Chapter Sixteen Naomi

Chapter Sixteen

Naomi

October 2022, seven months before her death

By the time I get to the soccer stadium, the temperature has dropped ten degrees. The wind has picked up, sending dark clouds hurtling past overhead, a disorienting contrast to the harsh glare of the stadium lights.

The game has just started, and the players are out on the field, but I don’t see Ben. I’m searching the crowd for Zee and Trey when I hear my name.

“Naomi!” Zee calls down to me. I make my way over to them, and Zee points across the field. “Hey, look at number seventeen! What a freakin’ stud!”

I’m relieved to see Ben high-five another player as he subs into the game. I cup my hand around my mouth. “Woooo! Let’s gooo!” And when he looks up and finds me in the crowd, it makes me light up.

Sometime later, I’m watching Ben send a long pass to a guy open in front of the goal when, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a small, dark-haired girl in a long pink coat watching me. At first, I think it must be someone I know, but when I turn and meet her gaze, she quickly looks away. I’m still trying to place her when I hear the halftime buzzer.

—

During the break, Zee and Trey leave in search of food, and a few minutes later, I’m watching Ben run down the sideline when a heavy arm wraps around my shoulders.

“There you are.” Liam smiles down at me, charming as ever, as if we’d planned to meet each other here. My ribs clench as I try to fight the attraction. “Liam. How’s it going?”

He moves closer, and I don’t move away. I’m hyperaware of the contact of his body against mine. The way he’s pulling me toward him. Why does he do this to me? I know this isn’t good, Liam being here. I know he’s hoping Ben will see—Liam might not want me anymore, but he doesn’t want anyone else to have me, either. The warmth of him so close to me makes every cell in my body alert, and I try to inch away from him. “We’re up,” I say, ignoring the fluttering in my stomach and pointing my chin at the field.

“I don’t care about the game…how are you?”

I turn away from him, unable to look him in the eye. If I look at him, I’m done. “Good, you?”

“Yeah?” I can tell Liam’s watching me. “Look, I just wanted to say—”

“We don’t have to do this.”

“Mollie and I broke up, you know,” he adds, and I have to force myself not to react. I shouldn’t consider getting back together, but I can’t help that pang behind my ribs.

The crowd cheers again, saving me.

Ben is on a breakaway, running down the sideline past the last defender. He cuts toward the goal, and the goalie comes out for him. They’re about to collide when, at the last moment, he switches the ball to his left foot and flicks it past the goalie’s outstretched hand.

As the crowd erupts, I cheer more than I need to, glad for the excuse to pull farther away from Liam.

“He got lucky,” Liam mutters.

I need to get away from here before Ben sees us and gets the wrong idea.

“Hey,” Liam says. “There’s something I forgot to tell you.”

I turn to reply, but before I know what’s happening, Liam leans down and kisses me.

For a moment, it’s all there is. The shock of it, the pressure and warmth of his lips, sends me spiraling. The kiss lasts a second too long before I jerk back, my whole body flushed. “What are you doing ?”

Liam shrugs, smiles.

I turn away, furious, and when I look up, Ben is standing on the sideline, staring right at us.

—

After the game, I search for Ben at the tailgate to explain what happened with Liam. I spot him talking to his teammate and start to jog over when the girl with the pink coat I saw in the stands earlier throws her arms around his waist.

He turns toward her and I stop in my tracks. She’s saying something to him. He’s smiling. There’s a familiarity to their body language. An intimacy to the way he leans over her. The way she touches his elbow gently. I watch him laugh at whatever she’s said and tug at one side of her earmuffs. What is going on?

“Ben?” My legs feel wobbly beneath me as I take a cautious step toward them. Startled, he and the girl pull back from each other. Their heads whip to me. The sky has broken and it’s started to drizzle, the cold making my hands go numb.

Ben looks at me over the girl’s head. She’s wearing a Yale sweatshirt under her coat, and when she sees me, her smile falters.

“Hey.” His voice is flat, eyes distant. “This is—”

“Jamie,” she says, with a tight smile. “Ben’s girlfriend.” She says it with a mildly annoyed tone as if asking, And who the hell are you?

“Oh, okay. Good to know.” I take a step back, shaking my head as my throat constricts. I look at Ben, whose face is a mix of emotions I don’t understand.

Without another word, I turn sharply and march in the opposite direction, and as soon as I’m far enough away, I run.

—

I fight the urge to cry as I surge through the dark, rainy campus. The wind has picked up and it’s throwing rain against my face, tearing my hair from my forehead.

Back in my dorm, I grab a bottle of tequila from the mini fridge and take a sip. It burns my throat but numbs the pain a little.

A half hour later, wandering down Washington Road, I reach the bridge over Lake Carnegie and push myself onto the stone ledge. It’s freezing out here. Wind surges around me, brutal, shoving me forward. I trip over an uneven stone, and as I recover my balance and glance down at the rushing water below, vertigo sends me reeling.

Out of the darkness, someone shouts my name.

Down the road, a light grows nearer. Too bright. Disorienting. It takes me a moment to realize it’s Liam on his motorcycle. He’d gotten it over the summer after wrecking his Jeep a few months before, and I’d always wondered what riding it would be like.

“What are you doing here?” I shout over the wind. The edges of him appear in the dark as he parks his bike.

He approaches slowly, cautiously, careful not to startle me in case I might lose my balance. “I’d like to ask the same of you.”

“What does it matter?” The irritation I’d felt when he’d kissed me at the game is still there, but the tension between us has returned, the tightness in my stomach that wavers between frustration and intense attraction.

After making my way down from the ledge, I take another drink of tequila and look at Liam.

I sink down to the ground, leaning my back against the stone and wrapping my arms around my shivering body.

“Let me take you back,” he says.

“I’m fine.”

“I never said you weren’t.” Liam sits down next to me on the wet pavement, takes off his jacket, and drapes it over my shoulders. The gesture surprises me, but I don’t stop him. Then Liam grabs the tequila from my hand and takes a long drink.

I watch him. “I thought you weren’t drinking.”

He shrugs, finishes it off, and wipes his mouth with the back of his arm.

Zee never liked Liam. Most people didn’t. They saw his brashness as rude. But I knew it came from a deeper pain he didn’t share, one I understood.

One night during my sophomore year, he told me he spent more time with his tennis coach than his own parents. After her failed back surgery, his mom took Xanax and Oxycontin like they were vitamins. His dad was always working late—or so he claimed—and so Liam was left alone. I think he put up walls to protect himself.

“It’s freezing.” Liam turns to me, leaning in so close that his breath tingles on my cheek. “Come on. Let me take you home.”

—

We pause under the eave of Liam’s dorm as the rain beats down on the pavement. I’m wearing his jacket, and we’re both soaked from the rain. Before opening the door, he hesitates, turns to me. “You want me to take you home instead?”

The unsaid question floats between us: Or do you want to come up? My eyes lift to his, and I take him in—the way his pupils fill his irises, the bead of rain tracing the lines of his cheek, the sheer fabric of his shirt clinging to his chest—and suddenly the air feels different, charged. My heart is beating so hard, I can feel it in my ears.

“No,” I tell him, and before I can say anything else, he leans down and kisses me. Suddenly it’s as if we’re right back in sophomore year at the beginning of our relationship, coming back from a night out at the eating clubs.

We burst into his room and tear off our wet clothes and it feels so familiar yet different, but when we get to his bed, he stops abruptly. His face is flushed and his hair rumpled from where my hands have run through it.

“You’re drunk—this feels weird,” he says, taking a step back.

“I’m fine,” I say, pushing myself up onto his bed, but as much as I want to keep kissing him, I can’t help but feel it’s kind of sweet of him to care.

He smiles, takes a step toward me, and leans in, but instead of wrapping his arms around me, he pulls the comforter over my chest and settles into bed next to me. “Get some sleep.”

—

I must have drifted off because when I open my eyes, I’m alone in his bed. It’s a little disorienting at first, and takes a moment for me to remember how I got here. Liam’s left a T-shirt and sweatpants on the end of the bed for me to change into, and after I slip them on, I find him asleep on the couch in the living room. I fight the urge to curl up next to him.

When he sees me, he smiles sleepily and props himself up on an elbow. “You look good in my shirt.”

I try not to smile. Wrapping my arms around myself, I look around the room. “Could I have a glass of water? I’m so thirsty.”

He rises from the couch. “I have that peppermint tea you like.”

I sink into the couch in his place and watch as he makes his way to the kettle. His blond hair is still damp from the rain, and he’s leaner, the lines of his jaw and cheekbones more pronounced. It occurs to me that it’s been a long time since we’ve spent this much time together. The last time we hooked up was an alcohol-fueled whirlwind, no more than a few words exchanged.

He hands me a cup and sits on the other end of the couch, pulling my feet into his lap. It’s killing me the way he’s treating me like we’re back together. Like nothing ever changed. I want to be angry with him, but I can’t help but feel that intense pull, that heightened sense whenever we’re close.

“So,” he says, “you going to tell me what happened or what?”

I look down and take a sip of tea, grimacing as it burns my tongue. I’d rather not talk about Ben.

“It’s the new guy, isn’t it.” Liam’s expression darkens. He breathes out. “I hate that guy. What a fucking tool.”

My eyes snap to his. “What’s your problem?” And the moment bursts. I push myself to my feet and reach for my phone. But I stand too quickly and blood rushes to my head.

“Woah, where are you going?” Liam asks, catching my elbow. He positions himself between me and the door.

I try to move around him. I knew this was a bad idea. “I should probably go.”

“Stay.”

“I work the opening shift at the bookstore tomorrow.” When I move for the door, he grabs my wrist but then quickly drops it, shoving his hands into his pockets instead.

“Naomi.”

“Liam.”

Just before I leave, I look at him one last time where he’s leaning against the frame, watching me closely, and I desperately want to close the space between us.

“Why do you always do this?” Liam breathes out. He’s not angry, but I can hear the frustration in his voice.

“Do what?”

“Leave like this.”

I let out a disbelieving laugh and glare at him, trying to control my voice. “When you disappeared last spring, I called you every day…You didn’t even text me back. Not once .” I’d never brought this up. The nights I’d spent worrying about him. The voicemails on his parents’ phone they never returned. “No one knew where you went. I thought—I don’t know what I thought…” My voice breaks as tears prick my eyes.

Liam breathes deeply. His jaw works, and I can tell he’s struggling. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“No?” My voice rises. After losing both my parents? After everything I’d told him?

“It was confusing.”

“You could have told me.” The pressure behind my eyes is painful, and I bite the inside of my lip, trying not to cry. “I didn’t want to lose you.” Now the tears come. Scraping them away, I push past him.

“Hey.” Liam catches my arm, gently. His face softens. “I didn’t want to lose you either.”

The air between us feels tense, and my face is flushed. I both regret everything and want him even more. We stand there, eyes locked, and when I can no longer stand it, I turn and walk away.

“I was here,” Liam says as I yank open the door at the end of the hall. There’s a deep sadness in his eyes. “Just know…I never left. I was always here.”