Don't Let Go (35 page)

“Counter tonight?” Becca asked, her eyes all giddy.

Just kill me. “How about that booth right
by
the counter,” I said, pointing. “Compromise.”

“Deal,” she said.

“What is with you tonight?” I asked, studying her as we sat. “You’re all, like, sparkly and stuff.”

“And what do you have against sparkly?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Except I’m gonna check behind your ears for alien cloning when we get home. Somebody sucked the smart-ass out of you.”

Becca laughed. “Nah, it’s still there, I’m just learning to channel it.”

“Oh, that’s so much better,” I said, sitting back in the seat. “Good to know you’re still in there.”

“Ha ha,” she said with her customary eye flutter.

A waitress I didn’t know walked up, which was weird enough. Her nudging Becca with a grin upped the oddness. Her tag said Chloe, and she was easily twenty-five, so not a friend from school. And then I reminded myself that I didn’t need to know everything and to back off the crazy train.

In honor of the night, I ordered something completely different. Becca’s favorite, the shrimp po’boy. With onion rings. And fried okra. And a Coke.

Her look of utter astonishment was so worth the saturated fat I was going to ingest.

“I’ll have the same, with sweet potato fries,” she said.

“Amen,” I said.

“Cool, I’ll put your discount in,” Chloe said, walking away.

There was that word again. “What discount?” I asked.

Johnny Mack came out from the kitchen and pulled some plates from the hot tray, barking orders to Chloe and another girl I didn’t know.

Becca bit back a grin, and then laughed. “I got a job.”

Didn’t see that one coming.

“You did what?” I asked.

“Got a job,” she said, sitting up proudly. “I start next week, on the night shift, and when summer comes I’ll maybe get moved to days.”

“You—” My head tried to put the words together. Not the job part. The working at the diner part. “Here?” I said. “Like,
here
here?”

“This very shift,” she said.

I felt my face grimace. “Needed a challenge, did you?” I glanced over at Johnny Mack, who did a double take on me, and then winked—
winked
—at Becca before griping about a plate that was wrong to someone behind him.

Becca snickered as I gasped.

“What the fuck was that?” I said, the sentence falling out of my mouth before I could remember who was sitting with me. I clapped a hand over my mouth.

“Mom!” she said, full-out laughing. “Such
language
.”

“Explain,” I mumbled behind my hand.

She shrugged, although her pleased expression was priceless. “We’ve been talking.”

“You’ve been—talking,” I repeated, before the crazy bubbled up. Tired laughter worked its way out and I leaned my face into my hands. “Wow.” To be a fly on that wall.

“Is it okay? Me working here?” she said. “I didn’t tell you because I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Success. It was a surprise.

“Yes—yes, baby, it’s fine,” I said, chuckling and squeezing her hand. “I’m just—taken by surprise, is all.” I looked over at Johnny Mack again with skepticism. “Especially on his end.”

“He’s all right,” she said, rearranging the sweetener packets. “He’s more noise than anything else.”

I licked my lips, so many responses waiting to fly out, but I swallowed them back. My past with him didn’t matter. She had her own path to make, and she didn’t need my funk messing it up. Besides, maybe it was his way of moving forward, mending fences and all that. And if she could handle him—

“I’m proud of you, Bec,” I said. “Of who you are—who you’re becoming. The world’s a crazy, mad place, and I think you’re gonna be okay in it.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Mom.” Then lightbulbs went off in her eyes. “That can be my tattoo!”

I blinked. “Say what?”

“My tattoo!” she reiterated. “There’s a line in
Alice In Wonderland
that the Mad Hatter says,
‘We’re all mad here . . .’
” she said, holding up her wrist. “That would look awesome on my wrist.”

Well, I had a few short seconds, anyway.

“So, have you thought any more about college?” I said, phrasing my words carefully. Didn’t want to come across as controlling, or planning her life, or rule-enforcing, or any of the other various crimes I’d been labeled with.

Her eyebrows came together as she looked down at her silverware, studying them as if they held an answer to my question.

“Compromise?” she said, looking up.

Cute, I thought, playing on my words. But her eyes were serious for once, not defensive as they usually were on the subject. Steeling myself, I smiled.

“I’m listening.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, which did nothing to reassure me.

“What if I wait a year?” she said. “And then decide.”

The old reflexes and irritability over disarray and laziness started boiling under my skin.
Wait for what, Becca? Why? So you can be a waitress? Ask Linny how much she enjoys a lifetime career of that.

That was just the kick-start of the comebacks tickling my tongue. There were more. And as I looked around to see where my Coke was so I could drown them, I found myself looking up at Noah.

Chapter 23

Really, really, truly could have used that Coke just then, as my mouth turned into a sandbox. He was headed behind the counter and stopped cold when he saw me, shrugging out of his jacket and walking our way.

“Oh, crap,” I muttered, not meaning it to be out loud, but that was my life.

“What?” Becca said. “Ohhhh . . .”

A very particular kind of stabbing, wrenching, piercing pain sliced through my middle as his eyes met mine. They were freakishly blue in that light, and warm, and I had to look someplace else. Like at Becca, who was clearly watching me to see if I’d disintegrate.

“Ladies,” he said, his expression jovial with a side of longing.

Shit.

He looked positively friggin’ edible in a long-sleeved button-down black dress shirt and black jeans. I didn’t see his feet. I couldn’t care less about his feet. I wondered if he was meeting Shayna for a night out. Maybe dancing. Maybe I’d throw up, later.

“Hey, Noah,” I said.

“Mr. Ryan,” Becca said.

“Oh, no, no,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “See that ornery, crotchety old man over there? That’s Mr. Ryan,” he said. “Please—Noah or
Hey you
will work just fine.”

Becca laughed. “Okay,
Hey you
, what’s up?”

Noah laughed. “That’s good. You’re a joy, aren’t you?”

“That’s the rumor,” she said, snickering at her own wittiness.

I wanted to be witty. All I was was sweaty. His hand landed on my shoulder then, nearly sending me into sweaty orbit.

“I wanted to see if you still had that picture you took of me and Seth—here at the diner?” he said.

The one I still couldn’t look at? Sure.
“Of course,” I said, fumbling with my phone.

Photos—where were the photos? Nope, that wasn’t it. Finally, I pulled them up and scrolled, hoping he didn’t notice that my fingers were trembling. Jesus, this was ridiculous. A week without seeing him and I was right back to the blithering idiot I’d been when he arrived in town.

My thumb froze on the photo in question, and my heart did a jump around in my chest. Their heads together, looking at me, so alike. And Noah’s eyes—shit.

“Here you go,” I said, handing it up to him.

He didn’t take the phone from me, he just put his hand over mine, holding it with me as he gazed upon the image and smiled.

Glaze over,
I told myself.
Don’t show weakness. Don’t show anything. Glaze, damn it. Glaze over, glaze over—

“Great picture,” he said. “Mind if I send it to myself?”

I let go of the phone, letting him do his thing, fully aware that I’d now have his number. And he would have mine. And now I could completely officially obsess over him never calling me.

“Didn’t Shayna take some too?” I asked, bringing his eyes back to me like a wrecking ball.

“Yeah, but she left before I got them.”

Everything in me went still.

“She left—like—on a trip?” I asked.

“One-way trip,” he said, typing in his number. He met my eyes again. “She’s back in Virginia with her family.”

He handed my phone back to me, and as much as I wanted to look away, I couldn’t. I was stuck. What the hell did that mean, Shayna leaving? And when did this happen?

“Are . . . you okay?” I asked, clearing my throat.

He nodded. “I’m fine. How are you?”

I smiled at Becca and patted her hand. “A night with my girl. Never better.” When I looked back up, there was a look of something that made my breath catch in my throat.

“So!” Becca said, clasping her hands together. I jumped at the sound of her voice, breaking the gravity his gaze held me with. “You look nice, all duded out. Big night?”

Bless you, Becca, for asking that.

“I hope so,” Noah said. “Leaving to meet up with my old boss about a job.

That jerked my head around again and this time I searched his face for answers. For something. No tells, no clues. When he looked my way again, his eyes were clear.

The two seconds of hope I’d felt at the news of Shayna’s departure were stomped down and ground out. He was focused and clear and driven.

And ready to leave the place that always muddied that.

It wasn’t meant to be. It never was. And that had to be okay. I nodded and smiled up at him.

“Good luck, Noah,” I said.

There was a long pause and a look I couldn’t read.

“Thanks,” he said, with a small smile. “You two have a good night.”

He walked away, leaving a gaping hole in his wake. And it was everything I could do to hold it together. I turned to face Becca, not quite able to look her in the eye. I couldn’t. My eyes were burning, my chest was tight, and I looked around the room looking for a focal point. I clamped my jaws together as tight as I could to push it back.

“Mom.”

“Hmm?” I said, as the blessed Coke finally arrived and I drank down half of it before even finding the straw. Anything to cool my jets.

“You still love him, don’t you?”

• • •

Her words, spoken soft and mature and knowing, as if she were twice her age, made me chuckle.

“Don’t be silly,” I said.

She gave me a look. “I thought we were being honest. I know what you look like when you’re trying not to cry, Mom, so save it.”

I smiled, though it wasn’t real. Opened my straw and stirred my ice.

“Yeah, I guess you are more perceptive than I’m prepared to admit,” I said.

Becca scoffed. “Not really,” she said. “But after Seth said that about you and Mr.—Noah—the other day, well, now it just seems crazy
not
to see it.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter, Bec,” I said. “People can see all they want, it doesn’t mean it’s gonna work out that way.”

“But it makes you sad.”

I smiled slowly. “Tell me about this year-off idea you have.”

“Wow, subject change of the century,” she said, taking a drink.

I widened my eyes at her. “Take the moment, baby.”

She inhaled and let it go. “Okay. I’m not talking about blowing it off, I just—” She stopped and looked at her hands for a minute. “I’d like to concentrate on my writing for a while without having to do school stuff, too.”

I sat back. I hadn’t expected an actual reason. “Your writing.”

“Yeah,” she said, licking her lips and fidgeting with her napkin. “I don’t even know if I’m any good at it, but I’d like to find out. Maybe submit a story to a magazine or something. I did some research online and I have a—list . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked up at me. “I just don’t want to settle for something else before giving it a shot, Mom.”

The tears I’d managed to put away came back for a second attempt. It was like sitting across the table from my mother years earlier, having a very similar conversation.

I’d been accepted at a state school for the arts. It was four hours away and a chance to find my sanity again. But that wasn’t practical or logical, and so the dream I’d manufactured for years was shredded in a matter of seconds. I took business courses instead, to ready me for running the store.

I looked at my daughter’s hopeful expression, my skin buzzing from head to toe.

“Take the year,” I said, my voice gone husky and foreign to me.

Becca blinked. “What?”

I nodded, a rush of warmth spreading over me, making me stop and take a deep breath. “Take the year, and do it seriously,” I said. “If at that time you decide you want to go into creative writing or journalism or whatever, or something else entirely, then at least you can make an educated decision.”

Becca’s face was priceless. “Are you serious?” she whispered.

The absolute relief and joy and hope in her tone made my heart heal a little, right there on the spot. For one second, I felt I’d done something right.

“Never settle, baby,” I said, quickly whisking a rogue tear away. “Never, ever settle.”

Her eyes misted up, and the smile that grew as her mind started working on her newfound possibilities was refreshing.

“Thank you, Mom.”

“So, do I get to read any of this stuff?” I said.

Her smile grew even bigger although a little anxious. I recognized that anxiety. Once upon a time, no one saw my work until my signature was at the bottom and I’d deemed it done. Even then, I’d panic a little.

“Yeah, but I have to work on some things, first.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said.

Becca looked at me, leaning forward, a new energy in her eyes. “You know, there are some non-credit summer writing classes I heard about, that are just like a few weeks long.”

“And your job?”

“I can work around that,” she said, shrugging off what had been the biggest news of the night just thirty minutes before. “What if you take some art classes, too?”

I nearly spewed a mouthful of Coke.