What he said surprised a laugh out of me. “Are you the dickhead?”
His grin was devilish as he reached by me, plucked up an olive and popped it in his mouth. “Always.”
We separated at the sound of Sylvia’s wheelchair rolling down the hallway, right before Irene pushed her into the kitchen.
“Oh, hello, you two. I was just about to give Sylvia her dinner,” Irene said.
“Go ahead,” Noah replied, levelling her with a serious look. “And by the way, if Vee asks you to bring her alcohol again, come to me. I’ll deal with her.”
A glassy sheen formed in Irene’s eyes. “I didn’t want to. She said she’d fire me, and I really need this job.” Sylvia reached out to touch her carer’s hand.
“Don’t be upset. I’m well aware of how crafty my sister can be,” Noah said. “Just remember to come to me if she does it again.”
“I will,” Irene sniffled. “Thank you.” She studied him with grateful eyes, coming forward to pat him on the shoulder. “You’re not nearly as bad as you want everyone to believe, are you?”
He didn’t answer, just got an uncomfortable look on his face before he murmured something under his breath and stalked out of the room. Irene raised her eyebrows and shook her head at his retreat. I watched him go, too. Today he’d been genuinely kind to two separate people, and it was almost shocking. Maybe he was right.
Maybe I was in danger of turning him into a good person. Or maybe Irene was right, and he wasn’t ever really that bad to begin with.
***
I put on my blue dress again. It was the only nice thing I owned. I stared at my reflection in the mirror and remembered what Noah said to me.
On Saturday night. I thought about you in your blue dress.
What I wouldn’t give to know exactly what those thoughts were. They’d surely scandalise my virginal heart, but these days I chased scandal like it was going out of fashion.
I emerged from my bedroom and wandered down the hallway. Taking a quick peek in the living room, I saw Noah was already in there, entertaining Enda Riordan and his wife, Mayor McBride and her husband and Matt O’Hare, whose wife had died a few years ago. I tried to feel sympathetic toward Sally for that, but she was so mean to me at school I had a hard time drumming up any sympathy.
Sylvia sat by the window wearing one of her good dresses, her hair tied up in a fancy bun and delicate sparkling diamonds in her ears. She must’ve gotten Irene to dress her up, though she did look a little uncomfortable to be around all these people who knew her before she became so sick.
It made me angry and sad that they’d more or less abandoned her until now. That Hawkins had ended their affair once she started to decline. The only reason these people were here was because Noah invited them, and I doubted they cared much about seeing Sylvia. They were likely more enthralled by the return of her dark and mysterious prodigal son.
Matt gave a loud, raucous laugh at something Noah said, while the others tittered their amusement. Matt was a portly, bald man with a bulbous whiskey nose. Enda stood next to him, over six feet tall and very much like an older, less pretty version of his son, Kean. His wife was a tall redhead with an elfin face. Lydia McBride had short brown hair and a no-nonsense style of dress, while her husband was a bespectacled professor-looking type. All in all, this was your typical middle-aged social gathering, if you didn’t factor in Noah.
He was an anomaly, and I still didn’t quite know what his intentions were with these people. Did he want to be their friend? I didn’t think so. Not with him referring to them as a bunch of arseholes.
The doorbell rang, and I went to answer it, coming face to face with Principal Hawkins and his wife, Theresa. Now that I knew what she’d tried to do to Noah, I felt vaguely ill in her presence. It happened a long time ago, but still, the thought of her coming onto a fourteen-year-old Noah gave me the creeps.
Sucking in a deep breath, I greeted them both, standing back. “Hello. Please come in.”
“Estella, so nice to see you,” Hawkins replied with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. I got the distinct sense that he didn’t want to be here. His wife must’ve pushed him to come, and that just pissed me off because I saw her attraction when she’d come face to face with Noah in the restaurant the other day. And if she had her eye on him when he was a kid, then who knew what she’d try now that he was a grown man.