Page 7 of Finding Noah
He blinked. “When was this?”
“The night you watched the Titans game. Well, you attempted to watch the game. You were quite fatigued, and when I returned to our room, you were fast asleep.”
With great care, I’d covered him with a blanket—then I’d lain awake on my bed and just watched him for more than an hour. Longing had gripped me, as it so often did. I’d never tell him, of course, how I felt. Plus, he always broke up with his boyfriends, and I didn’t want to lose our friendship.
Or so you tell yourself. Secretly, you wish he’d pick you, and that you’d settle down, marry, raise dogs, and be together forever.
All that was true. But I lived in the real world—not the world of fairy tales.
“I believe the kitchen is this way.” I gestured toward the back of the house.
Noah went first, pushing swinging doors into a cavernous room which contained both the family room and the kitchen.
I examined the floor. “Oh, these used to be two different rooms with a wall between them. I wondered at this very modern design of one large space.” I did some mental calculations. “The kitchen would have been quite cramped.” I pointed. “They removed the wall and added this center island. Quite clever.”
“Hopefully they didn’t remove a retaining wall.” Noah pointed to the television. “Okay, that’s got to go.”
I squinted. “Is it even color? I believe that is a cathode-ray-tube television.”
“Fucking hell.” He slashed the air.
“What?”
“I should’ve stolen Leroy’s television. Ninety-eight-inch, ultra-high-def, 4k…” He rubbed his hands against his face.
“I believe the key word in that sentence wasstolen. You already liberated him of his treasured baseball card collection—”
“Nothing of value in there.”
“Isn’t value in the eye of the beholder?”
He lowered his hand from his face. “That’s beauty.”
“Well, he didn’t behold that either.” I sniffed. “Still, stealing is beneath you. We shall purchase a new television. I didn’t see an electronics store in town, but surely there must be a larger location where we can pick up a few things.”
“We can’t just blow several thousand dollars on a television.” He approached the tiny one on the overly large stand. “I can’t even plug in my gaming system.”
That he hadn’t stolen. He’d simply, since it was his, added it to his rather pathetic stash of belongings. He wasn’t an accumulator or collector of things. No, his gift was with interpersonal relationships.
Or so I told myself.
“Look, I have a laptop. Sheriff West said the internet is still connected. Miss Esmeralda had little time for television, but she loved reading books on her tablet.” The sheriff had nicely collected that for her along with a few other essentials.
I’d asked if she needed anything else, and she replied that once I visited her in the nursing home and shegot my measurethat she’d decide. For my part, I anticipated with great joy meeting this…quirky…lady. “We can connect my laptop and order whatever we need. Surely there’s a company that delivers this far. We aren’t a million miles from civilization.”
“Given the circumference of the earth is just forty-thousand miles? Yes, no one is a million miles from civilization.” Noah ran his finger along the top of the television. “I had other plans for your laptop.”
I blinked. “You’re not watching porn on my—”
He burst out laughing. “Uh, no.” He closed his left eye. “I can do that on my phone.”
“Oh.”
“I was hoping…” He twisted his fingers together.
“Yes…?”
“That you might help me design a website. I need to start finding clients right away. I mean, might as well put all those training classes to use.”
