Under the Cornerstone (38 page)

“Oh my God, Jim. What fucking happened?” she asks him.

He grimaces in fake pain again, “I went to get a pack of smokes early this morning and there was an old lady getting mugged.”

He shifts on the couch as if he’s in so much pain he can’t get comfortable.

“Jesus. Here, let me help you,” Noe babies him.

She shifts him around a little and he pretends that she has helped him find the right spot.

“Anyhow, the old lady was getting mugged by two guys and I stepped in to save her. I knocked one out, but the other hit me in the leg with a bat. I’ve got a hairline fracture. I’m off this baby for at least two months,” he lies through his teeth.

“That’s amazing that you helped her,” Noe says with pride in her voice. “Did they catch the guys?”

Fuck my life.

“No,” he says and scowls in pain once more. “It’s okay though. The old lady wasn’t harmed, and they didn’t steal her shit.”

“Well, fuck, Jim,” she replies at a loss for words.

I feel her pain.

“How did you get to the hospital?” she asks.

“The cops took me.”

“Where were
you
?” Noe turns around and asks me with something close to an accusation in her voice.

I’m going to fucking gut his ass.

Jimmy answers for me, “I left while he was asleep. He didn’t know I was gone until I got home from the hospital. I didn’t even think to call him.”

I remain leaning against a wall with my arms crossed, repeatedly telling myself not to find something sharp and cut that fake cast off. This whole “woe is me” act is grating on my nerves.

Ryan and Rich bust through the door and take one look at Jimmy and give him looks of sympathy.

“Man, what the fuck happened?” Ryan asks.

Noe tells them Jimmy’s fictitious mugging story, and they both tell them how awesome he is for saving the made-up old lady.

We all sit around Jimmy’s living room for a few hours watching television. Rich goes out for food and we sit around eating Chinese and watching some pirate television show,
Black Sails
, that I’m pretty sure might actually be porn with great actors and a plot. I suffer through the erection in my jeans that pops up every time Noe makes some crude ass comment when another sex scene comes on, just so I can be in the same room as her with no conflict or drama. She sits against the couch Jimmy’s splayed out on so I have the perfect view of her.

A few more hours in, Jimmy looks at us with fake pain in his eyes, “Man, getting around on tour is going to be tough.”

I narrow my eyes at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Everybody is quiet for a minute until Ryan finally speaks up, “We’ve got Aaron to help. We’ll have to try to get to gigs earlier so he has more time to set up.”

“I can still do the rest of my job, I just won’t be as mobile and I can’t help set up the gear,” Jimmy tells him.

“Shit,” Rich says and rubs the back of his head. “You think one of the guys from Saul’s can help out for a few months?”

“Those guys don’t know shit about how touring or the band works,” I instantly put my foot down.

“I can help,” Noely says and every head in the room turns to her.

“Like on tour?” Rich asks.

“Yeah. I can help out. It’s just for a few months until Jimmy gets back on his feet. I can freelance remotely anyways,” she answers.

I take it back. I take every fucking thing I said about Jimmy back. I take it all back. I’m sorry. Jimmy fucking Crawford is a goddamn genius. A goddamn genius!

“We’ll pay you,” I say. “Well the label will pay you. We’ll create a position for you if we have to.”

“It’s fine,” she says.

“Holy fuck, Noe is touring with us!” Ryan says and pulls her up from the floor to hug her.

I want to do the same thing.

Rich hugs her and Jimmy sits up so he can pull her into a hug, “Thank you so much, Noely baby. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“It’s the least I could do for you saving an elderly woman’s life,” she looks down at Jimmy.

A goddamn genius! I think I love Jimmy at this moment more than I ever have.

“I just need to take care of a few things before we leave in five days,” she says and I feel a wave of sadness come off of her.

Chapter Forty

Noely leaves to take care of her business, and I shoot Rich a look as soon as she’s out the door.

“What’s going on with Noe?” he asks me.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“I have no idea,” he says.

“I’ll be back. I fucking love you Jimmy!” I yell and walk out the door.

I hear him reply, “Epiphany!”

I haul ass down the stairs and come out of the building just as Noely turns a corner. I jog to close some of the space between us, but hang back enough that she doesn’t know I’m following her. I hang back in the shadows when she enters a liquor store and emerges with a bottle of tequila.

She walks five more blocks before she stops at a stoop and sits down. I can’t figure out what she’s doing. It’s not like her to drink a bottle of tequila on some random person’s steps. It takes me a minute, but I realize she’s looking across the street.

She sits there for half an hour before I see a family sit down for dinner. Two teenage kids, a mom, and a dad laugh and you can almost see the conversation taking place as everyone explains how their days went.

I watch both the family and Noely, trying to figure out why she’s watching them. Something is here. Something deep. Something painful. She pulls out her phone and my own phone vibrates in my pocket.

I pull it out and see she’s calling me.

“Noe,” I answer just far away enough from her that she can’t hear me in the distance.

“Johnny,” her voice cracks on my name.

“What’s wrong Noely baby?”

“You were the first man in my life who loved me,” she says.

“Noe,” is all I can manage because I don’t know which love she’s talking about.

“Your dad was the second. Then Rich, and then Ryan, and then Jimmy.”

“Noely Baby.”

“My dad didn’t love me. He started a whole new family. He left me. He left me when I was eight. I remember the day he left like it was yesterday. It was before my mom got sick. I came home from school that day and he was standing in the foyer with his bags packed. My mom was on her knees crying, screaming, and pleading with him not to leave her.”

A sob breaks through, but from where I’m standing I can see her body tremble.

I did the same goddamn thing to her in California.

“I’m sorry I did that to you,” I say with tears in my own eyes. “I hate that he did that to you.”

“You didn’t leave a kid. I was just a little girl. He didn’t even say goodbye. He just patted me on the head like a dog and said ‘Take care of your mom, Noely.’ Then he left, and I never saw him again. Who leaves their kid like that?”

“An asshole.”

“When mom died, social services contacted him. Mom didn’t want me staying with my stepfather and she alerted the authorities before her death that my father was still alive. He must’ve told them he didn’t want me, because he never showed up. He didn’t even come to mom’s funeral. I mean I know they were divorced, but he had a child with her. He still had me. I was still here, and I needed him. He didn’t want me. He didn’t love me. I never understood why.”

I listen to her cry and give up trying to stay away. I walk down the street towards her. When she sees someone approaching, she looks up and then frowns down at her phone and back up at me. I sit down beside her and take her phone to end the call. I wrap my arm around her shoulder and pull her into me. She cries for a while until she’s cried out.

She takes a pull from the tequila bottle and then passes it over to me. I light a cigarette.

“Can I have one?” she asks.

“You don’t smoke, Noe,” I say because I don’t want her to start the habit.

“I do tonight,” she replies.

I hand her the cigarette and she lights it and then inhales. She coughs for a minute, but then smokes the rest of it like she’s been smoking her entire life.

“Don’t start smoking,” I beg.

She shrugs her shoulders. She seems so lost and I know I’m partly to blame for that. I’d take all the blame, but the first man who was supposed to love her unconditionally is sitting across the street from us having dinner with his new family. The family he abandoned Noles to make. I never knew until now that he had a second chance to make it right and fucked her over again instead.

I want to walk across the street and punch the motherfucker in the throat and tell him how amazing his daughter is. I want to tell him how she saved me, and how we’ve accomplished our dreams because of her. I want to tell him that despite him, she’s full of love and light, and that I can’t breathe without her. He needs to know what her stepfather tried to do to her and that she lived on the streets for a fucking week, so the prick couldn’t find her and finish what he’d started. I want to tell him that she finished high school when all the odds were against her and then finished a college degree. She fought not to become another statistic, and he didn’t have a damn thing to do with it other than donating half of the DNA that made her the amazing person that she is.

I can’t imagine holding a baby Noe in my arms and watching her grow up and then walking away like she was nothing. Disposable. Replaceable. Because from the moment I met her, she was everything. She saved me, and then she made my dreams come true.

We pass the bottle back and forth in silence, but she stays tucked into my side, right where I want her.

“Why’d you call me?” I ask her.

“You were the first man who loved me. I thought maybe you could tell me why my dad doesn’t love me.”

“I can’t even begin to comprehend how someone couldn’t love you, Noe. I’m not the person who can answer that question for you. The only person who can answer that question is across the street. So, did you buy the tequila for courage, or so you could drown in it?”

“You followed me,” she skirts my question.

“Noe, I know you better than anyone else. I knew something wasn’t right when you left. I followed to make sure you were okay. I’m glad I did.”

“Me too,” she admits and it makes my chest hurt.

“Are you going to answer my question?”

“The tequila?”

“Yeah.”

She sighs, “I think maybe I needed it for both reasons.”

“Well, if this is the night you decide to ask him those questions, we can check it off your bucket list. Or, we can wait until you’re ready. But if it’s tonight, then you grab my hand when you’re ready, and I’ll walk across the street with you. You say what you need to say and I’ll stand beside you the whole time. If you fall apart, that’s okay too. I’ll be here to put you back together.”

“I miss you,” she says and my heart swells.

“I miss you too.”

“When you’re not around… when we’re apart and fighting… it’s hard to…” she searches for her words.

“Breathe,” I finish for her.

“Yeah.”

She wraps an arm around my neck and buries her face in the side of it. I hold her tightly so she knows I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I won’t walk away again. I won’t be another man that walks out on her.

“Thank you for being here,” she whispers.

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

She kisses my cheek, and then pulls her arms back to herself. She stands and looks across the street. I stand with her and then she grabs my hand, and we walk towards her father’s house.

We stand on the front stoop for a while. She stares at the doorbell for some time.

“You don’t have to do this,” I tell her.

“I do. For me.”

“It doesn’t have to be tonight.”

“Tequila is my friend,” she looks up and gives me a small, sad smile.

Then she turns back and rings the doorbell. I hear voices and shuffling inside and then an attractive woman answers the door. She looks like the typical soccer mom. From the pictures and my memories, she’s nowhere as beautiful as Noely’s mom. How could he desert his wife and daughter for her?

“Can I help you?” the woman asks in a snobbish tone.

“I…,” Noely stalls.

“She’s here to see her father,” I finish for her with a stern voice.

The snooty woman looks me up and down, no doubt taking in the piercings and tattoos.

“I think you have the wrong address,” the woman says and tries to shut the door in our faces.

I stick my foot in so she can’t.

“I don’t think you heard me. She’s here to see the father that abandoned her when she was eight. That would be your husband. The husband and father you stole from another woman and his daughter. The husband that left her in the care of a pervert when her mother died so he could keep playing house with you. Now, you can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either you get her father to the door and let Noe ask her questions, or I will open this door and find him myself.”

She opens her mouth in shock.

“You’re wasting time,” I glare at her.

“Roger!” she yells from the door.

A teenage boy appears and then another follows behind him.

“What’s the problem?” the biggest one asks no doubt protecting his bitch of a mother.

“Your sister is requesting to speak to your father,” I tell the boy.

“My sister?” he asks.

“Nick, go get your father and take Ant upstairs.”

“Is that our sister?” the younger one asks.

“Yes, I’m your sister,” Noely finally speaks up and I look down to see her looking at her brothers with love.

“What the fuck?” Nick, the oldest, asks.

Roger finally comes to the door, “What’s going on dear?”

He stops dead in his tracks when he sees his daughter.

“I guess we’re having a family fucking reunion,” his wife seethes.

“Mom!” Nick scolds her.

“I just… I…” Noe begins as she looks at her father. “I wanted to know why you left me.”

With a hard look he tells her, “I wanted sons. Your mother couldn’t have any more children.”

“And when she died? You had a chance to take care of me. You left me with a monster,” she says as tears roll down her cheeks.