Now a Major Motion Picture (9 page)

He squeezed his eyes shut and gave himself over to his craving. He never let himself think about her…at least not anymore. He’d thought about her so much for so long that breaking the habit had been like breaking an addiction to the worst kind of illegal substance. Giving in tonight was the equivalent of falling head-first off the wagon. He could already feel the scrapes and bruises forming.

With a swiftness that took his breath away, the pieces of Amelia he’d stored in the dark closets of his brain came crashing down on him. He realized he’d held onto all of it—every look, every touch, from the night he’d first gotten up the nerve to talk to her to the night she said she’d marry him. As he lay there, staring at the picture that was the only proof he had of any of it, the memories pulled and tugged at him, attacking him from every direction.

Decisions

Hours later, Noah woke with a start. It took a few seconds for his eyes to focus and a few more for him to process the fact that he was on his bed, lights on, still dressed in the rumpled clothes he’d worn on his date with Erin. Apart from the photo that lay face-down on his chest and the steady rise and fall of Amos’ breathing on the floor beside him, he was alone, and the realization wrenched his gut and tore at his heart. The dream had felt so real it was hard to convince himself she wasn’t actually there, in his room.

Instantly, he was hit with a pricking sensation behind his eyelids, and his face crumpled in response. He’d thought—hoped—he was past the ability to shed tears over Amelia, but he knew better. The reason he hadn’t spent more time crying over her wasn’t because of some masculine inclination to overpower the pain. It was more that, in these last few years anyway, he hadn’t let his mind go anywhere near her.

He’d repressed the memories in true manly fashion.

When he tried to swallow, he found that his mouth was too dry, his throat parched. He sat up and rubbed at the crick in his neck that had formed after several hours in this awkward half-sitting, half-lying down position. He glanced at the clock—4:30 in the morning—and rose from the bed, stretching his stiff limbs. He stripped off his khakis and sweater and tossed them in the general direction of the laundry basket on his way to the kitchen, where he pulled a glass down from the cabinet and filled it with water from the refrigerator door.

He wandered back into his room, flipping lights off as he went. He downed the water and returned to bed, this time slipping between the sheets and reaching up to turn off his bedside lamp. Just before he twisted the switch, he noticed the picture of Amelia, which had drifted to the floor beside the bed. He bent down to retrieve it, taking one more long, punishing look at her face.

Nostalgia hit him in a fresh new wave. He tried to surface from it, but it held him down, pinned him to an even more painful set of memories.

The end.

He’d spent weeks, if not months, trying to piece together the quick downward spiral of events that had taken such a harsh toll on his future. The crushing sequence flooded back now in detail, and he forced himself to permit the memory, to come face to face with the whole damn thing in a way he hadn’t in the eight years since it had happened.

The morning of the worst day of his life had started innocently enough.

After a long night bent over the work tables and computer screens in the architectural design studio on campus, he’d slept late. When he woke up around eleven, he dragged himself across the hall to the house’s one bathroom, where the water in the shower went from scalding hot to freezing cold in a matter of seconds. Obviously Zack had beaten him in there.

Wide awake, he dressed in a rush. He had to book it to make it in for his noon shift at the Best Buy near the mall, where he’d worked for two years to help pay his tuition. Once his middle sister, Samantha, had started college too, his parents had worked out an arrangement with Noah to pay half what he owed beyond what his scholarship covered. He was covering the rest himself. His sisters would each get the same deal.

He sped to work. The store was hectic from the pushy atmosphere of the pre-holiday rush, and he was relieved when a scheduling glitch brought two co-workers in early, causing his manager to send him home three hours before the end of his shift. All he wanted to do was get home, call Amelia, and crash in front of the TV for
Monday Night Football
before trekking out for another long night in the studio.

He strode across the crowded parking lot in a fog, his mind on his plans for the night. So he was right up on his car before he noticed the petite blonde leaning against the driver’s side door. He groaned aloud, not attempting to disguise his annoyance.

“Geez, Ashley…what now?”

Why the hell wouldn’t this chick leave him alone? It was the second time this week Ashley Howell had shown up here while he was working. He knew she had a thing for him—he’d never met anybody so irritatingly persistent. Two days earlier, she’d gone inside and pretended to shop right before the end of his shift. He’d begged a co-worker to distract her and managed to slip out the door before she had a chance to follow.

That latest brush-off obviously hadn’t done much good.

“Come have a drink with me,” she said, and he was shaking his head before she even finished the sentence. “Come on,” she wheedled. “I just want to talk about my project.”

Ashley was a second-year architecture student, which was how he’d met her. He’d been on a panel of upperclassmen asked to sit in on a critique in one of her first studio classes, and she’d latched onto him from the start. At first, he hadn’t minded answering her questions about the program—that was why he was on the panel. But it soon became obvious she wanted more than his thoughts on architecture.

He stared at her, his face frozen in a mixture of disgust and disbelief. She had a hell of a lot of nerve.

He was preparing to tell her no when one of his friends from work, Sean, yelled to him from a few cars over. Sean had been sent home early, too.

“Hey man, want to go grab a drink at Darcy’s?”

Noah grasped at the chance to escape.

“Yeah, sure. I don’t have anything better to do.” He gave Ashley a pointed look. “No.” He held up his keys and motioned toward his car door. “Excuse me, please.”

She stared at him a moment longer before stepping away, lips pursed. She didn’t say anything, just watched with narrowed eyes as he got in the car, backed out of his space, and drove away.

* * *

A little more than two hours later, Noah was still sitting with Sean at Darcy’s, a local sports bar in a strip shopping center not far from the store. Midway through his third or fourth pint—he’d been watching pre-game coverage on the TV above the bar and wasn’t keeping count—he stood and headed to the men’s room.

When he got back to the table, another co-worker was in the chair beside his, a guy named Chris he didn’t know that well, but who, it turned out, was on a first-name basis with most of the wait staff. As he slid back into his seat, the server appeared with a round of shots, placing one in front of each of them. Noah eyed the small glass with trepidation. He wasn’t a hard liquor guy, and he had a long night ahead of him in the studio.

But he also wasn’t a wuss, and no man turned down a shot once it had been put in front of him—it was like an unspoken rule. He thought hard for a few seconds, and then shrugged.
Oh, hell, screw the studio tonight. I’ll go in early tomorrow.
He tipped his shot back along with the other guys.

When the server returned, he ordered another beer and Chris asked for a second round.

Two more shots of whiskey and a beer later, Noah’s head was swimming, and he knew he’d overdone it.

He was headed to the men’s room a second time when he noticed her.

Ashley was perched on the ripped, green vinyl bench of a booth tucked along one side of the bar—a boxy, generic-looking place with industrial tile floors and bad lighting. She was hunched forward, her foot bouncing up and down, deep in conversation with a girl who was sitting across from her in the booth. As he approached, he saw that she saw him, and she trailed off mid-sentence. But she didn’t speak to him as he breezed past her table and through the grimy swinging door at the bar’s back corner.

He rolled his eyes and groaned, wishing Sean hadn’t named the place they were going in front of her. There were obviously some screws loose in that blonde head of hers.
What, is she stalking me now?

It sure seemed that way.

He stalled in the men’s room as long as he could, hoping she’d leave now that she’d been discovered. When he opened the door, Sean grabbed it and walked past him to go in. Noah emerged from the hallway and went toward his table, chagrined to see Ashley walking away from it. She was about three steps behind Chris, who was following in Sean’s path.

Ashley shot him a speculative glance as he approached, and he shook his head, annoyed. She didn’t say anything as she passed by, just smiled and edged back toward her friend.

When the other guys returned to the table a minute later, he didn’t ask what Ashley had been doing there. He didn’t want to know. But Sean brought it up.

“What’s up with that girl?” He gestured toward Ashley’s booth, where she was already back in heated conversation with her friend. “She said she’s a friend of yours.” He eyed Noah with curiosity. “She’s kind of cute.”

Noah raised an eyebrow. Maybe Sean could take Ashley off his hands. “I don’t know what’s up with her,” he said. “And I wouldn’t exactly say we’re
friends
. But if you want, I’ll put in a good word.”

He turned his attention to his new pint, which the server had brought while he was in the bathroom. He’d probably had enough, he thought, but he worked at downing the glass anyway, deciding he’d order water the next time the waitress came by.

About two-thirds of the way through the pint, he pushed the glass away. The smell of fresh beer and stale grease was making him nauseous, and suddenly he felt an overwhelming urge to sober up. He might have decided to blow off his project tonight, but he still had to get home.

He glanced around for the server. Now that the thought had entered his head, all he wanted to do was leave—get home to change, watch the game, and call Amelia. A pang of guilt flashed through him about wasting this night in the studio. He’d been trying to cram as much studio time into this week as possible so he could leave campus a few days earlier than planned to surprise her. He’d already asked off work.

His impatient eyes roamed the restaurant for the dark-haired waitress. But instead they landed on Ashley, who, he noticed with a sharp prick of agitation, was again approaching their table. Before he could object, she’d slipped into the empty chair beside him. Her friend dragged an extra chair over and plopped down, too.

“Hi, guys,” Ashley said. “This is Carly.” She gestured to her friend. “I hope you don’t mind if we join you.”

“Not at all,” Sean said as Noah glowered at him. He didn’t seem to notice.

Just then, the waitress walked back over.

“Can I get you guys something else to drink?”

“I’ll just have water,” Noah said. “And my check. I need to go.”

“Aw, come on, man,” Chris said. “One more drink. Don’t shut the party down this early.”

“Yeah, Noah,” Ashley said. “One more beer. Come on.”

He glared at her, but directed his words at Chris.

“Nah, man. I’m done. Got an early morning tomorrow.”

The waitress nodded and took the rest of the drink orders while Noah sat back, willing his head to stop swimming so he could make a quick escape. He hadn’t bargained for this. When the server returned with the drinks and his check, he made a quick decision to order some fries, thinking maybe they’d help him sober up. He’d barely eaten a thing all day, and he could feel the alcohol sloshing uncomfortably in his stomach. The waitress nodded and picked his bill back up from the table.

He didn’t participate in the conversation swirling around him, just gulped his water and waited for his head to clear. It took at least twenty minutes for the waitress to come back with his food. When it appeared in front of him, he wasn’t feeling any better—if anything, the nausea was getting worse. He suddenly had no appetite for the greasy plate of french fries.
How much did I drink?
He struggled to add it all up, but he couldn’t remember.

“You okay, Noah?” he heard Sean ask.

“Yeah, man,” he said, shaking his head. “Just not feeling so good. I think I’d better get home.”

He pushed his chair back. His stomach lurched and his head swam as he staggered to his feet, his eyes once again scanning for the waitress—
where the hell does she keep going?
—so he could tab out and get the hell out of there. He sat down hard a moment later, rubbing his forehead and blinking in confusion. Seriously, how much had he had to drink? Finding himself face to face with Ashley, who’d shifted her chair so close it was disturbing, he wished desperately he’d had the good sense to cut himself off sooner.

He glared at her through his alcohol-induced haze. She looked away from him toward the rest of the group.

“He’s in no shape to drive,” she announced. “I’m fine, though. I’ll take him home.”

Chris groaned. “Fine. We’ll move the party to my place.” He turned toward Noah. “Give up your keys, man. We’ll follow you guys and get your car
and
your drunk ass home. You can thank us later.” He laughed.

Noah shook his head to object, but the motion felt like it was slowed by something thick and liquid, like he was immersed in swirling water. Too unsteady for another attempt to stand, he stared balefully at Ashley, but couldn’t find words to protest.

The waitress came back then, and the whole group tabbed out, Ashley helping Noah as he fumbled with his wallet. Her actions, all their words, blurred together in a cloud of confusion. He couldn’t remember, later,
how
he’d gotten home—his memories of what happened after he left the bar were all but nonexistent. In the months that followed, he’d wondered if Ashley had somehow slipped something in one of his drinks. But by then he knew that even if she had, it didn’t matter. No matter what led up to it, what happened that night was squarely on his shoulders—nobody had forced the liquor down his throat.