Dreaming in Chocolate

by Susan Bishop Crispell

  Noah flipped off his brother without turning around. He wasn’t going to let Tucker’s dickishness derail his hope for a future with Penelope and Ella. Not even Penelope had managed to do that and she’d put in considerable effort.

  He caught a hint of Penelope’s perfume clinging to his clothes as he stripped. He tossed the shirt onto the floor. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to scream at Penelope or kiss her the next time he saw her. The one thing he was sure of was that he wanted there to be a lifetime of next times. No matter what Penelope had said about them not having a future together. This was the universe pushing him where he was supposed to be. And he was supposed to be in Malarkey with Penelope and Ella.

  As he showered, he ran through the epic to-do list he was now faced with tackling. It would be worth it, though. To finally get the life he wanted.

  When Noah went back downstairs, he didn’t waste any time getting to the point. “I’m gonna move back.”

  “Just like that?” Tucker asked.

  Dropping into the chair opposite his brother, he leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees to keep from bouncing them. “You know I’ve wanted to come home for a while. Offering to help out while you’re out of commission was just a convenient excuse.”

  “Let me guess. This has nothing to do with wanting to be around your family and everything to do with getting in Penelope’s bed.”

  “It has everything to do with family.” Noah ran a hand through his damp hair and flicked the droplets at Tucker. “Ella’s my daughter. There’s no way I could go back to my old life even if I wanted to.”

  Tucker jolted forward, his cast thumping hard against the floor. He swore and readjusted in his seat so that he faced his brother. “I’m sorry. You do realize how kids are made, right? There’s no way you slept with the girl of your dreams and then just walked away. Not with how hung up on her you still are.”

  “Yeah, I know. And yeah, I did.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. So you slept with Penelope and she just decided not to tell you that you knocked her up? I don’t buy it. It’s not like you were some random one-night stand she couldn’t look up afterward. To me, that’s a clue that you weren’t the only guy she was sleeping with and the kid isn’t yours.”

  Noah scrubbed a hand over his face, unable to look at his brother. “I know how it sounds, but you’re wrong. She used one of her hot chocolates, and when she told me what she’d dreamed about I acted like a complete jackass. I don’t blame her for wanting nothing to do with me.” It wasn’t entirely the truth, but there was nothing he could do to change the past, so continuing to blame Penelope for all the time he’d missed with them didn’t help anyone.

  “Shit.”

  “I know it’s a lot to take in, but this is a good thing. I have a kid, Tuck. A kid I’m already crazy about. And I have a chance at making a life here with her and Penelope.”

  However many days Ella had left, he was going to be in them. And if fate was on their side, they’d have her for the rest of their lives. He just had to keep believing that.

  “So a girl and a kid all in one fell swoop?” Tucker asked.

  Noah blew out a breath and raised an eyebrow at his brother. “Pretty much. I came back looking to prove to myself I was over Penelope and found two people I’m not sure I can live without.”

  Now he just had to convince Penelope she felt the same way.

  * * *

  Penelope was still in bed, though not asleep, when Ella crawled under the covers with her the next morning.

  “Where’s Noah?” Ella asked.

  She stared at her daughter. The smattering of freckles on her cheeks. The enviously long eyelashes. The hope lighting up her big brown eyes. She hated that her answer would snuff it out. “He went home.”

  “But we were supposed to make you breakfast. I had it all planned out. Chocolate chip waffles and bacon and half hot chocolate, half coffee to drink. Full hot chocolate for me, though.”

  “That sounds yummy, sweetie. You and I can still make it if you want.”

  Ella rolled over so they were no longer facing each other. Her fingers twisted in the chain of the compass necklace as she huffed out a sigh. “No. It’s not the same without Noah.”

  “It’s the same as it’s always been,” Penelope said. And the truth of that sat heavy in her chest, like something important was missing, despite her life never feeling incomplete before.

  “I know. But now that we found him, he should be here. He wants to be here. He told me.”

  If he’d wanted to stay, he would have fought harder last night. He wouldn’t have walked away. Again. Even though she’d told him to. “I know you want him to be your dad, Ella.”

  “He is my dad. You know he is.”

  “Okay, technically, yes. Noah is your father.” Father, not dad. Dad implied reading bedtime stories and kissing scraped knees and compromising on how many bites of food were enough to warrant dessert. But try explaining those differences to a girl who had never had either one in her life.

  “Then why did you make him leave?” Ella packed a lifetime of accusation into that one sentence. She side-eyed Penelope, keeping her face directed at the ceiling while she glared.

  “Sometimes wanting something isn’t enough. Everyone carries around baggage with them from all the things they’ve experienced, and sometimes it’s just too big to get past.”

  “But why don’t people just set it down? Or get a wagon to pull it on?”

  If only it were that easy. Penelope stroked a finger down Ella’s cheek, wishing she could erase the hurt in her daughter’s eyes. “Some things are hard to let go of, even if it would make life easier.”

  Ella scrunched up her face and pouted. “Maybe you should both try harder,” she said after a few heavy breaths through her nose.

  “Ella,” Penelope warned.

  “What?”

  “You know better than to talk to me like that.”

  “I just want us all to try and be a family, okay, Mama?” The desperation in Ella’s voice made it quaver. “It’s already on my list and everything.”

  “You can still see him, Ella. I already told Noah that too.” Penelope’s voice was harsher than she’d meant. She closed her eyes and counted to five.

  “That’s not the same as being a family. He should be here with us all the time. He’s already missed too much. If he misses much more, I’ll be gone.”

  Gone. The word sounded so final coming from her daughter’s lips. “Sometimes people can’t always be here when you want them to be. But that doesn’t mean they can’t still be important to you.”

  Ella sat up and rearranged the covers around her so there was a thick barrier between them. Her small hands bunched and pulled on the fabric before smoothing the wrinkles out again. “If you hadn’t been fighting with him he would have stayed last night and everything would be okay now.”

  “No, he wouldn’t, sweetie. That’s why we were fighting. This life, this town, it’s not for him. No matter how much you both think it might be right now.”

  “That’s not true. Noah belongs with us.” Ella shook her necklace. Something rattled around inside, as if a piece that made the compass work had come loose. She looked up at Penelope, face flushed and eyes wide. “He’s supposed to be with us. Sleeping in this house and walking me home from school and laughing with you when I snort milk out of my nose at the dinner table. That’s how it’s supposed to be. So you have to be nice to him and make him see that he wants to be with us too. Because if he doesn’t know we want him too, we’re going to mess it all up!”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yes, it is!”

  “That’s enough, Ella. I wish I could give you everything you wanted, but Noah is never going to be what you want him to be. He had a chance to choose this life and he didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  Ella sat up, throwing the covers off of her. “That’s not true. He would pick me but you made him go away! And you broke my necklace. It
was working last night when he was here but now it won’t move at all. Not even for you. You broke everything!” She stood on the bed, one hand on her hip, the other clutching her necklace, and stared down at Penelope. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Stop yelling and sit down before you lose your balance and fall off the bed,” Penelope said.

  “Not until you make him come back! Call Noah. Tell him I want him here for breakfast like we talked about. He’ll come over. You just have to call him.”

  “You can see him, but not right now. And if you keep arguing with me, you won’t get to go to the Festival of Fate tonight.” Penelope hooked her arms around Ella’s knees and dragged her down, releasing her only once she stopped kicking.

  Ella jerked away from Penelope, the chain of her necklace catching on Penelope’s hand and ripping free from her neck. “You’re ruining everything!” She leapt from the bed and raced to her room. The walls shook with the force of her door slamming.

  Penelope picked up the pendant. It was still warm from being wrapped in Ella’s fist. She shook the compass and the red dial that always spun like mad when she was near gave a feeble shudder, then froze.

  She dropped face-first onto her pillow. The sound she let out was caught somewhere between a scream and a sob.

  The compass’s magic was supposed to lead Ella to the people who loved her. Now it was gone, and her daughter’s heart was in pieces.

  She really was ruining everything.

  34

  Ella wasn’t in her room.

  Or in any room in the house.

  Or even in the yard.

  As far as Penelope could tell, Ella wasn’t anywhere.

  35

  Noah lurked by the hot chocolate tent even though Penelope and her mom wouldn’t be around to man it for another hour or so when the sun went down. But with this being the shortest day of the year, sunset would come early and he’d be able to set the first of his plans in motion.

  Since his plans relied on Penelope giving him another shot, he needed her to show.

  More than half the town had already crowded into the park. The bonfire had been going for hours and people rotated spots in front of it. Others set up camp with lawn chairs and blankets and thermoses of soup and coffee and something stronger to keep the cold at bay.

  He caught a flash of purple weaving through the crowd. Five seconds later, he was being mauled. Or at the very least, hugged with the ferocity of a lion cub.

  “Hey, kid.” His kid. Damn that was a crazy thought. He wrapped his arms around Ella when she clung to his waist. Scanning the park and not finding Penelope, he asked, “Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s being stubborn.” Ella stepped back, fisting her hands on her hips, and gave him a squinty-eyed, tight-lipped look that was 100 percent Penelope.

  “That happens sometimes.”

  “It happens a lot lately. But if I can get my future to come true because of the festival hot chocolate, I think she’ll be better,” she said. “You’re going to put your future in the fire with me tonight, right?”

  “You bet I will.” He smiled down at her, noticing how unprepared she was to be outside for the next few hours. “Where are your gloves?”

  “I forgot them.”

  Noah rubbed his hands up and down her arms to warm her up. “Let’s get you over to the bonfire before you turn into an Ella-cicle.”

  “Yeah, that would be bad. If I froze right in the middle of the festival people would just shake their heads and say ‘Why didn’t somebody thaw her out?’ And you’d be really sad.”

  “Yes, I would. And so would your mom.” He tugged on one of the purple hunks of her hair to get her to look at him. “Do you think we should go find her and get her to warm up with us?”

  “I might freeze before we find her,” she said. Her teeth clanged together when she shivered.

  Noah knew she was exaggerating to avoid answering the question, but as sick as she was, he didn’t want to take the chance of making her worse somehow. But that didn’t mean he had to let the kid get away with manipulating him. He tilted his head toward the fire and set off in that direction.

  Pulling out his phone, he asked, “So if I call Penelope, she’ll tell me you are allowed to be hanging out with me?”

  Ella scurried around in front of him, raising her hand to stop him. “Don’t. You can’t call her yet.” She tried to tug the phone out of his hands. He tightened his grip and lifted it out of her reach.

  “So what you’re not telling me is that I’m going to be in even more trouble with her when she finds out about this?”

  “It’ll be okay. She won’t find out as long as I’m home before she comes to get me for dinner.”

  That little sneak. Forget about her not being allowed to hang out with him, Ella wasn’t even supposed to be at the festival, period. “Whoa, hold up, kid,” he said. Noah latched on to the hood of her coat as she walked toward the fire without him. She jerked to a stop, throwing a glare at him over her shoulder, but couldn’t hold back the smile that threatened to undermine her attitude. “Your mom doesn’t know you’re here? She thinks you’re still at home?”

  Ella turned to face him. “We had a fight and I went to my room.”

  “And you don’t think she’ll notice you’re gone? ’Cause I’m pretty sure she will, if she hasn’t already, and she’s probably going to lose her sh— She’ll be really worried about you.” He dialed Penelope’s number and listened as it rang and rang. Just as he pulled the phone away from his ear to end the call, she answered.

  “Penelope, I—”

  “I’m sorry, Noah. I can’t do this right now.” Her voice was raw with panic.

  It looked like she’d already discovered Ella’s empty room. Noah frowned at Ella. “Ella’s with me. She’s fine,” he said before she could hang up on him.

  “Oh, thank God.” Penelope’s sigh rasped through the speaker. “Are you at the house or the bar? I’ve been looking for her for over an hour. I can’t believe you just now thought to call and tell me where she was.”

  “She just found me at the festival. Like two minutes ago. I figured she was here with you and that you just wanted nothing to do with me after the way things ended last night and that she came over to hang with me on her own. She only told me you had no clue she was even here when I wanted to go find you. And now she’s giving me this really impressive death-glare for calling you.” He raised an eyebrow at her, silently asking if that was the best she could do. “Sorry about her sneaking out, by the way. She definitely gets her rebelliousness from me.”

  “That’s not funny, Noah.”

  “Oh, c’mon. It’s a little funny.”

  Whatever Penelope was doing on her end of the phone blocked out the first part of her response. The only part Noah could make out was, “I’m coming to get her.”

  “That might be kinda difficult. I already promised to do my wish with her at the bonfire. She said it was important to her completing some of the things on her list and that I had to help her. Of course, this was before I knew she ran away. But I still promised, so you can come join us, but you can’t take her home yet.”

  “Did you seriously just tell me what I can and can’t do with my own kid?”

  He shrugged, forgetting she couldn’t see him. “All I’m asking for is a few hours with her. With you. I’ve missed out on her whole life. I just want to spend time with her while I still can.”

  Penelope said, “That was a low blow, Noah.” Then she hung up.

  But it worked, he thought. And he meant it. He wasn’t going down without a fight. Noah nudged Ella to get her moving toward the fire again. “So, why’d you run away?”

  “Because I was mad at my mom for making you leave. And for breaking my necklace and ruining our lives.”

  “I hate to have to tell you this, since you have a serious grudge going on, but that’s not all your mom’s fault. I don’t know anything about the necklace, so you can stay mad at her about that if you want. Bu
t she only made me leave because I hurt her when we were younger and she’s scared I’m going to do it again.”

  Ella slowed to walk beside him. Turning her gaze to him, she said, “You won’t do it again.”

  “No, I won’t. But until she believes that, things might not be the way any of us want. So you need to cut her a little slack and you definitely can’t run away again. And next time you want to see me, you’ve gotta ask, okay? You can see me anytime you want as long as your mom says it’s all right.”

  “What if she says no?”

  “Then we’ll have to wait until she’s ready.”

  “I hope that’s soon,” she said.

  “Me too, kid.”

  * * *

  Penelope couldn’t find a parking spot anywhere close to the park. She left her car in the middle of the street a few feet from the barriers that marked the beginning of the festival. If Martin wanted to ticket her for it, so be it.

  The lights strung up overhead blinked to life as daylight faded. Tendrils of smoke wafted through the air, permeating it with the scent of the bonfire already in full burn. Downtown Malarkey was full to bursting with friends and neighbors, and Penelope pushed past every one of them without so much as a “hello” or a “sorry” in her haste to find her daughter.

  Ella was fine. She was with Noah. Safe. But until Penelope laid eyes on her, her heart refused to slow from its current panic-attack speed.

  They sat on an upturned wooden stump at the edge of the bonfire, Noah on the cold wood with Ella settled onto his lap like she belonged there. He’d unzipped his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders to keep them both warm in the near-freezing temperature.

  Pulling Ella’s gloves out of her pocket, Penelope walked the last few feet to reach them. “Do you want these?”

  Not expecting Penelope to suddenly be there, Ella jumped. Noah’s arms tightened around her to keep her from falling forward into the fire. He checked out the gray mittens with triangular cat ears and face sewn onto the backs as he took them from Penelope and asked, “Got any in my size?”