Tiebreaker (It Takes Two 2)

Maren,

If you’re reading this, then I’m gone. Save your tears. I was blessed with family, friends, and work that I loved. I got to watch you girls accomplish the impossible. I was lucky enough to live life on my terms and that’s more than most people get.

I’m back where I belong now, beside your grandmother. I won’t beat around the bush, the last few years have been rough. I wasn’t made for sitting still and the cancer was killing my spirit as well as my body.

I left specific instructions with Tim Walters in regards to my will. I’m asking you to keep an open mind and don’t do it only for me, do it for yourself as well. It might not make much sense to you now but I’m betting it will later.

I know you and Noah have a lot of bad blood between you and I’m asking you to give the hostilities a rest until the terms of the will are met. He deserves your patience.

I’m so proud of you, Maren. Proud of everything you’ve accomplished and proud of who you are as a person. Both you and Annabelle have exceeded my wildest expectations. Love you, Cupcake. Keep living your life to the fullest and loving without the breaks on.

Rowdy.

Tears fall on the letter. I shake them off before his sacred words can run off the page to be lost forever.

The sound of an approaching car causes me to glance up. A red Jeep Wrangler pulls into Noah’s driveway and a woman holding a grocery bag gets out. She’s young and pretty, with sleeves of colorful tattoos that dance off her creamy white skin, a slick raven bob, and a nose piercing. Without noting me watching her, she walks into his house.

My stomach churns for reasons I refuse to examine. Rowdy asked me to have patience with Noah. I owe my grandfather, so patience he’ll get. I pull out the second page of Rowdy’s letter, the to-do list, and start reading.

Chapter Five

Maren

I may have fallen for Noah at first sight, but we became best friends gradually, between small moments and large that accumulated over the years. Each one bringing us closer until there was no daylight between us by the time we became more. It wasn’t without its ups and downs however. There was more than one occasion when he trampled my feelings.

“You wanna come over and play video games?”

I’d lost a match earlier that day and he’d found me in tears on my grandfather’s tennis court, practicing my backhand with the ball machine until my blisters were bleeding and my elbow throbbed.

I looked over my shoulder to find him hanging on the other side of the chain-link fence, face puckered in discomfort. It was an invisible SOS, something we both emitted. Whenever one of us was in distress, the other knew.

“What?” he said at my squinty stare.

He’d gotten a crew cut that summer and it was still a surprise to see him with short hair. I secretly hated it even though I’d told him it looked supercool when he asked.

It was spiky, sprouting straight up off his head, so different from the shiny black locks that used to sweep across his forehead. I was sure he was tired of constantly jerking his head to the side, to get it out of his eyes, but I loved how silky and touchable it looked. Not that I ever had the privilege of touching it.

He waited patiently for me to answer. I was a sore loser, still am. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, even to him, so I shook my head. But Noah was as stubborn as I was. Never one to be dismissed easily, he jogged over to the ball machine and turned it off.

“Hey! What are you doing?!” I yelled.

“Let’s go play.”

He came over, took the tennis racket out of my hand, and pulled me off the tennis court by my wrist. Noah was fifteen and well past a growth spurt that had him towering over my twelve-year-old self. Not to mention he’d started lifting his dad’s weights in his garage. I know this because Dr. Callahan was always hollering at him to put them back in the same order he found them in. His biceps looked like softballs bulging out from his stick-figure arms and his t-shirts didn’t hang on him anymore, filled out by the lumps on his chest which I thought looked weird at the time.

All six feet of him escorted me to the front lawn while I complained the whole way. “You can’t cry every time you lose. You’re gonna lose. Everyone does.” His voice had deepened the year prior. It was soothing and steady and always held a hint of humor.

“I’m not crying!” Face ruddy and wet, I tried to break out of his hold and he practically laughed in my face.