I still miss him every day.
I take Naomi’s note and sit on the couch for a few minutes, just staring at it. I don’t think she’s that kind of girl. Any other guy probably would have read her note that way, but I can tell she’s different. I think she just wants to talk. I have no idea about what or that I want to, but I feel like I don’t have much of a choice.
I get up and head to the shower.
Thirty minutes later, I’ve finally worked up the courage, and I’m at her front door in some jeans and the last v-neck shirt I found in my dresser. I should be doing laundry and making something to eat and going to bed so I can head back to work tomorrow.
But instead, I’m here. At Naomi’s place.
I knock before I can think about it too much. It’s not long before the door swings open, and she’s in front of me, in jeans and a t-shirt herself. Her hair is down, and it falls around her shoulders. It’s really long, like Valerie’s, except Naomi’s is like chocolate.
She takes a step back. “Come in.”
I step in and take a few steps towards her couch, looking back at her. She walks with me. I can feel her stare on me. I have no idea what to do or say. It’s almost painful. I should have stayed home.
She sits down on the couch, so I do too.
Her TV is off, so there’s nothing to look at or pretend to look at.
“Sorry about the last few days,” she starts off. I look at her and back in front of me.
“Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything.”
“I just hope you’re not mad or something. After everything…that happened.” She turns her body towards me and sits so that one leg is underneath her and the other is hanging down.
“Why would I be mad?” I ask. That actually does make me sound like I was mad.
“I just had some family stuff. I had to go home for a few days and help my mom out with some stuff. I couldn’t make it back until today. I missed class actually.”
“Are you in college?” I ask just to change the topic. I hate that she feels like she has to explain herself to me.
“Yeah. At the community college here. I’m studying social sciences and minoring in business. I want to manage a nonprofit one day.”
I nod. But inside, I’m freaking out. I have no idea who this girl is or why I’m in her apartment. I don’t belong here. I don’t even know how to have a normal conversation anymore.
I stand up. “I should go.” I start walking towards the door. “I have somewhere I need to be.”
“Wait.” She’s standing up too and following me.
I stop but keep looking at the door.
“Please stay.” She comes closer and grabs my hand.
“I don’t know what you want from me, but I don’t really have time—“
“Carlos.”
I finally look at her. She’s staring back.
“It’s okay, you know. I promise I’m not going to make you my new boyfriend or something.” She laughs, and I can’t help but smile. “That’s not what this is. I just want to get to know you. As friends. I mean, we both live here. We must be the same age.” That’s not all it is, I want to say, but I don’t want to talk about it.
“Can we just… start over and get something to eat?” she asks.
I open my mouth. What do I say to that?
“Please.” She’s still holding my hand, and she squeezes it. She gives me another smile, and it’s just such a genuine smile. I want to believe her.
“Okay. Okay, we can go get something to eat.” Her eyes light up. What am I getting myself into?
I follow her down the stairs after she puts on some shoes. It’s dark out now but warm.
I still have no idea what to think of Naomi. Who does something like this? Goes out of their way to just be friends with someone else?
“We’ll go in my car,” she says. “Do you want take out or dine in?” Her car beeps as she unlocks it, and I walk around to the passenger side. It’s a small silver Honda. A few years old but well taken care of.
Can’t say the same thing for the inside. This is one thing that’s typical of Naomi and most girls. There’s stuff everywhere.
She tosses a jacket that’s bunched up on the passenger seat to the back, which has books, wrappers, and more clothes.
“Sorry.”
I get in and close the door.
“So take out or dine in?” she asks again, pulling out of the lot.
And the question I want to ask is: why are you letting some guy get into your car right now? You still don’t know me.
“Take out, I guess.” I don’t want to run into anyone in town and start having to make explanations for whatever this is.
“Naomi,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Why are you doing this?” I don’t want to look at her as she answers.
There’s a few seconds of silence, and all I can hear is the sound of the tires on the pavement underneath us.
“Can I just make one thing clear?” she says, both of her hands on the wheel. “I’m not doing this because I feel sorry for you. I’m doing it because I like you. I don’t know why. I barely know you.”
I take a chance and look at her now. She glances at me and puts her eyes back on the road. My heart is pounding inside my chest. I can’t believe she just said that. How do I even feel about that?
“I just—I feel drawn to you. You probably think I’m weird, but I can’t help it. I—“
“I don’t think you’re weird,” I say. “I just don’t understand why you’d want to be around someone like me.”
“Carlos, I can see what you’re not seeing right now. What I’m guessing you haven’t been able to see for a while now.”
I can feel her looking at me again.
“You’re a good person. I don’t know what you’ve gone through, but you’ll come through it. Only you can do that, but I just want to be there for you.”
We don’t say anything else the rest of the car ride. There’s still something I want to ask, but I don’t know how. So I store it away.
Seventeen
“So now I know who to ask when I have car trouble,” Naomi says as she digs her plastic fork back into her plate of fried rice.
So far, she’s asked me where I work and where I went to school, and I’ve managed to not tell her about my dad or Valerie. I don’t want to. Not yet, anyway.
“So did you grow up around here?” I ask. We’re at her sofa, our food on the glass coffee table in front of us. We had gotten a movie but never really paid attention to it. Instead, she’s asking question after question, and I’m trying to avoid answering except for the safe parts.
“I actually grew up like an hour from here in Jonesboro. I just moved here this year for college.” She puts her fork down and drinks some water. I keep eating.
“What do your parents do?” I ask.
She looks at me then back down at her plate as she answers. “My dad’s a truck driver, so he’s gone a lot of the time. My mom works as a lunch lady at an elementary school and takes care of my two younger siblings. They’re still in school where she works. Do you have siblings?”
“I have an older brother, but he moved to Texas. Haven’t seen him in a while.”
We eat for a minute. “Can I ask you something?” I say. It’s not what I’ve really been wanting to ask, but it’s something else that’s popped into my head.
“Shoot,” she says, food in her mouth.
“Are you Hispanic or white?” I say. And I have to smile, and I realize I just made her smile.
She chugs some water and puts the cap back on. “Both.”
She uses her hand to slip her hair behind her ear, and I imagine myself doing that. I blink and go back to my food.
“My dad is Mexican, and my mom is white. What about you? You’ve got to be Hispanic. Eighty-five percent chance that you’re Mexican, maybe ten percent chance that you’re Puerto Rican? And five percent for everything else.”
I laugh. “Mexican a
hundred percent. Born here, though.”
We look at each other again. It’s still a little awkward, but only because she admitted she liked me earlier. And now my mind is wondering in what way, and I want to know who this girl is. I want to keep being around her, because while I am, everything seems a little better.
I want to say that I start sleeping better, but I don’t. This time, for a different reason. And that reason is Naomi.
I lay in bed thinking about her most nights. We hung out again yesterday. That’s twice this week. It’s only been a couple of weeks since I met her, but I can’t help but want to be close to her. I don’t know what it is about her. She pulls me to her somehow.
She makes me laugh and smile. She helps me forget everything. For a while at least.
I have no idea why she would want anything to do with someone like me. She still doesn’t know anything about Valerie. Or Ariana. Or even my dad.
And I don’t want to tell her. Because it means she’ll leave. Like everything else in my life, I’ll lose her forever, and I just can’t stand to go through that one more time. So for now, I won’t tell her. I can’t. I need her.
I get a text from Naomi on my day off. She’s still at school, but she’ll be out soon. She wants to meet up at the movies. I had never really asked her, but it’s obvious she doesn’t have a boyfriend.
I’m just wondering if she has any other friends besides me.
I ask her that as we’re waiting for the movie to play. We’re pretty early. It’s a weekday, so it’s us and like four other people in this entire theater.
She shrugs. “I have friends. Just not here. It’s just most of them are back home. I didn’t have many friends to begin with because I started working junior and senior year of high school so I could help pay for my car and college. Only a couple of people I talked to came to this school too. A few of them are still back home. They found a job there. I have a closer friend who ended up at North Georgia in Dawsonville. I still chat with her online, but we don’t have time to see each other. We both work and go to school.”
“What about you?” she asks. We’re sharing a bag of popcorn that I insisted on paying for. My skin prickles as our fingers touch when we both go for the popcorn. I let her go first.
“My friends are assholes for the most part,” I say.
She laughs. “Why? You know what they say about the people you hang out with and what that says about you.”
I smile but don’t meet her eyes. “That’s why I don’t hang out with them anymore. They’re people from high school. I can’t relate to them anymore.”
“I get that. You just go your separate ways and become different people.”
I nod. She sighs, and we stare at the screen as the previews start. I can’t help but glance at her when she laughs out loud or when she pulls her legs up to her chest at the scary movie previews.
“Shit. I do not do scary movies,” she says, covering her face with her hands and looking towards me instead of at the screen. I’m not even paying attention to the previews anymore. Just staring at her. I can’t help it. I want to look away, but I can’t.
She’s doing the same.
What am I getting into? The thing is, I think it’s way too late to turn back now.
It takes everything inside me not to kiss her that night at the movies. One thing stops me, and that’s the fact that I’d feel like I was lying to her, and I wouldn’t be able to handle her finding out the truth about me.
So I turned that night after saying goodbye and headed to my apartment. And I took a very cold shower.
But now she wants to hang out again, and I can’t say no to her. I have to see her. I just have the feeling I’m going to have to say no sooner or later.
This time, we’re at my place. It’s the first time she’s here, and I hadn’t planned on it. I just always assumed we’d go to her place or out somewhere. But she’s knocking on my door. I know it’s her. She just texted me that I should help her study. She has a big test tomorrow. A final.
I want to say, hey, I didn’t even graduate high school. I don’t think I’m going to be a big help. But she doesn’t give me the chance. She’s knocking, and I’m scrambling to throw all my random work clothes into my room and put the dirty dishes in the sink before I have to go open the door or she barges in.
All I know is, even if I would let anything happen with her tonight, it sure wouldn’t happen in my room. Not if I can’t walk in there from the amount of clothes on the floor.
I finally make it to the front door and open it.
“Let me guess. You were throwing the mess that is your apartment into your closet?”
“No comment,” I reply. She walks past me, a binder in her hands.
“It’s okay. I do the same thing every time you come over.”
I smile and close the door. “Really? I can never tell. Must be a hell of a mess if it’s all still out when I get there.”
She laughs and sits down on the couch, automatically pulling her legs underneath her. She’s in these tiny shorts and a huge t-shirt, and I think I’m gonna need another cold shower after this.
I try to keep my eyes to myself as I head over to her. She’s already opening the binder up and flipping pages until she gets to the back.
“So what class is this?” I ask, sitting next to her. I can smell the shampoo in her still damp hair.
“Econ. And I suck at it. Bad.”
“Wait. I thought you were studying for non profits or business or whatever.”
“Yeah, but I have to take these core classes first. Somebody shoot me. I know I need to study business, but I just don’t get all of this stuff.” I look at her notes. There are charts everywhere. And words I don’t understand.
“I really don’t think I’m going to be much help to be honest,” I say. “You’re talking to someone who didn’t even—“
I stop right there. I never really told her I didn’t graduate from high school. Because then I’d have to tell her why. That I was in jail. Then I’d have to say why I was in jail.
And she’d never talk to me again.
“What is it?” she asks.
But I barely hear her because I notice the date on her notes. The seventh.
“Is that today’s date?” I whisper. Everything around me is starting to spin, and I can’t think straight.
“Carlos, what’s wrong?” I hear. I take a deep breath.
I forgot. I forgot about Valerie. She died two years ago today, and I forgot.
Now Naomi is standing up and staring at me. I finally see her.
“Nothing,” I say. “You know what?” I get up and I’m pulling at my hair. I can’t believe I got myself into this. I never should have let her in. Not just to my apartment, but into my life. This isn’t gonna work. This isn’t right.
“I don’t want to be rude, but you should go.”
“Carlos,” she says quietly, looking up at me. “What’s wrong? What were you gonna say?” Her binder is still open in her hands, but she’s no longer paying attention to those notes. Instead, she’s staring at me, waiting for an answer that I will never give her.
“Please just go,” I say again. I need to not look at her. It’s making this so much harder. I should have stopped this a long time ago and not waited so long.
I’ve made this so much worse. I’m just going in circles, like a car stuck in the mud and I’m never going to get out if I keep doing the same thing and spinning my tires until I’m so deep that I’ll never get out.
“Please just go,” I say again. But now she’s standing up, and my back is to her, but she’s right there, not going away.
“No,” she says. I can barely hear it. “Not until you tell me what’s going on. I’m not leaving you like this.”
“I’m not going to do what you think,” I say, my voice getting louder. My breaths are coming fast and hard, and I feel the walls closing in again. “Please, Naomi.”
Her hand is on my forearm. I turn towards her. She’s s
taring at me, her mouth slightly open, her eyes wondering why I’m like this right now.
And this time, I’m the one who goes to her. I take her head in my hands and I bring her to me.
And I kiss her, and she kisses me back. It’s like that night on the roof again, and once again, she’s rescuing me.
Talking me down from the ledge with her mouth, with her grip on my neck. Naomi pulls me towards everything that I’m afraid of.
Eighteen
I pull away, and her eyes flutter for a moment before fully opening and looking back at me. I pull my hands back as logic replaces desire. I can’t believe what I just did.
This isn’t fair to her. And it’s not fair to Valerie either.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Neither of us has taken a step back, but we’re no longer touching.
“Why?” she asks. “I know I’m not.”
I take a step back. This was my fault. I just couldn’t resist her being so close to me. And knowing what she tastes like. I gave in, and I shouldn’t have.
“This isn’t right,” I say.
“Why?” she asks. “What are you so afraid of?” She goes for my hands, but I walk towards the front door.
“Please, Naomi. Just listen to me. I’m not who you think I am. I’m not good for you.”
“Tell me why. And then I’ll decide that for myself.” She walks towards me.
Why does she have to be so stubborn? This is for her own good. It’s hard enough.
I walk back to the couch, and I grab her binder.
“I promise you I’m not trying to be a jerk right now, Naomi, but please go. I need to be alone.”
I put the binder in her hands. She’s silent, maybe waiting for me to change my mind. When she sees I’m not about to, she finally leaves, shutting the door behind her.
She texts me the next day, but I don’t reply. I can’t. That wouldn’t be right after I told her she needed to leave last night. I mean what I said. We need to break this off now. I waited long enough.
Letting Go (Changing Hearts Series Book 3) Page 8
