I give him some notes and then sing into the chorus of Just Breathe by Pearl Jam.
Stay with me, Let’s just breathe,
“Brad,” Noah exhales deeply. My eyes drift to his and I see brewing tears along his waterline.
“Am I that bad?” I smirk.
He shakes his head. “No…no, you’rereallyreally good.” He smiles, so earnestly it makes my heart stop. My fingers lose their pattern and I stumble over the next few chords.
Right here.Thisis what confused me so much over a year ago in those woods.
It’s this… pleasant stillness between us. Comfortable. Warm.
An energy I can only equate to a bright, sunlit morning before school, back when you were a child. When everything felt at ease.
“Noah, I’m happy you’re doing laundry, my darling,” Veronica storms out of the laundry room. “But, would youpleasekeep your boxers out of our loads? Your dirty laundry mixed with ours is just…a lot.” She tosses the few pairs of his I forgot to return onto the couch beside him.
His mouth drops open as we both stare down at the evidence of our affair now covering the couch in plain sight.
“Oh! Uh, yeah. Sorry about that.” Noah quickly grabs the clothes and stuffs them behind him.
Veronica nods her head, not picking up on the awkward tension she’s drawn up in the room, and makes her way upstairs with the laundry basket.
Noah averts his attention to Paislee, thankfully bringing us back to the moment. “You liked that song too, didn’t you, Peeps?” He smiles.
She answers with a little bounce and a giggle.
“Where’d you learn how to play like that?” he asks me.
I continue strumming a few chords, changing up the song to something simpler. “My dad used to teach me when I was younger. It was fun learning and impressing him.”
“Is he still around?” Noah asks.
I swallow deeply. “Oh yeah. He’s up north in Cambridge. I visit my parents every Thanksgiving, Christmas, you know. The usual holidays.” I nod. My parents are in their late-sixties now and while I don’t see them often, I try and see them when I can.
“You close with them?”
I think about that for a moment. “I used to be when I was younger. But, I guess the older I got, the more I realized how different we really were.” My eyebrows pinch as my fingers move along the strings. “They’re pretty religious. They're devote Baptists and... I guess I’ve always wondered… how they’d react if they really knew me.”
The next words stick in my throat, but Noah cuts in before I can force them out.
“Worried they wouldn’t accept you if you brought someone…else home?”
My eyes snap up to his, breath catching. I never wanted to admit out loud why we drifted apart, but Noah, doing what he always does—just sees me.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “Exactly.”
My eyes skip nervously to the hallway, in fear that Veronica may be around the corner.
Noah gets the message and nods once, slow and thoughtful. “Yeah, well. Sometimes I wonder about my dad too. If he were still around, I mean.”
“Did he ever do anything to make you feel otherwise?”
“No, not at all.” Noah shakes his head. A small flicker of a smile appears on his lips. He glances at me, hesitating, like he’s deciding whether to say more. “There was this one time, when I was younger, we were walking to the Home Hardware store.” Noah chuckles lightly as he recalls the memory. “There were a couple of guys that walked out at the same time as we walked in. They were holding hands and…”
“Did your dad say anything?”
Noah smiles softly, shaking his head. “No. He didn’t.” He swallows. “I knew he saw what I saw. And then he just… looked at me and smiled. That was it.” His brows pinch slightly. “But I hold onto that. I hold on to that smile for dear life.”
