38. Queenie
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
QUEENIE
RECOMMENDED LISTENING ‘YEH ISHQ HAI’ BY SHREYA GHOSHAL
“Do you know what I don’t understand?” Mischa asks me a few days later. She’s sprawled on my bed, flipping through the pages of my newest book obsession – Graceling by Kristin Cashore. It’s about a royal assassin who falls in love with the guy whose uncle she is meant to kill. And it is bad ass.
“What?”
“First, why are you wasting your time reading this fluff.” She taps the book cover. “When you need to be catching up on your texts for next semester. And secondly.” She sits up and gives me a pensive look. “Aren’t you moving awfully fast with Noah?”
I duck out of the bathroom where I’m shaving my face, without nicking myself. “Fiction expands the mind and imagination and helps with cognitive behavior changes. So, the only reason I can think of for you to diss on my book babies is because of Noah.”
She puts her chin on her knees and doesn’t look at me. Just worries the toe ring on her middle toe. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to, Meesh. I know you too well.”
I scrape off the last of the cream with my blade and splash water on my face. I talk to her as I wipe down the excess water. “Would you believe me if I said he makes me happy? He helps me be present?” I smile goofily. “And the constant multiple orgasms is a nice side benefit I cannot overlook.”
“We’ll table the orgasms for the moment and focus.” Mischa shakes her head. “You’re a chronic overthinker. And you don’t trust anyone anymore. You said this yourself back when I told you to talk to Teddy and maybe ask him out. And here you are…playing house with this stranger and doing the deed with him after knowing him, what, seven weeks?”
“Yes, but—” I sit on the bed next to her and nudge her shoulder with mine. She doesn’t budge. “I thought I had a crush on Teddy because he’s obviously good-looking. He plays cricket and he was nice to me when I was waiting on him,” I say slowly. Trying to put into words the evolution of my feelings for Noah. Trying to make sense of them myself. “I think I also liked him because I didn’t want to do anything with the like.”
“Okay.” She sounds even more skeptical than before.
“With Noah, we began in such an unconventional way I didn’t even get a choice to do anything differently. He just showed up and swept me away.” My lips twitch as I now think back to our first days of fighting and bickering.
I now understand it was all the unresolved sexual tension between us. And the very real moral lines we’d drawn.
“I mean, I kissed him before I said hello to him, Meesh. And he has never once, not for a second, taken advantage of that fact or any other. He’s done so much more for me than anyone else. And he did it without any agenda.”
Mischa sighs. “Then send him a thank you card. Don’t…” She waves her hand at the room, where some of Noah’s things are lying on the couch and the chairs. “Cohabit with him?”
Since we spend a lot of time together, in bed and out of it (and in the kitchen, and the bathroom, and the backseat of his Jeep), it’s natural for his things to be around more. Besides, we’ve been sharing a bed for almost a month now. Even before we started sleeping together.
“It’s just for a few more weeks, Mischa. Till the end of summer,” I try to reassure her. But just saying the words fill my heart with a pang. I try not to think about it, but this…thing…with Noah has a time limit. Sand running through an hourglass.
Our summer, this summer… is unreal. A vacation from who I really am. Who he probably really is. So, it’s easy to fall into it with abandon.
But it might not hold up in the cold chill of autumn and beyond.
Summer romances are special because they live in their own bubble, right?
“Do you believe yourself?” Mischa searches my eyes, looking for an answer even I can’t find.
“I have spent my whole life, since I was five, with every second of my life planned out,” I say, instead. “I’ve been singularly focused on getting into med school and make Amma and Appa proud of me for as long as I can remember. It’s taken up all of my time. All of it. I’m finally living for me, you know?” I say softly.
“I finally breathe freely. I smile freely,” I admit the truth. “And it’s not just because Noah makes me forget what that asshole did to Dolly and me. It’s because I like who I am when I am with him. Even when we’re fighting.”
Mischa sighs and hugs me. “You really like him, don’t you?”
I blink. And shrug. “I’m trying not to put a label on it.”
And I really am not. Fake boyfriend and girlfriend works as well as anything else. And we haven’t talked about any of this for the last two weeks since the Fourth of July party.
I never feel the need to when I am in his presence. Because he is so intent on me, I don’t need words to understand how he feels.
And yes, I am a little scared to ask too. Because we have known each other a short while. And too much has happened in this short while.
And to be honest, I haven’t felt the need to have a partner, a boyfriend, a romantic relationship so far because no one interested me as much as the life I was building for myself as a doctor. But Noah’s interesting and fascinating and dramatic and just…so there I have to take notice of him, whether I like it or not.
But most of all, asking Noah about the future means I have to face mine. And I’m not ready to, not yet.
“And you’re happy?” she asks again, doubtful.
“The happiest,” I assure her. And hug her back tightly. “If I had known sex was meant to be this kind of awesome, I might have practiced it more with the idiot from Psych class.” I wink at her.
Mischa laughs and shakes her head. “You really have changed, Queenie. And it looks good on you.”
I mull over her words a few hours later when I’m on my shift at the diner. Mischa is not wrong. I had made plans with her to study and catch up on my reading and notes for the next semester. The plan was always to go back to school in the fall, once spring semester passed me by. Continue my med school journey.
But meeting Noah, watching him and Fox and Ares be so incredibly passionate and focused about cricket is… defining me. They get up at all hours of the day and put in untold hours of practice and drills. They also are sticklers with diet and rest, especially before match day.
I have a ringside view of dedication, determination, passion, and ambition coming together to make an impossible dream come true.
It’s what I need in order to get through the next decade of med school.
Except…except…I shake my head. All these exceptions and thinking about the nebulous future gives me a cluster headache.
My phone buzzes. Since I’m in the pantry, I extract it from my apron and check it.
“What do you want?” I ask by way of greeting.
“You in my lap, while I feast on your tits,” Noah answers promptly.
I laugh and hold the phone in the crook of my neck. I remove the ketchup and mustard bottles for refilling. “You’re incorrigible.”
“I’m honest,” he retorts.
“Did you call me just to flirt incorrigibly with me or is there an actual purpose for this call?”
“I can do both, can’t I?”
“Noah!” I admonish him.
“I get hard every time you use your strict doctor voice with me, Hellcat.” His voice drops a sexy octave. “Do it again.”
I squeeze my legs together because of an answering reaction in my panties. And then, because I’m so distracted I say, “And what if I tell you I don’t want to be a doctor, strict or otherwise?”
“You don’t?”
I hesitate a microsecond before answering him truthfully, “I’m actually keen on neuroscience. As a career. I want to research the mysteries of the brain and find answers to them. Maybe even find a connection to why certain people get affected by neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.”
“That’s heavy-duty.” Noah’s quiet, thoughtful.
“It is. It’s still medicine. I am just more interested in academia than practical application, you know,” I say softly.
“So, you don’t have to start all over again with college?” Bless him for asking the most practical question. “You’ll not lose out on all the education you already have?”
“No,” I answer. “I’ll need to take a few extra classes to make up for certain subjects. But I can essentially switch streams right now and not lose much time.”
“That’s excellent then, Queenie. When are you starting?” He sounds so completely sincere tears spurt in my eyes.
Mischa’s known all the versions of me. The go-getter, the straight A student, the dutiful daughter, the hurt and rebellious senior who dropped out of college than deal with the mess of her college life.
But Noah’s only ever known me as a waitress at Ma’s Pantry. He’s only ever seen me as dependent on him – whether it is helping me out by kissing me at a party or giving me a place to stay because I’m homeless.
He has no reason to have any kind of faith in me. To believe I can do this.
That he does, without question, is why I’m with him. Why I can’t stand the idea of not kissing him anymore.
Noah believes in me. Period.
It is such a rare and beautiful thing, this unquestioning belief, my heart overflows with it.
“I still have to tell my parents. I haven’t talked to them properly for two months,” I try hard to keep my voice level even as a hot tear streaks down my cheek. “And I’ve to fill all these forms. And Thorndon might not even agree to keep my scholarship if I change majors now.”
“Then you’ll convince them,” he says simply. “Same with your parents.”
“How do you know?” I demand aggressively. “I’m just a stupid waitress at a stupid diner refilling mustard into Kitten squeezey bottles for minimum wage.” I sniffle a little.
“Because you’re a logical woman,” Noah replies calmly. “And logic dictates you’ll take the path required to get to your destination. Which is becoming a neuroscientist. If it means changing majors or talking to your parents or fighting with Thorndon, you’ll do so. I know you will.”
“I haven’t been logical with you,” I point out nastily.
“That’s because I make you lose your mind, baby,” he says cheerfully. Arrogantly.
I laugh through my tears. “You’re an idiot, Aussie boy.”
“I’m your idiot who misses you, so he called you to hear your voice.”
I sigh. “I get off at seven. I’ll see you then. And don’t you have practice? Aren’t you trying to nail the cover drive you keep messing up?”
“I am. But I got the Hellcat signal in my heart, you know.”
“The Hellcat signal?”
“It’s like the Bat Signal.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Except it’s a prickly cat with glowing eyes and curly ears.”
“I think I’m going to base my research on how a perfectly smart Australian cricketer descended into a blithering idiot,” I say meditatively.
“I’ll save you the time. It’s because he met this curvy, gorgeous, wicked smart desi girl who makes him lose his mind.”
“Go away, you maddening man. Have a ball or two hit your head and get it straight.”
“I could change the location of the Hellcat signal. It could be on my cock,” he insists drolly.
One of the other staff pokes their head in and raises their brows at me. I hold up one finger, signaling one minute. Blushing hard at all this silly horny talk. Really, how dramatic can he be?
“If it’s on your cock the Hellcat will not be responsible for any scratches and marks on it.”
Noah winces. “You’re a hard woman to argue with, Queenie.”
“You’re the one who’s hard, Noah,” I say tartly. “Now, I have to go. I’ll see you in the evening. Okay?” And I end the call before he says something funny or touching or outrageous.
But the warm glow of his trust, his faith in me remains in my heart.
It sparks the germ of an idea for how I can do the same for him.