Of course, that was the moment my phone decided to buzz again. I was too aware of my friends staring at me as I pulled up the text and read Noah’s words, a continuation of our previous conversation about the summer Shakespeare program he’d participated in. He’d been telling me about one of his cast mates that he’d become friends with and the night out they’d had after the last show. I’d seen the cast member in question. He’d been very attractive, and Noah had been out with him the night before. If I felt some sort of way about it, it wasn’t something I was willing to acknowledge at this time.
“Let it go,” Holden said after a few moments of silence. I shot him an appreciative glance, and my appreciation only grew when he quickly diverted the conversation to something else. Something completely unrelated to my current friendship, feelings, or past relationship with Noah. Our friends allowedthemselves to be distracted, and I fell into the easy lull of conversation with them while texting Noah.
Strangely, the feeling of sticking out had also disappeared.
It was late by the time I got home from the Rusty Nail. Most of my friends had early mornings, and I sometimes questioned how they were able to wake up and go about their days after our Thursday night outings. It was a skill I hadn’t mastered back when I had an office job. Now that I was my own boss, doing freelance web and application design, it was easier. I just didn’t set any meetings before noon on Fridays. In fact, I tried to avoid early morning meetings any day of the week. I had never been a morning person.
Noah was still texting me as I entered the apartment, and I sent him a quick message to let him know I’d made it home safely. A few minutes later, I saw Noah’s name pop up on my phone screen requesting a video call.
I settled onto my couch and accepted the request. His face filled the screen, and I couldn’t help smiling. Time really had been good to him. Even when we were in high school, Noah had been one of the most handsome people I’d ever seen outside of TV and movies. I thought it still might be true. My phone didn’t do him justice. They didn’t capture the shade of his emerald green eyes. I could barely make out the small beauty mark he had over the left side of his mouth or the fact that his top lip was fuller than the bottom. They were things I memorized about him years ago, and they were some of the first things I noticed when he came back to King’s Bay.
“It’s a bit late for you, isn’t it?” I asked, grinning at the screen.
“I was actually just finishing getting ready for bed when I got your text,” he told me.
That would explain why the bit of dark hair I could see in the screen looked wet. He’d had a pretty intense skin care routine when we’d been in high school, and I had a hard time imagining that it had become any less intense in the passing years. Hell, if I had to guess, he’d probably gotten more rigid about it. “And you thought you’d give me a call?” I teased.
I noticed the way his smile faltered for a moment before securing back in place. I was half-convinced that it was a glitch in the phone, because it had been so quick. “Should I not have?” he questioned in a way that made me know that I hadn’t imagined his wavering smile. It hadn’t been a problem with the quality of our video call. His eyes widened. “Wait, did you bring someone home from the bar? Am I cock blocking you?”
I laughed. “No, I promise you are not cock blocking me.” It had been a long time since I’d brought anyone home from the bar. I’d been in a long-term relationship until a few months ago, and I’d not met anyone that I wanted to take home with me since mine and Lucas’s breakup. Besides, I’d never liked the way I felt after a hookup, something that none of my friends seemed to understand.
Hell, Jonas and Seb had both met the loves of their lives by taking random guys home from the bar.
It was just another thing that made me feel different from my friends. Another thing that made me feel insecure in my own skin.
“Everything okay?” Noah’s voice pulled me out of the beginnings of a thought spiral. When we’d been younger, he’d been so good at that. He’d seen little things that my friends missed. It was strange knowing that he could still do it after all these years.
“Hmm,” I hummed. I wanted to lie to him, but if he could see me zoning out on a small phone screen, then he’d probably see right through that lie. “Just got in my head for a moment.”
“You still do that a lot?”
“More than I want to admit,” I told him with a laugh.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Did I? I thought for a moment before shaking my head. “Not really. If I start now, I’m not going to get any sleep tonight, and I have a few projects I’m working on. I need to get out milestone reports to two of my clients tomorrow, which means that I need to sleep tonight at some point. And unfortunately, if I start talking about it, I’m going to go deeper and deeper into thoughts. Then I’m going to end up tossing and turning all night because my brain won’t sh—”
“Breathe.”
The simple word, spoken so softly and authoritatively, stopped me in my tracks. I drew in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and exhaled slowly. My thoughts quieted. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s not that big of a deal.” He said it in a way that made me believe him immediately. “Now, instead of obsessing over whatever you’re about to obsess over, tell me about your night.”
So I did. I left out the bits about my friends questioning how I felt about him, but it was there, a low hum in the background of everything we talked about. The boys’ question kept repeating in my head. Did I want it to be something more between us again? Everything between us had happened so long ago that I was pretty sure I looked back on it with rose-colored glasses.
I tried to look through our high school memories objectively, but every time I did, I just remembered the way I’d felt when we were young and deep in the throes of first love. He’d understood me better than anyone ever had, even my best friends. He’d been able to pull me out of my spirals with just a word or a look. Thatwas still true. Look at how effortlessly he’d pulled me out of a potential spiral, and if that was true, then maybe the rest of my memories were too. Maybe the love I’d had for him back then had been the kind of love that could last, if we’d made different choices. If we’d followed our original plans, maybe we’d still be together now.
I didn’t regret the choices I’d made that shaped me into who I was now. Not in the slightest, but there was a question mark put in place by my friends’ questions. I still didn’t know the answer, but I did know that I didn’t like the question lingering. I’d never liked unanswered questions. Unanswered questions led to missed opportunities and regrets, and I didn’t want to regret anything to do with love.
Ever.
Noah was still talking, but I wasn’t taking in his words. It was some story about the cast party or the art museum or something. It had to do with clothing, I knew that much, and I knew that he’d been working on an exhibit about fashion, so it could have really been either. Of course, it could have been about a shopping trip he’d taken for all the attention I’d been paying to his words. Because I was thinking about everything else, about unanswered questions, and how I could find the answers.
There was only one possible solution.
“Do you want to hang out?” I asked, the words rushed into a barely comprehensible sentence.
But this was Noah, and he’d understood me better than most people when we were younger. He didn’t have any trouble understanding me now either. He smiled into the phone screen, and I was struck again by his beauty. “Saturday?”
