And he just chuckles, shoving me away playfully and slipping on his own helmet.
We climb back on the bike and waste no time heading back toward home. I thought for sure he’d try to diddle around with friends or a girlfriend, but he races through town like he’s in a hurry.
Or in a hurry to get me back.
I start putting pieces together in my head. The little show he just put on for that guy in town. Jake’s advice that I stay away from local guys. The order to put on a proper shirt before I left today. Father and son don’t get along well, but they seem to have that in common, at least. Both of them are stifling.
It’s not entirely awful. I might’ve liked to see my father act that way from time to time. Really stifling is bad. A little stifling…I don’t know. Kind of feels like someone cares, I guess. Maybe I would’ve liked more rules growing up.
Unfortunately for Jake and Noah, I’ve learned to live without them, so it’s a little late.
I hold tight onto Noah as he climbs the roads up into the mountains again, but thankfully he’s going much slower now, because I feel gravity pulling me backward, and I’m afraid I’ll slide off the bike.
I fist my hands, my muscles burning as I hold onto him.
When we get to a spot where the terrain evens out, I loosen my grip to relax my arms for a moment, and he pulls off to the side of the road, the bike resting at the edge of a precipice.
My stomach flips a moment, but then I notice the view through the trees below. The town spreads before us in a valley with the backdrop of the mountains, trees, and land lying in the distance. The great expanse—everything in one picture—makes my heart swell.
“Wow,” I say under my breath.
We sit there for several moments, taking in the view, and Noah removes his helmet, running his hand through his hair.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” he asks.
I blink, coming back to reality. My parents just died. Should I be chatty?
But I swallow the words before I can speak them. Their passing isn’t why I am the way I am, but I’m not explaining myself just because everyone else has their idea of what ‘normal’ should be.
“My dad thinks you resent your parents and that’s why you’re not sad about them dying,” Noah says, still looking out at the valley below. “I think you are sad, but not as much as you’re angry, because actually, it was the other way around, wasn’t it? They resented you.”
I harden my jaw. He and his father talked about me? Who says I’m not sad? How would he know anything? Is there some checklist of specified behavior that’s acceptable when family members die? Some people commit suicide after a loved one’s death. Is that proof they’re sadder than me?
I drop my arms from his body.
“We’ve got the Internet here, too, you know?” he says. “Hannes and Amelia de Haas. They were obsessed with each other.”
He turns his head, so I can see his lips as he talks, but I’m frozen.
He goes on, “And they had a kid, because that’s what they thought they were supposed to do, and then they realized parenthood wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Raising you took them away from each other.”
I force the needles down my throat, feeling the tears start to pool, but I don’t let them collect. How does he know all that?
“So, they turned you over to whoever they could as soon as you were old enough,” he tells me. “Boarding schools, sleepaway summer camps, nannies…”
My chin shakes, and I let it, because I know he can’t see me.
“You didn’t resent your parents,” he finally says. “You loved them.”
Hours later, long after I’ve gone to bed, I hear his words again. Raising you took them away from each other. They resented you. You loved them.
No.
I try to back away, but something has my hand, and it aches. I pull and yank, but the pain grows stronger, and I keep taking steps back, but no matter how hard I try I’m not going anywhere, and I can’t get my hand free.
What has me? Let go. Let go.
I loved them once. I did. But…
I wrack my hand, trying to get it loose from whatever has it, but I can’t turn, and I can’t run.
I loved them once. But not now.
I don’t know. I don’t know.
My eyes snap open, and I feel my cold thumb against the bare skin of my stomach. I blink and sit up, the pain in my hand throbbing as I wince. I look down and see my hand is caught in my T-shirt, the small hole I went to bed with now a gaping tear in the shirt.