Chapter Twelve Noah
Chapter Twelve
Noah
April
“Hey, did I tell you my boss submitted my work to that shoe company I love? They’re scouting for new website designers.”
I say it nonchalantly, but Goldie’s head pops up, her eyes open wide.
“Noah. That’s amazing. Are you nervous?”
I wasn’t before, but why am I suddenly now? My heart beats funny, almost like it skips a beat, as I peer down my nose at her, thinking about my future. We’re lying on my living room couch, whatever we were watching long forgotten as the rain beats down outside.
It’s a perfect day. Me and my girl, doing nothing.
From where she’s lying on her stomach, Goldie reaches over me for another marker. They’re strewn out over the coffee table.
I smirk as she uncaps it with her teeth.
“Not really,” I finally answer. “Should I be?”
“Yeah,” she says excitedly. “What if they love your work so much, they’re like, ‘We have to steal him away to design shoes for us.’ That’s your dream.”
“Sneakers,” I correct playfully. “And that’s not happening. But I like your imagination.”
She rolls her eyes and tilts her head, hyperfocused on what she’s doing—which is coloring in my tattoos.
It’s her favorite thing to do . . . get me shirtless and decorate me even more. Currently, she’s bringing the skull on my rib cage to life. I squirm as the swipe tickles.
“Imagination is sustenance for dreamers and fools,” she whispers before looking up at me. “Which one we are depends on our choice.”
I smile as she gently blows on her artwork.
“Who said that?”
“Me.”
I grin, clasping my hands behind my head as I stare at the ceiling. “Then I suppose today I’m a dreamer.”
She bites her bottom lip, but instead of kissing her I keep talking.
“You know, you’re really good with words. Have you ever thought about—”
“Shussha ya mouth,” she teases, interrupting me. “I’ll have you know I wrote something.” It’s my turn to look surprised, but she ignores me, coloring while she speaks. “A piece for that magazine I told you about a few months ago.”
I sit up quickly, forcing her back onto her haunches as she groans because she’s colored outside the lines.
“Noah . . .” she gripes.
But I push. “Can I read it?”
She shakes her head, then puts the lid back on the marker before tossing it back on the table.
“No. No way. I can’t . . .”
Her eyes won’t meet mine, and I hate it.
“Hey . . .” She looks off to the side, so I use my fingers to guide her chin back. “Come on. Why not? The whole world will get to once they publish it. This is huge.”
Goldie’s eyes squeeze shut. “If they publish it.” When she reopens them, they look greener and more nervous as she shrugs. “It’s just easier to get rejected when nobody else knows.”
“I’m not nobody,” I complain as charmingly as I can before I take her face in my hands, feeling her lean into them. “To quote this mad hottie I love, ‘dreamer or fool’?”
She scrunches her nose, pretending she’s miserable, but I know better. Even Princess knows better because she jumps up, purring and rubbing her face all over Goldie.
I close the distance and kiss my girl gently, brushing her hair away.
“I love you, killer. Let me do this with you. You don’t have to do this stuff alone. Plus, I’ve never known anyone that could make me feel half the things I’ve felt with only a few words.”
She groans but keeps her eyes on mine. “You’re biased.”
“So? Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Since I’ve known Goldie, writing’s always been something that’s private to her.
She never talks about it, and I don’t pry.
But I’ve watched her throw away countless ideas in the trash, write daydreams down in her journal, and stare at her computer screen before slamming it shut, mumbling to herself that goals are overrated.
I’ve watched her process for six months, and if she’s finally broken through whatever wall she’s been on the other side of, I’d like to be there to celebrate with her too.
Goldie blinks up at me, and there’s a rawness in her expression as she blows out a heavy breath.
“If you hate it—lie.”
“Done,” I rush out, letting her go as she uses my body to get off the couch.
My chin lifts as I watch her walk before I rub my hands together, making her laugh.
Goldie rummages through her giant bag before pulling out some folded papers. She looks over her shoulder at me before she walks back, holding them out while chewing the inside of her cheek. We’re smiling at each other as I stand, take them, and unfold them before looking down at the title:
History’s Overrated, Unless You Live in the World or You’re an Adopted Kid at a Routine Doctor’s Visit: How the Absence of My Past Mapped Out My Future
I lift my head, my eyes connecting with hers. “You wrote about being adopted?”
She nods cautiously like she’s still debating whether or not to let me read it. “The thing is, one night, I started thinking about the first night we met. And how you asked if I’d ever looked into my history. Like, tried to find my birth parents—”
Without thinking, I reach for her hand, remembering how we walked around.
“—and honestly, I started thinking about how so many times in my life, I’ve run in the opposite direction from my past or prebirth.”
She chuckles quietly, and I do, too, before I cut in: “It makes sense, though. Your family’s pretty incredible.”
“Exactly,” she rushes out, squeezing my hand.
“I was so lucky that it felt greedy to harbor ideas of some loving reunion with the people who couldn’t keep me.
Plus, how would that actually feel if that’s what happened—I reunited with people who could tell me things about myself .
. . stuff my parents never knew. Would it ruin what I have?
Leave that little asterisk next to their name despite how open they are to it?
It always seemed like a risk too big to take. ”
Her eyes start to glisten as I search them. She’ll never know how deeply I understand the last part of what she’s said. Or that she’s become the thing I’m not willing to risk.
Goldie lets go of my hand, running hers over her hair.
“Sorry, I’m dumping all over you. You should just read it, and I’ll shut up.”
She doesn’t need to tell me that there’s so much more she wants to say. It’s in the way her eyes search the space in front of her without really looking at anything and how she’s already picking at her nail polish.
“Hey.” I shake my head. “No. Talk to me. You don’t tell your sister this stuff, and I know you don’t talk to your parents about it. I’m your person, Goldie. It’s Noah plus Goldie forever, right?”
She frowns, glancing up at me, and then it all spills out.
“Fuck. I think what I didn’t realize is that once Pandora’s box is open, there’s no closing it.
Once I started questioning things about myself, I couldn’t unquestion them.
Where I get the color of my eyes . . . whether freckles run in my family .
. . who gave me the longer second toe . .
. who else is allergic to pineapple. All those questions were just hanging out in the back of my mind, eventually joining forces to remind me I didn’t truly know who I was. ”
I reach for her, my hand finding her waist.
“But you do know who you are,” I push back. “You’re the most self-aware person I’ve ever known. What came before you doesn’t make or change who you are now.”
Even as I say it, I have to wonder if it’s more for me or for her.
Goldie’s eyes lock to mine before she steps in closer, letting me hug her. Because I need what I just said to be what we both believe.
“No, Noah, that’s not totally true.” Her chin drags upward, bringing her eyes to mine as I look down.
“Sure, I know how I like my coffee or how my love of flowers definitely comes from my mother. But I’ve been writing and writing all these years, trying to be the next great whatever, and I always get the same critique: ‘Your writing doesn’t connect with the voice.
’ And what all those rejections really mean is that I have impeccable technical abilities but nothing to say—”
I start to interrupt, but she puts her hand on my chest. “—and that’s because I pretend I don’t have history.
That pot of a thousand ingredients who all cooked to make me who I am.
Only having an origin with my family isn’t enough.
Noah, we’re a collection of stories and history passed on between nurture and nature—”
I feel numb.
“—and I only have the ‘nurture’ part because I’ve always run away from the reality.
So, I wrote about feeling disconnected. And how that void is also a piece of who I am.
Which I think is rare but relatable. But I guess you’ll tell me,” she chuckles.
“Because no one’s ever really seen me until you. ”
I do see her. But I wonder if that seems as dangerous to her as it does to me. I’m not sure I can trust myself to speak right now. To not spill all my deep, dark secrets at her feet so I can give her what she’s gifted me.
The truth.
Instead, I press the papers to my chest with reverence and kiss her. I kiss her until I feel my legs under me again.
“Thank you for letting me read this,” I whisper into her lips.
She lets out a whoosh of breath before letting the moment fade out to a lighter vibe.
“Okay, enough of all the serious shit. Go read fast because I’ll be over here dying of anticipation just as quickly.”
I chuckle, following her lead, before deciding to do something I’ve been holding off for later. I’m not sure why, but it just feels right to give her my present since that’s what reading this feels like.
“Hold on. I’ve got something for you too. Stay here.”
Her eyes grow wide as I wink and walk past her in a flash, heading into my bedroom. When I come out a few seconds later empty handed, her brows raise.
“You got me air. Thanks, breathing has always been my favorite thing.”
I reach out to tickle her as I stop in front of her. “Smart-ass. Listen.” I hold up her article. “I’d like to read without you hovering, so go open the box on the bed.”
“Yay, presents.”
She bounces and claps at the same time, like the cutest fucking thing in the world. Wait until she sees what I got her.
I scratch the back of my neck. “You might hate it, so . . .”
A kiss is pressed to my cheek before she walks quickly, but my eyes follow her, watching, before I whip back to the words on the paper.
I slide a hand over the cover page before I open it and dive in.
I’m two paragraphs in when I hear, “Who wraps a present with duct tape? It’s diabolical.” I smile, continuing. When I turn the page, she yells, “Noah. A box inside another box. Seriously?”
I chuckle, still focused on what I’m reading because she was right. I am biased. I think every word of this article is perfection.
It’s so honest and raw. And that’s fucking me up a little bit because if Goldie not knowing her birth parents feels like a void she needs to fill, if she needs to know her past, then how does she keep loving a guy who’s erased his?
My eyes have swept the last paragraph, devouring every word, just as I hear her scream. I’m folding the papers back in half as her excited face stares back at me from the kitchen with my note in one hand and a new key chain in the other.
Her fingernails tap the wall like her emotions are ready to explode.
“You first,” I say.
She can’t even contain herself, running to me before I catch her with one arm as she jumps and wraps her legs around my waist.
“Yes,” she rushes out. “Let’s move in together.”
She’s breathless as I grab the back of her head, going in for a kiss until her hands press to my chest.
“No, no . . . you next.”
I laugh because I’d almost forgotten.
“It’s genius. Entertaining and funny. Emotional and really relatable. It sounds like you. They’d be fucking idiots not to publish you.”
I mean every word.
She kisses me, and I don’t know if it’s the sublimity of this moment coaxing out my memories, but as I open my eyes and we stare at each other, something sad sits on the fringes. Something I’ve run from for a long time that seems to still be chasing my future.
“Hey, can I talk to you?”
Lily pulls me next to a bank of lockers.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“I can’t go to homecoming with you.”
“What do you mean? It’s not for a month. You can’t suddenly have other plans.”
“My dad said no.”
“Because you’re going with me?”
She nods. “I’m sorry . . . It’s because your mom, and . . . well, because, ya know?”
I don’t say anything back because there’s nothing to say. Why did I even ask her? I knew better. This town hates me and wishes I was never born. That’ll never change.
As Lily walks away, I look up at all the eyes in the hallway glancing in my direction. All of them staring at me like the psycho they think I am.
Maybe there is something wrong with me.
Everyone always says some people are just born bad. I turn away from the gawking and slam my shitty locker door, feeling a sting. When I look down at my palm, the skin slowly turns from pink to red, blood rising to the surface.
The first cuts always hurt the most, I think before wiping my hand over the metal door and walking away.