Seven Weeks to Forever, page 15
“I want your take on this.”
“Maybe we both did,” I say quietly.
“At least one of you shouldn’t have. You’re the one who knows better, since you have a job to do. What you saw on the beach should have made you more sensitive to that. You’re supposed to help him get past his pain, not close off when he reacts to it. Of anyone, you know what he’s going through.”
“Sure, kick me when I’m down.” I walk over to the stereo and crank the volume back up, then go back to the stove.
“Stop acting like you’re six, and start acting like a second-timer.” He turns the volume back down.
“You can turn that back up if you’re going to keep lecturing me.”
He ignores me. “I want you to go find him.”
“I’ll text him,” I mumble.
“I didn’t say text him. I said go find him.”
“And what do I say when I get there?” I pick up the spoon and give the macaroni one last stir, and then turn off the element.
“You could start with hello.”
“Sheer brilliance. Do you write scripts in your spare time?”
He doesn’t answer me. I open the cupboard beside the stove and grab a colander from one of the shelves. I bring it over to the sink and pour the contents of the pot into it, letting the water drain out.
“What do I say?” I ask again, watching the water go down the drain. Steam rises from the sink.
“You’ll know what to say. Just listen to your heart instead of your fear.”
Amarleen said the same thing. I open my mouth to ask him if he’s getting his lines from her, but he’s gone.
“Thanks for leaving me on my own for this one,” I call out. I think I hear a chuckle somewhere in the distance.
Chapter Seventeen
My footsteps echo on the stairs leading up to Riley’s apartment, so loudly he can probably hear me coming from inside. When I have to pause to cough, I realize that my mouth and throat have both gone dry. That’s funny, because my palms are damp. I swallow, trying to moisten my throat so I don’t cough again, and then take the last two steps while trying to remember to breathe.
Shoulders back, head and chin up, I command myself. I raise my hand and my knuckles meet the cool surface of the door. After three short but loud raps, I lower my hand and wait.
About thirty seconds pass before I try knocking again, but there’s still no answer. I can’t hear any noises coming from inside.
Brilliant, Noah, I think. You insist — no, command — that I come over here, and he’s not even home. You didn’t see that one coming?
Noah doesn’t answer me, though, and I know that I’m on my own. I turn around and head back down the stairs, intending to go back to my car. Riley’s mom is standing in front of the studio when I round the corner, though, and I stop in my tracks when she turns her head to look at me.
“Hi, Cassidy. Are you looking for Riley?” She seems happy to see me, I notice. I guess Riley hasn’t mentioned anything about our morning at the beach.
“Hi, Mrs. Da— Elizabeth. Yeah, I thought he might be here.” I hear gravel crunching below my feet and realize I’m shifting from foot to foot. I force myself to stand still.
She shakes her head. “He left a while ago to go write. He said he needed a change of scenery to focus and clear his head.”
Awesome. I’m probably the one to blame for that. “Do you know where he is?” I ask, trying to sound casual.
“He went to a coffee shop that’s a few blocks from here. Malone’s, I think it’s called. It’s somewhere near the Promenade, if you want to go say hi.”
I get the sense that she’s asking me to go find him, even though I’ll be interrupting his writing time. I wonder how much she’s worried about him since Amanda left this life.
“Thanks. I’ll, uh, go see if I can find him.” I start walking again.
“Cassidy?” I turn back to her. “It’s good to see you.”
There’s genuine warmth in her smile. It makes me wish I had enough time left here to get to know her.
“It’s good to see you, too.”
She opens the door to the studio and goes inside, and I keep walking to my car. When I’m inside of it, I pull my phone out of my purse and search for the coffee shop she mentioned. It takes only a minute or two to find it and pull up driving directions. I just have to hope that Riley is still there.
The street the coffee shop is on is close by. It’s only a few minutes before I pull into a parking garage that’s on the same street and then head out to the sidewalk.
Here we go, all over again. I put one foot in front of the other, trying to think of what I’ll say when I see him.
And there he is, sitting inside of the coffee shop, scribbling on a notepad. As I look through the coffee shop window, I see him pause to take a sip from his mug before bringing the pen back to the page. Another minute passes by while I watch him write, my feet rooted to the sidewalk.
I can do this, I think. Gulping in a lungful of air, I force my feet forward again. Chimes tinkle above the door when I push it open.
“Hi there,” the barista calls out from behind the counter. He gives me a quick wave and then returns to flipping through a magazine.
Riley looks up at the doorway. Our eyes lock and neither of us moves for a few moments, until he sets his pen down on the table. It rolls away and clatters onto the floor, but he makes no move to pick it up. I can’t even be sure he’s blinking, or that I am either.
I raise my hand and wiggle my fingers in something that I hope resembles a wave, but he still sits there, motionless. He’s not looking away from me or bolting, though, so that’s a good sign. Or at least I think it is, and that’s all I have to go on right now.
He looks like a deer caught in the headlights, and I’m sure I do, too. The thought causes my lips to curve up in a smile, and I curse the bad timing. Maybe not, though, because is that the barest of smiles on his face, too? That’s a million times better than a scowl or frown, anyway. Time to take the next step.
I adjust the shoulder strap of my purse and take a step toward him. He sits up straight in his chair but says nothing. It appears that the writer is at a loss for words.
“Is this chair free?” I ask, placing my hand on the back of the wooden chair beside him.
He swallows and clears his throat. “Ah, yeah. There’s no one at this table but me.”
I smile again and sit down, trying to ignore the flutter in my stomach and how nervous I am now that I’m here. No, make that terrified.
“What are you working on?” I ask him, looking down at the pages filled with his hastily-scrawled words. I see arrows in some places connecting sentences together, and bubbles of point-form notes in others, all mixed in with the paragraphs that fill each page.
“A novel I’m writing.” He’s staring at me and then seems to realize it. Shifting his eyes away, he reaches for his mug and takes a drink from it.
“Can I read it sometime?” I ask. I won’t be here in The Before when he’s finished writing it, I know, but I’ll find a way to read it from The Life-After.
“Maybe when it’s a little more polished. It’s a little hard to follow like this.” He puts his mug down. I watch him, silent, until he speaks again. “Why are you here?”
“I have this thing with lost causes.” His eyes widen and I review my words in my head. Yeah, that definitely didn’t come out the way I meant it. “You’re not the lost cause,” I rush to add.
He grins. “I could argue that.”
“Of the two of us, I think I’m the lost cause here.” I feel myself starting to relax.
“No, you’re not. And maybe...” he pauses, swallowing again. “Maybe we’re not, either,” he finishes. He reaches across the table to touch my hand and I realize that as much as my being here has caught him by surprise, he’s glad I came.
I flip my hand under his so we’re palm to palm. Maybe there are things he can’t say, but I can feel them in his touch and see them in his energy. It’s expanding now, reaching out toward me.
“Maybe we’re not,” I agree, my voice soft. My body tingles as our energy connects. Even though he probably can’t feel it, I can tell it’s affecting him, too. I see it in the way he watches me, and how his breath catches and gets a little shallower. He looks down at our hands, tracing a pattern on my palm. He keeps his eyes there long enough for me to wonder if he’s having trouble looking at me.
Now is not the time to be shy, I think. He looks up again like he heard me, holding my eyes with his.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asks. I can hear what he isn’t saying. He wants to go somewhere that isn’t lit up with harsh fluorescent lights, and where our words won’t bounce around the room for the barista or anyone else to hear.
“Yes.”
He squeezes my fingers again and then lets go of them to lean over and scoop up his pen from the floor. He slips it inside of the messenger bag that hangs on the side of his chair. He does the same with the papers he gathers up from the table. “Okay, mademoiselle. Let’s jet.”
I push my chair back from the table. The scraping noise makes the barista look up from his magazine.
“Thank you,” he calls out.
Riley raises his hand to wave goodbye. As he lowers it, he reaches out to take my hand again, sending another tingle of energy through me. Our fingers stay joined together as we leave the café and step out into the evening air.
I let him lead, watching the energy surrounding him from the corner of my eye. Even if I wasn’t able to see the sparks dancing around him, I would be able to feel them from the touch of his hand on mine. The color of his energy tells me that he’s nervous.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks. We get to an intersection and stop walking, waiting for the red light in front of us to turn green.
“You,” I answer.
“Only good things, I hope. Not that I think I deserve that.” His hold on my hand gets a little bit tighter, enough to let me feel how fast his pulse is racing. It matches mine.
“I think we’re both to blame for this morning.”
His free arm circles around me, nudging me closer. I let him pull me into a hug, my head buried in his chest. His chin comes to rest on top of my head.
“How did you know I wanted to see you tonight?” he murmurs. He keeps his arm around me. I realize then that I don’t ever want him to let go.
“Something guided me here,” I say, silently thanking Noah for the very thing I wanted to throttle him for earlier tonight.
“I can be kind of a jerk sometimes, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” I move my head so I can look at him.
“I don’t know why I do it,” he continues. “I mean, I know why I do it. But I shouldn’t do it.” The nervousness that I saw in his energy seeps into his voice.
I squeeze his hand, bringing my free hand up to touch the side of his cheek. I don’t say a word, because I know I don’t have to. He turns his head to kiss the palm of my hand, his eyes still locked on mine.
My hand moves up to brush against the side of his hair and then he’s lowering his head, his face close to mine like it’s been before. This time, though, he keeps getting closer, until there’s no space between us and his lips are touching mine. His kiss is feather light at first, like he’s not sure how I’ll respond. I bring my other hand up to join the one that’s now tangling through his hair, and I feel his arms tighten around me. I’ve kissed someone before, in another body and another life, but I don’t remember it feeling like this. The sparks of energy between us pop like little firecrackers, making me tingle from head to toe.
He captures my bottom lip with both of his and then grazes it with his teeth, and suddenly what was so tentative at first is filled with the intensity of the weeks gone by. His tongue traces the inside of my lips before we break apart, and I keep my eyes closed when I feel the lightest trail of kisses along my jawbone and neck.
His lips press against my collarbone and his head comes to rest there. I circle my arms around his waist, holding him close. We stay like that for a couple of minutes, just standing in the middle of the sidewalk. I don’t know if anyone is watching us, and I don’t care if they are. If I could capture one moment of my life and hold onto it forever, this would be it.
I feel his arms loosen their hold around me and I look up at him. He looks a little bit shy now, taking my hand. We start walking again.
“Do you want to come over for a while?” His voice is a little husky and I think he realizes it, because he clears his throat. “Time for a Mario Kart rematch, so I can blow you away.”
“The first time when I completely creamed you was just a practice round, right?”
“Absolutely.” He smiles, looking down at the ground first and then at me. There’s that shyness again. We walk down the street for a few more blocks and then circle back until we’re outside of the parking garage where my car is parked.
“I’m parked here,” I tell him, pointing at the garage. “I’ll meet you at your place?”
“I’ll walk you to your car.” He doesn’t need to, but I can tell he wants to. That’s more than okay with me, because I don’t really want to let go of his hand just yet.
I lead him to the elevator on the first floor of the garage, both of us stepping inside when the doors open. I press the button for the top floor and the doors close again.
Sometimes elevators can be like little boxes of truth. Together in this tiny little space, I feel our energy heightened to a level even greater than it was out in the open. Leaning against Riley with my head on his shoulder, I feel everything inside of me tingle. He doesn’t look shy now for some reason, and I can tell he wants to kiss me again just as much as I want to kiss him. We hold back, though, letting the beautiful buzz between us grow. Neither of us notices when the elevator comes to a stop and the doors open.
“Are you getting out here?” A man’s voice draws my attention to the open door. He puts his arm against it to keep it from closing. I’m sure that on a normal night, I’d have some passing thought about patience and the guy’s lack of it. Tonight I just nod and lead Riley out of the elevator into the parking garage. The man steps into the elevator and the doors close, leaving us alone again.
“I’m just over there,” I tell Riley, tilting my head in the direction of my car. We walk the short distance together, and he drops a kiss on the top of my head before letting me get inside.
“See you in a few minutes?” he asks.
“Better get ready to be taken down at Mario Kart again.” I hear him laugh before my door shuts. Once I have my seat belt on, he raises his hand and then turns to walk back to the elevator.
It takes only a few minutes to find my way back to his place, driving back down the roads I took to get to the coffee shop. I park in the same spot on the street where I parked earlier tonight and wait inside of my car until I see headlights coming up the road behind me.
Riley doesn’t say anything when he gets out of his car, just holds my eyes with his. We walk around the back of the studio, our feet scuffling against the pavement.
He fumbles with his keys when we reach the top of the stairs, his keychain jangling in his hand until he finds the right one and slides it into the lock on the door. He turns the doorknob and pushes the door open, then squeezes my hand.
I walk inside ahead of him until I’m standing at the edge of the living room, not sure where to go or what to do. I hear the door shut and his footsteps on the floor, walking toward me. His hands touch my shoulders a second later. He must feel how tense they are, because he starts to massage them.
“Want to sit down?” He stops rubbing my shoulders, but keeps his hands there.
I bring my hands up to cover his. Instead of moving to the sofa, I find myself turning around to face him. Then his finger is below my chin, tilting my head up to his. Our lips meet and his body presses against mine, but it somehow doesn’t feel like we could ever be close enough. His hands move to cradle my face, deepening the kiss. My hands snake up his back and we don’t stop kissing until both of us need to catch our breath. When we break apart, he takes my hand and leads me over to the sofa, pulling me down beside him.
“I need to talk to you for a second.” He looks sheepish, almost embarrassed. I think I nod, but I’m too caught up in thinking that whatever this is, anything that starts with I need to talk to you can’t be good.
“You know how much I care about you, don’t you?” he continues. Nope, this definitely isn’t good. I don’t say anything, though, and just nod again, not trusting my voice.
“Okay.” He takes a breath. When I look down at his hand, I see that it’s shaking. Definitely a bad sign. It takes me a second to realize he’s talking again.
“If I tell you something, will you trust and know that it’s coming from my heart and that it’s not just the moment?”
“Sure,” I manage to croak. I’m expecting the worst until I tune into his energy and see a pink and gold glow around him. It’s then that I know to expect something else entirely.
“I didn’t mean what I said earlier today, at the beach,” he says.
“I know,” I tell him. “I didn’t mean what I said, either.”
He cups my cheek in his palm and closes his eyes for a few seconds. When he opens them, he stares straight into my eyes.
“I haven’t dated anyone since—” he stops, his eyes moving to the photograph of him and Amanda. I wait for him to take a breath. “Since Amanda died,” he continues. “I didn’t think I could. I don’t even know if I can tell you what it was like when she was just gone.”
I want to tell him that I know, and that it’s okay, but something in his eyes makes me stop. He brings his hand down, letting it rest on my knee.
“You changed that, though, because I love you.”
The tingle of energy running through me is more intense than anything I’ve ever felt. It’s so strong that when I open my mouth, I find that I can’t speak. In the momentary absence of words, I bring my hands to his face and gently press my lips to his forehead.
