Page 28 of Love: Take Two

My shoulders slump, and I have to hitch up my bag to keep it from falling.

Noah walks around to face me, but my expression has him cursing. He rakes his hand through his hair.

"Shit! I knew hooking up with you was a bad idea, but I did it anyway," he chastises himself. "Girls like you always get the wrong idea."

"The wrong idea?" I grit out, keeping my voice low so it won't break around the lump in my throat.

"Yeah!" he barks. "The wrong idea. Like that we're together when really it was just supposed to be a little fun. I told you that from the beginning!"

I stare at him for long moments, this man I thought I knew. This man who gave me pleasure beyond belief, convinced me he understood my heart, then bailed.

I blink back the beginnings of tears.

"You said we'd be friends after, then you left without a word. Ignored me for weeks." I shake my head, disappointed. "No, I think you got what you wanted, so you ghosted me."

He frowns.

"I didn't ghost you."

"Well, you should," I interrupt before he can say anything worse than he already has. "You should go back inside to that girl, I should go home to finish studying, and we both should forget any of this ever happened."

"Awa." He draws my name out, turning it into a plea.

I don't stay to hear him out. I don't need to. I've seen this movie. I'll just skip to the montage where I get my shit together, graduate, and move on with my life. Maybe then I'll find a guy whoisworth crying over.

Chapter fifteen

Noah

Christmas 2005

"So Dad's still pissed, huh?" Cory asks as he comes into the room Henry and I share and drops onto the bed across from mine. He hands me a beer, which I clink against the one in his hand, eager to drown my sorrows after the world's most awkward family dinner.

"It would seem so," I say with a sigh.

Dad and I haven't spoken since I told him I wasn't coming back to Yale for junior year. It didn't matter that I hated it there, or that I handled my transfer to USC all on my own, the perfect school for what I really wanted to do with my life. All he saw were the favors he wasted to get me recommendations that would impress more than my test scores did. The embarrassment he felt that one kid couldn't wait to follow him into acourtroom while the other, born on the same date and almost the same time, preferred to "waste his time on silly movies".

Those are the words I'd overheard during his and Mom's blowout fight. The night Henry skipped his sacred sleep routine and woke up the rest of the brothers to take me out to get shitfaced. He didn't understand why I was leaving Yale either, but for once, he was my brother and not Dad #2, there to keep me in line.

In the morning, Mom was making pancakes, her eyes red and puffy from crying, and Dad was gone. The one time I stood up for what I really wanted, refused to play Dad's game, I broke the family apart. But of course, Mom didn't let that happen. Through the walls, I'd heard her fighting for me, and that morning, she promised that though things were bad now, he'd come around.

"At least he's done with the silent treatment," Cory tried, doing his best to find the silver lining in this clusterfuck.

I scoff.

"'Please pass the rolls' is barely talking, but I guess it's better than before."

Before, he wouldn't speak to me. Wouldn't evenlookat me when he came back the next day. I stayed with a friend until my flight the following week and skipped Thanksgiving for the first time ever. Mom was devastated.

"It's 1000% better," Cory insists, his tone bitter. "You weren't here for the worst of it. You threw that bombshell and hopped on a plane; meanwhile, Adam and I were trapped inwhat felt like a war zone. Do you know Mom and Dad almost got divorced?"

That has me sitting up.

"What?"

"Yeah," he says, shaking his head. "Mom was talking to lawyers and everything. I think that's what snapped Dad out of it, because he sent the check for school the next day."

I rake my hands through my hair, speechless.