Chapter 11

PRESENT DAY

 

I lie in bed awake for the next hour, the image of what I just saw burned into my brain. It’s not like I never saw Noah that way—sitting in a wheelchair, his legs gone. I have. But then it all seemed so surreal, like maybe some hero doctor would rush in and tell us that they managed to save his legs after all. The scars were fresh back then. Now it seems so… permanent. Forever.

When I was a kid, I found a starfish at the beach with my mother, and she told me that if you cut a starfish’s arm off, it would grow back. That doesn’t happen with people, obviously. Once your legs are gone, they will always be gone.

Even Lily gets out of bed before I do. I absolutely refuse to leave my room until Lily grabs me by the arm and insists that I come out to breakfast. “Noah is making pancakes!” she announces happily.

I’d rather eat mud. Which is a good thing, because I’m sure he’ll make sure my pancakes taste like mud.

I put on a pair of my running shorts and pad out to the dining area, where Noah is back on his feet again, fully dressed in jeans, a wrinkled T-shirt, and sneakers, standing at the stove. He glances up when I enter the room, and the look he gives me almost physically hurts. I bet he’s sorry he didn’t tell me to leave last night.

“Here you go, Lily,” Noah says as he sets a plate of food down in front of her.

It’s a large pancake that fills the entire plate. He’s taken a bunch of blueberries and formed them into eyes, a nose, and a smile. It’s a smiley face pancake. Theo would never make Lily a pancake that looks like that. Hell, I would never make Lily a pancake that looks like that. Lily actually gasps with delight at the sight of it.

“It’s a smiley face!” she announces happily.

Noah smiles. “Glad you like it, Lily.”

As Lily chows down on her pancake, she looks at Noah and smiles adoringly. She’s so infatuated with him—it’s really cute. But that’s the way it’s always been with girls and Noah.

Lily gobbles up the last of her pancake while Noah gets to work on mine. I don’t know where my father and Gwen are, but it’s clear they’ve gone out. It’s just the three of us in the cabin. Just me, my daughter, and a guy who despises me.

A couple of minutes later, Noah lays down a plate in front of me that has three pancakes on it. They’re not burned or disgusting or anything like that. They look perfect and delicious. He probably put poison in them.

“I’m done, Mommy!” Lily announces, having gobbled up every bite of the smiley face pancake in record time. “Can I go play with my Barbie?”

I don’t want Lily to leave. I need her to be the buffer between me and Noah. But she’s already getting up and running for the living room, so there’s not a lot I can do. We don’t do formal dinners in our tiny apartment at home.

Noah sits down across from me at the table, glaring at me like he was just forced to cook pancakes for Hitler. When Lily is out of earshot, he hisses at me, “Ever hear of knocking?”

My cheeks grow warm. “The light was out. I didn’t think anyone was in there.”

“There’s a window in the bathroom,” he says. “I was using natural light.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” I say, for what feels like the millionth time during this trip.

Noah glances down at my untouched pancakes. “Are you going to eat those? Or did seeing me in the bathroom make you lose your appetite?”

“Noah…” I want to tell him it’s not true, because it’s most definitely not, but I know that my words will sound hollow. There’s too much bad blood between us. Really, I should just leave now. Except Lily is having such a great time.

Before I can say anything else, Noah stands up abruptly and leaves the room. He goes out on the patio and sits there, staring out at the lake in the distance, probably thinking about how much he hates me.

I hear a ringtone in the distance and realize that someone is calling me. I wonder if it’s my father. God, I hope he’s getting back soon. I can’t take too much more one-on-one time with Noah.

Except when I get to the bedroom, it turns out the caller is Theo. I see his name flashing on the display and consider letting it go to voicemail. It’s hard to recall even one positive interaction with Theo since our divorce. I don’t know if I can handle him right now.

My relationship with Theo was a direct reaction to my relationship with Noah. Theo was everything Noah was not. Theo was an artist while Noah was hardcore pre-med. Theo was scruffy and grungy, while Noah was relatively clean-cut. Theo was moody while Noah was even-tempered. Theo dropped out of college, while Noah graduated summa cum laude.

Theo was the sort of guy I’d always been attracted to before Noah. I met him when I was out with a friend at a bar where he was playing with his band. He had a great voice—raspy and deep. When he buried his face in the microphone, crooning an old Nirvana single, his stringy brown hair falling in his face, I felt something stirring in me that I thought was permanently dead. I came up to him after his set was over and told him how much I loved it.

Instead of thanking me, Theo looked at me with his soulful brown eyes and said, “How come a pretty girl like you looks so sad?”

My mouth fell open. I hadn’t thought I looked sad at that moment, but he was right. I’d been struggling with serious depression over the last several years. It felt like he’d looked right into my soul.

“It’s complicated,” I finally told him.

“Maybe you could tell me about it while I buy you a drink?”

“I…” I looked away, down at my sweaty hands. “I don’t really… date.”

“It’s not a date. You just look like you could use someone to talk to.”

He was right. I did need someone to talk to. And that night, Theo was an amazing listener. I told him everything. Well, almost everything—I never told him about Noah, which was maybe the most important part of the story. But we ended up talking until the bar closed down, then walked to Times Square and talked till the sun came up.

One year later, I found myself pregnant with Lily. Theo asked me to marry him, and despite growing reservations, I said yes. At the time, I figured it was better than being a single mother.

I figured wrong.

Theo was great in theory. He was sexy and a true artist and great in bed. But in practice, he was a mess. His band was a failure—they could barely book even non-paying gigs and there was constant inner turmoil among the band members. They kept on their coke-snorting drummer way too long, even though he’d routinely not show up for their sets. But Theo wouldn’t consider any other career aside from the one he’d always dreamed of, so he took side gigs waiting tables or bartending to pay the bills. That was fine in his early twenties, but not when he was in his thirties and had a wife and child to support.

Also, the long hair was much less sexy when his hairline started to recede. I told him he should consider shaving his head completely, and he blew up at me so violently that I never mentioned his hair again.

I could have lived with all of that though. I could have dealt with the poverty, the moodiness, the bad hair—all of it. But what I couldn’t deal with was the other women. When he’d come home sweaty after a gig, smelling like another woman’s perfume, that was too much for me to tolerate. Worst of all, he was blatantly unapologetic about it, claiming I’d tied him down too early with a child. As if that broken condom was my fault.

I stare down at the phone now, wondering what Theo wants from me. Of course, now that Noah has been reaming me out, my feelings toward Theo are warmer than usual. Theo may be a deadbeat, but at least he doesn’t outright despise me. He’d move right back in if I’d let him.

I grab the phone just before it goes to voicemail. “Theo? What’s going on?”

“Hey, Bailey.” The anger that had been in Theo’s voice during our last conversation is gone. Thank God. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“Oh.” It’s a rare moment when Theo apologizes for something. I should relish it. “That’s okay.”

“You’ve never taken Lily anywhere out of the state before,” he points out. “I just freaked out.”

He was worried, and I can’t entirely blame him. If he had taken Lily on a big trip without telling me about it, I would have gone ballistic. Just because he sometimes blows Lily off, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her. He’s her father, after all.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have told you.”

“Where are you, anyway?” Theo asks.

I tell him the approximate location of the cabin, best I can. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure where we are. And I’m not about to ask Noah.

“And you’ll be back in a week?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Lily has school next week so we’ll be back for that.”

“When you get back,” Theo says, “maybe I can take Lily someplace really special. What do you think she’d like?”

“Maybe the Bronx Zoo?” I suggest. Then I regret it, because I know the admission fee is more than Theo can afford. “Or Coney Island?”

“Sure,” he says. He’s quiet for a second. “And maybe you could come along too?”

I grit my teeth. This is a typical Theo move. He begged me not to kick him out, even though he could never promise to be faithful. Every once in a while, he makes a play to get me back. But I’m too smart for that. “Maybe,” I say, just to put him off.

“No pressure,” Theo says.

“Listen, I should go,” I say. “But… we’ll coordinate things when I get back.”

“Sure. Have a great trip.”

“Thanks.”

I hang up the phone, feeling a modicum better. Even if Noah is being a jerk to me, at least Theo was nice for a change. I don’t think I could handle being attacked by both of them.

I go back to the dining table to finish my cold pancakes. Noah is back in the living room and he’s talking to Lily. She’s listening to him intently, her little heart-shaped face beaming with happiness. God, she’s got one hell of a crush.

“Mommy!” Lily shrieks when she sees me. She’s waving her hands to get my attention even though she’s right in front of me. “Mommy, Noah is going to take me to see his boat and then we’re going to go get some crabs at the lake!”

“Wonderful.” I take a bite of my pancake. Even cold, it’s pretty tasty.

“And then, Mommy,” Lily continues, “he’s going to cook the crabs for our dinner!”

I look at her in amazement. “You’re going to eat crabs?” Lily subsists primarily on a diet of frozen chicken nuggets and hot dogs with a side of macaroni and cheese. And the chicken nuggets must be shaped like dinosaurs. Or else.

“Noah says he makes them taste really good,” she says.

Wow, she really loves him.

I look up at Noah sitting in the living room, remembering when I felt the same way.