“I guess not,” I said.
“Are we done with that, then?”
I nodded.
“I thought you broke up with me last night, when you left,” he said, not looking up.
My breath caught. “Oh. No, Ian. We just … we just had a fight.”
“Okay.” He swallowed, and my heart seemed to swell abruptly.
“In fact, I was going to come over for some wild monkey make-up sex. But then I came home and found Noah, and … and … well …” My face scrunched up.
“Oh, hey,” Ian said, and honestly, nothing on earth ever felt as good as those solid arms around me. He pressed my face against his neck and let me cry.
“Can you stay with me tonight?” My voice sounded small.
Ian pulled back and looked at me with those summer-blue eyes. “That’s why I came,” he said simply.
Then he pulled off his scrubs and came into bed with me, holding me so close that my cheek rested over his heart. Within seconds, I fell asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE DAY OF NOAH’S burial was cold and gray. We gathered at the funeral home in the morning. There would be no church service, as per Noah’s orders … just two hours for a wake, then on to the cemetery.
In an oddly beautiful tribute, the River Rats had asked my mom if they could bring in one of Noah’s kayaks, which they set up behind the casket in the Serenity Room. The boat was one of Noah’s most beautiful designs … a long, sleek vessel, the red cedar inlaid with white oak. As it always had, the dichotomy of my grandfather struck me … the rough-talking old man with callused hands who could produce such a thing of lightness and grace. Quite a legacy he left behind.
It was strange, all of us here in the funeral home—our home—all of us together, this time as mourners. I wished Noah could’ve seen Mom and Dad together again. Maybe he knew now. Freddie looked somber and mature in his suit, standing next to Bronte, slipping Josephine butter rum Life Savers and telling the girls jokes when they got too weepy. Mom let Louis run the show, and Dad, handsome as ever, greeted the people who paid homage to his father.
Jody was in the receiving line, too. I’d gone to see her the day after Noah died and broke the news, then asked her to stand with us. “I’d like that,” she’d said in a small voice. Then she gripped my hand with surprising strength. “Thank you, Callie.”
“Well. Anyone who can do a full split and put up with my grandfather deserves some recognition,” I murmured.
“He thought the world of you,” she said.
“Right back at you,” I said, and then the two of us had had a good cry.
Ian was here, too, standing in the back of the room like a mastiff … quiet and calm and protective. He brought me a glass of water, fished a handkerchief out of his pocket when I got a little tearful.
“Who even carries these anymore?” I asked, wiping my eyes.
“I stocked up after I met you,” he said, looking down at me. He gave my hand a squeeze, then returned to his post in the back of the room, bending slightly as Elmira Butkes asked him a question about that Methuselah of cats, Mr. Fluffers. All the hip-hop yoga ladies had come, as well as the River Rats, not to mention at least a dozen people who’d bought their boats from Noah’s Arks.
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