Eli’s breathing caught. “Oh. Oh, God. I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry, I?—”
“Don’t apologize,” Noah said quickly. His voice was rough. “Don’t youdareapologize.”
“But… you’re crying.”
“Rude observation.” Noah swiped at his eyes. He huffed out a breath, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Of course my first real cry of the season would be about a sketchbook.”
“And I get the feeling that’s very on brand for you,” Eli said weakly.
Noah laughed. “You drew me.”
Eli’s face burned. “Yeah.”
“At fifteen.”
“Yeah.”
“You remembered me,” Noah said slowly. “All these years.”
Eli swallowed again. “I mean, I forgot you, too. For a while. Life happened, you know? Breakups. Jobs. Boston. But when I opened this at my apartment, it all came back. When I saw you at Home Depot, I felt you were familiar. It took finding this to help my brain catch up.”
Noah looked down at the drawing again. His fingers hovered above the paper, as though he was being careful not to smudge the lines.
“I was such a baby,” he murmured. “Look at that hair.”
“You still have that hair,” Eli said. “Except now you have better product.”
Noah huffed. “I had no idea you were watching.”
“I was highly committed to younotknowing,” Eli said. “I would have died on the spot.”
“I might have said hi,” Noah said.
“That’s exactly why I avoided it.”
Noah smiled at that, then sobered.
“You weren’t creepy,” he said quietly. “You were a kid. You were figuring yourself out. And you turned all that untamed feeling into art.” He brushed his thumb along the edge of the page. “That’s…kind of beautiful.”
“You’re not weirded out?” Eli asked.
Noah bit his lip. “I reserve the right to tease you about it until we’re old.” His eyes twinkled.
Eli groaned. “Okay, now I’m suffering regret. Immediate regret.”
“But no,” Noah went on, his voice quiet. “I’m not weirded out. If anything, I’m honored, not to mention kindaoverwhelmed. And I’m probably going to need, like, three to five business days to emotionally process the fact that you were drawing me while I was throwing tinsel at people in the gym.”
“That’s fair,” Eli said.
Noah glanced up, his brow creasing. “Did you ever feel angry? I mean—at me? For not seeing you, for being oblivious?”
Eli thought about it.
“I don’t think I knew how to be angry back then,” he said slowly. “Not at you. I was busy being scared of myself. You were just a very nice boy with a gravitational field. I was some awkward kid hiding behind a sketchbook. It never occurred to me that seeing me was an option.”
Noah’s eyes widened. “You say that as if it’s fact.”
“Wasn’t it?” Eli asked.
