“Seriously?” he asks. “You don’t want to know what’s inside?”
“That was sarcasm. Open the damn box.”
He places both hands on opposite ends of the box, a nervous aurora running through his fingers, almost like he’s afraid to discover the contents hidden inside.
“What are you waiting for?”
His eyes turn to me. “It’s like Christmas,” he suggests. “You only ever get that one moment of surprise when you open your presents for the first time. After that, you’ll never experience the thrill of the unknown again.”
“Open the damn box.” I smile. “I could use an early Christmas.”
His tongue rolls across his lips. Bravery takes hold and he pops the lid open. His jaw sinks, his eyes widen. He slams the box shut. A visible gulp makes its way down his throat.
9
PRESENT
“It’s nice,” I say to Noah as I step through the open door of his loft. It’s dark and uninviting. Soft moonlight breaks through floor-to-ceiling windows, casting ominous shadows across the cherry floors.
“It’s home.” He crosses the room and rips a cord in the corner, turning on a lamp that lights the entire space. There’s a couch lined up against the windows, and a TV hangs on the opposite wall. The kitchen is to the left, all silver and very modern. “It’s peaceful here.”
A honking horn in the near-distance forces me to question that. “Really? I thought you loved the quietness of the country” My eyes scan the room, taking notice of the empty space that swallows everything else. It’s plain.
He pushes his hands into his pockets and shrugs. “The thing about silence is that it’s only peaceful when you have a clear conscious.”
I bite into my cheek, contemplating. “Sounds like there’s something on your mind.”
“All the time.”
“Want to talk about it?” I ask, my body swaying nervously.
“After a few drinks, maybe.” He crosses the room and steps to the bar. There, he reaches into an open cupboard above and retrieves a bottle of whiskey followed by two rum glasses. “Ice or no?”
“Whichever.”
He throws a few chunks of ice into each glass then tilts the bottle of whiskey. The brown elixir pours against the rocks, choking each piece of ice as it finds its resting spot near the bottom of the glass. He carries a drink and slides it into my hand.
“Thanks,” I say and step toward the large windows. Frost is painted against the glass, creating a collage of frozen wonder. In between the forming cracks, I can see the outside world—a whiteout of snow devouring every untouched inch of Old Town. I take a sip.
Noah moves behind me, the heat of his body a blanket from the coldness of the loft. “You miss it,” he says. “The beauty of the first snow.”
“Not so much.”
His reflection in the glass takes a swig. “I’m sorry about the way I spoke to you at the church yesterday. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I don’t think either one of us should be proud of the way we behaved.”
“Something we can agree on.”
Talking to his reflection seems so much easier, as if there’s less of a back-and-forth when our eyes aren’t concerned with avoiding each other. “I thought you weren’t allowed to drink,” I say, finally saying what’s been on my mind since his first drink at the bar.
“I’m not much of a by-the-rules kind of guy.”
“But you’re a preacher…”
“Yeah…”
I turn to face him. “All those years ago, when you came back from wherever the hell it was that you went, you never gave an explanation.”
“I came back a changed man.” He wipes a finger against his upper lip. “I think that’s enough of an explanation.”
I shake my head and sit my glass down on the window ledge. “Not for me, it wasn’t. You came back with a Bible in your hand and a mountain of distance between us.”
“It was never about being close to God, you know that, right? He was there for me and I became one of his own, but I’ve seen too much.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, shaking my head.
“I believe in my work, Faith. But I’m not a perfect man. I’ve got demons.”
“We all have demons haunting us from the shadows. It’s part of the deal we’re given when we’re born to humanity.”
“I don’t think you’re understanding me, Faith.”
“Then help me understand,” I say sternly, tired of tip-toing around half-truths. “We used to depend on the absolute truth, something that we knew most-often without ever saying a word. I could look into your eyes, and you wouldn’t have to say a damn thing, but when I look into your eyes now, all I see is darkness. I can’t read you anymore and that terrifies me.”
“I want to touch you,” he says softly, almost like a whisper. “I want to throw you against the wall,” his voice escalates, almost to a growl. “Rip your clothes off and fuck you until you scream for me to stop. But I won't stop. I can't stop.”
The lights go out and darkness eclipses the room. Half of his face becomes hidden in the shadows while moonlight stretches across his other half. Across the street is dark as well.
“I’m going to take this as a sign from God,” I say jokingly, trying to summon anything other than darkness.
“Not funny,” he says and moves to the bar behind me. He flicks a lighter and lights the flame of an old candlestick. “The power has been going out a lot lately.”
“Must be the overpopulation,” I mumble.
“Ha, ha, ha,” he feigns amusement. “It’s the weather. It’s been unpredictable these last few months.” He tips the candle to light another on a decorative table that sits about four feet high. Beside the candle are two vases, a half-empty bottle of vodka, and a home phone—a clear artifact of the past anywhere outside of small town, Ohio.
“Nice collection of books,” I say, pointing out the shelves adorned with ancient looking tomes underneath the table. “Anything I’d want to read?”
He smirks. “Probably not.”
“Did you mean it?”
He points to the books. “That you don’t want to read Plato?”
“No.” I scratch my foot against the cherry floors. “The part where you wanted to throw me against the wall.”
He’s visibly shaken, his body pulling away from me, his brow furrowing. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Because?”
“Because there’s a fine line between what I want to do, and what I shouldn’t do.” He bites into his lip and runs a hand nervously against the frozen window. “But I think about you all the time.”
“You know what they say—you never forget your first love.”
“No.” He steps away from the window and back to the counter where he pours another drink. “I could never forget you.”
“How did we get so fucked up?” I shake my head, trying to pinpoint the exact moment of our tortured timeline when we hit the point of no return. I know it began with the accident, and then again in the hospital—”
“That accident destroyed us,” he interrupts. “It ripped the rug out from under us and then it stole our lives from us. Everything after that was reactionary. We were supposed to be together until the very bitter end, remember?”
“I remember, but I know something now that I didn’t know then.”
“And that is?” Noah questions as he grabs my drink from the window and passes it into my hands.
“That the world doesn't stop spinning just because the fragments of our hearts were shattered across the asphalt. Our biggest mistake was thinking it did.”
“Cheers to that revolutionary truth.” He clinks his glass against mine, throws his head back and swallows the whiskey in one go.
I lean into the glass to take a drink, but instead, set it down on the bar behind me. For the first time, I notice the temperature in the loft plummeting, so I pull my sweater tight and wrap my arms around my chest. “You know, I’v
e lived so long in the shadows that this whole no power situation is almost comforting. I feel more welcome in the darkness, hiding from the light of the world.”
He chuckles lightly to himself. “That sounds a little morbid.”
“You don’t feel it?” I question and take a step toward him. “Don’t you feel the darkness settling in?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You can’t even be honest with yourself.” I shake my head. “Just by looking at you, listening to you, I know you’re damaged.”
He shrugs again. From experience, when he goes into repetitive mode, it means he’s avoiding. “Why does it matter, anyway?”
“Because,” I shout, “it’ll make me feel less alone!”
That grabs his attention, if only for a moment, before he drops his head. The candle behind him lights him so that he appears like a monster lurking in the shadows. But I know him, and he’s anything but a monster.
“I didn’t mean to yell,” I say calmly. “But you’re hot and cold and I don’t know where I stand with you by the second.”
“Other than finding Luke,” he begins to speak as he reaches for the bottle of vodka beside the candle, “why did you come back to Old Town?”
I shift uncomfortably, but since he’s given me permission to skip over the Luke portion of my aspirations, I do so. “I came back to start a new life.”
“Was Florida that bad?” he asks in between swigs of vodka. He puckers his lips and passes me the bottle.
“It was everything I ever dreamed of and then one day I woke up and realized it was none of those things.”
“I should warn you,” he says as I raise the bottle to my mouth and take a quick gulp, “that’s moon—”
It’s a half second too late when I realize what he was trying to say—that’s moonshine. My throat burns and I spit what’s left in my mouth to the floor. I slam the bottle onto the decorative table, and in the process, knock one of the glass vases to the floor. It shatters and dust scatters across the hardwood.
“Shit,” I stammer and kneel to the floor to begin cleaning the mess. “Do you have a broom?” When he doesn’t answer, I raise my head to face him. There’s a haunted, pale look etched across his face—the kind you’d see in a horror movie after the devoted wife comes face to face with a ghost.
“Noah?”
“You found him,” he says dryly. “Those are Luke’s ashes.”
10
FIVE YEARS AGO
In the space between us is nothing more than a tiny piece of paper—a check signed with a date years in the future. Neither of us say a word, unsure what to do with this predicament we’ve found ourselves in. It’s certainly not the worst fate in the world, but it’s a challenging one.
“Fifty-thousand dollars,” I say to Luke, “and we can’t spend a dime of it for five years.”
“What do you think it means?” he ponders. “And why is there a post-dated check hidden in the floorboards?”
That’s a good question that I have no answer for, so I shrug and shake my head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s almost like they knew—”
“Stop,” I demand. “I don’t want to go down that road. There’s nothing but heartache and a lifetime spent searching for answers.”
“I just wish…” He bites into his lip and his head sinks into his palms. The muffled sobs escaping the cracks in his fingers chills me.
“I know,” I say softly. “But I also know that pain is only temporary. It gets better. It always does.”
He wipes a forceful fist against his eyes, rubbing them dry but leaving the cherry-red evidence of tears behind. “You think?”
“It has to.” I fold my hands into each other and rest them on the table. “For years I went from home-to-home. From one tragedy to another. I survived because I believed in something greater than my own suffering. I believed that happiness existed, and I found that here. In this house.”
“Thank you, Faith.”
“For?”
“For being here. For staying here.”
My lips tremble on the edge of an emotional break. The sound of his chair screeching against the hardwood terrifies me, but soon, the feel of his arms wrapped around my neck comforts me. “We’re going to be fine,” he whispers into my ear.
“Do you think he’s coming back?” I ask. It’s a question that’s come out of the blue, and I can tell he’s not prepared for it by the long, drawn out silence.
“He has to,” he says quietly.
11
PRESENT
“No,” I stammer. “That’s a lie.”
Noah stands above me motionless. “I wish it was.”
I shake my head slowly, feeling myself drifting into an inescapable daze. “I don’t believe it.”
“Go ahead,” he snaps, “continue living in your fantasy world where you’re free to believe that your actions don’t have consequences.”
I crane my head to face him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You know what I mean,” he fires off quickly. “He was never the same after you left.”
“You are unbelievable,” I say gravely. I bowl over and stare at the floor—at the ashes, then at my hand that is resting in Luke’s remains. My body shakes. My stomach churns. I throw myself to my feet and swipe my arm against the contents of the table, sending glass shattering across the floor. “What the fuck is wrong with you!?”
“Faith,” he says and places his palms in the air defensively, “calm down.”
“Calm down?” I cackle. “Calm down? I’ve been looking for him for two goddamn days,” I scream and pound my fist against the table. “And you said,” I rub the back of my palm against my forehead and laugh lightly. “You said you’d take me to see him tomorrow.”
“He has a grave beside mom and dad.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Are you serious?” he asks deadpan. “How was I supposed to do that? You changed your damn number the second you left town!”
“I mean earlier. Why didn’t you tell me then?” I’ve calmed down, just enough so I won’t reach out and choke him.
“Because,” he clenches his fist, “I didn’t know how you’d react.”
“How? What happened to him?”
He shakes his head and turns away from me. “Do we have to go down this road?”
“Was he in pain?” I whimper through a sob. “Was it quick?”
“I don’t know,” he says, continuing to avoid eye contact with me.
“Tell me what happened!”
He shifts his eyes to me. “The details aren’t important.”
There’s a deep sadness settling in his eyes, pouting more than a pair of lips ever could. When I asked him earlier if he could feel the darkness, his response was a lie. Right now, I need the truth—even if it’ll devastate me. “Was it drugs?”
He shrugs and bites into his lip, not wanting to answer my question.
“Noah,” I beg, “I need to know the truth.”
“You want to know the truth?” he asks quietly. “It happened right outside of The Bootstrap.” He pushes himself backward and takes a seat on the arm of the leather couch. His body is slouched and his head hangs low. “It was a Sunday, and I hadn’t seen him in a few days, so when I got the call, I answered it.”
“The police?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “Luke. He wanted me to meet him at the bar, but I had work commitments. I was sitting in my office writing a sermon and something inside me told me to go check on him. I think it was the tone of his voice. I don’t know if it was God or intuition, but when I got there, it was too late…” He comes to a pause, a long, drawn out stint of silence.
The waterworks begin and I find myself barely able to continue standing. There’s a macabre reality show playing through my head where my mind films the script that Noah’s telling. Every time I wipe away a tear, they are replaced with two more.
“He was lying unconscious in the back alley. I rushed to him and knew as soon as my knees hit the asphalt that it was too late.” He hops to his feet and crosses to the bar where he braces his hands against it. Once again, his back is facing me and I know it’s purposeful. He’s trying to protect me from seeing him break. “Someone…” he stammers, “someone had knocked him in the head with a brick.”
My hand clasps against my mouth, but I’m unable to hold back a mournful wail. Murder. That’s the worst way to die—the ultimate betrayal of humanity. Knowing I could faint at any second, I move quickly to park myself on the couch.
And then, like always, it hits me ten seconds later… “You said someone killed him, but you didn’t say who.”
He takes a break from pouring a drink over ice. “That’s because the good ole police of Old Town are terribly inept at their jobs.” He spins around with the glass of whiskey thrown back against his lips. He sits the glass down on the counter and steps to the window. “Justice is a joke,” he speaks with an undercurrent of condemnation. “Rest assured that the assailants will pay.”
I throw myself back against the cushion and force my fingers through my hair. “In the afterlife?”
Noah nods and traces his fingers across the frosted window. “Something like that,” he muses out loud. He continues to paint his fingers across the glass, and I become inquisitive so I stand and approach.
‘5-14-2014’
“Is that the date?” I stand beside him. “Is that when it happened?”
“Yeah,” he says softly and turns to grab the bottle of whiskey off the bar.
“Six months.” I stare through the fading, cool numbers, where the city streets become increasingly covered in snow. “I should have been here.”
“Well,” he sighs, “you weren’t.”
I squeeze my eyes tight and pull my lips into my mouth. He takes a swig of whiskey and leaves me alone by the window. Rage. Sorrow. Pain. It all streams through my veins like a volcano on the precipice of eruption.
Faithless #1: A Tainted Love Serial Page 5
