Read Online My Nora by Holley Trent - Free Book Online

was there with some buddies. The moment we walked through the door he made a beeline for us and started buying us a lot of booze. Of course, I didn’t drink any since I had to drive home.”
    “Oh yeah? That’s interesting,” Matt said. By “interesting” he meant, “I’m going to fuck him up anyway.”
    “Why? Am I not cool enough to rate being talked to?”
    “Cool isn’t the issue. I told Chad pointedly to leave you alone. I was absolutely unambiguous about that.”
    Nora crossed her arms over her chest and furrowed her forehead with her hard squinting. “Why would you do that? It’s a small place. I can’t be intentionally avoiding everyone who rubs you the wrong way.”
    “Because I know how he is.” He didn’t care to elaborate.
    She shrugged. “Yeah, anyhow, I don’t know if Bennie is looking for a relationship or what, but she was mum about the encounter when she left this morning. Normally she spills all the details. This time, she just skipped right out of town without calling.”
    “Does Bennie look like you?”
    Nora shook her head. “No. She’s this short, Rubenesque Chinese woman, believe it or not. She works hard at it. She has to eat non-stop and she has this little book of exercises that are designed to emphasize certain, uh, womanly features. Why?”
    “I think Chad would have been happy to lay either of you,” Matt said gruffly, his shoulders tensing up to his ears. He closed his eyes and steadied his breathing, letting the muscles of his neck, shoulders, and back uncoil one by one. He opened his eyes again and looked at her. “He treats women like collectible trading cards. No offense,” he said, averting his gaze again. “I know you’re one of a kind, but Chad sees women as flavors.”
    “Yet he’s your friend? Sounds to me like sour grapes.”
    When Matt cut his eyes away from the water he found Nora’s jaw sliding in a way that Matt knew for certain meant she was grinding her teeth. Should he just come out with it? Tell her he wanted her for himself? He couldn’t rightfully tell her to stay away from Chad. She was a grown woman. She needed incentive.
    “Not my friend so much lately. We’ve been growing apart for a while, ever since he married my girlfriend.” Nora’s face relaxed and without pause she reached over and wrapped her fingers around Matt’s on the paddle.
    “I’m so sorry. That’s … well, it must have been rough.”
    “Yeah. He asked me to be his best man, but I made other plans for that weekend.” Matt snorted and shook his head, pulling the paddle into the canoe and laying it on the floor. “Truth was they had been going at it before me and Patricia hooked up, but hadn’t made it official. They were carrying on the entire two years we were dating, and then Chad decided they might as well come out with it.”
    “And you were still his friend after that?”
    “I’m a forgiving sort. Hey,” he looked her in the eyes and squeezed her hands gently inside his. “Can we change the subject?”
    “Okay. You tell me what you want to talk about, and I’ll be so cheerful your teeth will hurt.”
    Matt forced a smile for Nora’s benefit. He released Nora’s hands reluctantly and picked up his paddle again. “Tell me about your name. It’s not one I’ve heard much.”
    Nora uncapped her camera lens and took a shot of a periwinkle-colored houseboat floating near the bank as they glided past. Matt was pretty sure it wasn’t legal to be there. There was a man on the porch with his feet up on the railings and a hat over his face — obviously asleep. His hound dog, a brown hunting sort with long floppy ears, sat at the edge of the porch and yapped at them quietly as if he’d been trained for silence.
    “Well, my name is actually how I got to be interested in genealogy,” Nora said after they put some distance between themselves and the floating house. My grandmother named me after her grandmother, or at least in part. My name is actually