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“So do I,” I said, thinking of my blown audition. “But I feel…hopeful.”
“Yeah,” Noah said. “Hope. Gradations of darkness.”
I could hardly keep my eyes open. “Hmm?”
“Something someone told me once.” He kissed me, stroked my cheek. “Thank you, Charlotte.”
“For what?”
“For being here. With me.”
He held me tighter and I burrowed into him, letting the warmth of his body carry me to sleep where I dreamed, and in my dreams, I was soaring.
act ii: allegro
Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.—Walt Whitman
chapter twenty-one
She’d gone downstairs, but I could still smell her on my pillows, on the sheets, on my skin. I lay cocooned in the blankets, in the scent of her, my body remembering the feel of her and wanting more. Wanting her completely, in every way, now and into some unknown stretch of time.
My future with Charlotte, I realized, was the last undiscovered country I would ever travel. But I had amends to make before I could take a single step.
I found my phone on the bedside table and told it to call Lucien. I spoke with the old guy for twenty minutes. Agoodtwenty minutes. I didn’t say everything I needed to say; I’d save that for when I was with him in person, but I said enough.
Plans made, we hung up and I threw off the covers. I made my way across the room, to the very back of my walk-in closet. I smelled the remnants of my favorite cologne hanging in the air, felt the pants and suit jackets hanging all around me. All designer threads, usually worn for some fancyPlanet Xevent. A pang of regret slammed into my chest. I wondered what they were doing over at the magazine. The HQ was here in the city. My former co-workers were there. My former friends too; I’d steadfastly ignored every single message from anyone since rehab. They were nearby, going about their business, planning trips, working on articles.
I should be there. Or better, out on assignment somewhere, feeling wind tear at me while I jump or ski or glide over some vast horizon bursting with color.
The anger started to burn, and I almost let it catch. But then I thought of Charlotte, and I swallowed it down.Keep going, I thought, the same way I used to mentally boost myself during PT.Just keep going.
I felt my way to the back corner of the closet and found what I’d come for.
I hefted the cane in my right hand and unfolded it. Forty-six inches of aluminum, two large sections covered in white reflector tape—or so the counselors told me. The handle was black—more hearsay—and it had a loop of nylon at the top to go around the wrist. The cane—or white cane, they called it—was retractable and lightweight and I fucking hated it.
I nearly threw it back in the corner. Instead, I used it to find my way to the dresser. I told myself it didn’t make anything easier; the closet was small. Only an idiot would get lost in it. But I had to admit, I felt kind of good holding the cane. Safer, somehow.
On top of the dresser, I found an old baseball cap. Under my fingers, the raised stitching on the front resolved itself into an N superimposed on a Y. Blue cap, white thread. I put it on and turned it backward. My hair hid the scars on the back of my head—also raised and distinct—but one can’t be too careful.
I opened the top dresser drawer and felt around amid the cufflinks, the expensive watches I would never wear again, and the money clips I couldn’t use anymore. I found the pair of sunglasses my sister had bought when I’d gotten out of rehab. I’d nearly smashed them to show Ava I wasn’t going to play the part of the considerate blind guy who conceals his empty gaze from the public. But that was just me being a pain in the ass since I’d had no plans to venture out anyway.
Now that I was going to go out into the world for real, the thought of my aimless stare drawing attention made my skin itch. I slipped the glasses on. They felt light but sturdy. And expensive. Ava had great taste. I wondered what I looked like in them.
I wondered if I might someday forget what I looked like.
Charlotte called up to me. “Ready?”
No. But I’m trying, baby. I really am.
“On my way,” I called back and went out.
chapter twenty-two
I nearly fainted to see Noah come downstairs in a baseball cap, sunglasses, and holding a white cane. He wore a pair of stylishly worn-out blue jeans and a long-sleeved black cotton shirt that fit tightly over his torso, accentuating everything. I stood in the second floor living room, slack-jawed as he approached.
“You’re staring at me, aren’t you?” he asked. An echo of the first time I’d met him, but this time there was no bitterness in his voice, and a small smile graced his lips.
“As if I can help it,” I said. “I’m going to need to borrow that cane to beat away the women. They’re going to come flocking to this whole adorable, backward-baseball-cap-wearing-blind-guy thing you got going on here.”
