Paper or Plastic

by Vivi Barnes

  On Monday, Grandma had a fever and could barely get out of bed. I decided to call in sick to work so I could go with Dad and Grandma to see Dr. Ahmed. My mother thought it would be too hard on me, but Dad encouraged it. He was worried, and I had a feeling my going along was more for him than for me. Grandma was so weak and shaky that it didn’t take long for Dr. Ahmed to diagnose her with walking pneumonia, which apparently she’d had for a while without us even knowing, and tell us that with her running around in the rain last night, we were lucky it wasn’t worse.

  Dr. Ahmed prescribed medicines for her and ran some tests. He talked to us using words like brain plaque and advanced neurodegenerative process and cellular integrity that were just fancy ways of saying her Alzheimer’s was progressing. He tried to be sympathetic about it, but I could tell he’d seen enough of these cases to make us just another family who didn’t understand the disease and needed coddling.

  He did recommend that since Grandma had started wandering outside of the house, for her safety we should get a home health care provider who could be with her during her waking hours—more than what Patty could do. Dad gave me a look that I knew all too well, but honestly I didn’t care what Mom thought about having someone else in the house. Grandma needed help. Dr. Ahmed also suggested that we consider a nursing home. I almost let curses fly off my tongue at that one.

  I looked at my phone to see a text from Noah that he’d sent earlier. You okay?

  I knew he was worried, and I felt horrible about not responding to his text last night, but with the words “nursing home” still reverberating in my ears all I could do was text a simple Yes.

  He responded with Want to talk?

  The tears started pricking my eyes as I thought about talking to Noah. I typed No thanks. I didn’t want to get into it. To tell him what was wrong meant I had to relive the past thirty-six hours, and I didn’t have it in me to do that.

  At least Bryce and Court knew about it because Syd told them, so there was no having to re-hash everything with them. They sent me texts to tell me they were thinking of me, but that was it. I appreciated the distance.

  I called in to work again on Tuesday, choosing instead to sit around and watch episodes of Bonanza with Grandma. She slept most of the time, though when I tried talking to her about stuff, she’d smile and seem interested. I told her how much I liked Noah. She had an entire conversation with me about him, laughing as I told her how we both were practically gagging over the whole pageant thing. Then when I mentioned him twenty minutes later, she asked, “Noah who?”

  So I stopped talking about him and watched the shows with her instead. My mom tried to get me to do something—anything—else, but I refused. Dad gave me these annoying sympathetic looks all the time, but at least he left me alone. A nurse who would be with Grandma five days a week showed up Tuesday afternoon to introduce herself to us. She kind of creeped me out, with her short, straight dark hair, round glasses, and purple jacket and pants. She reminded me of the Johnny Depp version of Willy Wonka.

  I went to work on Wednesday. I was on the register the entire time, so even though I saw Noah walk by a few times (and once to check my cash), I didn’t say much to him except for a generic “Hey.”

  He caught up with me on my break, literally right as my fifteen free minutes started. I had a feeling he’d been waiting for the break to start.

  “Hey, Lex,” he said, walking with me into the employee area. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You just don’t seem like yourself today.”

  I shrugged, stopping at the time clock. “I’m just tired, I guess.”

  “Ah.” He watched as I input my ID to clock out for break. I didn’t meet his gaze as I punched the numbers. Just one look into those beautiful, serious blue eyes and I’d lose it. The only thing I could do was swallow over the lump in my throat and focus on not crying, because all I wanted to do was fall into his arms and sob. I could not do that. Not here.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked softly, his fingers lifting to brush my hair from my shoulder. The touch almost unraveled me.

  “No, I’m okay.” I smiled too brightly at him and backed toward the ladies’ room. “I’ll see you later.”

  I stayed in the bathroom for several minutes, breathing and trying to hold it together. Finally, I went to my locker to check my phone, terrified that there’d be a text telling me Grandma relapsed or something. But the only text was from Syd.

  Still going to the game? It’s ok if you aren’t.

  Yep

  Whacking the crap out of the ball was exactly what I needed right now.

  The scrimmage didn’t start until six p.m. Syd picked me up from work and took me straight to the fields. Being the best friend that she was, she didn’t say anything about my grandma. She squeezed my shoulder once, and that was all I needed to know that she understood everything.

  For the first time in days, I poured my heart into something. I played the shit out of that softball game, and even the coach said it was my best game yet.

  After I had pitched the last out, all my teammates cheered my name. Syd gave me a huge hug and whispered in my ear, “If your grandma was watching this game, she’d be so proud of you.”

  Bryce ran onto the field to give me a hug. “Lex, you were amazing,” he said, lifting me off my feet and twirling me around, making me laugh.

  “Thanks,” I said as he set me back down. His arms felt good—not as good as Noah’s, but still comforting. He leaned down to say softly in my ear, “I know it’s been tough, but you played a good game out there.”

  “Thank you,” I murmured. He turned to talk to Coach Santiago.

  “Um, Lex,” Syd said, nudging me. Noah was jumping down from the bleachers and walking toward his SUV.

  I ran in his direction, but he was already at his SUV by the time I’d made it to the parking lot. At least he’d sat in the bleachers this time. Had he tried to skip out before Bryce had seen him? The fact that I’d ignored him all day gnawed at my heart. Here was a guy who had tried to conceal his own awful truths, who had just started to trust me, and I couldn’t even return that trust. Now that my game was over and I felt a little better, my rudeness was apparent.

  I owed him an apology. And the truth about how I felt.

  21

  The next day at SmartMart, we were so busy that I didn’t have the chance to talk with Noah. When we did interact, he was polite and friendly in a manager-to-employee kind of way, but he didn’t go out of his way to joke around like he used to.

  Syd invited me and Court to go to the beach after work, since my shift ended early. With the crappy week I’d had, I agreed, and soon we were relaxing on the smooth white sand of Clearwater Beach. Noah was still on my mind. I didn’t text or call him, even though I wanted to. I didn’t like the coldness that had somehow settled between us, but aside from an apology, I didn’t know what else to say.

  “So we can go to that Mexican restaurant you like,” Syd said after Court left to go to the restroom. “Unless you want to go somewhere else.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Mexican’s fine.”

  She got up on her elbows. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  She sighed. “I am worried about you. You haven’t been yourself lately at all. I mean, I know things at home aren’t so great with your grandma and all. I totally get that. But then there’s Noah. What’s going on with you guys right now, because you haven’t said much at all lately.”

  I shrugged.

  “You still like him, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Great. Then when are you going to tell Bryce? Not to mention Court, who’s going to be pissed that you didn’t tell her first.”

  “Bryce would totally lose his shit over it, so the longer he doesn’t know, the better, I think. And I’m not sure if I trust Court enough.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “You’re right
about Bryce, but you probably should go ahead and let Court in on it. She won’t tell him. Not if you really don’t want her to and specifically tell her not to say anything.”

  Syd clearly trusted Court a whole lot more than I did. And even though Court was my friend, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to test that theory.

  After dinner, Court drove us back over the causeway. “Do you want me to drop you guys off at home?”

  “Sure,” Syd said, flicking a worried look at me. I hadn’t eaten much of my taco salad, something Syd commented on, since usually I ate the entire thing, shell and all. “Home is good.”

  Home? Home meant seeing Grandma in bed, frail, with a nurse by her side instead of me. Home meant my mother frantic about pageants or whatever had her going at the moment and my dad a nervous wreck about Grandma.

  As we exited the causeway and were about to take the turnoff for our town, I put my hand on Court’s shoulder.

  “Keep going, Court.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  She sighed but did as I asked, her face kind of amused and annoyed at the same time. “Yeah? Now what?”

  “I want to walk around the city.”

  “Oh. Okay, cool.”

  “No way,” Syd piped up. “We’re not going back to that Cooper’s bar. That place is a dive. Besides, it’s about to rain.”

  I ignored her. “Just do it, please.”

  Court drove us back into downtown, pulling into the metered parking space a couple blocks away from the bars. The streets were filled with people walking in and out of bars and clubs. I stayed a few steps ahead of my friends to avoid questions from Court. It wasn’t long before the sign for Cooper’s appeared.

  I hesitated. “I don’t even know if he’s working tonight,” I said to Syd when they caught up to me.

  “Who?” Court asked. “Who are you talking about?”

  I stepped up to the door, my friends right behind me, and peered inside. There were too many people to get a good glimpse of the bar, so I stepped in. I moved forward faster than my friends, who seemed too afraid to go past the entryway. Chicken. I was almost to the bar when a heavyset guy in leather stepped in front of me. Sidestepping him, my eyes moved over the bar. Damn, no Noah. Maybe he wasn’t even working tonight. He said he usually worked Thursday nights, but he could’ve given away his shift. A heaviness pressed down on my chest, making it even harder to breathe in the crowded, smoky room. I had counted on him being here.

  “Hey, baby!” the leather guy said, rubbing my shoulders. I smacked his hands away.

  “Could you be a little more disgusting?” I yelled over the noise.

  “I could, yeah,” he said, moving around so that he blocked my view of the bar again. “We could go somewhere and I could show you how disgusting I can be.”

  Oh, crap. I swallowed hard and backed away, but there were too many people. Pervy Guy pressed himself closer to me and grinned. He smelled of cigarettes and beer. I was going to throw up.

  Someone grabbed me by the arm and jerked me back. I turned to see Noah shaking his head at the guy. “She’s jailbait, dude.” Pervy Guy glared at him but moved away. I sagged in relief, but Noah didn’t let me relax. “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled over the crowd. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  His tone grated on me. “I felt like it,” I said. Which wasn’t true, of course. I really didn’t like being in this bar.

  He leaned in to peer at me. “What’s going on with you? Are you drunk?”

  “Are you serious?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Come on.”

  Still holding me by the elbow, he pushed me out in front of him, past Court and Syd, until I was outside on the sidewalk, people shoving their way past us, some pulling out umbrellas even though it wasn’t raining yet.

  Noah glanced around, then pulled me into the alley next to the bar. The girls waited at the entrance to the alley, and I could see Court waving her arms furiously toward us as she talked to Syd. The cat was out of the bag now, and I couldn’t care less.

  “You came here a second time?” Noah asked, releasing me to run his hands through his hair. “How stupid can you get?”

  “Stupid? You’re stupid,” I yelled, feeling ten years old.

  “I have to go,” he said, walking past me toward the alley entrance of the bar. I grabbed his arm.

  “Wait. What the hell is your problem, Noah? Talk to me.”

  “Talk to you? I’ve tried talking to you but you keep tuning me out.”

  I sighed. “I know I’ve been ignoring you, and I’m really sorry.”

  “You seemed to have no problem paying attention to Bryce.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Bryce? “What does Bryce have to do with it?” I asked.

  He crossed his arms as he glared at me. “What’s between you guys, anyway?”

  “We’re friends. You know that.”

  He snorted. “Friends.”

  What the…? “This is ridiculous. Bryce is one of my best friends. I don’t get why you guys can’t just—you know—coexist.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “So does Bryce know that you and I are friends? Is he wanting to ‘coexist’ too?”

  “Really? And they say girls create drama.” I ignored his question. Bryce didn’t know how I felt about Noah, but that wasn’t the issue right now. “So hang on, why are you still acting like this about me being friends with Bryce, anyway? It doesn’t affect you.”

  “Didn’t look much like friends to me the other day.” He looked away, his jaw set, and I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing in his neck as he swallowed.

  Oh.

  Oh!

  The pieces fell into place. Noah had seen Bryce hugging me—and I guess if you saw us from a distance, it’d look like we were together together. Was he jealous? All the butterflies in my body took flight as if I had just walked through a field of them.

  “Noah, look at me,” I said in a softer voice.

  He did. Only now did I see the shadow of hurt in his eyes—how did I miss that before? Noah had been nothing but nice, and I did everything I could do to shut the guy out.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s…” He hesitated, his scrunched forehead smoothing as his eyes moved to my trembling lip. “Hey, are you okay?”

  The softening of his expression and his obvious concern was my undoing. The balloon of pressure in my chest that had been building for weeks—my grandma, my mother, my position as pitcher on the team, my anxiety about Noah—released. I started to cry. And not the pretty cry, either, but the full-on sob.

  Noah immediately pulled me into his arms. He didn’t ask me questions, just held me as wave after wave of tears shook me. I didn’t even have the strength to feel embarrassed about it. I’d try to get myself together, then thoughts of my grandma stuck in bed while the Willy Wonka nurse attended her entered my mind and the waterworks started again.

  Finally, I pulled away from him, wiping the tears with the back of my hand. Noah removed the bar rag from his belt and handed it to me. I blew into it, not caring that it stank like booze, then tossed it into the Dumpster next to us. A few wet drops skimmed my arm. Of course, now it would rain. How poetic.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my chest still shuddering. “I shouldn’t have called you stupid. I just wanted to come here to see you and tell you that I’m sorry. I’m just having kind of a tough time at home, and—” I stopped, swallowing hard to keep from sobbing again.

  His hand cupped my jaw, his thumb sweeping rogue tears away. “It’s okay,” he said softly.

  The gentle intensity of his blue eyes tugged at my heart. Like that moment in the hotel elevator, something shifted between us—magnetic poles struggling to find each other. Weeks of teasing and flirting and toying with each other building up to this one moment. Taking a deep breath, I slowly moved my hand up his arm, ignoring the misting rain and the calls from Court and Syd that they were going to get the car. I was fearful that he’d pull away, that I’d misrea
d the clues from him. We’d only kissed once—very briefly—and I’d initiated it.

  Noah didn’t make a move—his eyes widened slightly as I closed the distance between us, my body pressing against his, but he didn’t lean in or anything like I expected. If anything, he looked nervous. He closed his eyes, the knot in his throat rising and falling as my fingers traced the line of a silver chain peeking out from under his shirt. I’d never noticed it before. “You’re kind of going through some stuff right now,” he said hoarsely.

  “I know.” I touched his face with my fingers. “I’m an emotional basket case and it’s raining and we’re standing in this alley being all awkward together. But I know you feel the same way. Tell me that you don’t.”

  Noah kept his eyes tightly shut. I sighed. “What are you so afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid,” he said, opening his eyes so that they swallowed me whole. I could see some sort of internal struggle playing out on his face, almost like he was standing at a crossroad and wasn’t sure which direction he should take: the lonely, safe road he was used to or the one heading toward the emotional train wreck that was me.

  Pressing my hands on top of his shoulders, I lifted myself up on my toes and leaned until my lips were against his ear, his cheek rough against mine. “I know you feel the same as me,” I whispered. “And I want to be with you.”

  It was like I lit a fire within him. Noah pulled me around until I was flat against the wall, his fingers in my hair, his lips against mine. I couldn’t take in enough—breathing his air, sliding my hands down his arms, around his waist. The rain fell, but we kissed on as time stood graciously still. In the drizzling haze, we pulled in all the colors around us, leaving the world muddled and gray.

  Noah Grayson consumed me.

  He broke away first, resting his forehead against mine. We were soaked now, but I didn’t care. I could hear someone catcalling from the opening of the alley. “I have to go back to work,” Noah said, his voice hoarse. I nodded even as I pulled him back to me. I twined my fingers in his hair as we kissed. It wouldn’t be easy to untangle myself from this guy—even if I wanted to.