Page 110 of Lost in Love

She shrugs. “My dad hit his head dumpster diving, and now they’ve placed him on a forty-eight-hour psyche hold. So that’s awesome. I’m thinking of doing something crazy to get up there myself. Seems like a nice vacation.”

We all laugh, but she’s serious.

Kate’s about as close to family as it comes these days. She’s my best friend, my adopted sister, and wine-drinking, forever-cussing best girl. I love her to pieces. With a scrunched brow, she smiles at Noah. “I think girly here needs a diaper change.”

Fin launches herself at Noah when she spots him by the door. Noah gasps at the smell. “Oh my God, you stink.”

Fin frowns at him. “Daddy.” I know, she only said Daddy, but that’s a firm, no, I don’t stink in Fin language.

I’d like to point out, at nearly two, Fin finally said her next word, and more importantly, said it to Noah of all people.

Daddy. And she says it constantly now. She still says tit a lot, but now daddy is thrown in there but always to the man she adores. It took her a long time to come around to him, but I think once she did, he became her favorite person in the world.

I’d have to agree with her. He’s a keeper.

They take me to surgery an hour later and at that point, I’d probably argue with you that I just said Noah was a keeper. If you’ve never been shot in the leg with a nail gun, you’re not missing out on anything besides pain. They can’t just pull the nail out and send me on my way. It hit the bone so they had to go in and surgically remove the motherfucker. After they remove the nail, start me on a course of antibiotics and pain relievers, I’m lying in the room cranky and waiting to be discharged.

Kate walks in and smiles at me when I throw a pudding cup at the wall. “Why so salty, babe?”

“I’m in pain.” I huff. “Where’s Noah?”

She sits down in the chair beside the bed. “He took them to raid the vending machines.” Then she hands me a Starbucks cup. “Dare I ask how this happened?”

“Noah didn’t tell you?”

“Nope. He told me to mind my own biz-ness.”

I smile.

Her eyes light up like I told her we’d won free wine for the rest of our lives. “Viagra again?”

I laugh and take a drink from the coffee she brought me. “No way. Long story short, Noah didn’t lock the door. I swear, you can’t trust a man when he says, I locked it, or apparently, I deleted it.” Don’t think I forgot about that video. Just wait.

“Imma need details.”

I stare at the cup in my hand and realize there’s a name I don’t recognize on the side. “Who’s Kristen?”

“I don’t know. I went there to order, the line was long, and the to-go orders were just sitting there with no one touching them, so I threw some money in the tip jar and snatched the already made drinks. No one said anything.” She shrugs. “Kristen orders some good drinks. I have to remember this one. Now stop distracting me. Tell me what happened.”

I go into detail about the hot, naughty, it’s-been-too-long sex we had this afternoon until it ended in an unintentional nailing, just not the sexy kind. And she laughs, because that’s all you can do when it comes to the shit the Beckett family gets themselves involved in.

Noah returns about an hour later, and I can immediately tell something’s wrong. Kate senses it too and excuses herself. “I’ll go hang with the littles.”

Noah nods, waits for her to close the door, and then his eyes slide to mine. “How are you feeling?”

“Angry.” My answer is flat because like I said, I’m irritable on pain meds. It’s like they do the exact opposite of what they’re intended to do for me.

Swallowing slowly, he steps forward and sits down on the edge of the bed, his hand finding mine. He squeezes it once. “I’m really sorry.”

“Is that why you look so upset?”

“I’m not upset.” He shrugs one shoulder. “I just hate being in hospitals.”

Emotion hits me in the chest, takes my breath away. It’s always those subtle reminders that seem to knock the wind out of you. The little details you thought you’d forgotten and then you remember. Mara. It’s not that her memory has slipped my mind. It hasn’t. It never will. She’s forever a part of us and will remain that way. But when they say it gets easier, I think in a sense, they’re right. It does get easier to smile, to feel like you can live again. And then it hits you again, and you’re reminded of that pain, and it’s as if you’re right back to that moment it all changed.

Noah’s breath catches when he notices my tears. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just… these places, the smells, it’s all… her. And I hate that those are the memories I have of her.”

Despite the fact that I want to punch him in the face for the nail gun incident, I take his hand in mine and smile at him through the tears. “We have good memories of her too.”

---