Page 113 of The Girl I Once Loved

When we get home a few minutes later, I’m disappointed to see Noah hasn’t arrived yet.

“Is it normal for him to be this late?” I ask Curt. “I mean, have you heard anything from Noah or the crew?”

“Unfortunately, we haven’t heard a peep. I just hope the boy had the good sense to find a safe port and not get himself pulled into the storm just to come home,” Curt explains, sharing a not-so-subtle worried glance with my mother.

That gut-wrenching feeling at the bottom of my stomach stirs once more.

Because unlike Curt, I’m not as confident that Noah would do the safe thing instead of putting himself at risk.

Noah would brave any storm if he thought it would bring him home to me sooner.

Please, please God, keep him safe.

Don’t let him do something stupid.

Keep my Noah safe.

Please.

* * *

It’s been forty-eight hours and still no word from Curt’s ship or its crew.

But most importantly, no word from Noah.

Curt has been calling everyone he knows to learn if anyone has seen them while out in the water. My mother has been a rightful mess, taking whatever sick days she has just to stay at home, hoping Noah will walk through our door at any minute.

And me?

I haven’t left his loft since the Coast Guard sounded out the alarm that a few fishing boats were caught in the storm with no inkling to anyone’s survival. Even Curt’s reassurances that his boat’s name isn’t listed amongst the shipwrecks does very little to comfort me.

“I know my boat. I know my crew. But most of all, I know my son. They are safe. They have to be.”

Unfortunately for Curt, I’ve never been an optimist.

Why? Why, God? Why didn’t I tell him that I loved him?

Why did I keep those words to myself when they were all he wanted to hear from me?

After everything that we’ve been through… is this how it all ends?

Instead of the happily ever after I yearned to write for us, will it all just end in tears and heartbreak?

No. I don’t accept this fate.

Noah and I were supposed to sail off into the sunset and live a life filled with love and joy.

This can’t be how our story ends.

It just can’t be.

But with each hour that passes by with no news, my dread sinks its claws into my soul, whispering in what world could happiness like mine ever be possible?

In nothing but one of Noah’s old Bayshore High T-shirts and his leather jacket, I roam through his sacred space, needing to feel his presence any way I can. I call out all my memories of him, of how these past few weeks he’s done everything he can to settle my uncertainties and doubts. How he gave me his love so unabashedly even when I clung to the pain of our tragic past.

But the true tragedy here is me holding onto misery when love was already at my beck and call.

What a fool I’ve been.

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