We were all sitting around the table eating by the time Noah joined us. He sat in the only empty seat left which happened to be next to me. Dad and Mr. Stewart talked about work while Mom and Mrs. Stewart shared the neighborhood gossip. I was trying to recover from the intense moment in my room earlier. I would have been able to do that if Noah hadn’t been sitting right next to me. That was bad enough, but he kept finding subtle ways of touching me. What happened in my room was a mistake, even though it didn’t go very far, it went far enough. I had to be strong and put a stop to things happening between us.
Noah put his arm around the back of my chair and reached across me for some bread, which brought his face so close to mine his lips were almost touching my cheek.
Keeping my voice low, I said, “I know what you’re doing.”
“I do too, I really like garlic bread.”
“I could have passed it to you if you had asked.”
“Yeah, I know, but my way I get to look down your dress.” My eyes shot immediately to his. “Oh, by the way, your bra selection tonight…Excellent.”
I slapped my hand to my chest trying to close the gap he had been peering down.
“Please tell me your panties match,” he whispered, and then leaned back slightly, glancing down in the direction of my panties. When I looked at him, I was met with a wink and a smirk before he shoved a big piece of garlic bread in his mouth.
“Noah, congratulations,” my dad said.
Just then I felt a hand on my knee and fingers creeping under the hem of my dress. My breath hitched and my eyes darted over to Noah. I’d be completely pissed at him if his hand didn’t feel so incredible on my naked leg.
“Thank you, sir.”
How he could remain so calm, cool, and collected in front of our parents while his hand rubbed over my knee was beyond me.
“It’s pretty rare that a sophomore gets asked to join the varsity team. We’re proud of you.” My dad always thought of Noah like a son.
“His mom and I are extremely proud of him. He’s a chip off the old block,” Mr. Stewart added.
The dads laughed as if the comment was hilarious. Noah smiled at his dad while his hand began to move up my thigh. I slapped it away and inadvertently hit the table with a loud thud, causing it to shake.
“Amanda, are you okay?” Mom asked.
‘Yes. I’m fine.” Noah snorted as he tried to contain a laugh. “I was swatting a fly away.”
My mom looked at me, slightly annoyed, but maintained her cheery voice, and said, “That’s ridiculous. We don’t have flies in this house.”
“My bad,” I said.
Noah’s hand landed back on my knee. He squeezed slightly, causing a loud gasp to escape me. All four parental heads turned to look in my direction.
“Um… Mom would you please pass me the…um…”
Noah’s hand was relentless. He would squeeze my knee then rub the inside of my thigh. It was impossible for me to think or form a coherent sentence.
“The stuff in the bottle, that you…um…pour on…um…lettuce?” My pitch grew higher and higher with each word.
“You mean salad dressing?” Mom said, sarcasm flowing from her words like a torrential rain. I nodded. “You already have some on your salad.”
“I need more. Please give me more.”
She looked at me like I didn’t belong to her before passing me the dressing.
“How’s Emily?” Mrs. Stewart asked while I doused my salad.
A prideful smile appeared across my mom’s face. “She’s wonderful. She’s loving college.”
“That’s fantastic,” Mrs. Stewart said.
“In fact, she joined the debate team. She’s an extremely articulate young woman,” Mom said as she glanced in my direction. If she had any clue what was taking place under her dinner table, she might cut me some slack.
I was so out of sorts, I dropped my fork just before loading it up with salad. “I’ll get it, Tweet.”
Noah’s hand disappeared from my leg. I took the opportunity to take a drink of water trying to calm down. Noah scooted his chair back and then bent down to grab the fork.
“Dead horse!” Dad announced while holding up the empty wine bottle.
All of a sudden, I felt a pair of lips on the outer side of my thigh right above my knee. I almost did a full blown spit-take at the exact same time my dad asked, “Are we game for another?”
Noah sat back up and I had three sets of eyes glued to me. The Stewart’s eyes held pity, for my parents, no doubt. My mom’s eyes held regret that she didn’t send me for those etiquette lessons when I was younger and my dad wasn’t even paying attention to my faux pas. He was busy holding the wine bottle above his glass desperately trying to get the last drop of wine to drip out.
“I’ll go get you another bottle of wine. I’m done eating, anyway,” I said, as I wiped the spray of water from my face.
I quickly rose from the table and made my way to the kitchen to put my plate in the sink. Without stopping, I headed to the garage where we had an extra refrigerator that my parents used for their wine collection.
Standing in front of the open fridge, I realized I didn’t know if they wanted red or white. I took a bottle of each to be on the safe side. I closed the fridge and turned around coming face-to-face with a beaming Noah. I took a step back. He placed his hands against the fridge on either side of my shoulders, caging me in. He really liked caging me in.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing in there with all the touching and the kissing? You kissed my thigh under the table. The family dinner table, for god’s sake.”
“I couldn’t resist. You’re mighty tasty.” He waggled his eyebrows and moved in closer.
Holy crap on a cracker, tingles were taking over my body.
“Leave me alone for the rest of the night.” I tried to sound mad, but even I could hear the smile in my voice. It was hard to be mad at Noah, especially when what he was doing felt so amazing.
“Okay, I will.” He dropped his arms and stepped back giving me room to get by.
“Thank you.”
As I passed him going back toward the door I felt the hem of my dress rise up behind me. I quickly stepped to the side, out of his reach. “Dammit, Noah! Stop it! I can’t defend myself with these bottles in my hands.”
Holding his hands up in surrender, he said, “I thought you had a speck of something on your dress. I was just trying to help is all.” I narrowed my eyes at him before heading back into the house.
I passed on dessert, even though chocolate cake was my all-time favorite. I excused myself from the table, saying I needed to work on a paper, and went back to my room away from the glaring eyes of parents and the roaming hands and lips of my best friend.
As I sat on my bed remembering how his hands and lips felt on my skin, I could feel the heat building up inside of me. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m was just sitting there thinking about him and getting all hot and bothered. The knock on my door brought me back to the here and now. “Yeah?” My voice sounded raspy.
The door cracked open and all I saw was a floating plate with a piece of chocolate cake on it. I smiled. Then I saw my favorite pair of light blue eyes.
“I brought you some dessert.”
Noah stepped in and closed the door behind him, tapping it with his foot. He placed the cake down on my bedside table and sat across from me on the bed. He held up the fork, which was already loaded with chocolate frosting. I was still feeling the effects of dinner as I stared at my two favorite things in the entire world. I parted my lips letting out a slight sigh. We never took our eyes off of one another. He handed me the fork.
Bringing it to my mouth, I slowly slid the fork between my lips. The tip of his tongue darted out of his mouth and ran across his lower lip. He watched the movement of my lips as they curled around the fork. I heard him swallow hard as I slid the fork out of my mouth. He took it from me and as he reached over to place the fork back on the plate, his lips almost grazed my cheek.
He moved in closer and whispered, “You have a little frosting in the corner of your mouth.”
I stayed still. My eyes were completely focused on him as he hovered for a few seconds no more than a half inch away from my mouth. The temperature of my body shot up a hundred degrees. What the hell was I doing? I needed to stop this. I was so weak and stupid for allowing this to happen. Besides, both our parents were at the other end of the house. Thoughts of losing Noah sprinted across my mind. I started to panic. I could feel my chest tightening. I felt dizzy and smothered. I leaned away from him.
He pulled back and stared at me. I didn’t want to see the look in his eyes, but I forced myself to face him. He needed to understand how serious I was when I said these words.
“We can’t do this. I can’t be your girlfriend.” He stared at me for a few more seconds before turning away, staying seated on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, and his head down.
“Why?” he asked in a raspy voice.
“I’m afraid if something happened to cause it to end, then it might f*ck things up so badly you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me after that.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“No it’s not. You remember Tyler Evans? He and Emily were close friends. Not as close as we are, but very close. They decided to cross that line and date. It lasted six months and ended badly. They couldn’t even stay friends. Emily and I saw him at the mall over the summer and he was so ugly toward her. I can’t have that happen with us.”
“We’re not them.”
“I know, but Emily does everything perfectly. If she couldn’t make it work, I sure as hell can’t. I have to have you in my life. I won’t cross that line with you. It’s too risky and I won’t chance it, not with us. I’m sorry about tonight. I never should have let things go that far.”
“I’m not sorry about what happened between us in here. Except that you won’t be with me.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to. I can’t. Besides, you deserve better than me, Noah.”
“There isn’t anyone better than you for me,” he said, looking at me over his shoulder.
“These feelings will fade away and things will get back to normal. Our bodies are going through a lot of changes. Hormones are flying all over the place. We just need to control ourselves and ride it out.” I was trying to hold back my tears. He sat up and turned to me, showing me how crushed he felt. It was impossible not to let a few tears escape. “I can’t lose you, Noah.”
“You’d never lose me, Tweet. I’ll always be here if you need me.” He raised his hand, bringing it to my face. The tips of his fingers grazed down my jaw to my chin.
I shook my head, leaning away from him slightly. “Please Noah, I can’t,” I whispered.
In one fluid movement, his hand dropped, he stood, and walked to the door. His hand grabbed the doorknob.
“I’ll see you in the morning when Mom and I pick you up for school, right?” I asked, my voice caught in my throat.
He didn’t turn around to look at me. “I don’t need a ride tomorrow. Coach called a meeting for the team before classes. Travis is going to give me a ride.”
When he didn’t turn and look at me the nerves took over my body. My voice got shaky. “I’ll see you at school then.”
“Maybe. See ya around, Tweet.”
When I heard the door click, I fell apart completely. The ache that had been in my stomach made its way through the rest of my body. I turned over and buried my face in a pillow to hide the sounds of my sobs. I couldn’t keep my body from shaking. I was burning up inside and out. I had never felt pain this intense before. The sense of loss I had when Noah walked out of this room was all consuming. I kept telling myself that I would talk with him tomorrow. He’s upset now, but once he’s had a night to think it over, he’ll realize I’m right. Why change something that has worked perfectly for us so far?
The two most devastating feelings in the world are failure and loneliness. All others pale in comparison.
Failure, to a certain degree, is under you’re control. In theory, if you work hard and give 100% you will achieve your goal. I think I work hard, but either I’m fooling myself or there is just an innate inadequacy gene woven through my DNA. Maybe I had a great, great, great, great, great grandparent, who was a total loser.
Loneliness, is worse than failure. Loneliness is controlled by others. I’ve heard people say, just because you’re alone doesn’t mean you’re lonely and you can be standing in a crowded room with people, but feel lonely.
There’s only one person in my life who reigns over whether or not I’m lonely. Whether I’m physically with him or not, knowing he’s in my life keeps the loneliness away. When he’s standing in front of me and I feel him slipping away, the ache of loneliness takes over and drowns me. Being that vulnerable to a person is frightening.
I hadn’t talked to Noah for three days. We had never gone that long without talking. In fact, we had never gone a day without talking or seeing each other. It was not for lack of trying on my part. I called several times, but he never picked up, the calls all went to voicemail. I saw him briefly at school. In class he was very distant, practically ignoring me. He’d say hi if we were near each other, but that was the extent of it. I spent a lot of time in the girl’s bathroom, crying after each encounter I had with him. I couldn’t concentrate on anything.
Immediately after school each day, I found myself in the journalism classroom flipping through all the pictures of him that had been taken for the article I wrote. Then I would go and stalk him. I hung out at the boy’s locker room, which garnered me some strange looks and a few phone numbers. He saw me a few times, but never acknowledged me. I was lost not having daily contact with him. I didn’t know who I was without him. My words the other night hurt him, I knew that, I guess I didn’t realize how much. He said he would be there if I needed him. I needed him now, but he wouldn’t even look at me.
It was the day of the dance. I got home earlier than usual. Emily was home for the weekend to help me get ready and she told me to get home as soon as possible. She said we needed several hours to achieve my look. I wasn’t sure how to take that. It usually didn’t take me that long to get ready for anything. At this point, I didn’t even want to go to the stupid dance, but I had asked Vincent. I couldn’t bring myself to call and cancel.
I was laying on the bed in Emily’s room while she rummaged through her closest for the perfect party dress for me. Thankfully, my sister was a pretty girl who went to a lot of dances and was similar in size to me. I was still shorter and a little curvier than Emily, but the difference wasn’t as noticeable now like when we were younger. I couldn’t have cared less about what I wore tonight. I heard her mumbling something while still in the closet. She stuck her head out when I didn’t respond.
“Amanda, did you hear me?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“How do you feel about yellow?”
“As long as it doesn’t have feathers glued to it, yellow is fine, Emily.” My voice was flat.
She looked at me for a second and then started laughing. “Right, I had forgotten about Tweety. That was hilarious. We knew exactly where you were. All we had to do was follow the trail of feathers.” I looked up glaring at her. “Too soon? Sorry. Okay, go take a shower, shampoo your hair, and shave everywhere.”
I glanced at the clock on her nightstand. “I have two and a half hours before I have to be there,” I whined.
“I know. You need to hurry up. We don’t have a lot of time.” She tugged my arms, pulled me to my feet, and pushed me out the door.
I did exactly what Emily told me to do even if it didn’t make sense to me. My brain was so numb I didn’t have the capacity to make any decisions right now. Noah was the only thought that played repeatedly in my head. I showered, shampooed, shaved, and returned to my sister’s room.
The dress she picked out was hanging on the closet door. It was the one she wore the first time she ran for homecoming queen. She won, of course. The dress was a pale yellow strapless taffeta. The bodice fit me perfectly, hugging me in all the right places, giving me a curve or two. The skirt hit me right at the knee and was full and flowing with three dimensional flowers sporadically placed close to the hem. She had matched it with a pair of silver strappy sandals with almost 3 inch heels. I wasn’t sure about the heels, but like everything else, I didn’t care.
Emily had me put the dress on first before tackling hair and makeup. I was sitting at her vanity covered in a huge towel so nothing would get on the dress. There was an awful lot to do for a dance I didn’t even want to attend.
“I think your hair would look awesome pinned up. Oh, and you can wear my diamond teardrop earrings that Mom and Dad gave me for my sweet sixteen,” Emily said enthusiastically.
“Whatever you want to do is fine.” My voice was monotone.
“For someone going to her first big dance, you don’t seem very excited.” I just shrugged my shoulders. “So what time is Noah picking you up?”
My chest tightened. I never told her who I was going with. I just told her I was going to the dance. “Noah’s not picking me up.”
“Why not?” she asked, eyeing me in the mirror while she brushed out my hair.
“Because I’m not going with him.” She stopped brushing for a few seconds, a look of confusion crossed her face.
“Oh, sorry. I just assumed…”
“Well, you know what that does,” I said.
“Why aren’t you going with him?”
“Because I didn’t ask him.”
“Are we going to keep doing this or are you going to explain why you’re not going to your first dance with Noah?”
“I just didn’t ask him. Besides, he’s not really happy with me right now.” I shifted my gaze down to my lap, breaking it from Emily’s. I was afraid if I said anymore I would start crying.
She stopped what she was doing and leaned against the vanity in front of me. “You want to tell me what happened?”
I couldn’t speak. I was on the verge of breaking down now. If I opened my mouth to say one little word, I wouldn’t be able to hold it together. I just shook my head. With the tips of her fingers, Emily tilted my head up to look at her. Tears were already swimming in my eyes.
“Talk to me, Manda. What happened?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I just know that he hasn’t talked to me in three days. He doesn’t answer his phone and he ignores me at school.” I wiped a tear from my face. It was a good thing she hadn’t done my makeup yet.
“There has to be a reason. That doesn’t sound like Noah. You can tell me. I won’t say anything.”
I debated whether or not to open up to her. It wasn’t that we weren’t close, because we were, it was just embarrassing to admit the problem was me. I was a loser and a screw up. I had screwed up my friendship with Noah.
“Things are changing and I…um don’t know what to do.” My voice cracked and a few tears spilled.
A slight smile played across Emily’s face. “It’s hard when your best friend becomes a very cute boy, isn’t it?” I didn’t respond. She could see in my eyes that she was spot on. “Is there a girl that Noah likes?” I nodded. “Do you like her?”
“No, I don’t. She’s not good enough for him.” I looked away from her. I wasn’t exactly lying. It was just Emily didn’t realize the girl we were talking about was me.
“Is that why he’s mad?”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“Sweetie, I know it’s hard and it doesn’t feel right now like things will work out, but they will. You and Noah have something extremely special, you always have. Nothing will ever come between the two of you for any length of time.”
“Thanks.”
“Let’s finish making you the hottest girl at the dance tonight.” She hugged me and got right back to work.