Elliot’s touch on my knuckles finally helped me start to relax, and I found myself thinking of Anderson’s touch on my wrist. This was how his touch should have made me feel, but it hadn’t.
“Ye don’t want to hurt him,” Elliot stated. “Sometimes hurtin’ people can’t be helped when puttin’ ourselves first.”
“Putting myself first distanced me from you all in the first place, Elliot.”
“How can ye be mad at yourself for things ye have no memory of?” he asked me. “How?”
“I don’t know. This whole situation . . . it’s so messed up.”
More poxy tears fell.
“I feel like I’ve cried all the tears a person gets for a lifetime. I wish I was like you.” I wiped my cheeks again. “I can’t ever remember you crying.”
“Just because someone doesn’t cry doesn’t mean they aren’t broken, just like when someone smiles it doesn’t mean they’re happy.” He kept stroking his thumb over my knuckles. “When you left me, I was devastated. I couldn’t function for a long time, and even when I developed a new routine without you, nothing felt real.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m past it, I’m here right now with you. If cryin’ helps ye move forward, then cry.”
I sniffled. “I guess I’m just more prone to emotional outbursts compared to normal people.”
Elliot’s lips twitched. “Maybe.”
“Still . . .” I shrugged. “Somehow I’m coping.”
“You’re not copin’, Noah. You’re drownin’.”
My breath caught. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I do,” Elliot said. “We’ll take things slowly; we’ll communicate and decide together when we should discuss the past few years in more depth. Sound like a plan?”
I looked from Elliot to my parents – they agreed with him whole-heartedly, I could tell from one glance. They had always trusted him, they had always loved him, and it seemed that was something that had remained the same.
“Okay.” I nodded, looking at back him. “Anderson told me I wouldn’t see him for a while. He’s doing what the doctor wants.”
I left out the part about him wanting me to go to him when my family – and Elliot – filled me in about the blank spaces in my memory. I was surprised to find that I could still remember his phone number and home address. I hoped I would never need to use either.
“Good,” Elliot said. “We’re going to focus on getting you better. No more talkin’ of the past for the time bein’, or the future for that matter. We’re only goin’ to be takin’ things as they come. Day by day.”
“Day by day,” I echoed. “Together.”
Elliot leaned in and kissed me in front of my parents, claiming his right to do so with pride.
“Together.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
NOAH
“Noah, can you stop fidgeting for two minutes?”
“No, Mum,” I answered, as I used my crutches to hop over to the window so I could peer outside at the world I’d been caged away from. “I can’t. I’ve been in this hospital for six weeks. Six weeks of being stuck in a bed, six weeks of nurses coming in and out to check on me, six weeks of you, Dad, Elliot and sometimes AJ, sitting and staring at me. In twenty minutes, I’ll be discharged and free. I cannot sit still; I don’t even want to!”
I felt good. So fucking good.
A month ago, I had decided that I would do what my family, Elliot and Doctor Abara wanted. I would take things day by day and focus on getting better. Of course, there were times when I slipped and wanted to speak about the things I’d been told about – like mine and Elliot’s break-up, and how quickly I moved on with Anderson – but each time I was shut down by Elliot or my parents. And I didn’t fight with them – I may have got snippy once or twice, but I let it go and remembered my goal.
I wanted to go home.
I hadn’t established where that home would be yet, but my parents had taken it upon themselves to ready my old bedroom for my impending arrival. A massive part of me wanted to return to the flat I’d once shared with Elliot, the flat where he still lived, but I was nervous about it, so going home with my parents was the right call. I didn’t say it out loud, but I felt some worry about going back to the way things were with Elliot, because things would never really be as they once were – and that