Peter was going to die with me when I told him about their little meetup.
One of Noah’s hands went to rest at the top of the bar counter, those navy eyes focused directly on me, searching and searching… like he hadn’t seen me before. He looked sad and a little tired and stressed. I’d forgotten he’d lost his last fight, and there was no way that hadn’t stung his ego.
But I didn’t feel pity. I didn’t feel bad. I just wanted to get this over with. To be done.
The hand he had on the counter inched closer to where mine was, and I wasn’t sure whether to look at it or at him as he said, in a voice too soft, “Look, I… I miss you, Len.”
I faced him again, expecting some level of tenderness to flood me, but getting nothing.
“I miss talking to you about shit.”
A hundred different examples of proof of how that couldn’t exactly be true and hadn’t been in a decade went right through my head, but I was proud of myself for keeping my mouth shut.
“I know that I’ve fucked up a lot. I know that I’ve said a lot of stuff to hurt you, but I love you.” His fingertips grazed mine, and I had to make sure not to look in the direction of Inspector Gadget or Pink Panther again as much as I wanted to.
“We’ve been through everything together,” he kept right on going, and I knew I was going to have to stop him because this little declaration was pointless. “No one knows me better than you, or ever will. I’m sorry, Lenny. For everything. I just… I don’t know. I got so mad at you for getting fucking pregnant. It felt like you cheated on me.”
Cheated on him? Okay.
My eyes strayed toward the table beyond, where I could see Grandpa Gus’s lips moving, probably talking shit—all right, not probably, for sure talking shit, this was Grandpa Gus after all—and Jonah nodding in response.
I had wanted these two to bond, and what the hell did they have to bond over?
Hating Noah.
I swear I didn’t understand my life sometimes.
“Lenny?”
He’d caught me. I glanced back at him and raised my eyebrows. “Yeah?”
“Are you listening?”
“Yeah. Mostly,” I told him the truth because, well… it was the truth. And if he looked butthurt about it, I didn’t know what to say.
He did look butthurt on second glance. His forehead was wrinkling, and he was frowning, insulted. “You don’t give a fuck about what I’m telling you?”
I couldn’t help but give him a long look as I thought about the two goobers sitting together. “It isn’t that I don’t care, Noah. I do. I care about you. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. But you telling me that you love me and that you’re sorry for the things that you’ve said….” I drew my hands up at my sides as I shrugged at him. “I will always love and care about you, frankly, and maybe I missed something, but we haven’t been in each other’s lives in forever.”
The fingertips on mine jerked away, and I couldn’t say I wasn’t glad.
“Noah, come on. You were here a year ago, but the only time you ever talked to me was when you wanted me to help you train.”
He opened his mouth like he was going to argue but shut it right back.
“But you don’t love me.”
“Yeah, I do,” he insisted, leaning forward, expression intense. “I always have.”
It was way too hard to keep a straight face. “No, you haven’t. Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that you do, but it isn’t real. If you’re going to feel that way about someone, it should be honest. It shouldn’t be because my daughter’s dad is here and you decided to get all possessive for no reason. You care about me, in your own way, but you don’t love me, Noah.”
My words weren’t sinking in. I could tell. “I’ve loved you my whole fucking life, Len!” he claimed, eyes moving around to see if anyone had heard him. I didn’t give a fuck if someone did, so I didn’t bother caring. “Always. There’s never been a fucking day when I didn’t.”
“You should’ve thought about that at some point before I was pregnant, and I wanted my friend around. When I needed some support and you made it out to seem like I was walking around with radiation poisoning. You called me a slut.” I gave him a smile that wasn’t a happy one by any means. “I needed you, and you left me. Not just now but years ago. I used to fucking take you to the hospital, Noah. I stayed with you the whole time, and that was when you needed stitches.”
He tipped his head back. “You’re going to bring that shit up? I was eighteen. I wanted to go away to school, and you’re still pissed off about that? I didn’t give you shit for graduating early.”
Oh hell. Yeah, none of this was doing anything. I couldn’t help but snort and look up at the ceiling as I shook my head.
He wasn’t the boy who had been my brother and best friend. He wasn’t anyone I knew anymore. And that really did suck.
“You know what, Noah? Yeah, I’m going to bring the past up. Because all of this goes back to you not being a real friend to me since then. I never would have just been a chickenshit and gone away to school without giving you a fucking warning. Without telling you I was thinking about it. You never even apologized to me over fucking up my ribs back then either; you know how fucking shitty that is?”
Noah opened his mouth, but I wasn’t letting him get another chance. I’d given his ass enough chances, and I was done. I had been done years ago.
But fuck it.
I didn’t give a shit anymore.
“But none of that matters anymore, Noah, because you don’t really love me. You don’t even really care about me. Because now I know what that’s supposed to be like, and it isn’t supposed to be like this. You don’t get to be territorial and ugly to anyone in my life. Sorry you realized too late that I’m pretty fucking awesome and that I have no gag reflex. But I love Mo and wouldn’t trade her for fucking anything, and I love her dad too, and they’re what I want. And I don’t say that to hurt you, but so that you know that even if Jonah wasn’t around, Mo always will, and if I could go back in time, I would still have her. And I can see that you could never look at her and see a child you could love. You don’t love me enough to love something I do, and that right there is the biggest neon sign in this shit.”
I pinned him with a glare and shrugged. “I get it, I really do, and I don’t blame you. It’s fine, but you don’t have a single right to say anything to me about anything.”
I saw his face change. Saw the anger take over his features. But he let me finish talking. He listened, at least to part of it.
Not enough based on the comment he went with next.
“You think you love that asshole?” was what he asked. “I’ve known you our entire lives. We used to be able to look at each other and know exactly what we were thinking.”
When we had been teenagers.
“And you’re going to choose some dipshit you’ve only known for a couple months over me?”
Oh fucking hell.
I just sat there and watched his features twist and turn as I leaned back into my stool. I was done with this conversation. I wasn’t about to waste my time going over this shit in circles, and unfortunately, words had never been my strong suit, but they were going to have to be enough. “Noah,” I told him as calmly as possible, digging in real deep for all that “mom patience” I’d developed… not that there was much of it, “he’s not an asshole. He’s not even close to being an asshole, and I could give you all the reasons why he isn’t, but I’m not. But, yeah, I do love him, and it isn’t choosing one person over the other. That’s not at all what it’s like, and the fact that you think that says everything.”