My inability to sit still didn’t go unnoticed. Mike looked at me impatiently and moved away, as if I was adversely affecting his enjoyment. I clenched my hands in my lap and closed my eyes, which only made it worse, because now all I could hear were sounds of the rustling sheets, the fall of the cloth onto the floor, and the crescendo of sounds, both human and instrumental. The air felt thick and heavy around us, like I was breathing underwater. Each breath felt labored and sounded harsh to my own ears, and I wanted to stop altogether.
At the moment I thought I would explode out of my seat and flee the theater, I felt a large, warm hand cover mine. Noah’s touch was completely unexpected, and I froze. But instead of this causing me more anxiety, Noah’s hand soothed me. I unclenched my hands. The block in my throat dissolved, and I was able to take a few deep, calming breaths. Each muscle that had tensed up seemed to unknot and relax.
The movie went on, but I noticed little of it. Instead, I focused on the tendrils of warmth that curled outward from the hand in my lap like vines on wall. The hand never moved, not throughout the entire movie. I glanced to see if Mike had noticed, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me.
The heat, the dark, the sudden cessation of panic—it all made me drowsy. Noah shifted and I felt his shoulder close to my head like an invitation. I looked at him, but his eyes were focused straight ahead. It was like his arm was detached from his body. Perhaps it was mine now.
I rested my head tentatively against the shoulder that was in my space. No one moved. I stopped worrying about what Mike would think and allowed my eyes to drift closed and my thoughts to wander into nothingness.
The noise of dozens of spring-loaded seats being snapped back in place woke me up. I jerked upright. Noah’s hand was no longer in my lap. I straightened and tried to look like I hadn’t spent the last half of the movie sleeping and holding hands with him. Too late, though, as Mike was standing up and looking down at me with a puzzled expression.
At least he didn’t look angry that he’d found his“ date” asleep on the shoulder of another guy. I wiped the sides of my mouth as surreptitiously as possible and stood up. To Mike I said, “So do you want to go to the CoffeeHouse?”
Mike looked surprised, and I heard a choked-off noise behind me. I ignored both reactions and smiled as widely as I could. Having not practiced this in front of the mirror, though, it could have looked like the joker’s grimace.
“Sure.” Mike was either baffled by my behavior or intrigued. Either way, he was willing to place himself in my company for at least another hour.
“Great,” I heard from behind me. “I’d like a coffee.”
I turned then and looked at Noah. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I was deeply embarrassed by my actions tonight. I needed to make things right with Mike and then figure out what I was going to do with Noah.
I turned back to Mike and motioned for him to exit the theater. When he didn’t move right away, I pushed him slightly and his inertia dropped away.
I don’t know where Noah and Bo went, but when Mike and I exited the small theater, they weren’t behind us. We began the twenty-minute walk through the heart of the campus to get to the coffee house on the other side.
Summer was refusing to release its hold, and the night air was sultry instead of cool. Tall, wrought iron lampposts lit our way, interspersed with emergency call boxes.
“That’s probably the weirdest date I’ve ever been on,” Mike broke the silence as we wandered down the sidewalk bisecting the east and west sides of the campus. “Did you ask me out to make that other guy jealous?”
“No!” I exclaimed and then confessed, “I might have said I thought you were cute, and he thought he was trying to help me out.”
“So what was with the hand-holding and snuggling during the movie?”
Had I really been snuggling? “I was having a panic attack, and Noah must have known it. He was just trying to calm me down. I wasn’t snuggling. Honest.”
Mike shrugged. “I didn’t think you were interested, so you kind of surprised me.”
It was now or never. I placed a hand on Mike’s arm and stopped him. “The situation kind of got out of hand. Noah and I go way back. But I do think you are missing out on someone. Just not me.”
“No?” Mike looked adorably confused now.
He hadn’t been whipping his hair out of his face for at least ten minutes, which seemed like a new record. When he wasn’t in a group, he wasn’t insufferably trying to make himself seem more attractive by hitting on every female in a twenty-foot radius. Maybe Sarah spent a lot of time alone with Mike and this was the guy she was attracted to.