mean, he goes where they go.”
“Wait.” I narrowed my gaze at him. “You’re hoping Shane becomes totally occupied with work for a while so he won’t have time for your mom.”
Noah gave me a wide-eyed, innocent look. “I didn’t say that.”
“Right. Nice try, but a few hours away at work isn’t going to stop those two from being a couple.”
He groaned. “Did you see them at breakfast? Can’t they at least tone it down when I’m around?”
“It was a little much,” I agreed.
He leaned his head against my bed. “And I’m so tired. Shane snores like a wild boar.”
“Wild boars snore?”
“You know what I mean.” He closed his eyes. “I need a nap.”
I got up. “Take my bed for a few hours.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” I had changed the sheets the night before, so I was pretty sure there were no drool spots on my pillow.
“Well, yeah, if you’re okay with me sleeping in your bed.” Noah pulled himself off the floor. We stood facing each other for a moment. He was so close I could smell the cinnamon on his breath and I wondered if I should just step forward and kiss him. I couldn’t, though. I wasn’t that brave.
“Sweet dreams,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the pounding of my heart.
I closed the door behind me and went downstairs. Noah was in my room, in my bed. It made me giddy, and I tried not to smile too widely.
Downstairs, Mom was taking the pizza out of the oven. “Where’s Noah?”
I sat down at the table. “He wanted to take a nap. I guess he’s had a hard time sleeping because of Shane’s snoring.”
“Tell me about it,” Trisha muttered.
Mom and I shared an amused glance. “Well, dinner’s ready. We’ll save him some for later.”
After dinner, I stayed in the kitchen and called Avery. “Guess who’s sleeping in my bed right now?”
“Seriously?”
I curled a strand of hair around my finger. “He’s up there right now. That’s a good sign, right?”
“No.”
“What?” I was confused. Why wasn’t Avery excited for me?
She sighed. “I don’t think it’s a sign of anything, Charlotte.”
“But—“
“Look, I know you like him, but I think you’re setting yourself up to get hurt.” She cleared her throat. “I need to tell you something. You’re not going to like it, which I why I didn’t tell you earlier.”
I listened carefully as Avery described an encounter she had with Noah during the homecoming dance. She had watched as Noah and I danced to a slow song. When the song ended, I had gone over to talk with Callie and some of our other friends while Noah went to get us drinks. Avery went up to him. She mentioned that we seemed to be hitting it off, but Noah had shaken his head. “We’re friends only,” he said. His voice, Avery said, was emphatic. “She knows that, right?” he’d asked her. “That we’re friends and nothing more?” Avery said that I did know that. She then asked Noah to go out to her car and get a jacket for her. “I wanted to talk with you right away,” she said, “but then Jared and I started talking and I got distracted.”
“Oh.” The giddiness that had consumed me earlier evaporated.
“This is a good thing, Charlotte.”
“How is this a good thing? The guy I like wants nothing to do with me.”
“That’s not true. He likes you, but not in the way you want.”
“Again—how is that a good thing?”
Avery was quiet for a second. When she spoke, her voice was softer. “Charlotte, now you know. Now you can move on and find someone who wants to be more than a friend. Instead of focusing on a relationship that will never happen, you can open to the possibility of someone else.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
“Not exactly.” She sighed. “I tried setting up Callie with someone once. She was really into him, but he didn’t return the feelings. It was a disaster.”
Now it was my turn to be quiet. Maybe Avery was right. It was time to accept a nice, simple friendship with Noah and put my romantic energy into someone else.
“You’re my friend,” Avery said. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. That’s the only reason I’m telling you this.”
“I know.” I could hear everyone in the dining room discussing the storm. Then I heard Noah walking down the stairs. “I have to go. Noah’s awake.”
“Sure. And remember—there’s nothing wrong with having a great guy friend.”
“Right.”
“Besides,” Avery continued. “Callie says she knows a football player who would be good for you.”
We said goodbye and I hung up. Noah walked into the kitchen, his hair pressed to one side from where he’d slept on it. I resisted the urge to brush my fingers through it.
“How was the nap?” I asked.
“Good. I’m starving, though.”
I got up from the table. “I’ll reheat the pizza for you.”
He sat down, still looking sleepy. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” I took the pizza out of the fridge. “After all, what are friends for?”
Chapter Three
The rain stopped roaring on Sunday night. By Monday, it was barely a drizzle. The sky still loomed gray and bloated clouds moved fast and low, but the worst was finally over.
“I guess we’ll be leaving,” Trisha announced after breakfast on Monday. I had gotten used to having everyone around. We had developed a cozy routine revolving around simple meals and old movies. The house would seem empty without our guests, but part of me was relieved: it was difficult to be around Noah all the time. I kept noticing little things about him that I liked, such as the way he was careful to always clean up after himself and help my mom, and how he laughed at something on TV. It would be easier to see him as just a friend, I decided, once there was some distance between us.
With school officially canceled, I focused on helping my parents, who had reached out to overwhelmed authorities and offered to assist in their casket cleanup efforts. Over two dozen coffins had been unearthed during the storm, and it was essential to get them back to their proper burial spaces. One had been discovered wedged in the cart corral at a grocery store. Two were found lodged between trees at a local playground. And several had floated all the way to the high school, where they came to a strange stop on the drenched football field. The image of the splintered wooden boxes sitting near the 50-yard mark dominated the local media. Dad was not amused.
“There are thousands of people without power right now, and this is what makes the news?”
Despite the fact that he made a living off people’s intense interest in life after death, he was constantly annoyed by public fascination with the subject.
Mom researched local cemeteries, made endless calls, and confirmed that the coffins had come from a tiny graveyard a mile away.
“Some of them are from before the Civil War,” she told me and Dad. I had raided the pantry to produce dinner, which consisted of canned spaghetti with meatballs and buttered wheat bread. After a weekend without a trip to the store, canned