“Thank you. So much,” she said. “Everyone always talks about how great you are and how nothing is the same without you. To be very transparent with you, I was getting a little tired of it.” She belted out a deep laugh. “It was like, ‘Okay, I’ll never measure up to the wonderful and magical Shay. Cool. Awesome. Great to be on board.’” She gestured to me. “And now I meet you and discover that you’re exactly as great as they said.”
“She’s really annoying like that,” Noah said.
I shifted to face him. “What?”
Still looking at Aurora, he said, “It would help if she wasn’t completely perfect. I know. Trust me, I knowallabout it.”
With a grin, Aurora said, “It was really good to see you tonight. Stay in touch. Call me, text me. Tell Jaime to come into my room and poke me. Whatever.”
When Aurora stepped away, I asked Noah, “What was that all about?”
“You heard what I said.” He shrugged. “What do you say we wrap this up and head out? I’ll tell you all about the ways you’re annoyingly perfect while I get your clothes off. But I’m warning you right now, wife. My heart rate hasn’t gone back to normal since this morning and I’m not sure it ever will. I might just snuggle you all night. I might keep you in my bed and hold you until you’re sick of me. Even on school nights.”
Was I forcing this? I couldn’t be. There was no way. Right? “I’m not going to get sick of you.”
He swung his arm around my shoulders and tucked me close to his chest. “Let me take you home.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Take me home.”
* * *
We werequiet on the drive back to Friendship. It was a comfortable sort of quiet, the kind that came from knowing we didn’t have to swerve around awkward silences or entertain each other. It had always been this way with us. All those early mornings driving to school together, when we were bleary-eyed and half awake, we’d barely managed more than a few words.
By the time we turned up Old Windmill Hill, I’d stopped tossing the ex’s words over and over in my mind. They were still there but I could think around them now. I had to keep telling myself he was wrong, but more importantly, I didn’t care what he said. He didn’t matter to me. There was no reason to live or die by his words.
Convincing myself not to care when I suspected he was right was a lot like standing on the shore and trying to stay dry. Even when I thought I had a handle on it, the surf licked at my toes or a goddamn riptide curled up and crashed over me.
The real problem was that Xavier was wrong about the things that didn’t matter and he’d cut me right down to the bone on the things that mattered all too much. He could hit me on my weight because he knew I struggled just enough for it to hurt but the shape and dimension of my body was nothing compared to the suggestion that I talked myself into believing people loved and wanted me.
It was one thing to hear those thoughts in my head when I was alone and mean to myself but it was another to hear them spoken directly to me. I’d barely been able to look at Noah and my friends tonight without tucking in for a lengthy internal debate as to whether I was forcing them to play along in my sad little games too.
Huh. I guess I couldn’t think around Xavier’s words after all.
I’d almost convinced myself of one more pathetic thing.
“What the hell?” Noah muttered when we pulled onto the gravel drive leading to his house. Several trucks were parked along the lane and Gail stood at the base of the steps, a coat clutched around her shoulders while members of the farm crew surrounded her. “Something’s wrong.”
He parked the truck and we rushed to join the group. When Gail caught sight of Noah, she pressed her palm to her mouth. I grabbed Noah’s hand between both of mine. It was time to focus on him now. I’d fall apart over my issues later. They’d wait for me. They always did.
“What happened, Gail?” he asked.
“Gennie’s missing,” she said.
chapterthirty-one
Noah
Students will be able to search.
No.
This wasn’t happening.
Just—no.
Gennie had to be in the house somewhere. She was hiding. She was in the closet or under the bed. Curled up in the bathtub and giggling into her arm while everyone went crazy searching for her.
She wasn’t gone. She couldn’t be. I wouldn’t accept that as reality.
