Page 82 of The Lipstick Flip

And maybe it didn’t matter that my brain was so far away from my mouth, because I still had one smart thing to say.

“I want to say I’m sorry. And I want you to come home.”

26

Noah finally agreed to come over.

So, I kicked Theo and Auggie out.

“Good luck, Cart,” Auggie said.

“This is your best apology yet,” Theo said.

“You’re going to do great. Call us and tell us what happens.”

Theo waited until Auggie was out the door before leaning in to whisper, “Don’t fuck this up.” And then he scrubbed one hand over my buzzed hair, pressed his forehead against mine, and followed his husband out into the night.

For the next fifteen minutes, I was sure if I sat down—if I stopped moving—I was going to puke. So, I wore a hole in the floor, one arm wrapped around myself, phone clutched in my other hand so I could check it every five seconds. I was sweating so much I started to go upstairs twice to change clothes. Both times, I had the panicked thought that I wouldn’t hear Noah knock, so I went back to pacing and sweating.

And then he knocked.

I was in the living room, and I tripped over the coffee table trying to get to the door. When I got there, Noah stood on the porch: the puffer jacket with its fur-lined hood pulled up, the fleece leggings, the Uggs. He was huddled like he was shivering, but then I thought maybe he was just trying to hold himself together.

“Hey,” I said when I answered the door. But that sounded stupid, so I said, “Hi. Thanks for coming over.”

He pushed his hood back as he stepped inside. He was wearing a little makeup, and he had glitter on his cheeks, and his eyes were red from all the crying. When I shut the door behind him, he pulled his arms around himself again.

“Do you want to sit down?” I asked.

Noah nodded, so we went into the living room. I moved over to the sofa, but Noah dropped into one of the armchairs. He picked up a throw pillow and held it to his chest like a shield. That seemed like a message even a redneck like me could figure out.

“I guess you were with your family,” I said.

He shook his head. “They fly out in the morning. They drove back to St. Louis after dinner.”

“Oh,” I said.

Something in the house creaked.

After a while, Noah asked, “Where’d you get that shirt?”

“Theo loaned it to me.”

“It looks good on you.”

“That’s what Auggie said.”

For some reason, that made Noah roll his eyes. After a few more seconds of squeezing the life out of that throw pillow, he said, “That video was very sweet.”

I didn’t say anything to that.

“I know that’s—that’s going to affect your account,” Noah said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I should have done it a long time ago.” But then I said, “I shouldn’t have needed to do it, I guess. Everybody should have known from the beginning.”

That made him bend at the waist a little, his arms tightening even more around the pillow. “Howie, it—it means a lot to me. I don’t even know if I can say how much it means to me. But—”

He stopped.