No doubt Noah took his Camaro to get to the cemetery so I have no choice but to walk. It’s not such a big deal though. It’s only a twenty minute walk from the school and if Noah’s not there then it doesn’t matter. I can use it as a chance to clear my head.
I slip out the back gates of the school and start heading towards the cemetery. He shouldn’t be alone right now. We’re all hurting and should be banding together, not pulling away.
I take my time, wanting to give him as much time with his baby sister as possible, as clearly, he’s been needing it, but when I walk down the path that leads to the cemetery and pass his Camaro; I never could have expected my heart to break the way it is right now.
Noah sits before a small headstone in the long, unkempt grass with his head in his hands, looking completely devastated. I pick up my pace. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken so long to get here.
My heart breaks watching him like this. Missing his baby sister while missing his best friend. No one should ever have to go through the pain of losing a little sister, but add Rivers leaving again, and it’s all too much.
He must have heard me approaching in the grass as he doesn’t look up from Lily’s grave when he questions me. “How’d you find me?”
I drop down beside him, hoping he doesn’t feel as though I’m intruding as I take his hand. “You once told me that you’d never leave Haven Falls because this is where your sister is. Just makes sense for you to come here when everything else is so fucked up.”
“Damn me and my big mouth.”
I cringe. “Sorry. I can go if you need me to; I just didn’t want you to be alone.”
“No, don’t go,” he tells me, reaching for me and pulling me up onto his lap before resting his forehead on my shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here.”
My fingers curl into the back of his hair as my other hand holds him tightly. “You know it’s alright to miss him.”
Noah lets out a deep sigh. “I just…I feel like I failed him. If I was there for him more or…I don’t know, was a better friend, he might have been comfortable sharing all the bullshit with me and then I could have done something about it. He never would have felt the need to leave.”
“You can’t say that,” I murmur. “He was raised by two criminals. He never stood a chance in hell of coming out of that; but then you showed up and suddenly he had someone in his life who wasn’t interested in using him as a drug mule. You gave him true friendship and I’d bet everything I have that’s exactly what he needed at the time. Without you bringing him into your family and showing him what it means to have love and light in his life, who knows where he would be now.”
“I could have done more.”
“Don’t you see? You’ve already given him the world. Without you, he probably never would have broken free from that life. Your friendship and Tully’s heart is what’s given him the strength to strive for a better life and be a better man, and I don’t think he could ever ask for much more than that.”
“But I didn’t even try,” he shoots back at me. “It’s not like I brought him into my life to figure him out. I did it because he’s my best friend and I wanted him there. He became part of the furniture because mom refused to let him leave most of the time. Every time the topic of his parents or his home came up, he would shut down and we all just sat back and said ‘he’d come around eventually’ and then it never happened and we gave up asking. I should have pushed him on it, fought for more information, or went looking for it like you did.”
“You can’t say that,” I tell him. “You’re thinking too much into it.”
“Am I?” he questions. “I gave up searching and that’s not something a good friend does. I should have had his back, and if I did, he might have been over this bullshit by now. I could have gotten him away from Anton, or at least tried. Hell, we could have converted the garage into another bedroom for him and given him a place to live where he wouldn’t have to be anywhere near the memories of his mom and out of reach of his dad.”
“I’m going to risk sounding like a corny loser here,” I say, making him scoff and roll his eyes, “but I’d dare say for a very long time you were the sunshine in his day.”