Mayfly Melodies

Seventeen

Noah

It's the ropes and the reins, and the joy and the pain. And they call the thing rodeo—Garth Brooks

There were thirty-four cracks in the ceiling.

He knew their exact placements, knew the ways that they spiraled out and crossed, like a maze that had neither a beginning nor an end. Even in the pitch black, when he lied on the middle of his bed with his eyes closed, he could see the way the cracks adorned the ceiling above him patterned onto his eyelids. He'd spent many sleepless nights studying them — so much so that he could recall them on a whim.

Tonight, though it was actually early morning now, it wasn't his parents or Aaron or even Caroline that was keeping him awake. For the first time in months, he felt utterly at peace. The feeling was so completely foreign that he was forced to remain awake, scared that if he closed his eyes and succumbed to sleep it would disappear by morning.

He couldn't begin to decipher when the peaceful feeling had emerged within him but he did know the cause. There had only been one thing that had changed his life recently, even as recently as the past few hours, and that was Bailey Grant.

The woman he'd taken home only hours earlier, when the sky was still dark and dawn was not beginning to rise in the east as it was now, weighed heavily on his mind. The first time he met her, he'd thought she was entertaining. The second time, he'd found her captivating. And now? He was entirely smitten.

It was hard to figure out just what made Bailey so enthralling to him. It wasn't just in the things she said or the way she looked. It went deeper than that. It was in the gentle curve of her mouth and the way the smallest smile could so easily touch her beautiful hazel eyes. It was in the quiet way she laughed and in the way that she didn't seem to take herself too seriously. She had a good sense of humour and, he could sense, an even better heart.

And the kiss...

Noah had been replaying that moment in his mind for hours. He didn't really know what it was about it. Maybe it was the fact that it had been almost a year since his last kiss, having had it with Abby Noland when he'd said goodbye shortly before he and Caroline had left Wichita Falls. Or maybe it was the fact that, for just a moment, he'd been able to forget about all of the burdens he had resting on his shoulders.

But Noah felt as if it were more than that. It had felt like a hot-flamed fire shooting through his veins, igniting a part of him he hadn't realized existed. The intensity of the heat was familiar - the same he'd felt the night his family had died. Yet this heat, though familiar, was different. It wasn't painful or scary. It was remarkably freeing, as if she were releasing him from the cage he'd locked himself in.

He knew it was crazy to be thinking something like that after only one date but it was the truth. Bailey Grant, whether he wanted her to or not, was affecting him. And that made the whole situation even more ridiculous because Noah had never really been affected by a woman before. Sure, he and Abby had been very close, so close that Noah had Considered proposing marriage on several occasions, but she'd never really impacted his life. They'd been able to go days without speaking to each other as if it were no big deal. Noah hadn't even really thought about her since the day he'd broken up with her and that, he thought, was odd considering he'd once considered asking her to be his wife.

The scary part was that Noah wasn't sure whether or not Bailey was experiencing a similar reaction to him. In a way, he hoped she was. He wanted her to like him back and it had seemed like she did. She had, after all, promised to ask him out next time. But that, he told himself, could have just been her way of being nice. People did that; lied after a bad date in order to get away quickly.