Page 86 of Reclaiming Love

“I think I do.” He sat down, took her hand in his. “Don’t worry. What’s he going to do?”

She shrugged, wanting to believe him, to have his sense of fearlessness.

“He’s stuck,” Noah told her. “He’s being watched and it would be stupid of him to make any moves now. Don’t you worry about him Melissa. At least stay here a while and finish your latte.”

She did, while he ordered his. He smiled at her as he sat down and they looked at one another from across the table. Though he’d only been here a few moments ago, they’d forgotten all about Matt.

After looking at her across the table, Noah leaned in towards her. “Whatever happens between us, Melissa, I want you to know that you helped me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Helped you? How?” If anyone had been doing any helping around here, it had been him. He’d helped her to see.

“I lost someone I loved, a year ago. My girlfriend, Bree.”

She gaped at him aghast. “I’m sorry.” It had been the last thing she’d expected him to say.

“She was ill. She’d suffered from bulimia for years. I never knew, until maybe six months before she died. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I’d kind of figured something was wrong many months before that. She was so good at disguising the truth, as well as she disguised herself. Loose clothes and all. When it came out, she pushed me away. She lived with her parents and they were convinced they could help her. So I got out of the way.”

“I’m so sorry.” Melissa breathed, then reached across and grabbed a hold of his hand.

“In the end, they’d gotten her lots of help. Her mom says she was going to behavioral therapy and had started taking antidepressants. I don’t know.” He looked down. “I tried to help her, but she refused to see me. The thing is, when I look back on it now, it all makes sense. The signs were there. I was blind to them.”

“You can’t blame yourself for something you weren’t privy to,” Melissa said gently. “You wanted to help her, but you say she and her parents thought it better that you stay away. You can’t blame yourself.”

“Two weeks before she died, she wanted me to come see her. She looked a lot better; she seemed to be on the mend. She had a little more color in her cheeks and she told me she was winning, that the therapy was working, that there were days she could stand to look at herself in the mirror. She was hopeful about fighting it. Hopeful that she’d get better.” He looked up at her, his eyes shiny. “But when I held her”—he stopped, took a deep breath—“when I held her, it was like holding a child. ” He looked up at her. “The thing is, if you’d seen her, she seemed like the most confident, beautiful, outgoing person. She fooled us all.”

Melissa pressed the palms of her hands to her face as she listened.

“That day she was full of hope. She told me the recovery would take time, months, years even but that she’d won half the fight because she wanted to get better. And she said that if I was still single when she got better, she wanted us to get back together. She died two weeks later.”

Melissa saw him look away, saw him hunch over, ever so slightly, saw his battle for composure. “What happened?” she asked, battling to keep her voice steady, even as she felt her heart slide down the slippery slope of her insides. “She said she was going upstairs to watch a film on her laptop but when her mother went in later to say goodnight to her, Bree had keeled over to the side. She was already dead. They said later that she'd had some sort of brain swelling, and it caused something similar to a stroke. It happened because of an electrolyte imbalance caused by the bulimia. It was Christmas Eve.”

Melissa wiped her face, then leaned over and put her arms around him. “I’m so sorry.” She held him, wanting to absorb some of his pain. They stayed locked like that for a while before moving apart.

“It’s been a long year.”

“I can imagine.” Now she understood why he hadn’t spoken much about his Christmas break. All this time she’d been worrying about her own troubles, never once knowing about the sadness that was gnawing at him.

“I’ll never forget her.” He looked away.

“No.” She put her hands back on her lap.

“You never forget someone who impacts you in that way. I still remember the girl I met in high school, when I think of her now.” He brought his gaze back to Melissa.

“I don’t suppose you do,” she said, feeling a deeper bond, now that he had revealed a side of him she had known nothing about. “And I don’t think you should forget people who have been a part of your life, as she had been.”

“But you helped me.”

“How?” How could she have possibly helped him, when she hadn’t even been aware of his pain?

“You made me move on by giving me something else to think about. You distracted me, you could say.”

She gave him a startled look.

“You didn’t mean to, I’m sure. But you did.” He touched her hand as it lay in her lap. “I don’t think you even noticed me for the first few months.”

She thought about it. “I noticed you when some guy bumped into me and knocked my coffee all over me.”

“I’d noticed you long before then. I came here once and saw you. You looked a little down. I don’t know what it was. It’s not even near my work place, there are closer coffee shops.”

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