Chapter 27
Brooke
* * *
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this,” Noah said, trying to comfort me.
“Oh Noah.” I cried into his chest and found I couldn’t stop.
We’d been sitting in the waiting area for about twenty minutes. My flight was in an hour. I was all checked in, just waiting for the flight to be announced so I could board, so I could board and leave like I’d never been here.
“Brooke, look at me.”
I lifted my head. “Noah, why don’t I feel like I’m doing the right thing? This was supposed to happen. I was supposed to go home on this day, and get back to my life. I don’t just miss them. This feels like something else. I want to make sure Aria has everything she needs to get all she wants. I want to be there when she needs to talk about boys and makeup and magazines, and…God, I want Ryan.”
Noah frowned at me. “Then what are we doing here?”
I shook my head at him. “I…I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know.”
“Have you thought about the situation and everything?”
“Yes. Maybe …I think I have.”
“Well, I can’t tell you what to do. You have to do what feels right.” We’d talked about this already. Like Sally, Noah hadn’t told me what to do. I suspected it was because this was the sort of thing that was difficult to advise someone on.
“I just don’t know, Noah.”
He sighed and gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “Why don’t you open Ryan’s gift? Maybe that will cheer you up.”
I didn’t think anything could cheer me up, but I’d try it. Ryan’s present felt like a book.
I tore at the beautiful wrapping paper and gasped when I saw a little notebook. It was a book, indeed, but it was one of his notebooks. I’d seen it before.
This was hisBrooke 101book.
I opened it and gasped when I saw the first page. He’d crossed outBrook 101and written just above it:
101 things I love about Brooke
My heart stilled. It stopped beating within the walls of my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. I’d seen him with this book a few times but had never looked inside it after seeing it that first time. I’d gotten lost in the joke about our 101 courses.
A tear ran down my cheek when I flipped the page and started reading all he’d listed.
1. I’ve decided Brooke’s not on drugs.
2. Brooke likes sex on the beach with a dash of a screaming orgasm
3. Brooke’s the most kind-hearted person I’ve ever met. She always thinks of others first, before herself.
4. I love her Brookisms and how she thinks I’m half monk. Who talks like that? Lol.
5. Brooke healed my broken heart. I’ve known heartbreak enough to destroy my soul and leave me lost in the wind not knowing if I was coming or going. Then I met her and she fixed me. She healed my heart and it started beating again. I felt it the first time I saw her coming down the hill in that God awful car.
I stopped reading and brought my hand to my heart as the darkness over my mind started to fade. It receeded to the back of beyond and love filled me.
I continued to read on, taking in everything Ryan had learned about me. All that he loved about me.
Everything he wrote was beautiful. But the last thing tapped into that void in my soul, just like that first night I fell for him.
