novelxo : Chapter 1
I wake up to two million views.
I don’t know it at first. With my eyes closed, my hand traverses the obstacle course of cups, food wrappers, and ChapStick tubes on my nightstand to find my phone. All I want is to know the time.
Or maybe I don’t. From the sunlight piercing my screwed-shut eyelids, it’s embarrassingly late.
My fingers wrap around the charger cord, and I drag the phone across the nightstand, knocking the ChapSticks down like bowling pins.
Whatever. Future Noelle can deal with that mess.
I finally get a hand on my prize and illuminate the screen. But instead of the time, my bleary eyes snag on an avalanche of TikTok notifications. Even as I blink at the astronomical number, it keeps ticking, growing by five, by seventeen, by forty-two.
“What the hell,” I croak.
Then I remember: my video.
My already sleep-weak grip fails me, and the phone drops onto my face.
The door flies open at my pained howl. Through watery eyes, I make out the general shape of my mom. “Noelle, what in the world?”
If this were a sitcom, this is where it would freeze: on me, twenty-eight years old, rolling around in my childhood bed, blinded in a freak iPhone accident after going viral on a social media app meant for teenagers.
The only thing that doesn’t make me want to die inside is how many people have seen this video. My heart skips a beat. Maybe even the right person.
I knife into a seated position, my fingers pressed against my aching orbital bone as I fumble for my phone. From the doorway, Mom watches in bafflement, decked out in Peloton gear instead of a power suit. Must be Saturday.
“Are you okay?” Brown eyes that match mine slide to the bike in the corner of the room. On the wall, a neon sign cheers be awesome.
I can tell she’s dying to turn it on. I wish I could tear it down. Nothing like waking up to aggressive positivity every morning when you’re a grown adult who had to move back into your parents’ house after getting laid off from a job you didn’t even like.
“Yes, Mom, I’m great.” I sigh, a headache blooming. “Just dropped my phone on my face.”
“Sorry, sweetie. Hey! Since you’re up, I’m going to get a quick ride in.”
She says all of this in one breath, already at the bike with her special, extra-loud shoes in hand. The number of times she’s woken me clacking across the hardwood these past four months can’t be counted on all my appendages. It’s not her fault she turned my childhood bedroom into a shrine to her two-thousand-dollar bike, though. None of us anticipated I’d be here again.
“Do your thing.” I burrow back under my duvet and pull up my account on TikTok, my heart pounding.
Right there, on my latest video posted just over a week ago, is the number of views: 2.3 million. There are over four hundred thousand likes and sixteen hundred comments.
Holy shit.
What the hell happened? When I fell asleep at nine last night, I held steady at a paltry eighty likes. And, most crushingly, no comments.
My expectations were low, but they should’ve been lower. I created the account last September on a bored whim, then started posting my photography after seeing other photography accounts take off, though no one gave a shit about mine.
But hope starts with a seed, right? At least, that’s what my gram used to tell me with a wink.
I keep all of the advice she gave me tucked in my pocket for when I need it, which was often before her death, and near constant now that she’s gone. She was a fixture in my life from the start, the person I turned to when anything happened, good or bad. It’s unconventional to call a grandparent your best friend, but Gram was mine from the time I knew what best friends were.
It took two months after she died before I could look at pictures of her without instantly crying. I have a voicemail of her singing “Happy Birthday” that I can’t listen to, even six months later.
But this video—the one that now has millions of views—is as much a love letter to her as it is a question to the universe. Or a plea.
When you find out your grandmother had a secret lover when she was twenty, you want to know more. And when she’s not around to answer the tornado of questions that kicked up the second you pulled those pictures out of a timeworn envelope in a box transferred from a dusty corner in her garage? Well, you have to find alternate means.
My dad was my first stop. I asked if he knew anything about Gram’s romantic history, keeping it vague. I had to tread lightly—if he didn’t know about the relationship, it might upset him. His grief was still as raw as mine.
“It was only ever Pop for her, and Mom for him. She always talked about how he was her greatest love,” he told me.
His parents’ relationship has always been a point of pride. Their love story set his own expectations sky-high, turning him into a hopeless romantic, and those expectations trickled down. It was a long-standing joke in our family—if it’s not like Gram and Grandpa Joe, we don’t want it.
Dad’s eyes had narrowed with curiosity, maybe suspicion, at my ensuing silence. “Where’d that question come from?”
“Oh, nowhere,” I said while a picture of her and another man burned a hole in the back pocket of my jeans.
So, Dad was out. And if he was out, everyone else in my family was, too. They’d just turn around and tell him.
I’d spent enough time on TikTok to know it was equal parts useless and transformative—insipid dance routines mixed with reunion videos that made me sob into my pillow at two a.m. If I posted the information I’d found and made it compelling enough, there was a chance someone would see it. There was a chance someone would know.
Maybe they’d know something about the collection of photos and the single letter Gram squirreled away for over sixty years. Maybe they’d know the handsome man in the pictures with wavy dark hair and a deep dimple named Paul—it was written on the back of the pictures in a steadier version of her loop-happy handwriting, along with the years: 1956 and 1957.
She married Grandpa Joe in 1959 after a whirlwind romance. I know their story by heart—Gram loved to tell it to me. But she never uttered Paul’s name, not once, and that’s strange. We played a game we affectionately called Tell Me a Secret constantly. I always told her mine, and she told me hers.
So I thought.
Before gathering up the nerve to look at the comments and confirm whether my answer is there, I decide to rewatch the video.
I press my thumb to the screen, and it starts up, playing the Lord Huron song I chose for maximum heartstring pullage. The text I added overlays each picture I hold up in the frame, the chipped mint polish on my thumb a stark contrast to the black-and-white prints.
There’s a bite of grief looking at her face, which in its youth looked so much like mine. The architecture of our features is the same; people have always told us that. Twins separated by fifty or so years. Soulmates born in different decades.
The first picture is Gram and Paul standing in front of a house I don’t recognize. The text on the screen reads: My grandmother passed away recently. I found these pictures of her and a man I never knew.
Then it’s them at the beach, her looking up at Paul with a flirty grin on her face: The only info I have is his name is Paul and they knew each other in Glenlake, CA, sometime around 1956.
Next, it’s a picture of them embracing, her cheek pressed against his chest, eyes closed: Her name is Kathleen, and I believe she was twenty in these photos.
The last is Paul sitting at a picnic table, his chin propped in his hand, gazing into the camera in a way that reveals who was behind it: This is a long shot, but if you recognize him, please reach out. Gram never mentioned him, but he looks important. I really need to hear their story.
There’s a thread of commonality running through each picture: they were always looking at each other and smiling. Often in each other’s arms. In many of the shots, Gram was looking up at Paul with hearts in her eyes.
And his heart clearly belonged to her. If I hadn’t known it by the way he looked at her, the letter he wrote said it out loud.
I peel back the duvet to make sure Mom is still occupied. There’s sweat dripping down her face, her attention laser-focused on the screen in front of her. I might as well not be here.
Perfect. I pull out the letter I stashed under my spare pillow, smoothing over a crease with my thumb.
July 1, 1957
Dearest Kat,
I understand why we can’t elope. I truly do. I just want you to be well.
The end of our relationship won’t stop me from loving you for the rest of my life. I don’t know if that helps or hurts. The only thing I ask is that you remember what we promised each other: never forget our time together, and think of it with happiness.
I promised you it would be okay, do you remember? And it will.
Yours always,
Paul
I can say with certainty no one has ever loved me like that. So why did she say goodbye?
I’ve never put my face or voice in anything I’ve uploaded. Even my username is anonymous, just user and a random mix of numbers. But now Gram and Paul’s faces are there, and 2.3 million people have seen it, and I don’t feel bad. My grandmother loved this man, but I can’t ask her anything. She can’t tell me this secret.
So, if Paul is still alive, I hope he’ll tell me for her.
I slip the letter back into its hiding place, then flip onto my back, picking my phone up to go comment diving.
But before I can get there, the duvet is unceremoniously ripped off my head. For the second time today, I drop my phone on my face.
“Fuck!” I yell, covering my face with my hands. My flailing legs connect with a body.
“Fuck back!” The familiar voice groans. “You got me in the balls!”
“I can’t hear Cody’s instructions!” Mom puffs over the instructor’s shouts and her Lamaze-adjacent breathing pattern.
I uncover my face to find my younger brother, Thomas, doubled over, his forehead resting on my bed, hands tucked between his legs. His breathing pattern is Lamaze-adjacent, too.
In the middle of all the ruckus, my dad pokes his blond head through my doorway, a bright smile on his face. “Does anyone want eggs Benny? I thought we could do brunch since Thomas is here.”
I rip my scrunched duvet out from under Thomas’s head, yanking it back over my legs. “I would love everyone to get out of my room. Remember my rule about not being in here when I don’t have pants on?”
“I’m almost done,” Mom pants. “I’m about to PR.”
Thomas groans.
God, same. My good eye strays back to my phone as a slew of notifications bubble up onscreen. I’m desperate to check, but I don’t dare in a room full of Shepards who don’t know about any of this.
Thomas rebounds, his sea-green eyes turning sharp with curiosity as he sees my lit-up screen. Looking at him is like looking in a mirror, minus the eleven months between us; we have the same honey-blond hair and dark eyebrows, but my eyes are the color of coffee dregs.
He nods his chin toward my phone. “What’s going on?”
I flip it on its face. “Nothing.”
“Your Tinder blowing up, Beans?” He smirks. “What a catch.”
Dad has disappeared to start on the eggs Benedict, and Mom is busy celebrating the end of her ride, along with her PR. I take a risk, putting both of my middle fingers in Thomas’s face.
“Knock it off, you two,” Mom says, out of breath.
Thomas cackles, sliding out the door. If I didn’t have chronic back pain, I’d swear I was fifteen again. Being in this house makes us both regress.
Mom jumps off the bike, an exhilarated smile on her face. She turns to the be awesome sign behind her, pulling the string. It only gets illuminated if she feels it’s deserved. It zaps on, the pink light turning her face even redder.
Her dark hair is damp around the edges of her ponytail, and her eyes go soft when they meet mine. Same as they always do lately.
“You good?” she asks, and it’s not perfunctory, exactly, but we both know I’m not.
Still, I say my line with ease. “Yep.”
Her quiet sigh indicates she doesn’t believe me. Fair. I don’t, either. “Well, it’s eleven, so maybe you want to get out of bed?”
Be awesome, indeed.
Just what I need, death by Canadian bacon.
I’m tempted to pull my phone out no less than one million times, but it’ll invite questions I’m not prepared to answer. My family is nosy on a regular day. Since I had to move home, they’ve turned into helicopters, clearly concerned that I’m one job rejection email away from losing my shit.
I finish my breakfast in record time, slamming my fork down like I’m the winner of a Benny-eating contest no one else entered. “Done, see you.”
“Why, do you have plans?” Thomas asks over the screech of my chair and around a mouthful of food.
“Why, does it matter?” I shoot back.
He lifts an eyebrow. “I just got here, and you’re already ditching me?”
“Mas, you slither up from the city whenever Sadie has plans that don’t involve you. I’m sure I’ll see you in mere days.”
“I don’t slither,” he grumbles, though his expression softens at the mention of his longtime girlfriend—and my best friend. The softness is replaced by mischief as he pulls a magazine from his lap, curled open to a specific page. “We didn’t have time to discuss this.”
“What, that Maxim still exists or that you’re still subscrib—”
What I’m looking at sinks in, and I snatch the magazine from Thomas’s hand with a gasp.
He leans back in his seat, grinning. “Your boy Theo Spencer is one of Forbes 30 Under 30.”
I snort. “My boy? You’re the one who had a crush on him throughout high school. He was a pain in my ass. On purpose.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” he says smugly.
I ignore him, and the two men bracketing Theo in the picture, instead staring at the face that’s vexed me for years. That wavy dark hair, the barely there dimple that pops when he smirks. Those deep blue eyes shaded by stern eyebrows that curve into cockiness with infuriating regularity. At least, they did when I last saw him years ago.
We may have been voted Most Likely to Succeed in high school, but our paths diverged dramatically when we went to college.
Obviously. The man is in Forbes, and I’m in SpongeBob sleep shorts. I’m not sure what’s more annoying—his latest accolade or the fact that he’s still smoking hot.
“Good for him,” I say in a tone that clearly conveys fuck that guy, if Mom’s arched eyebrows are any indication. I toss the magazine at Thomas, smiling triumphantly when it hits him in the face.
Thomas’s snort echoes as I drop a kiss on Dad’s sandpaper cheek to thank him for the meal.
I hightail it out of there, using the fumes of my annoyance to speed out to the backyard. Specifically, to the hammock in the far corner, where I can dive into comments without interruption.
Forgetting Theo, his perfect face, and his Midas existence, I pull up the app.
In the grand scheme of things, none of this matters. I had the perfect childhood. I had parents and grandparents who loved me, who showed up to my millions of extracurriculars, who thought the sun rose and set on my and Thomas’s existence, along with our cousins. Grandpa Joe was a sweet man with a booming laugh who used to tug on my bottom lip when I was pouting just to get me smiling again. Gram being in love with another man when she was young doesn’t change anything about my life.
But now that she’s gone, I’m desperate to know this story. She clearly found her way to ultimate happiness. How?
I don’t know what my ultimate happiness looks like or how to get it. If it even exists. Without Gram here to tell me it’ll be okay, and after the missteps that have moved me further from my Most Likely to Succeed path, I’m not confident I’ll ever find it. I wish she could tell me something.
There are nearly two thousand comments, but the most popular ones are at the top. My eyes scan the first five, almost desperately, like I’m looking for a life-or-death test result.
Two things happen.
The first: my breath catches as I see a comment, three words long.
And the second: Thomas pops out of nowhere, yelling, “GOTCHA!”
I jerk violently, screaming as the hammock swings and dumps me onto the grass below.
But I saw the comment before I tipped over, and it made my stomach drop harder than falling.
User34035872: that’s my grandfather.