Yours,
Noah
P.S. Weather. So cold I’m wearing socks to sleep.
Grace
I slammed the apartment door open. I’m surprised we don’t have gouges in the wall from all the times I’ve banged the door open.
Lana was lying on the sofa, and Amy was sitting in my chair painting her toenails. Being used to my door dramatics, Lana didn’t move, but from Amy’s curses, I must have made her mess up a nail.
“What happened?” Lana called as I walked over to the kitchen to pour myself some water.
“Noah just asked me to go on a date with him,” I paused, and Lana and Amy started to squeal with excitement. “But I’m going with Mike Walsh, and Noah’s bringing a ‘good’ friend.” I held up my fingers to do air quotes around the word good.
The squeals turned to groans of dismay. “No way,” Lana said.
“Yes way. Worse, this girl who I work with was there when Noah set up the double date, and she has a crush on Mike. She looked like I had stabbed her in the heart with a fork.”
“You kind of did,” Amy pointed out.
“How’d this happen?” Lana asked.
“I told Noah I was interested in Mike,” I admitted. Groans from both girls filled the air.
“Why?” they both exclaimed.
“Because I didn’t want him to think I was some pathetic dolt who sat around waiting for two years for some guy to come and say ‘Let’s be friends,’” I gave a half-hearted defense of my stupidity.
“Bet you didn’t expect this,” Amy said, completely deadpan. I almost lunged for her. Lana glared at her, and Amy drew back and made a zipping motion with her fingers over her mouth.
“What are you going to do?” Lana asked.
“Have the best damn time of my life tonight.” I stomped into my room and slammed the door shut.
“What about the picture?” Amy called after me. I held back a sigh. I had already bailed on the picture once, and Amy was super nice to let it go. She didn’t deserve any blowback for my recent wave of flakiness. I picked up my backpack that carried my camera and my laptop. My phone was fully charged, so I quickly scrolled through my contacts and found Mike’s number.
Meet you at library tonight?
Sure, came the quick response.
The campus movie theater, the Varsity, sat on the very edge of the south end of campus, down by the diner. We’d just walk. I didn’t want this to appear any more date-like than it already did.
I pulled the backpack on and picked up my tripod. Opening my bedroom door, I said to both, “Let’s go.”
As we descended, I could hear footsteps on the stairs below. Noah’s face appeared around the next turn.
“Great. I didn’t want to be late for my tutorial,” Noah smiled at us. I heard Amy give a breathy sigh behind me.
“I’m the assistant,” Lana told Noah.
I muttered, “Fine,” motioning him to turn and go down the stairs.
At the porch, Noah stopped me and tugged at my backpack with one hand, grabbing the tripod with the other. For a moment I resisted until I realized how ridiculous we looked, as if we were two dogs fighting over a bone. I let both the backpack and the tripod go.
“Let me guess—something to do with your momma.” I rolled my eyes.
Noah shrugged on the backpack. “I had it easier than you, you know.”
“I don’t think that just because you lost your mom when you were born, and I lost my dad when I was twelve that you had it easier than me,” I replied softly. I didn’t want Lana or Amy to hear me, but I also didn’t want Noah to believe I thought his loss was less than mine. As if sensing I needed a moment, Lana hurried a reluctant Amy along.
“It’s true. I don’t think you can miss what you don’t know,” Noah replied.
“Sure you can.” I think Noah missed his mother more than he ever would admit.
“I don’t have memories of her, but you have twelve years of them with your dad.
“I also didn’t have someone blaming me for my dad’s death like your dad has.”
“Are we going to try to out-horrible the other?” Noah ran a hand through his hair.
“Out-horrible?”
“Like my life is more horrible than yours?” Noah explained.
I shook my head. “Is that what I’m doing? Because I didn’t mean to.”
“I know it wasn’t,” he let out a deep breath. “This is too heavy a discussion for a sunny day.”
I looked up and squinted. Full midday sun.
“What’s wrong?” Noah asked. Maybe I did have a black-ants-on-a-white-blanket face.
“I’m just hoping for a little cloud cover.”