Always the Last to Know(86)

A flash of a smile. “Maybe you can walk around the block a couple times, hm?”

“Are you saying I’m in the way?”

“Yes. You’re in the way, Sadie.” His eyes met mine. “Take a walk, Special.”

Time stopped. That name. It sliced into my heart like a burning arrow.

“How’s it going here?” Janice said, racing up the stairs, her arms full of pillows. “Will you be finished by three, do you think? They’re having a housewarming party! Tonight! It’s just crazy! I have to stage the whole house, get fresh flowers and make all the beds and hang the towels and put this damn cow statue somewhere, what was I thinking when I ordered it, oh, and guess who doesn’t like fake orchids? My lesbians, that’s who!”

Good for the lesbians. “Can I help?” I asked. “I’m just in Noah’s way, and I’m great at making beds and such.”

“You’re an angel, Sadie! An angel! Noah, three o’clock?”

“No problem,” he said, looking back down at his work.

By three o’clock, the house was more or less in order, Noah was finished, Janice was thrilled with the window seat and now on her phone, yelling at someone. She handed us two envelopes, mouthed, Angels! and waved goodbye.

We walked out of the brownstone, despite the fact that I’d sort of been hoping to meet the owners and be invited to the party and end up snogging Noah on a pile of coats somewhere.

Noah opened his envelope. “Holy shit,” he said. “This is twenty percent more than my estimate.”

“She pays a rush fee. She’s a little crazy, but she’s kind of wonderful, too.”

“I should work here more often.”

Words I would’ve killed to hear once upon a time. I let it go, but the casual way he said it scraped my heart. “Well, now that she’s seen your work, she may well call you again.”

“Thanks for the referral, Sadie.”

“Of course.”

“You gonna see your boyfriend tonight?” he asked as we walked toward the truck.

“Oh. No. We broke up. He had a girl in every port, as the old saying goes. Or two ports, anyway.”

Noah stopped in his tracks. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“You heartbroken?”

For someone with the kind of verbal diarrhea I had, it was oddly hard to talk about this. Because it was him. Noah, the real breaker of hearts. “A little bit. I feel pretty dumb.”

“Because you didn’t know?”

“Yeah.” Naive, dopey, innocent Sadie.

“Because you trusted him to be honest.”

“Yep.”

“That’s not dumb, Sadie. That’s just . . . you. You believe in people.”

The wind rustled the maple leaves, which were so green and fresh they glowed. “Thanks, Noah.”

“You want me to beat him up for you?”

I laughed. “Nah. He’s a soft yacht salesman. You’re a badass carpenter. It would hardly be fair.”

The corner of his mouth tugged up. “Well, then. You wanna eat? I’m starving.”

“You mean here? In this horrible city you hate?”

“I don’t hate Brooklyn. Brooklyn’s nice.”

“Jump on the bandwagon, why don’t you? Sure, let’s go eat some street meat. It smells incredible.”

And so we got a couple gyros on Seventh Avenue and took them up to Prospect Park to eat while we sat on a bench overlooking the grassy field. When we were done, I said, “Come on, wild boy. Let me show you the botanical gardens. You think you like Brooklyn now, just wait. It’s the perfect day for it.”

And it was. Late April, the cherry trees so fat and fluffy with pink blossoms, a few drifting down into Noah’s hair, which I left for effect. What the lad didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Thousands upon thousands of flowers were in bloom, and Canada geese strutted about, their little goslings following in quick, darting movements. The constant noise of traffic and music that defined the city was silent here, and the smell of grass and flowers combined in the perfect perfume. Ahead of us was a guide dog, a Golden retriever, and I thought of Pepper. Would she like the city? Probably not at all, given what she was used to, romping on the shores of the tidal river, going for swims in the Sound, rolling in dead seagull whenever possible. Maybe she’d transition to pigeons. The thought made me wince. The pavement in New York could get so hot that . . .

Okay, no. I wasn’t going to worry about that right now. My father was getting better, and I’d be in Stoningham till the end of summer, and it wasn’t even May. People had dogs in New York. Pepper would be fine.

And I was with Noah, whose hair had escaped the elastic. Women looked at him, and so did a few men—he was cooler than cool because he wasn’t trying at all. Levi’s and work boots that actually saw work, a worn flannel shirt over a dark green T-shirt devoid of ironic sayings or rock band names. He was authentic, and that was something rare in this part of Brooklyn, especially among men our age.

“This is so beautiful,” Noah said as we walked under an archway of entwined cherry blossoms. “I can see why you love this part of the city. There’s a lot more to it than cement and noise.”

My heart hurt. “True,” I whispered.