“I thought he told you to not pay any attention to what I say?”
“He did,” he confirms, “but he didn’t say not to ask you anything.”
We walk out of the coffee shop and head towards the lifts. “Are you ready to hear what I have to say about Noah?” I ask.
He presses the call button and nods. “That’s why I’m asking.”
“Okay. Don’t ask me about him, don’t talk about him to me and don’t pay any attention to what either of us says.”
“Great,” he says, “we’re back to behaving like teenagers. Amazing.”
“Shut up,” I say as I playfully nudge his arm, “and get to bloody work.”
“You going up to the labour ward or are you on one of the others?”
“Labour and delivery,” I tell him.
He steps into the lift and punches the button. “You can at least confirm if you knew him already,” he says.
“I think that’s pretty obvious,” I reply.
“Hold the doors!” someone calls.
As the depth of the voice floats into the small lift, I feel my skin prickle. Ben shoots a glance at me in the instant before Noah rushes into the lift. He stops the minute he sees me and just stares. He shakes his head and turns around in an attempt to get out, but the doors slide shut in his face.
He folds his arms across his chest and leans against the side of the lift without turning around.
“I thought I told you to stay away from her,” says Noah.
Ben looks down at me and rolls his eyes. I raise my eyebrow back at him. He forgot to tell me that bit. “And I thought I told you that I’m an adult and I can make up my own mind.”
Noah shakes his head. He still has a mop of light brown hair and is dressed similarly to Ben in a white shirt and black trousers.
“Why do you hate her so much anyway?” asks Ben.
I almost spit my coffee out.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Noah says. “But I’m telling you that she’s trouble.”
I narrow my eyes at his back.
“Alright,” says Ben. “But I’m still going to make my own mind up about her. After all, people can change, can’t they?”
“I’m still here,” I remind them.
“Unfortunately,” mumbles Noah.
I turn to Ben. “Some people can change,” I say, “but some people still act like idiotic teenage boys.” I nod towards Noah.
Neither of us says anything after that, and with each floor we pass, the tension and awkwardness grows between us. I decide to stare straight ahead and sip my coffee. I know he’s pissed off with me for just leaving him like that, but what else was I supposed to do? I was doing it for him. Surely after all these years he can see that.
The lift pings and the doors slide open. None of us move.
“I think this is your floor,” says Ben.
I look up and see the signs for the labour ward. “Oh,” I say.
“See you around,” calls Ben. “Hope your first day goes alright.”
“Okay,” I reply. “And thank you.”
I don’t look at either of them as I walk out of the lift. When I hear the doors close behind me, I feel my shoulders sag in relief.
“Ariel,” says Noah.
I jump at the sound of his voice. I hadn’t realised he’d followed me out of the lift. “What?” I snap, turning around to face him. I wish I hadn’t. Now that he doesn’t have an angry scowl smothering his features, his handsome face is like a slap to my own. All those images I have of him in my memory don’t begin to do him justice. His blue eyes look like a snapshot of a midnight sky, complete with twinkling stars. They stare into me, but my gaze has travelled from his eyes down to his angular jaw. He’s got a twitch in in it, just underneath his ear, which means he’s grinding his teeth. Wow, he’s still really angry.
“Stay away from me,” he says, breathing his minty toothpaste breath all over my face.
My eyes flash down to his hand, but there’s no ring. Hmm. What happened there then?
“So you fix broken hearts, do you?” I ask. “Seems a little ironic.”
I see a flicker of confusion on his face before he composes himself and then frowns at me. “Ariel,” he warns. “I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to see you and I don’t want to hear about any of your antics from my mates.”
How does he know about my antics?
“Stay away,” he says again.
“That’s exactly what I was intending to do nearly seven years ago, Noah.”
“Is that so?” he says. “Well, you shouldn’t have come back.”
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” I tell him, and now he’s the one that looks as if he’s been slapped in the face.
Chapter 11
THEN
A Backwards Apology
Droplets of water wake me up as they splatter onto my face. When I open my eyes, I realise that they’re dripping from his head because he’s standing right over me…in nothing but a towel.
“You fell asleep,” he states.
Yeah, I kind of figured that out. “I know.”
“Are you showering or not?” he snaps.
He’s still angry. Great. “Shower, please.”
He throws a towel at me and it lands over my face. I huff and snatch it away. “Are you angry because you fucked me like a dog or because I was a virgin?”
“Both,” he says, shaking his head. “No, the latter.”
“Why does that make a difference?” I say gently. I don’t want him to be angry with me. We did something that we both agreed to do. He didn’t hurt me. He respected me more than he’ll ever understand. It doesn’t matter to me that he was rough. What matters is that he waited until I gave him permission.
“Because I just took something away from you that you can never get back, and I didn’t do it very nicely.”
I want to hug him. I want to curl into his lap and fall asleep in his arms.
“I don’t know what I can say,” I confess. “I wanted it like that.” I shake my head to correct myself. “No, I needed it to be like that. Please don’t feel bad. If you feel bad, then I’ll feel bad, and I’ve got enough to feel bad about.”
He flops down onto the bed and turns to face me. “Why did you need it to be like that?”
I shake my head and get up. “I can’t tell you. You’ll just have to trust me.”
He stares down at his hands and watches the water drip onto his open palms for a couple of seconds before asking, “Is it really your birthday today?”
I look into his blue eyes that remind me of the sapphire stones on my mother’s engagement ring and nod. “Yes, it is.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“For what?”
“You’ve had a really shitty birthday.”
I smile weakly at him. “You made it better, so thank you,” I tell him. “Can I take a shower now?”
He nods. “There are fresh towels in the cupboard. I’ll be outside, chopping some wood.”
I nod and wait for him to grab his clothes and leave the room. When I hear the back door shut, I quickly grab the bloodied sheets and run downstairs to the kitchen. I ram them into the washing machine, throw some powder into the drawer and set it to run on its hottest wash. I doubt even a ninety-degree wash will get bright red blood out of white sheets, but I guess it’s worth a try.
I spend nearly an hour in the shower, washing and scrubbing every centimeter of my skin. The hot water stings as it skims over my swollen, sore bits, but I relish it. This kind of pain I can handle. This doesn’t take my breath away and it won’t keep me awake at night. And this sort of pain won’t force me to relive it over and over again.
After I wash my hair three times, I shut the shower off. I grab one of the large bath towels from out of the cupboard and wrap it around me. Then I take another smaller towel and wrap my hair up before positioning it on the top of my head.
When I pad back into the room, I see that he�
��s left me some clothes on the mattress. A black pair of his boxers and a plain white t-shirt. Interesting. What has he done with my clothes from the bathroom?
I let my towel drop to the floor and pull on his clothes. The t-shirt falls to mid-thigh and his boxers fall loosely around my legs. I need to watch how I sit down or else there’s no point in me wearing anything. I pull the towel from off my head, run my fingers through my long, damp hair and then scrunch it. I wrap my arms around my chest and walk down the hallway towards the stairs.
Each step creaks as it absorbs my weight. I glance around the old farmhouse and see the exposed, rotten beams across the ceilings, the bare stone walls and the cold, leaf-covered concrete floors. There isn’t a single proper piece of furniture in the living room. I notice the hearth and the fire, a couple of rugs and beanbags, and a small radio. How does he live here like this? It’s freezing and it looks like crap.
I hear him before I see him. His boots collide with the floor, making the sound echo around the room until he marches into view. I’m still on the stairs and he doesn’t know I’m here so I watch him for a while. He places the logs and some kindling on the floor next to the hearth and starts to build a fire. I watch the muscles in his back as they dance underneath his t-shirt. I can’t stop myself from thinking that he’s been inside me. He’s done something to me that no man has ever done before. I gave him my virginity.
“What sport do you do?” I ask.
He jumps at the sound of my voice and drops a stick.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to creep up on you,” I tell him.
He crouches back down and carries on stacking the kindling in a criss-cross pattern on the grate. “I swim. Well, I used to.”
I thought so. “But you don’t anymore?”
“Not really,” he says with a sigh.
“What do you mean?” He can’t have a body like that without doing at least a couple hundred lengths a week. I should know. Maybe he used to be on the swim team and that’s how he knows me. “How much swimming did you used to do?”
“A lot,” he says. “I swam for county when I was like twelve, but I had to quit. I just do it to keep fit now.”
“Why did you quit?” I ask, stepping off the last stair. My feet immediately freeze over.
“I was in an accident,” he mumbles. “I damaged my back and haven’t been able to swim as fast since.”
“What sort of accident?” I push. I know I’m being rude and nosy, but I like that he’s talking to me. And I like hearing that he’s got a story to tell because it kind of helps to take my mind off my own shitty life.
He takes a deep breath and flicks his lighter. “It was a house fire,” he says. “I fell through the stairs.”
I stop. My hand is still on the banister of the stairs and my eyes are fixed on the back of his head. “Just you?”
“No,” he says, leaning down to blow gently underneath the pile of logs. “I lost my entire family that night. Both parents, two sisters, two brothers and three dogs.”
He let me bang on about losing my entire family when he’s been in the same boat as me? Actually, he’s still in the same boat. “Do they have a grave?” I ask. Surely if they did, then he’d have seen a hole just a big as the hole he dug for my family.
He grabs the iron poker and stabs it into the fledgling fire really hard. “They couldn’t find any bodies to bury. I had their ashes so I buried them instead.”
Fuck.
“How did you…” I begin.
“How did I survive it?” he finishes.
I take a deep breath. “Yes.”
“I imagine I survived just the way you did.”
“Bad luck?” I offer.
He scoffs. “That’s the difference between us, Ariel.”
I’m still curious how he knows my name but I like how he keeps using it. “How do you—”
“And that’s how I know it’ll get better,” he continues. “Time will change your opinion of that.”
“What will get better?” I ask.
“You thinking it’s bad luck that you survived. That’ll change.”
I don’t believe him, but then again, he’s been there. He’s been through what I’ve been through and he’s come out on the other side. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Okay.”
“It still haunts me every single day,” he confesses. “And the smell…I’ll never forget it.” He visibly shudders and then crouches down to throw a big, thick log onto the flames that hisses and spits at him. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he tells me. “I don’t even know why I’ve just told you all of that.”
I hear his voice break as he finishes the sentence and feel a tiny piece of me break for him too. I didn’t think I had anything left inside me that could break.
My feet begin to move towards him. I want to tell him that I’m sorry, but I can’t say it because I know how shit that word really is. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t make it hurt less and it doesn’t bring them back. I feel my hand begin to reach out as I near him.
“I’m not a gravedigger,” he announces. His voice sounds normal again. I want to ask him if I’ll be able to talk about my family like that and then make myself sound normal again afterwards.
I pull my arm back and hold it down by my side. “I thought you said you’d dug the grave?”
“I did,” he says.
“I’m confused,” I say, feeling a frown creep onto my face.
He stands up and turns around to face me, then gestures to the room. “This is my Grandad’s place. He had a stroke a few months ago and now he needs twenty-four-hour care. I’m his only living relative and he’s all I’ve got, so I’ve had to sell all of his stuff and some of his land to pay for his care.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. I couldn’t help it. It just slipped out.
He nods. “I’m at university but I’m on Christmas break for a few weeks, so I’ve volunteered to cover his usual shifts at the cemetery.”
Ahh, that explains it.
“I’m going to have to sell the house too, I think,” he adds.
That must suck. We fall into an awkward silence after that. I hate that we both have death hanging around our necks, and I think we should talk about something else before we both end up crying on one another. That’s definitely not what we need. I stare as he continues to stare back at me and realise that I still don’t know how he knows me. “How do you know me but I don’t know you?”
Despite what he’s been through and what he’s just told me, he smiles, and I know right there and then that he’s the most beautiful man I’ll ever set eyes on. “You’re Ariel. You’re the girl that’s going to put this stupid little village on the map when you go to the Olympics in three years. I’ve seen you…you’re good.”
“I got lucky,” I say.
“No,” he says. “You’ve worked hard to get where you are. You’re not born a triathlete. You’ve become one.”
I want to tell him that I was. I was born one. I don’t have to try at it. It’s just like breathing for me. I don’t get tired. I don’t get aching muscles. I just do it. And when I’m doing it, I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt. “I enjoy it,” I tell him.
“I can tell.”
When has he seen me? “So why don’t I know you?”
“I’m guessing I’m about five years older than you, so I left for university when you were probably about fourteen.”
Erm, he got the maths wrong, but I don’t bother to correct him. “You lived with your Grandad after the accident?”
“Yes, I ran the farm with him.” He walks into the kitchen and grabs two steaming mugs from off the counter. “I made you some tea,” he says, handing me a chipped green mug. “I hope it’s alright.”
I eye the mug carefully and take a tentative sip. “It’ll do,” I tell him with a small smile.
“Come and sit,” he says, nodding towards a pile of pillows in the middle of the floor. He doesn’t have to ask me twice. I sit down on a large brown pil
low and wriggle my toes in front of the fire.
We don’t talk. We just sit there and drink our tea. I can feel my eyelids getting heavier and I know I’m going to fall asleep. I think about asking him if he wants me to leave, but it’s getting late and I have nothing to wear.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “And I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t look at me. I’m expecting him to ask me what I’m thanking him for, but he doesn’t. “You’re welcome.”
I tip my cup back and drain the remains of my tea. I want to ask him more questions. I want to ask him what he plans on doing with his life or how he manages to carry on with his life at all, but I don’t feel like I’ve earned the right.
After twenty minutes of sitting in comfortable silence, I hear him snoring gently. I crane my neck to look at him, and for the first time, really take him in. He’s fallen asleep lying on a beanbag with his head hanging off the back of it. His mouth is open slightly, but it’s cute in a weird, sleepy kind of way. He has a heart-shaped face, high cheekbones and his jaw is quite sharp, but it’s just round enough to stop it from being triangular.
My thoughts go over this morning and how I reacted afterwards, and tears spring to my eyes. I can’t believe I’m sitting here in a stranger’s pair of boxers in an empty, cold house with nowhere to go and no one to go to. I don’t think I can stay in this village. I don’t think I can live being talked about and pitied by everyone. I brush the tears off my face and shudder in a long, deep breath.
I have to leave.
Now that thought has nestled its way into my head, I realise that I won’t be able to let it go. I quickly glance at the sleeping form next to me and wonder if he’ll help me. I know I’ve asked a lot of him and that I don’t even know him but I need some help. I won’t be able to do it all on my own.
Chapter 12
NOW
An Early Night
It’s nearly ten when I finally let myself into our apartment. I spy a note on the kitchen table and see Ruby’s scribble across the page telling me she’s left lasagne in the fridge for me. I feel myself smiling. I’m sure that if it weren’t for Ruby, I wouldn’t eat anything. She makes my packed lunch for work and cooks tea almost every single night. Today when I opened my lunch box¸ I found a roast chicken and couscous salad with hummus and carrot sticks. Ruby’s big on healthy eating, which means that this lasagne won’t be a normal lasagne. It’ll be crammed with extra vegetables and probably be made from quorn, because she says there’s less fat and more protein in quorn. I don’t really care about fat or protein, so I usually just eat whatever she makes me.
Noah and Me Page 7
