The mixed martial arts crowd was full of people that wanted to see some former military guy get their ass kicked. If I got beat, this was their way of saying that they could have hacked it in the military if they’d wanted to. So I made sure I upheld Marine honor by not getting beat. Oorah.
My perfect record led to a professional contract with a management company and fights at holidays. I did a fight earlier in the year, and now I'm the undercard on a New Year's Eve match in Las Vegas. Just being on the undercard for such a match was a big payday for me.
But no matter how big my paydays were, they'd never match what Grace had in her trust fund or what the house she grew up in was worth. I was going to have to use my fight earnings to leverage that into something else. The thought of the fight and all the implications it held brought on a throbbing headache that killed any good feelings I’d had about getting Grace alone in her teenage bedroom, which was too bad. Those were damn good fantasies. I shifted in my seat and pressed my temple with my thumb, trying to ease the ache.
"You can work out when we get there,” Grace whispered and squeezed my shoulder.
For a minute I wanted to shrug out of her grasp. I didn't like that she had to comfort me. The pounding in my head increased like a goddamm woodpecker was on the inside, pounding away at me.
Grace
NOAH LOOKED TENSE, AND he was strung so tightly I thought he might shatter like glass with the wrong word or touch. I glanced in the rearview mirror and met Lana's worried gaze. She raised her eyebrows in a silent question, but I couldn't answer her—not without letting Noah know that I was concerned. He had some old-fashioned ideas about shouldering all the burdens. I think it had to do with the fact his mom died young.
The deaths of our parents was one thing that had drawn us together when I’d written to Noah while he was deployed to Afghanistan. The bond between us had seemed so strong and real that the letter he’d written telling me that we shouldn't see each other after he separated had been devastating to me. It had taken me a long time to feel good about myself after that and to trust other people. I’d felt numb inside.
I learned later that Noah had been struck with his own sense of insecurity, particularly after he had come up to my house to surprise me on leave. Determined that he wouldn't bother me with his struggle with coping with the civilian world and convinced that he wasn't good enough—which in his mind was all to do with wealth—Noah broke it off. Then, just a few months ago, he came storming back, a Marine on a mission. It was hard to hold out, but at first I didn't trust him.
We'd survived one test, one fight, but this was a real concern. Noah's anxiety over coming to my home was scaring me. I wondered if he was going to drop Lana and me off at the gate and then speed back to the airport and join Bo in San Diego with all their buddies. Half of me expected this and half of me wanted him to go. If this was going to break us up again, I'd never forgive myself. And maybe I'd never forgive him either.
I looked at Lana again for reassurance, but Noah caught me and frowned. I gave him a weak smile, which only seemed to deepen the unhappy lines of his face. The passing scenery was the safest place to look right now, so I stared out the window and silence settled in for the last thirty minutes of our drive.
As we drove down the lane to the house, I thought back to the first time I'd come here after my father died. Mom had fallen apart. She went to bed after the funeral and didn't get up. After the third day she’d refused to leave her bed, my older brother Josh called Uncle Louis—dad’s brother. I was twelve. Josh was fourteen. He let me sleep in his room that night. I was certain Mom was going to die, and while she still lives and breathes, she isn't with us anymore. Uncle Louis arrived a day later, took the whole scene in with a glance, and by the weekend, we were living with my cousin Lana in her mansion north of the city of Chicago.
There were a few rules here. Stay out of the targeting range of Lana's mom. Don't bother Uncle Louis. Make sure my mom had her meds. Josh assimilated easily. Being athletic, Josh slid into an easy social class at school. I was a shy, sad, round ball of a girl, and while Lana made sure everyone included me, I still felt awkward—like I was always just visiting. I didn't make close friends with anyone but Lana. I actually clung to her, and when I started writing Noah two years later, when I was fourteen and he was eighteen, I clung to him too. I was trying to give everyone around me space so I didn’t end up alone.
"Drive around to the side," Lana leaned forward, directing Noah to the spot to park the rental car. Having likely watched us arrive through the security cameras, Daniel, the house manager, came out the side door immediately to grab the luggage. It was a little amusing watching Noah and Daniel tussle over the cases, but Noah was a professional athlete and had about thirty years on Daniel. This would not end well.
"Noah," I said, slipping my hand around his elbow. I cringed when I felt how tight his muscles were. When we got to my room, I was going to give him an all-body massage. Thinking of Noah lying nude on my bed while I slicked oil all over the curves of his muscles was much better than thinking of Noah ready to run out of the house and back to Central.
AFTER UNPACKING MY THINGS, I walked along the balconette to the guest wing. There were three bedrooms here, each with its own bathroom, that were reserved for guests. There were more in the basement, and one on the first floor, though that was for our grandmother when she visited. She never did, though. She lived in a condo association in Northfield, and maybe she'd like to visit, but Uncle Louis never brought her here—probably because Grandma and Lana’s mom didn't get along.
I hadn't seen my mother yet. She could be sleeping or she could be dosed into zombie mode and sitting in the library. I didn't rush to find her. During our brief conversation before coming home for Christmas break, I'd told her I was bringing Noah home. She made some polite noises, but I'm not sure she could repeat the information I’d given her if you asked her an hour later.
Still, someone had made up a room for Noah in the guest wing. While I would've liked to have him sleep in my bed, it was only a double—but I could've slept on top of him. Likely Lana was responsible. She would've called ahead and made the arrangements. Even though Uncle Louis wasn't my dad, Lana and I felt that he'd have a hard time with Noah sleeping in my bed. Noah didn't resist.
I found him in his room, standing at the window with his arms braced above him, holding onto the top of the sill, looking out at Lake Michigan.
He must have heard me come in because he didn't turn around, but he did acknowledge my entrance. "I can't believe the view from here."
I walked over and wrapped my arms around his solid waste and tucked my head into the hollow between his shoulder blades. With a deep breath, I inhaled his wonderful smell and thought it was sad that he was still so tense. I tugged on his arm. "Why don't you come and lie down? I'll give you a rubdown."
"You know that Bo has money, right?"
I shrugged even though he couldn't see it. "Maybe. I guess I never really thought of it."
"He doesn't live anything like this. Sure, he's got a big house, but it's in West Texas. It looks out over oil rigs."
"And this house, that I don't even own, looks out over Lake Michigan."
Noah shook his head. "You just don't get it, Grace."
He was right. I didn't get it. Noah was disconcerting in these moods. He always seemed to know what he wanted and when he wanted it. Things moved on his timeline or they didn't move at all. But there wasn't any budging him from these moods. The last time he had been like this, he’d fought an illegal fight, and we broke up soon after. I didn't want to revisit that experience. I realized that I needed to be more independent. So even though Noah was withdrawing from me, I had to suck it up. He’d come back. This was just a phase.
The holiday season was never much fun, and it wasn’t just because our parents were intolerable. It was because Josh was often gone, practicing for his bowl game. This year Noah had a New Year’s Eve fight, and Josh’s game was the next day. We'd see Josh for two whole days before he had to go back to State to practice for the big game. He was a junior this year, and there wasn't much more time for him to make a statement as a player if he wanted to go pro. Josh had told me privately he didn't think he would make it.
Listening to both guys in my life express such concern wasn't ordinary. I was used to being the one who was indecisive and uncertain, yet in this case, I could see their futures so clearly. Noah was so driven that it didn't seem possible that he wouldn't achieve every goal that was set in front of him, and Josh was so talented there was no way he wouldn’t get drafted.
But all I could do now was hold their respective hands and listen to them and encourage them.
"How did they figure out you didn't like water in boot camp?" I asked suddenly.
"Huh?" The question caught Noah off guard and he turned to look at me over his shoulder. I sidled around the front and pushed against his chest so that he wasn't leaning up against the window and staring at the cold water. Nudging him backward until he fell into one of the upholstered chairs in front of a gas fireplace, I settled in on top of him. His arms closed around me automatically.
"When you wrote to me, you said that you hadn't realized that water would be such a big part of your military experience, that you hadn't realized that the Marines were part of the Navy."
He nodded, then, catching on. "Besides the recruiter? I hesitated. We were supposed to jump in the water and do an equipment removal test, and I hesitated. I'd never hesitated before. I was always the first one off the mark, running, jumping, climbing, whatever they wanted me to do, I was doing it first. But when we came to the pool, I stopped and people brushed past me. All except Bo. Bo waited with me. Not because he was scared of the water."
"I can just imagine what he said."
"Yeah," Noah gave a small gruff laugh full of affection for his best friend. "He said to me later that he always let me go first so that he knew where to go, but this time he waited for me and waited, and then he just grabbed my vest and jumped in. Later he said that he got tired of waiting and he was hot. But—“
"But he was saving you," I finished.
"Yeah, I had to do that part of the training. It was a whole third of boot, Grace, and I hated it. Every day."
"But you jumped in. You conquered it, and now it is just a thing that's behind you."
"You can't put a house this big behind you, Grace."
"It's not my house."
"But you come from here. This is your world. I grew up in a shack and lived on welfare. Do you see why I didn't come inside so many years ago when I thought about visiting you?"
Even though we'd exchanged letters for four years while Noah was deployed, sometimes he was a complete mystery. This insecurity of his over the size of this house, this house that belonged to Uncle Louis and not even to me, was unfathomable. Noah had gone to the Marines, owned his own business, and was part of an exclusive group of mixed martial artists who fought for money in Vegas and other venues in front of thousands of fans. He'd been on television, for crying out loud. But take him out of his element and set him down in a 12,000-foot, overblown McMansion in the Northern suburbs of Chicago, and he'd immediately forgotten all of the success that he had made for himself.