Present Perfect (12 page)

All of a sudden, I felt a pair of lips on the outer side of my thigh right above my knee. I almost did a full blown spit-take at the exact same time my dad asked, “Are we game for another?”

Noah sat back up and I had three sets of eyes glued to me. The Stewart’s eyes held pity, for my parents, no doubt. My mom’s eyes held regret that she didn’t send me for those etiquette lessons when I was younger and my dad wasn’t even paying attention to my faux pas. He was busy holding the wine bottle above his glass desperately trying to get the last drop of wine to drip out.

“I’ll go get you another bottle of wine. I’m done eating, anyway,” I said, as I wiped the spray of water from my face.

I quickly rose from the table and made my way to the kitchen to put my plate in the sink. Without stopping, I headed to the garage where we had an extra refrigerator that my parents used for their wine collection.

Standing in front of the open fridge, I realized I didn’t know if they wanted red or white. I took a bottle of each to be on the safe side. I closed the fridge and turned around coming face-to-face with a beaming Noah. I took a step back. He placed his hands against the fridge on either side of my shoulders, caging me in. He really liked caging me in.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing in there with all the touching and the kissing? You kissed my
thigh
under the table. The family dinner table, for god’s sake.”

“I couldn’t resist. You’re mighty tasty.” He waggled his eyebrows and moved in closer.

Holy crap on a cracker, tingles were taking over my body.

“Leave me alone for the rest of the night.” I tried to sound mad, but even I could hear the smile in my voice. It was hard to be mad at Noah, especially when what he was doing felt so amazing.

“Okay, I will.” He dropped his arms and stepped back giving me room to get by.

“Thank you.”

As I passed him going back toward the door I felt the hem of my dress rise up behind me. I quickly stepped to the side, out of his reach. “Dammit, Noah! Stop it! I can’t defend myself with these bottles in my hands.”

Holding his hands up in surrender, he said, “I thought you had a speck of something on your dress. I was just trying to help is all.” I narrowed my eyes at him before heading back into the house.

I passed on dessert, even though chocolate cake was my all-time favorite. I excused myself from the table, saying I needed to work on a paper, and went back to my room away from the glaring eyes of parents and the roaming hands and lips of my best friend.

As I sat on my bed remembering how his hands and lips felt on my skin, I could feel the heat building up inside of me. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m was just sitting there thinking about him and getting all hot and bothered. The knock on my door brought me back to the here and now. “Yeah?” My voice sounded raspy.

The door cracked open and all I saw was a floating plate with a piece of chocolate cake on it. I smiled. Then I saw my favorite pair of light blue eyes.

“I brought you some dessert.”

Noah stepped in and closed the door behind him, tapping it with his foot. He placed the cake down on my bedside table and sat across from me on the bed. He held up the fork, which was already loaded with chocolate frosting. I was still feeling the effects of dinner as I stared at my two favorite things in the entire world. I parted my lips letting out a slight sigh. We never took our eyes off of one another. He handed me the fork.

Bringing it to my mouth, I slowly slid the fork between my lips. The tip of his tongue darted out of his mouth and ran across his lower lip. He watched the movement of my lips as they curled around the fork. I heard him swallow hard as I slid the fork out of my mouth. He took it from me and as he reached over to place the fork back on the plate, his lips almost grazed my cheek.

He moved in closer and whispered, “You have a little frosting in the corner of your mouth.”

I stayed still. My eyes were completely focused on him as he hovered for a few seconds no more than a half inch away from my mouth. The temperature of my body shot up a hundred degrees. What the hell was I doing? I needed to stop this. I was so weak and stupid for allowing this to happen. Besides, both our parents were at the other end of the house. Thoughts of losing Noah sprinted across my mind. I started to panic. I could feel my chest tightening. I felt dizzy and smothered. I leaned away from him.

He pulled back and stared at me. I didn’t want to see the look in his eyes, but I forced myself to face him. He needed to understand how serious I was when I said these words.

“We can’t do this. I can’t be your girlfriend.” He stared at me for a few more seconds before turning away, staying seated on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, and his head down.

“Why?” he asked in a raspy voice.

“I’m afraid if something happened to cause it to end, then it might fuck things up so badly you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me after that.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“No it’s not. You remember Tyler Evans? He and Emily were close friends. Not as close as we are, but very close. They decided to cross that line and date. It lasted six months and ended badly. They couldn’t even stay friends. Emily and I saw him at the mall over the summer and he was so ugly toward her. I can’t have that happen with us.”

“We’re not them.”

“I know, but Emily does everything perfectly. If she couldn’t make it work, I sure as hell can’t. I have to have you in my life. I won’t cross that line with you. It’s too risky and I won’t chance it, not with us. I’m sorry about tonight. I never should have let things go that far.”

“I’m not sorry about what happened between us in here. Except that you won’t be with me.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to. I can’t. Besides, you deserve better than me, Noah.”

“There isn’t anyone better than you for me,” he said, looking at me over his shoulder.

“These feelings will fade away and things will get back to normal. Our bodies are going through a lot of changes. Hormones are flying all over the place. We just need to control ourselves and ride it out.” I was trying to hold back my tears. He sat up and turned to me, showing me how crushed he felt. It was impossible not to let a few tears escape. “I can’t lose you, Noah.”

“You’d never lose me, Tweet. I’ll always be here if you need me.” He raised his hand, bringing it to my face. The tips of his fingers grazed down my jaw to my chin.

I shook my head, leaning away from him slightly. “Please Noah, I can’t,” I whispered.

In one fluid movement, his hand dropped, he stood, and walked to the door. His hand grabbed the doorknob.

“I’ll see you in the morning when Mom and I pick you up for school, right?” I asked, my voice caught in my throat.

He didn’t turn around to look at me. “I don’t need a ride tomorrow. Coach called a meeting for the team before classes. Travis is going to give me a ride.”

When he didn’t turn and look at me the nerves took over my body. My voice got shaky. “I’ll see you at school then.”

“Maybe. See ya around, Tweet.”

When I heard the door click, I fell apart completely. The ache that had been in my stomach made its way through the rest of my body. I turned over and buried my face in a pillow to hide the sounds of my sobs. I couldn’t keep my body from shaking. I was burning up inside and out. I had never felt pain this intense before. The sense of loss I had when Noah walked out of this room was all consuming. I kept telling myself that I would talk with him tomorrow. He’s upset now, but once he’s had a night to think it over, he’ll realize I’m right. Why change something that has worked perfectly for us so far?

The two most devastating feelings in the world are failure and loneliness. All others pale in comparison.

Failure, to a certain degree, is under you’re control. In theory, if you work hard and give 100% you will achieve your goal. I think I work hard, but either I’m fooling myself or there is just an innate inadequacy gene woven through my DNA. Maybe I had a great, great, great, great, great grandparent, who was a total loser.

Loneliness, is worse than failure. Loneliness is controlled by others. I’ve heard people say, just because you’re alone doesn’t mean you’re lonely and you can be standing in a crowded room with people, but feel lonely.

There’s only one person in my life who reigns over whether or not I’m lonely. Whether I’m physically with him or not, knowing he’s in my life keeps the loneliness away. When he’s standing in front of me and I feel him slipping away, the ache of loneliness takes over and drowns me. Being that vulnerable to a person is frightening.

I hadn’t talked to Noah for three days. We had never gone that long without talking. In fact, we had never gone a day without talking or seeing each other. It was not for lack of trying on my part. I called several times, but he never picked up, the calls all went to voicemail. I saw him briefly at school. In class he was very distant, practically ignoring me. He’d say
hi
if we were near each other, but that was the extent of it. I spent a lot of time in the girl’s bathroom, crying after each encounter I had with him. I couldn’t concentrate on anything.

Immediately after school each day, I found myself in the journalism classroom flipping through all the pictures of him that had been taken for the article I wrote. Then I would go and stalk him. I hung out at the boy’s locker room, which garnered me some strange looks and a few phone numbers. He saw me a few times, but never acknowledged me. I was lost not having daily contact with him. I didn’t know who I was without him. My words the other night hurt him, I knew that, I guess I didn’t realize how much. He said he would be there if I needed him. I needed him now, but he wouldn’t even look at me.

It was the day of the dance. I got home earlier than usual. Emily was home for the weekend to help me get ready and she told me to get home as soon as possible. She said we needed several hours to achieve my look. I wasn’t sure how to take that. It usually didn’t take me that long to get ready for anything. At this point, I didn’t even want to go to the stupid dance, but I had asked Vincent. I couldn’t bring myself to call and cancel.