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She stops and stares at the money, at war with herself.
“Okay. Thank you,” she says finally, her voice cracking. She takes the money and stuffs it into her apron.
I feel sorta bad, poor girl.
“Have a nice day, Charlotte,” I say and start to hobble away.
She calls after me, “I hope your leg gets better soon.”
That was big of her, considering what ginormous bastards we’d been to her all morning. Or maybe she’s just doing her job.
I wave a hand to her without looking back and leave Annabelle’s.
Time heals me. I go back to work. ToPlanet X. To the world and all its thrills and beauty. I don’t go back to my parents’ townhouse; hell, I’m hardly in NYC anymore. I don’t go back to Annabelle’s, and I never see—or think about—that cute waitress with the sad eyes ever again.
“Fucking hell,” I whispered as the machine read the last line of what I’d ‘written.’
I felt sick. Disgusted.Terrified.My own imagination took my ‘just a broken leg’ fantasy and carried it on a terrible tide to a fucking terrible conclusion—a life without Charlotte.When I was sighted, I would’ve been blind to someone like her. Someone sweet and good and full of unimaginable talent. But I was blind, and if I wanted a life with her, I had to fucking live that way.
Clarity hit me like a breath of fresh air.
I knew what I needed to do, but spending a sweltering summer in a classroom in Brooklyn, trapped behind a desk and thousands of miles away from her wasn’t the way to do it. I wasn’t sedentary. I was a world-traveler and always had been. Now that my ass was out of the townhouse—thanks to her—moving slowly was better than not moving at all.
I had to keep moving. Always. To her. She was at the end of a long, dark road where I was going to be beset with impossible obstacles, and maybe even danger, but I had to make that journey. I had to do everything possible for Charlotte. Everything and anything.
Because the idea of failure, of living without her in my life, was a nightmare worse than blindness.
Lucien and I went to my parents’ house in New Haven, and I told them my grand plan: to follow Charlotte’s tour through Europe—without her knowledge—on my own. Naturally, they thought I was insane, and my father was about ready to disown me for worrying my mother. Lucien wasn’t happy either, but he managed to soothe my parents. Only Ava, of all people, thought I was doing the right thing.
“It’s not stalking, is it?” I asked over the phone as she was still in London. “I mean, will she think I’m some sort of creepy asshole for following her around…?”
“Hiding in the bushes outside her hotel room?” Ava laughed.
“Something like that.”
“She’s more likely to be upset you were there the whole time and she couldn’t be with you,” my sister said, serious now.
“I’ll have to take my chances that she’ll hear me out when it’s over and forgive me.”
“She loves you. She’ll forgive you.”
“Would you?”
“I would,” Ava said, “if it worked.”
I felt second thoughts trying to creep in. What if traipsing blind around Europe alone didn’t slay the demons that plagued me? More likely, the trek would wear them down until they croaked of exhaustion. Just the idea of navigating one city alone—never mind seventeen—made me want to lie down and pull the covers over my damn head until the whole crazy idea went away.
“It has to work,” I said to Ava. “I have nothing else.”
“Then go for it,” she replied. “But Noah? Be fucking careful. I mean it. London is only a short flight to anywhere in Europe. You call me if shit gets dangerous or weird. Or hell, come home if it’s too much. Okay?”
“Okay,” I lied. I didn’t know if my crazy plan was going to work, but I knew—with total certainty—that giving up was out of the question. And certainty, as my old buddy Harlan used to say, is its own kind of peace.
chapter thirty-seven
Sunday night. My last night, and I let myself cry into Noah’s pillow. I’d spent the entire day preparing to leave the next morning, and he hadn’t called. Was he really going to let me leave the city without saying goodbye? Or was I the one who was leaving without calling him, without telling him that I loved him too?
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t get on that plane the next day without hearing his voice and knowing what he thought or felt. I grabbed my cell phone off the side table, found his number in my contacts and punched it.
