by J. P. Grider
“A helmet?”
“I got a Harley. I’ll take you for a ride.”
Norah shook her head. “I just wanna stay home.”
Greeaat. “Fine.”
“Noah?” Norah stopped midway down the hall before descending the stairs.
“Yeah?”
“Why did it take you this long to come home?”
“I left a few hours after I heard. I didn’t even call my coach, Nor.”
“No. I mean, why did you have to wait for them to die before you came home?”
“This isn’t my home.” He heard the clip in his own voice, but it was the truth. This was Brick and Tatum’s house; they’d bought it and moved in before they’d gotten married. He’d taken Norah from her home three huge towns away, to live in a new house, leaving their childhood home up for sale so strangers could live in it.
“It would be if you left college once in a while,” she muttered as she walked away from him. Norah’s gotten snippy lately.
Just as Noah made it down the stairs, the brother walked through the front door.
“Oh. Hey,” Carter said.
“Hey. Sorry about your mom.” Noah really was sorry for Carter. The boy lost his mom; Noah knew all too well what that loss did to a teenage boy. Not that he knew if Carter was a teenager yet. He only recalled that he was somewhere close to Norah’s age.
“Thanks. Sorry ‘bout your dad.”
“Thanks.”
Both boys moped into the kitchen, where they were greeted with a warm hello by the grandmother, but a “Where have you been, Carter? We were worried sick about you,” by the swollen-eyed Lorraine. Even though she pretty much screamed at her brother, and even though her face shouted “I’m in a fighting mood,” Lorraine was not intimidating. Her brother responded with an exaggerated roll of his eyes and said nothing else.
The grandmother, on the other hand, ignored her granddaughter’s outburst and said, “Sit down, boys, I made pot roast.” She put two plates and sodas in front of them, and all five now sat down to a delicious but somber meal. Noah hadn’t had a home-cooked meal since…since…since, well, forever.
Lorraine’s lips were pursed before she blurted again, “Really, Carter. I wish you’d just have called. You didn’t even answer my texts.”
“Yeah, well, sorry there, Rain. I just happened to lose my mother today and had other things on my mind than worrying about you.”
Great. A family feud. “You know what?” Noah said, standing from his chair. “I have to leave. Norah. I’m going for a ride. I’ll be back later.”
Norah jumped up. “No, Noah. Please stay.”
“I didn’t come here to play happy family,” Noah glanced at Lorraine, “or Family Feud.”
“Nobody asked you to come.” Lorraine sneered.
The grandmother slammed her hands on the table. “Stop it now. All of you. Noah, sit down.”
Noah wanted to say, “You’re not my grandmother,” but he didn’t think he should be disrespectful to an old lady, so he sat back down. “Now, this is hard on all of you,” she said. “You’re all on edge, and you’re all very sad. Instead of fighting, you should be comforting each other. We have a long road ahead of us; we’re going to need to stick together.” Lorraine’s grandmother’s eyes welled up, but she continued. “I’m here to make things as easy as possible, but there are still decisions to be made. We still have to figure where—” She stopped. Why’d she stop?
“Where what?” Lorraine asked what Noah was wondering.
“Nothing. We just have to pull together.”
“Where what, Mimi?” Lorraine asked again. “Where we’re gonna live?” Lorraine looked at her grandmother, then at Noah, then back at her grandmother. “We’re not staying here? Then where? Where will we live?”
Shit. Where will they live? Noah was going back to school. He was right in the middle of wrestling season. He had classes. What was he going to do about Norah? Did his dad name a guardian for her?
“One day at a time, Rainy. Okay?” her grandmother said.
Lorraine didn’t take another bite. Noah glanced her way every so often. Her chest was rising too much. Her lips quivered, and her eyes were glassy. The dinner table? It was so quiet you could almost hear the hearts of five people breaking. Noah’s included.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lorraine couldn’t take the silence or the unknown any longer. All she wanted to do was mourn the loss of her mother, not worry about where she, Norah, and Carter would end up. If her grandmother went back to Florida, would the kids have to go? Lorraine was old enough not to have to, but Carter and Norah—would they have to? Lorraine couldn’t take care of two twelve-year-olds. She could barely take care of herself with her part-time fitness instructor job and full-time college schedule. She took her uneaten dinner and threw it away, leaving the kitchen to be alone.
In her room, unable to get comfortable, she slid on a pair of leggings and her sneakers, grabbed her fleece, and went out for a run. Her mind was too busy racing for her to enjoy her iPod, so she took to the sidewalk without her music, in an attempt to outrun her thoughts. It was stupid, really, because it was pitch-black outside, and it kept her from venturing too far. At the end of her development, she turned around and ran home.
When she got there, under the garage light, Noah was sitting on his bike. “Got far,” he mocked, referring to her short five-second run.
Lorraine looked at him and said nothing. His eyes looked grey out in the dark. She wondered what color they actually were, since she couldn’t recall noticing before.
“Not much of a runner?” he asked.
She continued her staring. “I run. It’s too dark right now.”
“Afraid of the dark?”
“Afraid I’ll fall.”
“Don’t wanna bust up your nose?”
Lorraine ignored his side-splitting joke.
“Wanna go for a ride?”
“What?”
“A ride. On my bike. This thing I’m sitting on.”
Lorraine thought about it for a minute. She didn’t even know if she liked him. So far, he’d seemed rude and aloof. To her surprise, though, when she opened her mouth, she said, “You got another helmet?”
“No. You can use mine.”
“You can’t ride without a helmet.”
“Who says?”
“The law.”
“I’m not too concerned about it. Would you like to go or not?” He was rude about it, but she was rude at dinner. Carter was rude to her. Didn’t they all deserve to be rude right now?
“Sure.” She took his helmet and straddled behind him, knowing she was running away, even if for the moment, just like Carter had. Here she was, six years older than her brother and doing exactly what she’d yelled at him for.
But as soon as Noah took off down the road, Lorraine’s busted nose pressing into the brisk air, she felt unburdened. She closed her eyes and let the wind wash away her worries. Noah’s bike produced the effect she’d attempted to achieve through running. As Noah picked up speed, Lorraine was afraid to fall backwards off the bike, so clutching him tighter, she rested her chin against his leather shoulder. Her heart raced with the dangerous thrill. Why hadn’t she ever thought of owning a motorcycle? It was so much better than running.
Miles passed by before she felt the bike come to a stop. “Where are we?” she asked when she opened her eyes.
Noah turned down the engine and said, “My old home.”
A large colonial-style house sat across the street from the field where Noah parked.
“Wow. Nice house.” Lorraine unwrapped her arms from around Noah and got off the bike, but Noah remained put. He stared at the house for so long that Lorraine became uncomfortable. She didn’t know if she should get back on the bike or stay standing behind it, so she did neither and sat on the frozen grass.
It took Noah a few beats before he realized what she’d done. “What the hell are you doing down there?”
“Waiting.”<
br />
“For what?”
Lorraine frowned. “For you.”
Noah shook his head and got off the bike. He pulled a green knapsack out of his luggage trunk and took out a sweatshirt. “Here. At least sit on this,” he said as he tossed Lorraine the shirt.
“Thanks.” She took it and spread it beneath her.
He took out another shirt and laid it down before he sat.
“You miss it?” she asked him.
With his eyes still on the house, he nodded. “Yeah.”
“Sorry.”
He nodded again.
At first, Lorraine didn’t know what to say, but then she decided to ask, “Why haven’t you come back?”
The look she received from him made her feel stupid. “Because he sold it,” he said in a tone that confirmed he thought she was stupid.
“I mean to our house. Your father built an apartment for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Lorraine leaned forward over her pretzeled legs and rubbed at her hands. “He had an addition put on the back of the house. It’s called a mother-daughter, but he added it so you’d have a place to stay during the summer and Christmas break and whatever.”
By the baffled look on Noah’s face, Lorraine assumed he’d had no idea about the apartment.
“Why didn’t you take it?”
“Because. Brick said it was yours.”
After a pause, Noah said, “Even though I told him I rented an apartment with some teammates?”
“Even though.” Lorraine didn’t know he’d said that to Brick, but she went with it.
They sat there for several more silent minutes. Lorraine was uncomfortable with his silence. Maybe because he never smiled. Obviously, he wouldn’t be smiling now, but even the first time she met him, all he did was scowl. But Lorraine couldn’t help herself, she had to break the silence. “So, you never answered me. Why haven’t you come back? Like, even before they got married, you never came home.”
He eyed Lorraine from the corner of his eye. “There was no home to come back to.”
“What?”
“Brick sold our home.” Noah pointed across the street at the house that no longer belonged to him. “That’s my home. And I’ll never be able to go back again.”
“But—”
“Rain? Is that what they call you?”
“Or Rainy.”
“Well, Rainy. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” His words were crisp and articulate. He stood, picked up his shirt and put it in the trunk, and straddled the bike.
Lorraine got up and held the damp sweatshirt in her hands. “Is your trunk locked?”
“No.”
Noah was a moody thing. But since his dad just died, she’d cut him some slack. She was pretty moody herself today.
Despite Noah’s moodiness, Lorraine enjoyed the ride back home just as much as the ride to Noah’s old house. She just avoided leaning her chin on his shoulder. But she did stay as close as possible for fear that she’d fall backward off the bike.
When they pulled up, Mimi was standing on the front porch in her nightgown, winter coat, and a glower that could rival the one Noah was sporting at the moment.
“Lorraine,” she said cooly. “Did you not just do the exact same thing you accused your brother of? And at almost midnight?”
“Midnight?” Lorraine hadn’t realized it had been so late. Yes, dinner was eaten later than usual, but...wow. It had been over twenty-four hours that she’d lost her mother and Brick. And it hadn’t even sunk in yet.
CHAPTER SIX
Noah watched Lorraine apologize to her grandmother for leaving without letting anyone know as he stood there attempting to tamper down his sad emotions. He didn’t want to be sad. There was no purpose to it. It wouldn’t bring his father back. If sadness could do such a thing, he would have been back in his mother’s arms a million times over. But watching Lorraine hold back her tears while she spoke to her grandmother was making him sad. It upset him that his father was dead, but truth be told, since his mother died, he and his father grew further and further apart each passing year. And then when Brick had met Tatum, well, Noah pretty much wrote his father off. It was his mother’s life insurance that was paying for his tuition at Duke, so he felt he didn’t really owe his father anything. But Noah knew. Noah knew that one day, that wall he’d built to keep his father out of his heart was going to come crashing down and kill him.
Noah shook his head. He was being contemplative. He did not like contemplating. So, he left Lorraine to her grandmother and went up to Norah’s room. Once again, he sat in her chair and watched her sleep. This wouldn’t help to keep him from thinking, because seeing his little sister, so innocent, so young, he felt bad that she had to go through her teenage years an orphan.
Fortunately, Lorraine stopped in Norah’s doorway before he’d gotten too maudlin. “You want me to show you that apartment? You can stay there while you’re here.”
Noah immediately stood, picking up his leather coat as he did, and left Norah’s room. “Yeah. That’d be great.” He followed Lorraine down the stairs and to the kitchen where she grabbed a set of keys off the hooks by the back door.
“Here. There are two of the same key.” She shrugged and led the way through the back hall and down a set of three steps. “It’s pretty nice. You’ll like it.”
They walked into a small corner kitchen that housed a table and two chairs, and a small living area to its left. “Wow,” Noah said almost half-heartedly, but more out of surprise than anything. “Why did he do this?”
“Brick? I don’t know. He kept saying he wanted it to be a surprise. He never said why he wanted to do it.” Lorraine pointed to the back of the apartment. “Your bedroom’s on the left, the bathroom to the right. It’s only got a stall shower, but it’s really roomy.”
“Roomy? You’ve used it?”
Lorraine blushed then ducked her head. “Yeah. Sorry. Some nights, when no one is home, I come here and pretend I have my own apartment.”
Noah raised his eyebrows. “Are you alone when you pretend?”
Her eyes grew wide. “Yes, I’m alone.”
Noah wanted to say, “We can change that,” but this was his stepsister, for all intents and purposes, so instead he said, “Too bad.”
She shook her head. “There are sheets on the bed already.”
“Oh? Did you change them for me?”
“No. I put them on when—” She blushed again. “There are sheets on the bed, but I can give you a fresh set if you want.”
Noah snickered. “Not necessary.”
She side-stepped Noah in the little hallway to go back to the kitchen. “Okay, well, I’ll let you be.”
“Tell me,” Noah said before she walked out. “Did you sleep in my bed? On those sheets?” Why Noah was flirting, he had no idea. She wasn’t even his type. But she was cute when she blushed.
Noah was here for his sister and his father’s funeral, not to seduce his father’s stepdaughter. Snap out of it, Mack, willya?
“See you tomorrow, Noah. Thanks for the ride.”
“Hope I didn’t get you into too much trouble with your grandmother.”
She shrugged and opened the door. “Nah. She’s cool.”
“Oh, wait.” Noah slid one of the keys off his new key ring. “Here,” he said as he handed it to Lorraine. “You keep this. In case I lock myself out.”
The side of her mouth quirked. “‘Kay. See ya.”
“See ya,” he thought, but didn’t say.
Noah didn’t feel like going back outside to get his backpack, so he stripped down to his boxers and went to bed without brushing his teeth. He lay there wondering why the hell Brick built him this apartment even though Noah had barely spoken to him in the last few years.
And now that his curiosity had been piqued, he let his mind wander over to Lorraine sleeping on his sheets.
Maybe she was naked.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lorrain
e woke up with the same thing on her mind as when she went to sleep—was Noah flirting with her? She didn’t get it. Maybe she misunderstood his comments. He probably just wanted to know if she’d slept on his sheets so he could lie on top of the comforter. Maybe the thought of sleeping on sheets she’d laid on was gross. Besides, Lorraine should have been thinking about her mother. Not Noah.
Today’s plan was to pick out a last outfit for her mother to wear. Mimi gave Norah the option to pick out Brick’s suit, but Norah declined, so when Mimi ran into Noah, she would ask him. He hadn’t resurfaced from his apartment, though, and now Mimi was already at the funeral home making arrangements for tomorrow’s service.
When Lorraine made her final decision—a mint-green silk blouse, a long, pale-grey, belted pleated skirt, and black pointed-toe suede slingback flats—she spread it out on her mother’s bed and snapped a picture of it. She didn’t know why she took the picture, but she did. Then she went downstairs to make a cup of tea. While the kettle warmed up, she pulled up the picture. This is what she’d remember her mother in forever. Was it good enough? Would her mother approve? Before she could finish her thoughts, the back door opened.
Noah nodded, then searched the kitchen. “You have coffee?” he asked, his voice deep and groggy.
“Just wake up?” It was the middle of the day already, and he was still sleeping?
“Had trouble falling asleep. Coffee?”
She pointed to the empty percolator on the counter.
“You don’t have one of those one-cup machines?”
“Nope.”
He picked up the pot and turned it in his hands while he looked at it and frowned. “Do you know how to make it?”
“Nope. I drink tea.”
He made a loud grunting sound, which Lorraine guessed was a sigh. “Is there a deli nearby or a Dunkin’ Donuts?”
“Yeah. Make a left outside the development. There’s a side road on your right that’ll take you right to the shopping center. There’s a deli and a Dunkin’.”
“Want anything?”
