Page 37 of The Murder Between Us
“I’m afraid of what you mean.”
Cole frowned. Noah shook his head as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Cole didn’t quite smother his sigh. He folded his napkin and set his silverware on his plate.
“No, no.” Noah waved him off. “That’s not… We’re not leaving.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from his wallet. Once crisp and white, the sheet was now dull. He’d handled it with fingerprint powder on his hands at some point, and it had transferred to the paper, darkening it. He’d rubbed the note every day until Monday, when Cole had walked into the office and back into his life.
He unfolded the paper and smoothed it on the table. Cole’s number, scrawled on the Aria’s stationery, sat between them. “I never threw it away.”
“You never used it, either.”
His cheeks burned. Noah pulled out his cell phone and swiped it on. Pulled up his text messages. Found the draft. “I wrote this at the airport Thursday morning. I never sent it.” Obviously.
Cole took his phone and read. His lips moved as his eyes bounced over Noah’s words.
Cole,
I’m sorry, I’ve just been recalled back to my office. There’s been an emergency. I’m at the airport right now and I won’t be able to meet you tonight. Which… I’m really upset about. I had an AMAZING time last night. It doesn’t feel real, what happened. I dreamed of meeting a man like you. I realize I’m not experienced, and I don’t have any idea what I’m doing, but I was wondering if maybe we could keep in touch? Maybe we could meet again—
The message ended abruptly. He remembered the furious, burning shame he’d felt at pouring his heart out, blubbering about how happy he was, how much that night had meant, and then, the icy deluge of realizing he wasso fucking pathetic.
Who the hell was he? He was a one-night stand, a pity fuck, and why on earth would someone like Cole want to see him again? Cole could have anyone he wanted. Why would he waste time on Noah? Inexperienced, boring, ridiculous Noah.
He’d been begging for Cole’s attention, and his desperation was leaking out of him, rancid and rotten.Don’t make it more than it was, he’d snarled at himself.
Cole didn’t look up for a long time. Long after he’d finished reading. He kept staring at the screen, not letting the screen saver come on and wipe away Noah’s words. His thumb stroked over Noah’s aborted last sentence. “Why didn’t you send this?” His voice was soft, softer than Noah expected.
He shook his head. “’Cause I was being pathetic. We had a one-night stand.” His cheeks burned. “You took pity on me—”
“I didnot.”
“It was just one night, and it couldn’t have meant to you what it meant to me. I was being clingy and…” Pathetic. “I wanted you to remember me well, instead of remembering me as a guy who went overboard. I wanted to remember that you liked me. I wanted to remember walking backward out of your room, not able to stop kissing you, not even for a breath—”
Cole looked away. His eyes fixed on the road, on the passing cars. He didn’t blink. His jaw clenched. Trembled. “Noah,” he finally said, the word agonized and pushed through gritted teeth.
“You’ve seen my life now,” Noah said. “I was being selfish that night. I wanted, for once, for one night, to know what it felt like to be…me. And the only thing that has made sense, in a long, long time, was that night and being with you. It’s not just that you were a guy or that we had sex. It was that, but it was more. It wasyou. You were everything I had ever dreamed of.” His voice went high and thin, strangled. “And I have no idea what to do.”
Cole’s jaw worked left and right. Finally, he looked back, but he didn’t look at Noah. He stared, instead, at the table, where he’d set Noah’s phone. The text was still between them, like an indictment. “What do you want to do?”
“I want…” Noah laughed despondently. “I want to rewind time and stop the Olson murders. I want to have stayed in Vegas on Thursday and seen you again. I want to go back and relive Wednesday, and then stop time so we could have—” His voice choked off. “I want to be as happy as I was that night, and Thursday morning, every day. But I can’t.”
Cole stared at him.
How could Cole know what it was like to be afraid? He was out, and he probably had always been out. He was from California. Had he ever had reason to fear the consequences of being gay? Had he ever felt the terror of knowing he could lose everything if he let himself be himself?
“How can I be the man I want to be with the life that I have?” Noah whispered. “With Katie? With the divorce, and with custody… I’ve looked, you know. Dads who are gay, they don’t get primary custody. Some of them don’t even get visitation. It may be 2021, but the courts—” He shook his head.
“I know a few.” Cole’s voice was gentle. “It’s not unheard of. And it’s not outlawed. Custody should be determined based on the best interest of the child.”
“A lot of courts feel that a gay dad is not in the child’s best interest. And this is Iowa. The Midwest isn’t California. Or D.C.”
“What’s your alternative? Push down who you are? Ignore your own needs? Your own happiness?”
Noah shrugged. “Worked for years, didn’t it?”
“No, it didn’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t be this miserable.”
“I shouldn’t have gone out Wednesday night. Why did I think it was a good idea to know? Now I know exactly what I want, and what I can’t have.”
Silence.
