me knew that was silly, but logic wasn’t playing a big part in my process.

 

The bookstore had been hers, too, but it was a business. The house just never felt like ours. I never felt it settle into our skin the way a home should. Growing up there, it had been structured and perfect and run with strict guidelines. Nana Mae always said her neck went stiff every time she walked in that house, and while she said it to be funny I knew what she meant.

 

The bookstore was the opposite, and maybe that was my mother’s way of releasing all her pent-up creativity. It was magical there. Free and flowing and musical. She always had delicious smelling candles burning, something baking in the back kitchen to put out for customers, and happy music playing. She’d leave the counter to go read a storybook to a child if they looked interested in one. She talked to customers and within minutes knew exactly the book they would like or needed. She was Miss Mary Dee to the world of Copper Falls. The store breathed through her, and I used to love to watch her work. My friends were always envious of me for having such an amazing mom. But they didn’t understand.

 

Miss Mary Dee was left at the store each night, and the mother I knew at home was someone else entirely. It was like she exhausted all her creativeness during the day and only had the rules of life left in her once she got home.

 

I pushed to my feet from the reading sofa in the corner, shelving a book someone had left out. The store still wove its spell on me every time I entered, but I didn’t have her touch. I tried to keep customers happy, but I couldn’t read them the way she did. There was still an oven in the back, but fresh cookies and cupcakes and other goodies were only made when Ruthie would find the time or make them at home and bring them in. And while Ruthie would light candles, I’d end up following behind her and blowing them out for fear we’d forget one and the whole place would burn to the ground.

 

And music? I snorted just thinking about it. Johnny Mack made sure we didn’t have that. I didn’t remember him banging on the wall when she played her soft jazz tunes back then, but he definitely didn’t like it now.

 

I made another round through the back office area, snatched my jacket and bag from behind the mammoth old wooden checkout counter that I’d added a granite top to, and let myself out, locking the door behind me.

 

I had to pass the diner on the way to my car, but before I headed there, I couldn’t help a sideways glance inside. It was dark behind the little white stringed lights Linny had painstakingly trimmed out the window with. There was no one in there. I breathed a tiny sigh of relief, mixed with the dread I felt as I let my eyes drift toward the big gazebo that was located catty-corner from the diner. In a couple of weeks the gazebo and the whole park behind it would be blinged out in all manner of white and red, smelling of fried carnival food and all kinds of chili. But for now it was still green and serene. In general, I didn’t have much reason to hang out down there anymore. The river was nice, and I’d bring Becca down there to feed the ducks when she was little, but it was tied to a moment that clamped down on my heart. I had a version of it on canvas in my living room, and that was all I needed. I only went in person once a year, and it wasn’t that day yet.

 

Taking a deep breath, I wrapped my jacket around me and crossed the street. The dusky dark had the streetlights flickering on, and the ice cream shop down the block was still lit up brightly, serving hot chocolate and spiced tea.

 

I felt conspicuous as I passed the gazebo and reached the path that would lead to the river, as if everyone in town were watching me. As if no one had anything better to do than wait all year for me to go to the park.

 

The river wound into view among big beautiful cypress trees, and as I moved toward the bench I always inhabited, I stopped short, my steps faltering. There, sitting in the dim light, lit only by the low security lights along the water, was Noah. Sitting alone, looking down at something in his hands, he didn’t see me.

 

He remembered.

 

Every centimeter of skin on my body tingled as the emotion welled up in my throat and burned behind my eyes. It was the last place where our baby had still been ours.

 

I closed my eyes and could smell the cold rain of that late afternoon, hear the music filtering over from the carnival rides. Noah and I sat on that bench and didn’t care that the sky was leaking on us. We’d made that life in a storm, and then we were arguing about whether to keep it in the middle of another one.

 

 

 

“Please, Jules,” he said, leaning over to lay his face on my stomach. I could feel the heat of his skin through my shirt. “Give us a chance. Don’t let your parents do this.”

 

“Look at us,” I said, lifting his head and raking his rain-soaked hair from his face. “We’re a mess, Noah. We live at home, we have maybe forty dollars between us, and we have to ride to school with your sister. We can’t even pass algebra. What kind of parents can we be?”

 

“Ones that love each other,” he said back, heat in his voice and his eyes. “That’ll go to hell and back to be a family. I promised you I’d take care of us and I will, Jules. Fuck algebra.”

 

“How?” I said.

 

“I’ll make it happen.”

 

I shook my head. “How are we going to pay for—”

 

“That’s your mother talking,” Noah said, jumping to his feet and pacing. “That’s that place they sent you to. It’s not you.” He dropped to his knees again in front of me. “Where are you, Jules?”

 

I blinked against the rain in my eyes and instinctively palmed my belly as the baby did a somersault. “I’m right here,” I whispered.

 

He shook his head and took my hands in his. “No, you aren’t. You haven’t been for a while. She’s got your head so filled with—”

 

“With things that make sense,” I shot back. “You didn’t see that place, Noah. The girls my age that looked thirty, just trying to get through the day.”

 

“They’re alone, you’re not,” he said. “You’ve got me.”

 

“I want this too, Noah,” I said, my voice cracking. “I’d give anything. I live with it every day, feel it every day. This baby is depending on me right now and I’m scared to death. All I have to do is eat to make it happy, and still I’m scared to death.” I placed his hands on the squirming movement of my belly. “Feel that?”

 

His eyes filled with liquid that had nothing to do with the rain. “Yes,” he choked.

 

“How do we take care of that?”

 

He reversed our hands so that mine were back underneath. “Feel that?” he said, fat tears falling from his eyes. I couldn’t breathe. “How do we walk away from that?”

 

 

 

I opened my eyes to realize there were hot tears rolling down my face. That was the last time our baby had been ours. Two minutes later, my water broke, and I went into labor, setting off a comedy of errors to get to the hospital. And said good-bye to everything.

 

How do we walk away from that? Those words had haunted me ever since.

 

I swallowed hard, blinking my tears free to see his profile, and turned around. I walked as quietly as I could back up the path, thanking God I wasn’t wearing heels to clack on the sidewalk.

 

Was he remembering that same night? Was he thinking about us? Of course not, I chided myself, wiping my eyes. He was back here with a gorgeous girlfriend and plans for the rest of his life. He wasn’t concerned with the nostalgia of an old flame. That look on his face earlier had been totally natural. We both were a little taken aback for a second at seeing each other again for the first time, that’s all. Had he stayed in town, we’d have become dulled to the other’s presence after a while, as all breakups go. We never got the chance to dull. So now—twenty-six years later—we’d have to awkwardly do that.

 

My cell buzzed as I got to my car, and I checked to see a text from Becca.

 

Out 2 eat wth Lizzy & Darlene. Spnding nite with L.

 

I leaned against my car and steadied my breathing, still feeling the burn behind my ribs. Why was he back? Why couldn’t he just stay gone?

 

I cleared my throat and shook the thoughts free. I had other issues. It’s a school night, I texted back, in full words, rebelling against the text-speak. I remembered her troubled expression from earlier and felt a stab of concern and curiosity. And wondered what she was really up to. I remembered seventeen. Way too well.

 

They go 2 school 2, was her reply. Quizg 4 the govmt test. L mom said ok.

 

Quizzing, my ass. She’d forgotten she’d already copped to that. But too tired to pick that particular battle, and remembering I’d dumped her at lunch with her dad, and knowing Lizzy’s mom was somewhat of a Nazi June Cleaver in workout clothes, stricter on Lizzy than I could ever be accused of, and would probably feed her a four-course breakfast in the morning and personally supervise homework, I broke my own rule and gave in.

 

Loves, I texted. Our trademark word since she was little.

 

Loves :).

 

I got in, fixed my eyes, got my shaky nerves under control.

 

And called Patrick.

 

 

 

• • •

 

 

 

Patrick was a guilty pleasure, unlike anything I’d ever done before. Never in my life had I had a one-night stand. I’d gone from Noah to a rotation of random losers to Hayden. After my divorce I went solo for a very long time. Deciding that I was clearly not cut out for relationships, I focused on being Becca’s mom. Once I did start dating, it was small-time. Only one ever got close to being serious, and when it did, I doused it. I wasn’t looking for another husband, or even a significant other. So when Patrick sidled into my world with his no-strings-attached, let’s-just-have-fun sexual whirlwind, I was ripe for the picking. And he was fun.

 

Fun.

 

Like taking off on a motorcycle and feeling the wind whip by at eighty miles an hour, just to stop and eat pizza and have sex in a field kind of fun. Okay, we really only did that once, but it was so outside my box that I’d never forget it. Ever.

 

We didn’t talk about our personal lives, other than the obvious surface things like he knew about Becca and he knew I owned a bookstore. I knew he had no kids and headed up a construction crew.

 

That about summed up what we needed to know to make small talk during rest periods. Because we didn’t hook up for the stimulating conversation.

 

I crawled back in bed, propping up on an elbow so I could stare at him. The new morning light peeking through the curtain was just enough to highlight all I needed to see. One arm was thrown over his head and his face was relaxed in sleep. He’d shaved for me because he knew I couldn’t stand the scratchiness, but the darkness was working its way back onto his jaw.

 

Patrick exuded raw sex appeal. Anyone could say anything they wanted about his crude language and rough exterior, he was hot. And was a product of the life he chose. Construction guys don’t worry about what wine goes with what entrée, they are just happy that there’s wine. And they don’t call it an entrée.

 

The sheet was tangled around him, a leftover result of the monkey sex we’d had around two. I traced a finger down his chest, in awe as usual of the muscle definition that continued into his abs. He was my age, roughly, or so I assumed. That was another thing we’d never actually defined, but although his body didn’t look it, I felt like he was in his mid-forties.

 

He drew in a deep breath as the touch stirred him from sleep, and he opened his eyes slowly and blinked at me.

 

“Hey, beautiful,” he said.

 

“Hey, yourself.”

 

He wound a finger around one of my locks and pulled me to him for a kiss. I dropped a light one on his lips and he chuckled.

 

“You’ve already brushed your teeth, haven’t you?”

 

I snickered. “Of course.”

 

He nodded, eyes drifting back closed with a lazy smile. “Of course.”

 

“Want some coffee?” I asked. “I just made some.”

 

“Not just yet,” he mumbled. “I’m gonna go see if I can hit this dream up again.” I ran my lips lightly along his arm and then moved to his stomach, kissing the parts the sheet didn’t cover. “Mmm, but if you keep doing that—”

 

“What will you do?”

 

“Probably not much till you make me go brush my teeth.”

 

I gave his stomach a nip and laughed as I pushed off the bed. I was restless. I’d already had two cups of coffee and showered, and aside from being naked was nearly done getting ready for work. Two hours earlier than necessary. It was like my skin couldn’t be still.

 

I eyed Patrick’s flannel shirt where it lay over my chair in the corner and opted for my big floppy warm robe instead. As sexy as wearing a man’s shirt felt, that struck an intimate chord with me that I wasn’t interested in pursuing. I took the stairs softly, stepping around the creaky spots out of habit. Hearing the familiar ka-thump, I turned to see Harley, our pit bull, exit from Becca’s room. The giant brindle-coated teddy bear slept in Becca’s bed every night whether she was there or not. Although she could put on quite the guilt trip when she felt like the girl abandoned her.

 

“Hey, Harley-bear,” I whispered, scrubbing her neck. She looked up at me with a doggie grin that warmed me like nothing else could. “Wanna go get some coffee with me?”

 

I ran a finger along the bottom of three framed photos on the way down. One of Becca, Mom and me right after Dad died. Another one held Becca’s school picture. And the last one was of me and my parents when I was around ten, with my weenie dog Duchess in my lap. It was there on the wall my whole life, was still there when I moved in, and was one of the few things I couldn’t discard when I redecorated. Duchess was buried in the backyard, under a Texas-shaped pavestone in the flower bed.

 

I opened the back door for Harley, poured myself another cup of coffee and turned the machine off so I’d quit, and then just—stood there—soaking in everything. The countertops were granite now instead of the original Formica. The blue-and-white-checked linoleum floors and shag carpet had been sacrificed for natural stone tile. While I’d changed everything I could afford to change and replaced the old furniture with our own, it was still my mother’s house in many ways. I’d even arranged the furniture differently so it wouldn’t feel the same, but it still came down to the same old shell with the same old ailments it always had. Creaky stairs. Noisy plumbing. And too many memories in the bookshelves.

 

That was another thing that hadn’t changed much. In my mother’s will, after leaving me her house, she’d requested that her books remain in the wall-to-wall bookshelves that stretched across the living room. By “remain” I took that to mean anywhere on those shelves, so I’d taken out all the knickknacks and shoved them all together on one side so that my books would fit. I thought it was fair. I mean, what a bizarre request.

 

Regardless, I complied, just like I always had. Feeling the jolt of memories that came attached to each and every book I touched. Each one had a story behind the story. And sometimes it was better that those stories stay right where they were rather than pull all my crap to the surface. I figured there would be time enough to deal with all that if I ever decided to remodel or sell. In four years it hadn’t been a priority.

 

At the familiar scratch on the back door, I let Harley in and sank into the couch, curling my legs under me and pulling pillows onto my lap. She jumped up as if she were a little lap dog, the couch sinking where she planted herself, squirming half onto the pillows on her back. I chuckled as I rubbed her belly and all her taut muscles melted into mush, legs sprawled and head thrown back. Harley didn’t know about her breed’s reputation. Nobody told her she was supposed to be fierce. She thought she was born for belly rubs and bacon treats.

 

The room was dim except for the early light streaming from behind the curtains at the front window. It was quiet. Too quiet. It was odd, not having Becca there making noise and griping about what clothes she couldn’t find or homework she’d forgotten to do. I was used to the chaos, and the lack of it had my ears ringing and my thoughts working way too fast.

 

A light knock at my door cut them off, and I set my mug on a nearby side table as I checked the wooden clock sitting on it. Seven thirty-five.

 

Harley contorted herself back upright and her ears went on alert.

 

“What, did you forget something, Bec?” I said under my breath. “Like your key?”

 

I got up shaking my head, the responsibility lecture already booting up in my head. Assuming it to be Becca, I opened the door unchecked, grateful I hadn’t opted for Patrick’s shirt. And felt every pore in my skin wake up. That last swallow of coffee sat in my stomach like mud.

 

Noah stood before me with tired eyes, hands crammed into the pockets of a black leather bomber jacket. His gaze took me in quickly, but I had the feeling he could have passed a test on what he’d filed away in that two seconds.

 

“Morning.”