Page 91 of Catching My Dreams

Asher just laughed and hugged his girlfriend closer to him. “You’ll never have to worry about that,” he assured her. “If anything, you’d be the cheater. We both know you’re way out of my league.”

“Not true,” Riley replied, but she was smiling, clearly pleased by his response.

Noah returned to the table then, but the frown on his face and the tense set of his shoulders had Ella’s surprisingly good mood plummeting.

“I need to go.”

“Is everything okay?” Ella asked, already knowing it wasn’t.

He shook his head. “My mom’s not feeling well. She said it feels like she’s getting the flu, but I want to pick her up and take her to her oncologist in case it’s something more serious.”

“Can I do anything?” Ella asked, her throat tightening at his words and the fear she heard in them. “I can come with you.”

Noah shook his head. “No. I don’t think my mom really wants to host a visitor right now.”

Ella knew he hadn’t meant the words to be harsh, but she barely managed to contain her flinch. She’d wanted to offer help. Not ask his mom to make her some tea. “Right.”

He wiped a shaking hand over his face and sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know,” she replied, her smile falsely bright. “Just call me if you need anything.”

His shoulders dropped, and his eyes softened into twin blue pools. “Thank you. I’ll keep you updated.” He leaned down and placed a hasty kiss on her lips before racing out of the coffee shop.

“I hope she’s okay,” Asher said.

“Me too.” Ella looked down at her mocha, the remnants of the chocolate-flavored coffee tasting bitter on her tongue.

She’d known Noah’s mother for years, even if their interactions had dramatically decreased after her falling out with Noah, and she’d always been awed by Francesca’s easy laughter and unmatched passion. The only thing that had ever seemed to dull her shine was her cancer diagnosis.

“Noah’s been so worried about her,” Riley said. “I can’t imagine how hard this has been on both of them.”

Conversation was stilted after that, all of them caught up in their concern for Noah and his mom, and when Riley asked if Ella still wanted to go to the movies with them, she declined. They dropped her off at her house instead and reluctantly left her there after she promised to send Asher a check-in text every hour.

Ella took Archie for a long walk, finished her essay on Hamlet that was due in two days’ time, and made a large batch of butternut soup, but by the time she was pouring the hot liquid into the largest Tupperware she owned, Noah still hadn’t replied to her latest message asking how everything was going.

Uncertainty had her stalling for another ten minutes, but she finally got in her car and drove to the house she’d visited more than once when she was a kid and only a handful of times in the last few years. Noah’s car was parked in the driveway. She pulled up behind the Jeep, hoping her presence wasn’t going to be as unwelcome as her overactive imagination was trying to convince her she’d be.

Her knock on the front door sounded too loud to her paranoid ears, and when Noah answered the door looking harried and disheveled, she waited for him to snap at her. Instead, his tired gaze met hers, and he nearly knocked her over with the force of his hug.

“You’re here,” he whispered into her hair.

“I brought soup,” she told the chest her face was crushed against.

He let out a weak chuckle. “God, I love you.”

He held her there for at least a minute, his arms gradually loosening and his body slowly relaxing against hers.

“How is she?” Ella asked once her head was free to tilt up and she could see his face.

“Okay,” he replied. “She has the flu. Her doctor said we need to keep an eye on her symptoms, but I got her the medicine she needed, and she should be okay.”

Ella breathed out the breath she’d been holding in, only to launch immediately into a list of questions. “Is there anything else she needs? I can go to the shops quickly. Tissues? Tea? Honey? I can get her chicken soup if she’d prefer that?”

Her father had shocked her by sending her some money that morning along with an unapologetic voicemail saying he’d had second thoughts about completely cutting her off, given her situation, so she had the funds to buy whatever his mom needed.

Noah smiled. “I’m sure whatever you made is perfect.”

“It’s butternut,” she told him, handing over the container that she had narrowly saved from being crushed between them earlier. “I put in extra garlic because it’s meant to help fight the flu.”

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