Chapter 15
It had been almost a month since the fire, and I knew my time staying with Noah would be ending soon.
This fact hung around the apartment like a bad smell.
It was heavy and oppressive, and I swore that I could feel it every time we looked at each other.
The truth was, I didn’t want to go back to my apartment.
I was comfortable at Noah’s. I loved waking up with him and falling asleep with him.
Ever since the night we made lasagna and cleared the air, I didn’t even feel as bad about the fact that I was falling so fast for him.
Because yeah, it wasn’t what we’d talked about. It was the opposite of what we’d planned, but he wasn’t upset at the fact that my heart was trying to do a speed run of our relationship. Just like I didn’t mind that I might always be waiting for him to catch up.
Our relationship was working for us, and there was a small part of me that worried that maybe it wouldn’t work as well once we were no longer living together. It was silly, and I knew it, but that nagging fear was always there, humming under the surface.
It was a part of the bad smell.
I wasn’t even surprised when my phone rang in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon.
Ten minutes later, the other shoe had dropped.
My apartment would be ready a week from Friday.
I had only a week and a half left staying with my boyfriend, a week and a half of all the quiet, domestic moments I’d come to love. I had to savor them.
I closed my laptop early, an hour before Noah was meant to be home from work, and I started making dinner. I was pulling the roasted chicken and vegetables from the oven when I heard his key in the doorway. “I know it’s not what we had on the menu, but I wanted to surprise you.”
“It was my night to cook,” Noah pointed out with a grin and a quick kiss.
I pulled him in for a deeper one, the kind that I could feel at a cellular level.
He was such an amazing kisser, and I was pretty sure I was going to miss the ready supply of those the most. I wondered how I was going to go back to not having them whenever I wanted.
I was going to miss the way he always tasted like overly sweetened coffee when he got home from work, which was the only way I even liked coffee.
Normally, I hated it, but when it was on Noah’s tongue? Delicious.
The kiss lingered on my lips, even after he pulled away. I watched as his lips curved up into a small smile, and my stomach swooped. “Well, you’ve had a long day at work—”
“So have you,” he countered. “Don’t you have a milestone coming up?”
I scrunched my nose at the reminder. The next milestone was due in a few days, but for once in this project, I wasn’t stressed about it.
It was just a few tweaks to code I’d already written for the project, a few changed parameters, and it would do exactly what I wanted.
I would probably finish that milestone early, which meant that it wasn’t a burden to take on an extra night of cooking.
Besides, bad news was always better delivered with good food.
I plated up our dinner, and we took it to the couch. It was routine now, comfortable and lived in. Noah turned on the television and found a nature documentary he’d been wanting to watch. “You know,” I teased, “I cooked. I think that means I’m supposed to be the one to choose the show.”
“But it was my night to cook, meaning it was my night to choose first.” Every time he issued a counter argument, I was reminded of the fact that he’d been a champion debater in high school.
I’d loved watching him then, and I loved hearing his debates now.
Even when I was on the receiving end. Of course, back then, he couldn’t use puppy dog eyes on his opponent.
He could on me, and I was weak to them. “Besides, you know I’ve been waiting on this one to drop. ”
It was a good thing I was teasing, because I would have folded like a soggy napkin.
Even if I’d meant it. His puppy eyes were a devastating weapon.
“Before you start,” I began. His eyes lit up because he knew he had won.
And well, we both liked winning too much to be entirely healthy. “My landlord called today.”
He put the remote down on the couch and angled his body to look at me. “Another delay?”
Was it just wishful thinking, or was there hope in his voice?
“The apartment will be ready a week from Friday.”
He deflated at the news, and it was all the confirmation I needed that it wasn’t wishful thinking. Not at all. He was just as saddened by the idea of us no longer living in the warm bubble of his apartment as I was. “Oh?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“How do you feel about it?”
I skewered a roasted carrot with my fork and brought it to my lips, using the food to give myself a moment to think.
I was sad about going home, but it was more complicated than that.
I missed my apartment. I missed my bed, and I missed having my full wardrobe.
I missed my collection of rubber ducks, and I hadn’t read a comic book in almost a month.
I missed being able to blast the Glee soundtrack during times of emotional distress without it pinging every single one of Noah’s alarm bells.
There were things I missed about my place, but I didn’t know if any of them outweighed how much I didn’t want to leave.
Because I had headphones, I could listen to the Glee soundtrack just as easily with them.
The ducks I had at his place weren’t as good as the ducks I had at my apartment, but they got the job done.
A little slower than the myriad of ducks I had at home did, but…
I may have already thought of places where I could keep my ducks at Noah’s apartment.
You know, if that were to ever become a place where I kept my full collection of ducks.
And my bed? My bed didn’t have Noah.
That was what I was going to miss the most. That was the hardest part of seeing the end of this arrangement, and that was why it was so complicated.
I swallowed down my carrot and shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
“Talk it out?”
Another carrot. Another moment to collect my thoughts.
Noah followed my lead and ate one of the roasted potatoes, closing his eyes as he savored the flavor.
I watched his lips move as he chewed. “I’m going to miss this,” I said quietly.
“I’m going to miss kissing you when you come home from work and eating dinner together and cooking together.
I’m going to miss watching your documentaries and listening to you complain about my selections. ”
“Because you always choose musicals,” he started. I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. “Or sitcoms.”
I stuck my tongue out at him, pulling one of those magical laughs from his lips. “As I was saying, I’m going to miss all of this. I’m really going to miss those early morning kisses and seeing you with your hair all messed up and those moments when you actually wear your glasses.”
“So, you’re going to miss me looking ugly?”
“You have never looked ugly a day in your life,” I assured him.
“I’m going to miss seeing you not perfectly put together all the time.
I like seeing it. I like knowing that you don’t let anyone else see that.
” Not even the people he’d hooked up with in the years we were broken up and growing into adults.
He’d told me all about it, how he rarely let them sleep over.
How, on the rare occasions he let a guy sleep over, he’d sneak out of bed early to brush his teeth and put in his contacts, assuming he ever took them out.
He didn’t even let them see his in-depth skin care routine.
“I’m going to miss you, too,” he told me before he popped a piece of chicken in his mouth. “I sleep better when you’re here.”
“I sleep better when I’m here, too.” I went to bed earlier than when I was left to my own devices.
I got more sleep because going to bed with him was more appealing than stealing a few more minutes on my laptop.
When I went home, I wouldn’t have anything motivating me to go to bed at a halfway decent hour.
“Guess we just have to make the most of the time we have left then.”
Noah was right. We had to make the best out of the next week and a half. I had to soak in this domestic bliss, absorb every minute of it that I could, because soon, I would be having lonely dinners and late nights again.
The next few days were amazing, but I could feel it.
I could feel that thrum of tension, of knowing that this was ending soon.
Our relationship was going to change. Not living together, not seeing each other every day would change things.
How could it not? Even my friends picked up on the tension during our Thursday night hang out.
They tried to pull me out of my head, but I was too far gone.
And every day that passed, I just found myself getting deeper and deeper into my thoughts.
I kept replaying the last time I left him.
It had been for the better. I knew that.
I had known it then, and I knew it now. I didn’t regret our high school breakup, choosing my future over my boyfriend.
I didn’t regret choosing to stay friends with him rather than attempting a long-distance relationship that was doomed to fail, but it had hurt.
Kissing him goodbye at the airport had hurt, even if I’d known it was the right thing to do.
I knew this wasn’t the same thing. I knew that this wasn’t the end for us, just because we would no longer be living together. But knowing something and feeling it were two entirely different things. It felt the same, walking away from him, going back to my life.
Noah had noticed it, too. He kept trying to pull me out of my thoughts, kept prodding me to talk about whatever was going on in my head.
I didn’t know how to word it to him. I didn’t know how to tell it to him in a way that might make sense to anyone who didn’t live in my head.
Unfortunately, I’d never been great at translating my thoughts into words.
I hated that I felt like I was wasting the time we had left by being so deep in my head, too.
It was just another thing that I couldn’t explain.
That feeling of wasting time grew, and time kept moving by. Faster and faster, until it was the Wednesday before I was set to leave. It was our last night with just us. I had my time with the boys the next night, and then it was moving day.
Instead of cooking, Noah brought home takeout.
We ate while a movie we’d chosen together played in the background, and then we spent the rest of the movie curled up together.
I could hear the sound of his heartbeat in my ear, feel the steady rise and fall of his chest, and I wished I could pause time.
I wished I could freeze it and stay in this moment forever.
“How much longer’s your lease?” Noah asked when the credits rolled. His arms tightened around me, pulling me closer to him. He pulled me so close that it felt like he was trying to merge us together into one entity.
“Three or four months, I think,” I answered. “Why?”
“Then in two or three months, we can talk about you moving in here full time. Just a few more months, right?”
I looked up at him. His eyes were as soft as his voice, and my heart swelled.
Two or three months wasn’t long. It might have been too fast to be talking about moving in together, but I didn’t care.
I’d had a taste of it now, and I wanted to hold onto it with both hands.
I wanted this future with him, and if we could put a clear timeline to it? Then that was all the better.
“And until then, we can have sleepovers.”
“So many sleepovers,” he agreed, kissing me on the top of my head. “Because I’m a man of creature comforts, and this is the best creature comfort there is.”
I quirked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think I like being called a creature comfort.”
Noah’s laugh sounded loud in my ear. “Baby, I called you the best creature comfort.”
I reached for the remote and found the sequel to the movie we just watched. The movie hadn’t been the greatest, but it was the perfect excuse to extend this. To stay laying with him. To keep being his best creature comfort, whatever the hell that actually meant.
It was the best way to hide the fact that I kept slipping and sliding back into my head.
Two or three months. A lot could change in that time.
What if, once we weren’t living together, he realized that this wasn’t what he wanted?
What if I stopped being what he wanted? And there were other things that could happen in that time.
He could get bored with me. The shine of the new relationship could wear off, and we could figure out that there wasn’t a lot going on underneath.
No.
No, I knew that wasn’t the case.
When he held me, I felt like I was home.
I felt like I was exactly where I belonged, and I didn’t think that was going to fade in two or three months.
Every minute that passed, I only felt it stronger.
Every day that he smiled at me, I felt more certain.
Every time I heard his laugh or kissed him or talked to him, I knew that there was more going on than some honeymoon period in our rekindled relationship.
I felt Noah’s hand on my face, cupping my cheek. He nudged my face gently until I was looking at him and not the characters on the television screen, characters I didn’t even recognize. “You’re thinking really loud. Still in your head about leaving?”
I nodded.
Noah gave me the world’s gentlest kiss. “Thinking that hard cannot be good for you, and this movies sucks. C’mon.”
“Hm?”
“We’re going to see what we can do about turning off your brain for a while.”