“Why are you here?” I asked, allowing him to lead me over to the swing. He took my messenger bag from my shoulder and placed it on the floor, urging me to sit down.
I sat. He gave the swing a little shove with his feet and we swayed gently.
“I think we just need to get to know each other again.” His voice was steady and clear in the night air. I felt like Jell-O on the inside.
I refrained from pointing out the obvious. You couldn’t read nearly forty letters from someone and not get to know them a little.
I ran my eyes over his face, trying to read some expression, and noticed his lower lip was scabbed. My hand was up and hovering like I could make it better with a touch. “Ouch,” I said.
“Yeah, it only hurts when I smile or laugh.”
“Or kiss,” I added, and then mentally kicked myself.
“The person I want to kiss isn’t really feeling me right now,” he half-joked. His eyes were warm, and I knew I was courting danger here. The old Noah wound healed up over the last year, and now I was threatening to slash it open and pour salt all over it.
I started to draw my hand back, but Noah grabbed it and pressed it against his lips. I could feel the ridge of his scab, a hard contrast to the soft portions of his lips. Against my will, I rubbed my fingers across the uninjured parts. That tiny touch had set up a riot in my stomach like a battalion of butterflies was trying to beat its way out. I didn’t heal him with my touch, but from the softening of his lips I could tell he liked it. I stroked him slowly and his mouth parted. His breath felt hot against my fingers, and I felt something coil inside me in response.
“I’m really glad to see you made it home safe and sound,” I admitted. My words sounded breathless. I had prayed so hard for that outcome. Even when he hadn’t wanted me, I was so happy that he was alive and unharmed.
“I missed you, Grace. More than you will ever know.”
He smelled delicious again. I wanted to press my nose into the well of his throat and breathe deep, imprinting his smell onto my memory banks. It would make my nighttime fantasies slightly more real and vivid. I forced myself to drop my hand.
“I—” I cast around for the right words to say. I wanted to explain myself in a way that still preserved my pride but conveyed I wasn’t a toy to be discarded and then picked up whenever he felt like playing with it again. “If you truly want to be friends, Noah, I can do that. But nothing else.”
His face remained unchanged, which made me falter. Maybe he did just want to be friends, and I had misread the entire situation. I gave him an uncertain smile and said, “I’ll see you around campus then?”
“Don’t friends hang out?”
I nodded my head. Yes, but we weren’t really friends. We were some weird, undefined category where we had some shared intimacy, yet were not in a real relationship.
“How about we study together at the library on Wednesday?” Noah offered.
I shrank back, tears at the back of my throat. I was right to be cautious. He wanted to just be friends, like his kiss-off letter said. He had referred to me as a little sister. I cleared my throat to make sure I sounded as easy going as he did. “Sure. I have Stats & Methodology that day, and I always need to review my notes after that class. Meet you there.”
I stood up then and walked to the door that led up to my third floor apartment. When I looked back to wave, Noah was standing there with one hand on the back of his neck and the other at his hip. He looked frustrated, managed a slight smile, and then nodded in return. I went upstairs, as confused as I had ever been.
I had three classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. They started at 8:00 a.m. and ended right after noon. I usually met Lana for lunch at the Quad Commons Café, the one place Amy says we should never eat. Lana rarely got up before eleven and scheduled all of her classes in the afternoon. Lunch was about the only meal we shared together on a regular basis, and it was usually the first of the day for her.
We had two choices on campus. The dining hall, which served a variety of cafeteria food, along with a salad and dessert bar, or the Quad Commons Café, where you could get deli sandwiches and light grilled items. Tuesdays, we would meet at the dining hall, because they had Taco Tuesdays, but most days we met and had big prepared salads from the QC Café.
Lana had already purchased everything and was sitting at a table unwrapping her salad.
She was wearing sunglasses, which I tipped down when I arrived at the table. She allowed me to see her swollen eyes before pushing the glasses up and waving me to my seat.
“Peter?” I queried. She mhmm’ed and I waited. She pulled out her phone and showed me a picture of some blonde in front of a mirror, wearing tiny panties and her shirt pushed above her bare breasts. They were rather large and obviously fake. Not Lana.