Sweet Noel

by Jeanette Lewis

  “No buts,” he said. “It’s just not the right situation, for either of us.”

  “What makes you say that? Is it because I have no money and two kids?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “But I saw your face back there. You’re not over Lee. And I’m not about to get in the middle.”

  “Yes, I am,” she insisted. “I didn’t realize it right away, but he asked me if I wanted to try again, and then it hit me.”

  “Wait.” Noel held up one hand. “He wants you back?”

  “He wants to try again,” she snapped. “I’m not an object he can drop and take back when he pleases.”

  “That’s obviously what he thinks,” Noel retorted.

  “Right.” Gina nodded. “And for nine months now, that’s all I’ve wanted. But when he asked me, suddenly I didn’t.”

  Noel ran his fingers through his hair. “You can’t be sure. You don’t just flip a switch and suddenly love someone else.”

  “No, but maybe you flip a switch and realize you’d been wrong this whole time,” she replied.

  He sighed, thinking of the work ahead. He’d rather build a thousand sand dragons than try to navigate another minefield of heartbreak.

  “I need to go,” he said simply. “I just talked to my manager, and there’s a big sponsor coming to New Orleans. I need to focus on that right now.”

  They stared at each other through the silence, the only noise coming from the hum of the engine and the faint, faraway sound of the ocean.

  “Okay,” Gina finally said. Her voice was high and tight. “At least let me drive you back. You can’t walk.”

  It’d be great to decline her offer and walk out of her life like a man, but he’d been on his feet too long already, and the pain coming from his knee was agony. He moved to the car, his gaze going to the crumpled front corner, evidence of where he’d met the business end of the bumper and come out the worse for it. Gina and her family had gone above and beyond to make it up to him. It wasn’t their fault he couldn’t make it work.

  Gina waited for Noel to fasten his seat belt. It was only a few more minutes to the house, but any extra moment had suddenly become precious. These were the last draining minutes of their time together.

  She drove home with her heart aching. He was leaving, as she’d known he would. She’d been silly to think that he could turn on a dime, change his entire lifestyle merely because she’d asked. She felt silly now, a silly fool caught up in the romance of the moment. And Noel wasn’t one to suffer fools.

  Tears stung her eyes as she pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. Before Noel could say anything, she was out of the car, slamming the door behind her and taking the steps to the porch two at a time, the way she used to as a kid coming home from school ready for a snack.

  “Gina!” Noel called behind her, but she ignored him, determined to get to her room before she broke down. She would not cry in front of him.

  She threw the front door open and rushed through the foyer.

  In the living room, her father looked up in surprise from his tablet. “Hey, you’re back early,” he said. Then he caught a look at her face. “What’s wrong, pumpkin?”

  “Gina, wait!” Noel had reached the open door. He stood there, leaning heavily on his crutches, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He was obviously in pain.

  “It’s fine,” Gina told her dad. “Everything’s fine.” She turned to Noel. “You should probably lie down and rest.”

  “Please wait. I don’t want to leave it this way,” Noel said.

  Gina started for the stairs. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” From the corner of her eye, she saw her dad wince and retreat to the living room. “It’s over, so let’s forget about it.”

  “Is that really what you want?” he asked.

  She squared her shoulders. “I’m tired of the drama and tired of hurting,” she said. “I have been hurting one way or another for almost ten years. I want it to be over.”

  “I’m sorry,” Noel said. “I didn’t mean for it to end like this.”

  End. The word pulsed over her, ugly and sharp. This was the end.

  A shuffling noise made her whip her head around. Jordan stood at the top of the stairs, wearing Avengers pajamas and staring down at her with sleepy eyes.

  “Jordan, what are you doing up?” she said.

  “Are you fighting?” he asked. There was a challenge in his voice.

  “No, sweetheart. We’re not fighting,” Gina backtracked. “We’re having a discussion.”

  Jordan’s eyes shot to Noel. “Are you leaving?”

  In the bright light of the foyer, Noel’s face looked drawn, tired. “Yeah, buddy,” he sighed. “I have to go soon.”

  The look on Jordan’s face broke Gina’s heart all over again. “Go back to bed, sweetheart,” she told him. “I’ll come tuck you in in just a minute.”

  He scowled, but turned on the heel of one bare foot and stomped back to the room he shared with Arthur.

  Gina turned to Noel. It felt wrong to be staring at him with such turmoil. Like they were back in the hospital exchanging barbs and trying to get the upper hand.

  But even if she did think of something hurtful to say, there was no upper hand in this game. There was only loss. She’d spent almost an entire year begging Lee to stay, and he’d left anyway. She wasn’t going to beg Noel.

  She met his eyes. “If that’s what you want, I won’t stop you.”

  His lips pinched together, and he sighed. “I’ll be out of here in the morning.”

  Gina brushed away the tears hovering on her lashes. This past month had been a roller coaster, leaving her giddy with anticipation for the future. But the ride was over. It was time to get off.

  “Bye,” she whispered.

  19

  Noel shut the door to his room—no, the guest room where he was temporarily staying—and leaned against it for a long moment, taking the weight off his throbbing knee. He imagined he could hear Gina’s footsteps on the second floor, above his head. His heart pounded as he remembered the way she fit in his arms, the smell of her hair, and the press of her body against his.

  His throat ached at the thought of leaving in the morning. But it was time. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, the longer he stayed, the harder it would be to leave. He’d get up and out of there before the boys were awake, let Gina say his goodbyes for him. They’d be sad, especially Arthur, but they’d get over it pretty quickly. Kids were resilient. They forgave and forgot.

  Pain shot through his leg as he limped to the bed and sat down heavily, bending to take off his shoes and socks. Would Gina ever forgive or forget? Probably not. She was already wounded, a woman who carried scars on her heart, and he hated to know he’d given her another one.

  He sighed. He traveled light, but there were still plenty of things to pack before he could leave. He probably had a few things scattered around the house he’d need to track down. But it all felt so exhausting. He couldn’t muster his usual thrill for getting out and moving on; it’d been replaced by a heaviness in his stomach and the ache in his leg.

  As for his heart, it was frozen, a lump of ice in his chest that refused to thaw. He threw himself back on the bed and thumped his head into the pillow. After he rested his eyes for a few minutes, he could deal with this.

  The knock on the door was quick and frantic, pulling Noel from sleep. He blinked and looked around the room. He’d left the lamp on and was still fully dressed in his rented tux, but the bedside clock put the time at about five in the morning. So much for resting his eyes.

  The knock came again, then Gina’s voice. “Noel?”

  “Come in.” He sat up, immediately alert.

  Gina came into the room, wearing pajama pants and a loose T-shirt. Her hair was disheveled, and her feet were bare. Terror filled her eyes. “I can’t find Jordan,” she said. “Arthur came to climb in with me and woke me up. I went to check on Jordan and he’s not there.”

  Noel leaped to his fee
t, ignoring the fresh stab of pain from his knee. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not in his bed. I checked the bathroom and the rest of the house; he’s not here.”

  “What about the house alarm?”

  Gina shook her head. “Dad says he didn’t set it since Mom got home so late.”

  Noel glanced over her shoulder to where the living area blazed with lights. Dimly, he could hear Peter’s voice. He reached for his crutches and gripped them tightly. “We’ll find him,” he told Gina.

  They hurried to the kitchen. Peter was pacing, the phone pressed to his ear. “Hurry as fast as you can, son,” he said.

  “Dad called Ben,” Gina explained.

  Marjorie came running up from the basement. “He’s not down there or in the garage.”

  “Did you check inside the cars?” Noel asked.

  Marjorie nodded, her face as white as ash. “All of them, and I checked everywhere else I could think of. I can’t find him.”

  “Where is he?” Gina asked, her voice shaking.

  “What about my van?” Noel suggested.

  He took two steps, but Gina was ahead of him, running to the front door. It banged against the wall, and she left it open as she jumped off the porch and sprinted across the lawn to the detached garage. Faintly, they could hear her calling Jordan’s name.

  A few tense moments later, she was back, shaking her head. “He’s not there. Where could he be?”

  Noel took a long step and pulled her into his arms. He was awkward with his hands wrapped around the handles of the crutches, and he had to pull her using his forearms. But Gina didn’t seem to mind. She grabbed the front of his white shirt and buried her face in it.

  “He can’t have gone far,” Noel said. “We’ll find him.” But they’d been asleep. They had no way of knowing how long Jordan had been gone. “Where would he go to be alone?”

  Gina raised her head, and their eyes locked. Noel knew they were thinking the same thing. “The ocean,” Gina whispered.

  “He can swim, right?” Noel’s voice was sharp, skimming across the room like a blade.

  “Yes, but he’s never been in the water at night.”

  Dimly, like it was happening in a dream, Noel saw Peter spin toward the French doors and shove them open. There was a blur as Gina and both her parents hurtled toward the dunes and the beach beyond, screaming Jordan’s name.

  Noel worked his way along the beach, moving slower than the others. Their flashlights bobbed in the darkness, reflecting off the water and the wet sand, but the waves swallowed their voices. The search spreading out from either end of the house, flashlights moving quickly. Ben had arrived a few minutes ago, and he and Gina raced in opposite directions while Peter and Marjorie stuck closer to home. Eva had stayed behind in case Arthur woke up. The lights bounced off the water, where the uncaring waves crashed and churned.

  Noel knew he’d be no match for everyone else in speed, but he had a hunch. He’d seen the burn of adventure in Jordan’s eyes the day they’d built the sand snowman. He recognized it from his own childhood. The caves. The tips of his crutches sank into the sand, and with every step, his bare feet slipped, putting fresh strain on his knee. He ignored it. Gina had said the caves could flood in high tide.

  He passed by Ben, who was thigh deep in the water, calling and searching. He considered enlisting Ben’s help, but hesitated. What if he was wrong? The caves were a long way off, and if Jordan wasn’t there, Ben would have wasted precious time.

  Noel gritted his teeth against the pain and hurried on. If he was wrong, this was a pointless effort, and hopefully the others would find Jordan well before he could get back. But if he was right …

  Finally, the shoreline darkened, the rocks jutting toward the ocean. In the faint moonlight, they looked black and oily. Noel paused. What child would choose to come here, especially in the dark?

  One who’d been hurt. One who couldn’t process something painful and didn’t know what to do with the extra burden. Noel had seen the look on Jordan’s face when he’d said he was leaving. It cut deep. Maybe not as big of a betrayal as a divorce, but it was still another adult leaving him behind.

  Noel pressed on. The cliffs grew closer, taking on shape: rocky edges rounded by centuries of pounding surf and a surface pockmarked with openings.

  “Jordan!” Noel bellowed over the roar of the water.

  There was no response.

  Noel waded in, wincing as sharp coral dug at his bare feet. There were no footprints, no hint that Jordan had come this way. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling. He glanced down the beach where the flashlight beams bounced over the sand and wished he had more than just the light on his phone. “Jordan?”

  His tuxedo pants clung to his legs as he limped across wet sand and through shallow pools to reach the rock wall looming before him. The largest dark spot was the entrance to the largest cave. Would Jordan really come here? He was a smart kid; he knew how dangerous this could be, especially in the dark.

  Yet he’d seen the look on the boy’s face when Gina had told him to go back to bed. There was anger simmering beneath the surface, covered only by a thin layer of heartbreak. Who knew what a child would do when faced with all that?

  “Jordan?”

  No answer. Noel hit the light on his phone and aimed it toward the blackness, trying to see, trying to hear. The cave had a briny, rotted smell, an indication of life decaying in the darkness. The light on his cell phone flickered, and Noel cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight. Stupid.

  Then, faintly, a voice came from the darkness. “Noel?”

  Relief flooded through him, instantly banishing the throbbing pain in his knee. “Jordan!” he hollered. “Where are you?”

  “Up here.”

  Noel bounced the light around the cave until he finally found Jordan, huddled on a small rock ledge in his thin pajamas. His lips were blue, and tear tracks glistened on his pale cheeks. “Jordan!” Relief flooded through him. “What are you doing here, buddy?”

  Jordan sniffed loudly. “Am I in trouble?”

  “No. But everyone’s worried about you.”

  A swell of icy cold water came from the cave opening and knocked him off-balance, sending another shot of pain through his knee. He looked over his shoulder and could barely discern the thin line where the rocky opening of the cave swallowed the sky and the beach.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked Jordan.

  “Just cold. But the water is getting higher.”

  The water surged again, this time to Noel’s thighs. He turned the phone to look at the screen. It was almost five o’clock in the morning, and the tide was coming in. Could they get out of here before it overtook them? His phone battery was at two percent. He’d forgotten to plug it in before he fell asleep.

  “Is there water on your ledge?” He asked.

  The boy shook his head. “It’s dry. That’s why I got up here.”

  “Smart kiddo,” Noel said. “Give me a minute to catch my breath, and then we’ll get you down.”

  Noel turned back to his phone. He had no service, but he sent a text to Gina anyway, praying she’d somehow get it.

  Found him. In the caves. He’s OK. I’ll get him out.

  Not that Gina would stay away. She’d come barreling in here the minute she knew where they were. The thought of Gina turning into a mama bear warmed his heart. She was tenacious, for sure.

  “I’m glad you didn’t try to go back on your own,” Noel told Jordan. “That would have been very dangerous.”

  “I could do it,” Jordan muttered, so softly Noel almost didn’t hear.

  He bit back a smile. This kid was strong, no question. And brave. “Why did you come all the way down here?”

  “I wanted to explore it, but Mom wouldn’t let me,” Jordan said. “Then, when I heard you guys arguing, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get out of the house. I only meant to walk on the beach for a minute and then go home, but I got all the way to the caves and decide
d to come in.”

  “In the pitch black?”

  “I had a flashlight, but I dropped it in the water when I climbed up here and it went out.”

  The water surged again. Time was wasting.

  “We can talk more about it later,” Noel said. “Right now, you need to get down.”

  Jordan peered over the edge at the water. “I’m scared,” he admitted in a small voice.

  “I’ll catch you,” Noel promised.

  The ledge was just over his head. Jordan slid to the edge, his legs dangling so Noel could reach his thighs.

  “Easy now,” he warned. “Try to slide off slowly.”

  There was a crack, and the ledge gave way. Jordan plummeted, falling into Noel’s arms. Without thinking, he lunged forward, bracing himself for the extra weight. Jordan hit his arms and Noel felt something in his bad knee pop.

  The pain flashed through him, burning hot and bright. He heard a scream and dimly recognized that it came from him. He stumbled, but his arms locked around Jordan’s middle, holding him close to keep him safe. Waves splashed around them as he lurched, sending water over their heads and faces.

  “Noel!” Jordan yelled.

  “I got you. Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Noel gasped.

  His phone was gone, swallowed into the abyss. In the darkness, he held Jordan tight, fighting against the pain.

  “Can you stand up?” He tried to lower Jordan into the water, but the boy clung to him, gasping and shaking. Pain pulsed white-hot in Noel’s leg, sending spots of darkness dancing in his vision.

  “Don’t worry about it, I’ll carry you,” he said, working to keep his voice calm. “I’m going to swing you around onto my back, but you’ll have to help me.”

  “Okay.” Jordan’s teeth chattered in Noel’s ear.

  Noel backed up to the wall and finally got Jordan situated on his back. He forced his attention to the task of moving. The water was up to his waist now, they had to get out.