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TWENTY-SEVEN
Noelle
The day after breakfast with Matthew and his sister, I sat around our usual table at the coffee shop and cradled a mug in my hands.
“Oh my god, you guys,” I said to my best friends. “His sister is so nice. Like, so unbelievably nice. And she wants to be an actor and I just… I really liked her. And I think she liked me.” My cheeks heated, and I buried my face in my hands as I looked at them.
“So it went well?” Charlotte smiled as she sipped her frozen drink. “See, I told you she’d love you. It’s impossible not to.”
“Yeah,” I beamed. “It did. Really, really well.” I chuckled, and the four of them stared at me. “What?”
“You’re falling for him, aren’t you?” Gabbi asked as she looked up from her cup.
“What?” I bit my lip. Was I? I just shook my head. “I’m just seeing where things are going. Sure, we’re dating… But it’s not that serious.” I said, not really believing my own words.
“I dunno, Noelle. Seems pretty serious to me. You spent your entire break with him. You met his sister—literally the most important person in his life. How is that not serious?”
“But—It’s not—We haven’t even…” I trailed off. It wasn’t serious, but somehow every time I thought about the way he was with me, so tender, loving, caring, doing things like making sure I ate and calling me baby… How could I say we weren’t serious? But even so. I shook my head. “We haven’t even talked about the long term. We barely even decided we were officially dating. I’m not… It’s not like I’m in love with him.”
“Maybe not yet,” Angelina snorted. I could always count on her to be my dose of reality, but right now I just wanted to live in my bubble. I needed it, because I didn’t know what was going to happen and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if everything fell apart.
I hadn’t asked him about the future, besides my small one-off question when we were in bed together, because I knew it was going to be the end of this lovely, happy, honeymoon phase. When we had to start answering the tough questions and had to start sharing the most intimate details of our lives with each other.
Sure, he knew I lost my dad, and I knew he lost his parents, but I had a feeling that neither one of us knew how deep our wounds ran. And I hadn’t told him about Jake, either.
Not about our relationship, or what he had done to me. The real reason I had, on the heels of utter betrayal, booked a flight, packed all of my belongings up from our once shared apartment, and moved back to Portland—my home. Why I truly left the assistant job in New York—the one that I had hated, the one I had only got because he begged me to come with him. Not the way I had resolved myself that I was going to change my life. Not a lot of people got a second chance in life—a do-over, or a chance to start again. But I did.
Sometimes people asked me if I missed that job—the one I left behind in New York City, working as an assistant for a publishing company. I thought I had it all figured out after college: a decent job, a little apartment in NYC that wasn’t much but would be the start of my life, a ring that was sure to come from the guy I thought I was going to marry—but that was before everything fell apart. And the truth was, I didn’t enjoy the job. Didn’t enjoy living in the big city. Didn’t even really want to marry the man I had once thought was my everything.
And moving home after that year had been freeing.
But still, there were things I hadn’t communicated. Stuff I hadn’t even scratched the surface on, three years down the road. My best friends didn’t even know the depth of my pain. It was like there was a hole in my heart that I had never quite repaired, and this never subsided ache in my soul, even after all this time. I thought about how different I had felt at the beginning of the year, versus now.
Then, I hadn’t even known how to fill that void in myself, hadn’t known where the unexplained longing for rightness, stability, or care came from. But I had known that it terrified me. It scared me how much I longed for one person who could perhaps mend my heart, could put me back together piece by piece after I was shattered. And maybe I had been set adrift at sea, and I still didn’t know which way was north or south. It was like I had been paddling, frantically, for the last two years, and maybe all I was waiting for was for my rescuer to pull me back to shore, to breathe life back into me, to hold me, warm me, and tell me that everything is going to be okay and to just hold on because I’m going to save you.
But I had known, even in the frigid ocean waters of the Oregon Coast, even as I shivered against the freezing cold currents, that this time would be different. And I had made a vow to myself right then. I didn’t need a man to heal what another broke. I could—I would heal myself, put myself back together stronger than I ever was before. I am enough, I thought to myself that day at the beginning of the semester as I watched the world shuffle on with their daily lives. Because I had to be. Because the alternative—being broken? I didn’t know how to live with that.
But right here and now, sitting in this coffee shop with my friends? I felt like Matthew had pulled me out of the icy water and wrapped a warm towel around me. And my heart. And somehow, even when I was aching and feeling this desperation deep inside of me, the one that longed for anything and everything, to feel complete and wholly loved, I knew I could do this. I knew I could survive it—life. Because I was strong enough to live, and be happy, and achieve everything I had once dreamed of. Even if love, well—that could wait a bit, couldn’t it? Because I was going to find my old self again, no matter how hard it would be to to do it.
And Matthew—he was the one who had showed me how much life was worth living again. The one who had shown up, day after day, and showed me what love was supposed to be like. I didn’t know if he loved me—I didn’t even know if I loved him, but I did know one thing: he was the cataclysm for change in my life.
He threatened to shake the foundation I had built around myself, the defenses I had created to protect myself from harm. And I knew, somehow, that if I let him, he could topple all of them.
Every barrier, every wall. He had been successfully chipping away at them for so long, that I was worried about what would happen when he finally realized how much better he was than me and left me. At the idea of being broken and so very alone, and the only person who could put me back together would be the person who had left me.
I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let myself give every piece of my heart to Matthew Harper—even if he was the best guy I had ever met. Even if he was the only one who made me feel safe and protected but also lit a fuse in me that couldn’t be quenched. The only man who had ever loved every inch of my body just for the sake of it. Because he wanted to.
Because he saw me in a way no one else ever had.
Fuck, I was screwed—because I was definitely, definitely on the path to falling way too deeply in love with this man.
~ ~ ~
The worst part about Tessa staying for the week was I hadn’t gotten to spend any alone time with Matthew, and since I was on duty that night, I couldn’t even spend time with him and his sister.
I sat at the front desk in the dorm, working on some event stuff, when my phone buzzed. I quickly unlocked it and a huge grin spread over my face.
Matthew: Baby?
