“I’ll let you get back to work. Here’s my number in case you need anything or whatever.”
“Okay,” I said, as she handed me a piece of paper with a number written on it.
“Seriously, anything you need, just call. I want to help him.”
I nodded, at a loss for words.
“You’re doing the right thing. Thank you,” she said.
“Yeah, sure,” I answered.
She smiled again then walked off, back toward the stairs. I watched her go, shocked at how mature and serious she had been. I shook my head softly, completely stunned over the whole encounter.
Finally, I gathered myself together, my head practically spinning. I felt my stomach drop with excitement when I imagined calling Noah. She had said he was madly in love with me.
She had said he was madly in love with me.
As I headed back to work, a smile crept over my lips. I wasn’t over Noah and I knew it. I had been fooling myself the whole time, building up an armor of fake hate. But hope flooded in, small but sure, shattering that armor. I was going to try, because I owed it to him to be a decent person, the same way he had been to so many people before me.
Chapter Eighteen
6:45pm Me: Hey, I ran into your friend last night, I hope everything is okay.
I stared at the message and considered the implications. He had more or less abandoned me, decided never to speak to me again, and ruthlessly cut me out of his life. I had never met a person that would go so far as to quit a job and drop a class to avoid someone, and yet Noah had done exactly that. Somehow, I was so diseased that he had to avoid me at all costs.
And yet Ellie was so sincere. I considered adding her name to the message, but I didn’t want to make things bad between them. She seemed genuine in her worry, and really seemed to think that I was the only person who could bring Noah back out of whatever funk he was in. But I knew things about Noah, things maybe most other people didn’t know, and I had been convinced that he wasn’t as bad as everyone thought. Something had happened, something that made him panic and run. And that same thing was probably forcing him to ignore me, and maybe that’s where all the partying was coming from. I was worried, and I hated myself, just a little bit, for still caring about someone who had so easily cut me out of his life.
Or maybe I was delusional. Maybe I just wanted to mean more to that guy than I actually did. Ellie had said he loved me, but what did she know? She could have been completely wrong, and was just making a desperate play to help Noah. I could have been about to step into a trap.
I groaned, completely torn.
Chris, as usual, was both helpful and blunt. Send the message if I want, she said, but don’t expect it to do anything. Which was basically useless, but at least it was honest. If I was going to send the message, I had to have realistic expectations. The problem was, I didn’t know what my expectations were, let alone what was realistic.
Scanning my bedroom, feeling the pulse in my neck throb, I looked back down at the screen.
Fuck it. Fuck Noah and fuck the burning ache in my chest. Fuck the way I had been feeling ever since meeting him.
I hit send.
I stared at it for a second, half expecting him to reply immediately. He wouldn’t, though, and eventually I tossed the phone away. I stood up and sat down at my desk, booting up Facebook.
Internet stalking. That was the thing I needed, of course. What better way to distract myself from Noah than to stare at his Facebook page and imagine all of the skanks he’d been with since ditching me? I refused to fall into that trap, at least, and avoided trying to find him.
I scrolled idly through my feed, staring at everyone’s updates. People made their lives look so great, almost amazing, but I knew the truth. It was all curated, selected moments designed to create an impression. Nobody posts about the terrible and boring stuff, about hours stuck at work, the minutiae of the same meal for dinner at the same time each evening, or a night spent studying on a Saturday night instead of going out to the latest raging house party. It’s all fancy bars and dressing up, expensive meals and fun afternoons. And I was sick of the image, of the fakeness of everything.
I wanted something real. And I thought I had found it.
Briefly, I wondered if Miss Havisham had a Facebook. I typed her name into the search bar, but nothing came up. Intrigued, I tried searching for the theater, but found a group for Temple’s film studies department instead. I clicked and it took me to their page.
Plastered on their timeline was a pretty basic and cheap looking graphic, but it immediately caught my eye. It was a student film competition, open to any student of Temple regardless of age or year of study. Entry was free, and the films were due at the start of spring semester.