“I wouldn’t ask you to marry me if we weren’t.” He gestured to me. “Not that I’m trying to rush you on that matter. Just making a point.”
“So, you’re just a bear with a pricker in his paw on a regular basis? That’s your look now?” There was no way anyone could miss the teasing in my tone this time.
“Listen, don’t knock it. The more people I can scare off with this look, the better. Saves me from having to mediate every damn hiccup in this town.” A sigh rumbled out of him. “You disappeared, you know. You were just gone. Left town, never to be heard from again.”
A moment passed where I tried to put his words in an order I could understand. I couldn’t find one. “Wasn’t that the plan?”
He bobbed his head but there was nothing convincing about it.
“We both wanted that. Right? We wanted to get out of here and never come back. That’s why you went to that summer program at Yale. So you could leave as soon as possible.” I stepped closer, my book bag brushing against his leg. I couldn’t have this conversation without seeing it in his eyes. “And you left first. I spent most of the time after graduation here. Alone. I took my sweet, slow time leaving. I didn’t disappear at all.”
He brought his hand to the back of his neck as his lips twisted into a joyless smile that saidkeep telling yourself that.
“Am I missing something?” I asked.
“No, you have it right,” he said after a pause. “I guess I figured you’d—” He pulled the hand from the back of his neck, dropped it against his thigh. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Noah, wait,” I said, touching his forearm. He froze, staring down at my hand. “It does matter. To me.”
Gennie ran out the front door, the screen banging behind her as she dashed toward me. “Did you think about it? Are you going to come to the game tonight?”
“Oh, sweetie.” I glanced at Noah, hoping he’d help us both out and give me an exit from this event. No such luck. “I have to go home and do some adult chores first. I’m not sure I’ll finish in time.”
Gennie nodded, obviously disappointed. “Okay.”
“I’ll see you on Monday for sure. We’ll talk about explorers. I have a really cool story about an explorer and how his ship might be one of the shipwrecks in Newport Harbor.”
I opened the car door and set my things inside.
Noah called, “There’s a decent food truck scene before the game. It’s worth it for that alone but you should check it out. You might realize you don’t hate it here.”
I dropped into the driver’s seat. “Is that how it went for you? You looked around one day and realized you didn’t hate it here anymore?”
Noah held my gaze while warmth pressed in around me. It was a hot day. Afternoon sun. Humid too. Hot, humid, sunny. That was the only thing I was feeling.
“Check it out,” he said. “See for yourself.”
* * *
“There’s a football game tonight.”
Jaime frowned at the screen. She was in her classroom with the overhead lights off because she hated bright lights but I could still make out that frown. “What kind of football?”
“High school,” I replied. “I think. I’m pretty sure.”
“Why do we care about this?”
“The little girl I’ve been tutoring, she talked it up.” I peered into the empty fridge. “Apparently there are food trucks. I’m guessing it’s a tailgate situation. Maybe fundraising? I didn’t ask a lot of questions.”
“The kid you’re tutoring is into food trucks? That generation has its priorities straight.”
“It wasn’t like that when I was in high school,” I said. “Football games were as basic as you could get.”
She started stapling little rainbows with her students’ names and birthdays to the board. For a second, I was overcome with sadness. I didn’t have a birthday board this year. I wouldn’t get to celebrate birthdays or any of the other milestones of kindergarten. And I didn’t have Jaime right there next to me—all because I wanted to drop out of my life and reconnect with the only place that had made me feel like I belonged.
Jaime snapped me out of my thoughts, saying, “You should go.”
“Go where?”
