26. Noah
26
NOAH
The next few weeks pass in a blur.
For about a week after the incident with Ryan, Izzy and I were in and out of meetings with Mrs. Fisher. Even though we told Luke about everything that had happened, she still needed to hear it from us.
It was hard to admit to them that Ryan had been bullying me. But after speaking more with Appa about it, I realised that it was something I needed to face before it festered inside me. I called him a lot before those meetings, wanting his advice about how I should handle the situation, and he told me to just tell the truth, so I did.
A few days after our final meeting with Mrs. Fisher, with Mr. Reid and Luke present, we found out that Ryan had been expelled. He would be allowed to take exams, but in a separate room from everyone else. The relief was obvious on Izzy’s face when she smiled at me in that office, and it set my heart at ease.
We slipped back into our routine easily. Izzy shows up at my practices, no longer on crutches, so I don’t have to worry about her coming down the stairs. It’s like I’m looking at my own personal sun every time I see her on the sidelines, and I don’t hide my smiles anymore. Josh teases me for it sometimes, but I’ve seen the way he acts around his girlfriend.
I don’t know what Izzy and I are doing anymore. Obviously, we both have feelings for each other, but neither of us is taking the risk of saying it. I want to enjoy these moments with her before it all ends though. I want to show her that I don’t want it to end.
That’s how I’ve ended up outside her room on the last day before Christmas break, which also happens to be her birthday. Amelia and Chloe mentioned it at lunch a few weeks ago, and I’ve spent the entire time since then thinking about what I should get her.
Nothing I found online seemed good enough, and I didn’t want to buy something for the sake of it. This might be the only gift I ever give her, and I want it to mean something. The only thing that caught my eye while searching was a website where you can buy a star for someone, but it felt too impersonal. Then I realised I could make one for her.
I still walk with her to and from class every day and usually spend my evenings in her room doing homework. The other girls on her floor have gotten used to seeing me now, and there’s no risk of them telling a teacher I’m here.
However, when I walked her back to her room today, I made up an excuse saying I’d left something in my room, and I’d catch up with her. Really, it was just so I could get her gift. I stayed up late every night for the past week putting it together, and I hope she likes it.
I carry the small dark blue box to her room, lifting the lid slightly to check that everything is still intact before I knock on her door.
“Come in.”
I enter her room, closing the door behind me, before I approach where she’s sitting at her desk, focused on her homework. As soon as she looks up at me, I hold the box out to her. She gives me a puzzled look, putting her pen down as she turns her whole body in her chair to face me.
“What’s this?”
“A present.”
“For me?” she asks, pointing to herself.
I nod, a smile tilting at the corner of my lips from her question. She reaches out to touch the box, her fingers tracing over the corners of it before she takes it from me.
“Can I open it?” Izzy asks, glancing down at the box before looking back up at me.
“Of course,” I tell her, and a second later, she lifts the lid, revealing what I’ve made.
Over a dozen origami stars hang from the lid of the box, surrounding a crescent moon. It took a lot of time to make, a couple of paper cuts too, but it’s worth it for the look on her face right now. Her mouth hangs open slightly, green eyes bright and wide, and the top of her cheeks start turning pink.
“Noah, you made this?” she asks, touching one of the stars and moving her face closer to it. “This is incredible.”
“Happy birthday, Izzy. I wanted to give you something to say thank you for everything you’ve done these past few months.”
She replaces the lid carefully, gently moving the box over to the desk. Then she pushes herself up so she’s standing, and her arms are around my neck, pulling me closer to her. I freeze for barely a second before leaning my head down to make it easier for her, my arms moving to circle her waist as if we’ve done this a million times before.
“Thank you. I love it,” she whispers, and my stupid heart hears I love you instead.
I hold Izzy close, not wanting this moment to end a second earlier than it has to. If this is the only time I’ll get to hold her like this, I’ll take as much as I can get.
After twenty-one of the best seconds of my life, Izzy loosens her grip on me. I do the same as much as my head and heart tell me not to. But then the next five seconds overtake those twenty-one, as Izzy moves her hands to my face. She gently pulls my face closer to hers and kisses my cheek, dangerously close to the corner of my mouth. She lets go of me, but I’m frozen, still leaning over her, her green eyes piercing into mine.
If she tried to kiss me now, I wouldn’t stop her.
“Izzy, are you there?”
We step away from each other as whoever’s outside her door starts to knock on it.
“Should I hide?” I whisper, alarm setting in as I look around and try to find the best place to hide.
“No, it’s just Amelia. You can sit there,” she says, pointing at her chair before walking over to the door. I run my hands through my hair, trying to settle my racing heart before we have an audience. I place a palm over my chest, rubbing my sternum as she opens the door.
“Great news. We have New Year's plans,” Amelia says, as she barges into the room with Chloe behind her. “Oh, hey Noah.”
I take my hand away from my chest and raise it in a halfhearted wave, forcing my face to look as friendly as possible. It doesn’t matter though, because they’re barely paying attention to me as they talk to each other.
“Olly is having a party at his house. His parents are going abroad for New Year's and he convinced them to let him stay behind,” Amelia explains.
“Where does he live again?” Izzy asks as she comes back to my side. She keeps a slight gap between us, and her friend’s eyes me up, eyebrows raised, and gaze pointed as they notice my hands clasped tightly in my lap.
Izzy must notice at the same time that I do because she steps closer to me. She glances down at me for a quick second with a silent question in her eyes. I break my hands apart and hook one arm across her waist, shuffling her forward slightly until Izzy sets herself down on my thigh. She places her arm lightly around my shoulders, her hand coming up to rest against the side of my neck. It’s embarrassing that she can feel how fast my heart is beating. Her friends’ expressions relax as they continue their conversation.
“Surrey, we’ve been there before. He’s the one with the big house, indoor pool, huge garden with the little pond that Josh fell in, remember?”
“You didn’t have to bring that up!” Chloe interrupts, and I have to stifle a laugh at imagining Josh falling into a pond. I will ask him about the story behind that the next time I see him.
“Oh, that Olly. Who else is going?” Izzy asks, her fingers moving lazily up and down my neck. She keeps talking with her friends, but I don’t register a single thing they say.
I do my best to keep my breathing steady, to act like Izzy and I do this all the time, but my heart feels like it’s about to burst out of my chest.
Is this what it would be like if it were real?
Would we sit like this all the time, her keeping me grounded when I feel like running away?
“Noah?”
“Huh?”
“I asked if you were going to come to the party,” Chloe says, exasperation in her voice.
I glance up at Izzy, our gazes connecting. The slight tilt of her head tells me that she won’t force me to go with her, it’s my decision.
“If Izzy wants me to go, then yeah,” I say, my eyes not leaving hers for a second. She smiles down at me, eyes bright with something I can’t name.
“Can you wait until we leave at least?” Amelia says jokingly.
Izzy lets out an airy laugh, her breath ghosting across my skin and giving me goosebumps. She stands up, and the sudden absence of her weight on me makes it feel like half of me has gone missing.
“We will both be there. You can leave now,” Izzy says as she waves her arms at them and shoos them toward the door.
They jokingly complain but both of them hug Izzy on the way out as they make promises to text each other later to make plans for the party. She closes the door behind them and comes back to me.
“Was that okay?” she asks, her eyebrows creased as she twists her hands together. “Sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
“It was fine,” I tell her out loud.
In my head, I tell her that I want to do it over and over again, want her to touch me like that whenever she wants to.
“Do you really want to go to this party?” she asks, perching on the edge of her bed.
“If you want to, then I will. But if you just want to go with your friends, then I won’t.”
“I’d like it if you were there.”
“Then, I’ll be there.”
She nods, giving me a small smile before she leans over me to pick up the box again. Her hair brushes against my face, the scent of cherries overwhelming me and I have to close my eyes to try and ignore how close she is to me.
“Did you really make all of these?” She lifts the lid and fiddles carefully with the stars again.
“It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it,” I tell her as she runs her fingers over every single point of each star. My next words spill out before I can stop them. “I thought about buying you a star, but it didn’t feel like enough. You deserve a whole constellation.”
She’s quiet, her head still ducked low to look at the box, and I worry I’ve said the wrong thing. It feels like I’m exposing myself every time I speak to her now, getting too close to revealing how I truly feel about her. But I don’t want to ruin the friendship we’ve been building. I don’t want to ruin the chances of staying friends with her after the year ends.
“You’re really lovely, Noah. No one’s ever done something like this for me before.”
When Izzy finally looks up at me, there’s a shine in her eyes. I do my best to try to ignore it, to put it down to happy tears, but I know it’s not that. With how Ryan has been behaving since the start of the year, he obviously never treated her right. He didn’t deserve a second of her time.
A tear finally falls from her eyes, and I’m kneeling in front of her in an instant. I reach my hand up to hold her cheek, brushing the drop away as she leans into my palm, her eyes closed.
“I hate that he knew you before I did,” I tell her quietly.
The truths come out more easily when we aren’t looking at each other.
“I wish we’d met earlier,” she admits. “I really could have used a friend like you before.”
Friend.
The word douses me in cold water. I force myself to remember what this is. Our emotions are heightened because we’re both going through a lot, and we’ve spent so much time together putting on this show.
But it’s only us in this room right now. It’s only ever been us when we talk like this, when we’re this close to each other, when she lets me touch her like she’s something precious.
I don’t want to just be her friend, but it’s clear that’s all I can be for her. She’s going through a lot already, and all I need to do is be there for her in whatever capacity she’ll let me. I slide my hand away from her face, curling it into my palm as I stand up.
“My parents are coming soon,” I tell her.
They’re not. They’re arriving tomorrow morning to take Mina and me home, but I need to leave this room before I break down.
“I’ll text you about the party,” she tells me quietly, but she doesn’t look at me.
I take one last look at her, watch her swipe her hand across her cheek, and then I leave with the lump in my throat suffocating me.