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“For being good?”
“He’d curse at me in Russian and then say…”
“Say what?”
“Never mind. I’ll sound like an arrogant ass.”
“Tell me! Come on. It’s not bragging if it’s the truth.”
I felt warmth grow in my chest at her words. I didn’t talk about my writing a lot. I’d always been too busy with the sports to give it much thought, but I was sort of proud of my articles. And I had to admit, some part of me wanted Charlotte to be proud too.
“All right. Yuri would say, ‘You’re being better than the subject matter. Tone it down or write a book, but if you do the latter, I get first crack at publishing.’”
“Noah!” Her voice was saturated with pleasant surprise, and I could have hugged her. Or kissed her again, despite my own damn vow to leave her alone.
“Do that!” she cried.
“Do what? Write a book?”
“Why not?”
“What would I write about?All the Light I Cannot See?”
“Catchy. Anthony Doerr’s lawyers might disagree, but I like it.”
Of course, Charlotte knew the reference. She was smart. She read a lot, just like me. She had a deep pain she couldn’t shake—stage fright—like me. And everything else I liked about her, I liked because it was the exact opposite of me.
She nudged my knee, and I swear to God, I felt it up to my groin. “Think about it, eh?”
Unlikeme, Charlotte knew just when to leave a subject alone and resumed reading the Mendón book. But I wasn’t really listening. When my blood had cooled from her brief touch, I thought about that old saw: write what you know. What did I know? Blackness. That losing my sight made me feel trapped in my own body. Anger, pain, rage. A future of more of the same.
I felt the shadows grow long and steal the sunlight from my skin. A soft hand on my arm; Charlotte had stopped reading.
“What are you thinking about?”
My life…or what’s left of it.
“Not a damn thing.”
chapter seventeen
On Friday night, I was itching to go out. Melanie was out of town visiting her parents with her girlfriend, Sasha; Anthony was spending the weekend withhisnew girlfriend in D.C., and Regina rain-checked me for next week. I found myself wandering the townhouse, debating whether or not to go up and ask Noah if he wanted to venture out. Not as a date, of course. No, just as friends. Or an after-work social outing, since he’d made it clear we were employee/employer only. As it should be. The last thing I needed was to have my heart stomped on all over again.
And Noah wasn’t right for me anyway. But for a love of reading, we had nothing in common. He was cranky and sharp-tongued, and I’m sure that if he’d known me when he was sighted, he wouldn’t have given a girl like me a second look.
“It’s better this way,” I muttered to myself. “I can’t take another hit.”
I should have been comforted by that fact. Instead, I just thought of his kiss, of his hands on my face, his words…To have the love of someone like you.I put my hand to my heart as if I could massage away the little ache that lived there.
I wandered to the second floor. I heard Noah above, in the office/gym room, lifting weights and then running on the treadmill at a speed I was sure wasn’t safe even for people who could see. That was part of his normal routine. Not so normal was what came after.
I was in the kitchen making a snack when I heard the slow, methodical clacking of an old typewriter.
Noah’s typing? When he can’t see what he’s doing or read it after?
I thought of our conversation at Strawberry Fields. He liked to write. He’d been good at it. A sunburst of enthusiasm dawned in my chest. This was something he could do, and it sounded like he was willing to try. But not on a typewriter! He needed something designed for him.
I raced down to my floor and powered up my laptop. It only took a minute to find software for the visually impaired that read screens, spoke type-written words, and had all kinds of voice-activated bells and whistles. They could be used with Braille keyboards or regular and didn’t require special computers; they were compatible with anything. And they were expensive. The best, that I could see, was $450.
