Chapter 10

PRESENT DAY

 

The crickets are loud tonight.

That’s one of the most annoying things about sleeping in the country—those damn crickets. Some people like the sound of them or at least can ignore them, but I’m not one of those people. I lie awake, my head throbbing, wishing the crickets would shut the hell up.

One night when Noah and I were camping in the wilderness, lying awake in our tent close to midnight, I asked him why crickets were so loud. Noah, who was a Boy Scout for his entire childhood, was always ready with an answer for any question that came up during a camping trip.

“The hotter it is, the louder crickets chirp,” he explained to me. “Also, summer is mating season for crickets, and the male mating song is the loudest.”

“Fascinating,” I said.

He leaned toward me in our shared sleeping bag. “Are the crickets giving you any ideas?”

Ah, sex in a tent. It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced that. Actually, it’s been a long time since I’ve experienced sex period. A really long time.

Great, now I’m being kept awake by the crickets and I’m horny.

I get out of bed and shut the window, blocking out the sound of the crickets. The window was providing a nice breeze, but I just can’t take any more of the crickets flaunting their superior love lives.

I get back into bed, but now there’s another noise filling the room. It’s Gwen. And my father. Talking in their bedroom.

I try not to listen, but the walls are paper thin. God, I hope that doesn’t mean I’m going to have to listen to them having sex during this trip. I don’t think I can handle that on top of everything else.

“…not her fault,” I hear my father say.

“Not her fault!” Gwen bursts out. She’s not even attempting to keep her voice down—she probably hopes I’m listening. “Whose fault was it then? Noah’s?”

“No, it wasn’t…” My father mumbles something I can’t make out. “She’s had it rough, you know?”

“I hope you’re not suggesting she had it worse than my son?”

“No! That’s not what I’m saying!”

Great, they’re having a fight over me. After all the horrible things I’ve done to Gwen Walsh, now I’m going to break up her engagement.

“I’m just saying,” my father says, more quietly this time. “Bailey is sorry. I know she is.”

There’s a long silence. It doesn’t sound like Gwen is trying to scratch my father’s eyes out, but I’m not entirely sure what that would sound like.

It’s ironic that Gwen hates me so much, given how much she used to like me.  Then again, Gwen’s affection for me paled in comparison to how much my own mother adored Noah. She practically fell in love with him the first time she met him. She couldn’t stop talking about him for days afterwards.

Mom met Noah during my freshman year, soon after she finished her chemotherapy. With the worst of her recovery behind her, the first thing she wanted to do was pay her only daughter a visit at college.

I met her at the entrance to the dorm, where Dad dropped her off before going to find a parking spot. I hadn’t seen her since before her chemo started and it was a shock. She lost all her hair again and she had a kerchief tied around her head—Mom never liked wigs. On top of that, she was a good twenty pounds lighter than she was before, and she wasn’t heavy to begin with.

“Bailey!” Mom’s brown eyes lit up when she saw me. “I’ve missed you so much.”

When we hugged, my mother’s frame felt so frail in my arms. I wasn’t a big girl by any means, and I felt like I could crush every bone in her body if I squeezed just a little tighter.

“There’s no elevator,” I told her apologetically. “And I’m on the fourth floor.”

“I can manage a few flights of stairs,” Mom assured me.

Except by the top of the last flight, my mother was looking decidedly pale. She was breathing heavily and all I could think was that this stupid dorm nearly killed her. Why did I let her come up here? I should have insisted we go out somewhere.

“Mom…” I murmured.

“I’m fine,” Mom puffed, managing a smile. “Just give me a minute.”

We lingered in the stairwell, waiting for my mother’s breathing to return to normal. I gripped the railing of the stairs, watching her face, praying this trip wouldn’t involve a call to 911.

“Hey, Bailey!”

I whirled around and my chest fluttered when I found myself face-to-face with none other than Noah Walsh, who had officially cemented himself as my Freshman Crush after he patched up my hand. It was a pointless, hopeless crush though. I’d seen Noah bring home several girls over the semester on scattered Saturday nights, and every one of them was far more gorgeous than I could ever hope to be.

“Hey, Noah,” I said.

“How’s your hand?” he asked.

I held up the hand he’d bandaged for me in his room. “All better.”

I glanced at my mother, who was breathing better now. Well enough, in fact, that an appreciative smile curled her lips at the sight of Noah.

Noah looked at my mother, and his eyes widened slightly—almost unperceptively, but I caught it. I knew he was pre-med and he was no dummy on top of that. I’m sure he could take look at her wasted frame and bald head and put it altogether.

“Bailey,” he said, “you didn’t tell me you had a sister visiting you.”

It was the most obvious line in the history of the world. He didn’t think my mother was my sister. Not a chance. Hell, my grandmother would have been a more realistic guess at that moment. But Mom tittered and blushed in a way that surprised me. Maybe she wasn’t falling for his line, but she clearly liked the attention of a handsome, sophomore coed.

“This is my mother,” I told Noah. “She’s visiting for the weekend.”

I’d noticed people often got anxious about touching my mother when she looked this way, but Noah quickly stuck his hand out for her to shake and offered his best smile. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Chapin. I’m Noah. I live down the hall.”

“Down the hall, huh?” Mom said, giving me a pointed look.

“I can really see the resemblance,” he added, looking between the two of us. “But you must hear that all the time.”

“Not as much as I used to,” Mom said as she beamed up at him.

“Anyway,” I said regretfully, “my mother had a long trip, so I think we’re going to go to my room.”

The grin didn’t slip from Noah’s face. “Well, if there’s anything you guys need while you’re visiting, just let me know. Like I said, I’m right down the hall.”

“Well, aren’t you nice?” Mom was so obviously completely smitten.

Noah sprinted down the stairs, taking them two at a time, leaving me standing alone with my mother. She looked down after him, a tiny smile playing on her lips. I’d always thought my mother was immune to the attentions of any man besides my father.

“Wow,” Mom breathed, when he was officially out of sight (and hopefully earshot). I expected she was going to say something about how nice he seemed, but instead she said, “He’s hot.”

“Oh, Mom…” I covered my face so she couldn’t see my cheeks turn red.

She laughed. “Well, he is, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled.

She smiled that secret smile again. “You’re so lucky, Bailey. Only eighteen years old and you’ve got that guy living right down the hall.”

At the time, all I felt was frustration that my Freshman Crush was so solidly out of my league. But as it turned out, Noah was only one tragic act away from being mine.

_____

 

I wake up in the morning with Lily’s feet staring me in the face.

Lily and I are no strangers to being forced to share a bedroom. We’ve shared one for the past three years, since Theo took off. And about half the time, at some point during the night, Lily migrates to my bed.

I want to say it’s a joy sleeping with my daughter. I do love having her warm little body encircled in my arms, and I’m sure she likes it too, which is why she comes into my bed. But Lily is a very restless sleeper. It’s not at all out of the ordinary for her to turn 180 degrees during the night and end up with her feet on her pillow, intermittently kicking me in the face. In fact, when she does have her head on the pillow at the end of the night, I suspect it’s only because she did a full 360 turn.

Well, at least her feet don’t smell too bad.

I sit up in bed, massaging a crick in my neck. It’s not yet seven in the morning—I’m probably the only one awake in this house. But looking on the bright side, that means I can hit the shower before anyone else can get there.

I tiptoe out of bed before Lily wakes up. I grab the towel Noah left for me as well as my toiletries. I nearly bring a change of clothes, but then I figure I can just wrap a towel around myself for the three-foot-long journey back to my room. It will be fine.

The door to the bathroom is shut, but the light isn’t on, which is Lily’s usual MO. I got her in the habit of closing doors behind her, so she always closes the bathroom door, which drives me nuts because I’m never sure if it’s occupied. I open the door to the bathroom, thinking I’ll have a little talk with Lily later.

Except as it turns out, the bathroom is occupied. By Noah. Who just finished taking a shower.

It’s not like I never walked in on Noah just after a shower before. Hell, I’ve walked in on him during a shower many, many times. On purpose. And in a lot of ways, he looks very much the same as he used to back on the day he bandaged my wounded hand. He still has a full head of hair plastered to his skull, although it’s shorter than it used to be. He still has those strong, tight muscles in his shoulders, arms, and chest, but that’s no surprise since I could see them through his T-shirt earlier. He does have more hair on his chest than he used to, but I suppose that’s normal with aging. And… well, let’s just say my favorite part of his anatomy is just as I remember it.

But the Noah before me is entirely different than the Noah I used to catch coming out of the shower. That Noah wasn’t sitting in a wheelchair. That Noah had two strong, muscular legs sprinkled with golden hair. This Noah has two pale stumps, half the size of what his femurs used to be and half the width, with white scars where the rest of his legs used to be.

“Bailey,” he gasps.

“Oh my God,” I say. “I’m so sorry!”

I slam the door shut, but of course, it’s far too late. If I have earned any goodwill whatsoever in the last day, I have instantly lost it.