“Gotta go,” I said, pocketing my phone after shooting off an ETA for him. Ten minutes, because I was leavingnow. Mom could either move the Lexus or I’d drive around it, and fuck the lawn. They were the ones who’d boxed me in. Noah hadn’t given me details on how it had gone with his parentals, but he needed me, so I was out.
And me?
How Noe ever could have doubted that I needed him, too—fuckingalways—was beyond me. He was theonlything I needed, and shit like the motherfucking “clutter” from the first eighteen years of my life getting donated, or me no longer having a fucking bedroom of my own in the house I grew up in, didn’t even faze me, because I didn’t just need him, I was the lucky fuck whohadhim.
And fuck if I was ever gonna let that go.
20
Noah
I had never walkedout on my parents in my life, but I guess there was a first time for everything. They’d just… just made me somad. Of course, storming out when I didn’t have my own car was kind of dumb, since now I was stuck stomping down the sidewalk since I didn’t want to just stand there hovering in their driveway waiting for Gage, but still, it was the principle of the thing.
“Noah,” I heard my mom calling in an exasperated tone from behind me.
I ignored her, which was apparently a trait I’d inherited from my parents.
Shocker, they hadn’t really listened to me. I mean, sure, they’d been happy—and an insulting level of surprised—about my grades, but it was like they thought it was a fluke or something, not something I’d be able to maintain. Not unless I came back home where they could supervise everything next year, at least.
I turned onto a side street, stabbing at my phone to send Gage another text, asking him to meet me at the little park that was a few blocks away. God, I was… waspissed. Which wasn’t usually how I reacted to things, but just... justugh. Them not taking me seriously or thinking I could make good decisions on my own wasn’t really anything new, but now, after so much time away from them, it grated on me in a way I’d never let it before.
Besides, they were wrong. The last straw had been telling them about Gage. They hadn’t wanted to talk about my school plans atallafter that, too busy getting themselves worked up over how they’d never thought we had a healthy relationship in the first place and that adding sex into the mix didn’t seem smart.
I shuddered. List of things I never wanted to hear my parents say ever again: “genitals” and every other anatomically correct term for cock, balls, and ass; the word “penetrative;” any combination of “sex” and my name in the same sentence; speculation about my masturbatory habits.
The whole topic had made Mom look like she’d just sucked a lemon, and Dad had immediately started googling safe sex stuff and gay STI statistics and all that, because of course he had—and side note: vomit, I still wanted to bleach my brain to avoid ever having to think aboutthatpart of the conversation again, please and thank you—but neither one of them had actually wanted to hear about… about what Gage meant to me, or how much he encouraged and supported and looked out for me all the time, or that Ilovedhim.
“Noah.”
I swiped at my face, my head jerking up as my heart leapt. I was almost to the park, but I’d been so busy feeling pissy about it all that I hadn’t even noticed Gage pull up next to me.
That definitely hadn’t been ten minutes yet, but I wasn’t surprised. Gage was always there when I needed him.
He pulled up to the curb and stopped the Jeep, and the minute he was out of it I threw myself at him, not even caring if it made me look pitiful and needy and codependent. Iwasall of those things… all of those things plus still pissed off at my parents.
“Plan B?” Gage asked, his voice all raspy as he caught me and squeezed me close.
“Yeah,” I sniffled, since it was pretty obvious that my parents had closed their minds to everything but their own opinions already. “We’ll have to, um, we need to… to…”
Oh God, I was flailing. WhatwasPlan B? I couldn’t even remember now.
I was wrapped around Gage like a spider monkey, practically climbing him, and he boosted me up a bit and set my butt on the hood of his jeep, standing between my legs.
“What we need to do, Noe,” he said firmly, obviously seeing my impending freak-out barreling down on us and stepping in front of it to cut it off at the pass, “What we’regoingto do, is head home.”
Back to campus, he meant, which, he was right, felt way more like home now than the familiar-but-stifling house I’d grown up in did.
“Okay,” I said gratefully, my whole body instantly relaxing. He wasn’t asking me, he was just laying out what was going to happen and telling me how it was going to be, and that was perfect. It wasus. Besides, I’d already used up all my initiative for the day, and I was perfectly happy to wait and figure out the details of Plan B later.
Except… oh. Wait.
“I’mnotmoving back here, G,” I said, because now I remembered.Thathad been Plan B. If my parents made me move home and transfer schools, Gage had said he’d just come with me. But I couldn’t do it. Not when they treated me likethat. It had been the last thing I’d shouted before slamming the front door behind me, so… so we were going to need a Plan C, I guess.
“Me, neither,” Gage said emphatically, which made me relax all over again. We were on the same page, just like always. “We’re gonna start looking at apartments for the summer as soon as we get back,” he added. “My parentals are good for the rent, and next year—”
“I told my parents I’d pay for school next year myself,” I blurted out, which sounded ridiculous now that I was saying it to Gage. “You know, like… loans, I guess? Or, or I could get a job?”
Tons of people did it. Um, somehow. And okay, I definitely wasn’t fully cut out for actual independent adulting yet, because I had no idea how to go about getting either of those things... but that was something to freak out about later, because suddenly theotherthing Gage had just said filtered through my self-centered pity party, making my brain screech to a halt and do a U-turn, heading back to that comment he’d made about rent.
