Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (Signal Bend)(14)

He was tense about Iris, too, trying to navigate the narrow path between obviously avoiding her and getting too close to her. She seemed to be using the same map. They kept catching each other’s eyes and turning away.

Before dessert had been served, Nolan had had all he could take.

It was easy to disappear in all that noise and activity, so he grabbed his coat and slipped out. Then he started walking.

When he was a kid, he used to walk all the f*cking time. Whenever his head got too loud, he’d just walk until he could think clearly again, and then he’d walk until he’d gotten right with whatever was bugging him. Or right enough to rejoin the world, anyway. Since he’d had a bike, now he rode. There had been times that he’d put a few hundred miles on his bike on a single trip, never with any destination in mind.

For almost as long as he could remember, his head had gotten loud, and he’d had to move to make it stop. He remembered the first time. He’d been maybe eight, and his mom hadn’t been able to pay the fee for a field trip his class was going on. They’d gone without him, and he’d spent the whole class day, until the last bell, sitting in the office next to the secretary’s desk.

Even that young, Nolan had understood how hard things were for his mom. His bio-dad had been gone most of the time, so it had been just his mom and him, struggling alone, and he’d seen a lot more than she thought he had. Until Havoc, Nolan and his mom had never had anybody in their corner except each other.

So on that day, as lonely and ashamed as he’d been, he hadn’t blamed her at all.

He’d been furious and hurting, but he’d had nowhere to send it. It had just churned and churned in his head and his gut all day long, while he’d sat in that little student desk next to the secretary and been made to stay quiet and do worksheet after worksheet.

After the bell had finally released him from his torment, he’d started off on his route home. They’d lived in a crappy apartment only a few blocks from the school. But he hadn’t turned in on their street. He hadn’t been finished walking.

By the time he did make it home, he’d walked for more than an hour, and his mom was a terrified basket case. But he’d felt better.

That night, when she’d sat on his bed and asked why he’d gone so far, he’d talked to her about his day and told her he’d just needed to walk. He hadn’t understood it yet, but she’d seemed to. That weekend, she’d walked a route with him that kept him in their neighborhood, a path she’d deemed safe, and asked him to let her know when he needed to have a ‘walkabout,’ and always to come home.

He’d been moving ever since, on feet or wheels. Usually, he went at night, when the world was calm and quiet, and he often went without telling anyone.

But he always came home.

That day, just needing to escape the happy volume and activity of the house, not feeling angry so much as hemmed in, he walked away from the front door, headed down the long driveway, and turned onto the gravel road. As noisy as the house had been, the world outside held the cold silence of Christmas, when everyone everywhere was indoors enjoying the company of those they loved.

He’d only walked about twenty minutes before his toes were freezing inside his boots, so he turned around.

When he got back to Badger’s driveway, which was packed with cars and trucks, he saw that the hatch of Rose’s little blue Subaru was up, and somebody was leaning into it. Expecting Rose, he walked up without a second thought, but it was Iris who stood.

“Hi,” she said when she saw him.

He was too close by then to do anything but go to her. “Hey. You need some help?”

She reached up and brought the hatch down, latching it with more force than was probably necessary. “Nope. Just packing up some gifts. Rose is driving back to Chicago tonight, so she wants to motor soon.”

“You leaving, too, I guess?”

Iris turned and leaned on the back of the car. “No. I’m staying here. I got a job on Main Street.”

“You’re going to live in Signal Bend? With your dad?”

“Well, yeah. For now, anyway. I guess I’ll get my own place at some point.” She tilted her head, and her blonde hair swept over her shoulder. “Do you have an opinion on my living in Signal Bend, Nolan?”

The way she asked the question, it was pretty clear that she was asking something else as well. He took a step toward her, put his hand on the hatch, and leaned in a bit. “Straight talk, Iris?”

“That would be cool, yeah.”

Iris just seemed to take life the way it came. He kissed her, she liked it, she leaned in. He told her he didn’t know why he had, she called him on it, told him to stop. He showed up standing next to her sister’s car, she said hi. He offered her the truth, she said yes please. Nolan didn’t think he’d ever known anyone like that, who just stood still and accepted life as it happened.

“I like you. I liked kissing you, and I seem to want to do it a lot. But you and me is a bad idea, for a whole lot of reasons.”

“My dad.”

“Well, yeah, he’s one. But that’s not really it. It’s me. I don’t…” He stopped, not sure how to explain. But he’d offered her straight talk, so he said, “I don’t think I’d be good at being in a couple, and I don’t think us just hooking up is smart.”