10
Noah
“Good morning, Noah. How’re you feeling?”
I gazed up at my surgeon, who looked far too chipper and awake for so early on a Tuesday morning. Then again, maybe alertness and optimism were traits one wanted in the guy who was about to cut into one’s leg.
“Ready to get this over with,” I answered him. “I traveled with the team this weekend to watch my teammates play against Atlanta. I made the trip just to sit on the sidelines and watch them lose when I knew I could’ve helped to change that outcome. I don’t want to do that again.”
The doctor frowned. “You know I’m not making any promises about you playing again, Noah. No doctor in his right mind would. Let’s get past this procedure, see how you heal . . . and then we’ll talk.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please, doc, enough with the flowery words and apple pie promises. I’m not the kind of guy to drop trou when you bat your eyes and sweet talk me.”
“All evidence to the contrary.” The doctor gestured to my hospital gown with a smirk.
“All right, you got me.” I blew out a long breath. “Are we ready to get this show on the road?”
“We absolutely are. Dr. Sherb, the anesthesiologist, said he talked with you earlier, right? He’s meeting us in the OR.”
“Yeah, okay.” I shifted, trying to get more comfortable on the narrow gurney. “I’m more than ready to go. I want to get to the other side of this as soon as I can.”
I thought about Alison, about the flurry of sexy early-morning good luck texts I’d received from her today. I thought about the night we’d spent together last week, the sweet promise of our love-making, and how beautiful she’d looked as she’d kissed me good-bye in the gray light of the next day’s dawn. I thought about my team, struggling to get back on a winning streak. For years now, since Angela had died, part of me had been wondering what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life. Now that I had a glimmer of an answer, I was damned eager to get on with it.
An orderly and a nurse came in, passing the surgeon as he left the room. I settled back, closing my eyes, and waited for what came next.
* * *
“Hello, handsome.”
I blinked, still woozy, and glanced around me. For a long moment, I had no idea where I was, and then slowly, I recognized my surroundings. I was sitting on the grass inside the Allen Centennial Gardens at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. It had been our special place, Angela’s and mine, during our college years. And this spot right here where I was sitting—this was where I’d dropped to one knee at sunset on one June evening at the end of our junior year and asked Angela to be my wife.
She’d laughed and cried and said yes, of course, and then our parents, our siblings, and all of our friends had poured out of their various hiding places. One of my buddies had filmed the whole thing, and when Angela had posted it on her social media, it had gone viral, setting up what became first her hobby and then her career.
I took a deep breath, remembering all of that history without any of the attendant pain for the first time in many months. And on that breath, for the first time in even longer, I scented a familiar perfume.
“Ang.” Turning my head wasn’t easy, but I managed to do it, and there she was, my beautiful, ethereal wife, that same teasing smile that I loved so much.
“Do you remember that day?” She sighed and hugged her knees to her chest. I noticed absently that her hair was just as I remembered it. In those last painful months that had been marked by occasional hopeful highs and lows of the deepest despair, her beautiful blonde hair had faded and become brittle, all of its luster leeched by the chemo and other drugs.
“Of course, I do. I was just thinking about it.” I looked around us at all of the flowers in bloom. “I was nervous as hell, and you were just all placid and serene.”
She laughed, and it was the same sound of tinkling bells that it had always had been. “Want to know a secret? Something I never told you?”
“You had a secret from me?”
“I did. But it was for a good cause—I didn’t want you to get your feelings hurt. But the reason I was so calm, cool, and collected the day you proposed is that I already knew you were going to do it. My sister told me.”
“No fucking way!” It didn’t make sense to be pissed over ten years later, but I was. “I made her swear in blood that she’d keep her big mouth shut.”
“But the bond of sisterhood goes beyond even blood swears. When we were teenagers, one of my cousins got engaged. Her boyfriend asked her to marry him while they were on a camping trip, and so in all of the pictures, the poor thing had greasy hair, no makeup—and she was wearing flannel shirts and sweats. It was tragic. My sister and I pinky promised each other that if we knew a proposal was on the horizon, we’d tell.”
I rolled my eyes. “But I didn’t ask you while we were camping. We were on a date. You would’ve looked gorgeous no matter what. You always did.”
“That’s sweet, babe. But there are girl-things you couldn’t begin to understand. I had to make sure I was wearing tear-proof mascara and sexy new undies.”
“Oh.” I paused. “Yeah, I remember those. They were definitely worth it.”
Angela grinned. “Best engagement sex ever.”
