Toward the end of our shift, I caught him leaning over the box office, chatting with Chelsea. It was the first time he had spoken to someone other than me, and I felt a pang of jealousy shoot through me. Chelsea was pretty in a way I wasn’t, and she had a very bubbly personality, at least from what I’d seen. Noah laughed at something, and I imagined Chelsea giving him her “fuck me” eyes through the glass. I bet he had already spent long nights with her in that little booth. I shook my head, banishing the image from my mind. He could do whatever he wanted. I wasn’t going to play into his little games.
Slowly, too slowly, the night ground to a halt, and I found myself sweeping up the theaters with Noah. We did it in strained silence. Where the night before, we were laughing and making jokes together, that night we were awkward and rushed. We did our work and we did it as quickly as possible. Once we finished, I went to help close up the concession stand, and Noah went to clean the bathrooms.
The bathrooms cleaned, the registers tallied, and the stand closed up, the group of us got together and walked out of the student center basement. Miss Havisham stayed behind to finish some things and to lock up. It felt good to walk out as a group; the night before, I had escaped with my tail between my legs, but I wasn’t going to let Noah ruin my work experience.
As it turned out, Chuck and Mikey were in fact best friends. They grew up together in a small town in Iowa, and they both wanted to get out there as soon as they could. Mike described himself as “gay as a jaybird,” which made me giggle, and Chuck said that he was “ambisexual.” I had no idea what that meant, or why they immediately began to talk about their sexual preferences when I barely knew them, but they were silly and funny in a way I hadn’t seen in a while. People were too jaded and cool, but not the Wonder Twins.
Chelsea looked different outside of her box, and she was taller than I had expected. I wasn’t short, about five foot five, but she was at least five foot ten. Noah was the tallest in the group, at maybe six foot two or three, and I got another pang of jealousy when I realized how good he looked walking next to Chelsea. They looked natural together, and as the group idly chatted about nothing, I realized they had known each other for a while. That was probably how she got the job, I thought bitterly. I didn’t know why I held their friendship against them; I was clearly still upset with Noah, and mentally taking it out on her. I vowed to try and get to know her when he wasn’t around.
As we moved out onto campus, the group started to split up. I was heading west, toward my apartment, and the Wonder Twins were going north. We waved as they walked off, laughing loudly about some joke I didn’t pay much attention to. I hurried off, leaving Chelsea and Noah standing together under a streetlight. I gave Chelsea a smile and a wave, but I pretended like Noah didn’t exist. Let them analyze that. I didn’t care. I was done with the whole thing. I had made it through the night with as little interaction as possible, and I was already feeling stronger. Maybe I wasn’t quite at my mom’s level, but still strong enough to get over one asshole guy.
And then Noah had to ruin all of that.
Chapter Eleven
As I got a good distance away, I felt like I was home free. I began to turn my thoughts to what I was going to do when I got home, if I wanted to study or veg out, when suddenly I heard footsteps approaching. I turned and saw Noah jogging to catch up to me, a small grin on his face.
Great. That was exactly what I didn’t want. I had gotten through the night, more or less, without any big confrontations, minus the one in the supply closet. Things were tense, but they weren’t awful. I was moving on.
But there he was, muscles rippling as he caught up with me.
“Hey, dots,” he called out. I wanted to flip him off, but decided to keep it classy.
“I told you not to talk to me,” I said, not slowing down. He matched my pace as I walked. I tried my best not to look at him but I couldn’t help it.
“I know, but I want to say something first.”
“I can’t stop you,” I said. Although I wished that I could.
“I’m sorry about that shit with my dad and your mom. I’m not okay with it, but it happened. I didn’t even know about it until two days ago. I know you’re pissed—“
I stopped in my tracks, my heart pounding. He stopped mid-sentence because of my abrupt change. I stared at his face as he turned around and stopped in front of me, confusion creeping into his expression.
“What did I say?” he asked me.
He said two days ago. Two days ago. I felt like my brain was in overdrive, trying to parse exactly what he had meant. I had spent the last day obsessing about the possibility of him lying to me. I was convinced that he had, and I had treated him like crap because of it.