Chapter 15
Noah
Despite my parents offering me to stay with them for a few days, I’d dropped them off and promptly set off home, longing for solitude and peace.
After a full week under my parents’ eye, I was ready for it. I was so ready to go back to work, anything to ease the mundane pace of living like this.
In this weird state of longing. I missed…him. Everything about him. I even missed his goddamn sunburnt foot.
I hated holidays. I hated time off. I just wanted to throw myself into a bunch of high blood pressure cases and someone’s weird-looking mole and the pain in someone’s hip, and I’d gladly take every toddler with chickenpox this week. Throw them at me. I’d deal with them all.
I also had my phone burning a virtual hole in my bag. I hadn’t looked at it since yesterday. Not dared to. I’d even turned the ringer off and silenced everything.
I didn’t want to know. Because he’d left and rejected me, and this was my last lifeline.
And I knew full well how it looked because he hadn’t offered me his number, not opened up the possibility of future contact, nor had he invited me to any such…thing.
My mother had instead demanded his contact details from one of his friends and then promptly entered them into my phone like she’d had that right.
She’d also called me a pig-headed fool and told me to get myself together and ring the bloke because he was apparently as besotted with me as I was with him.
Lies. Total fabrication of truths from my gossiping mother. It was a hook-up. A random one. A rebound. A holiday fling. A mindless shag. All things I’d chosen not to further explain to my parents, despite my dad telling me I would regret not organising a repeat performance.
The shame was real. Truly, and I was mortified in every single way.
Welcome to my life. No wonder I was single. We’d been here before, me being set up on blind dates and introduced to suitable single men of the homosexual persuasion. I’d not been impressed and had fled in embarrassment after each one.
The other thing I’d done was delete the apps off my phone because that part of my life was over. I was not doing this again. I got attached easily, and overwhelmed, and what had it been? Two days of constant fucking and I was in love and ready to propose? Seriously, Noah. I needed to stop this.
So I went home. My semi-detached newbuild home, one of three hundred on a packed estate, where I parked my car mere inches from my front door and trampled in my tiny flowerbeds to get out.
Everything was packed and stacked and tiny and fitted, just like my life.
It had always felt like it suited me, but suddenly today?
I felt enclosed. Like there wasn’t enough wide open space to breathe.
Perhaps having spent the past week on a beach had altered my perception of things, but then I’d actually hardly spent any time on that beach.
I’d fucked Fox Riley for two days and then spent the rest of the time hiding in my room. For heaven’s sake.
I unpacked, did laundry, mindlessly refusing to acknowledge the memories carried in every single piece of clothing in my bag. I couldn’t even look at my Crocs; instead, I took the bag out and threw them in the bin, sand running through my fingers.
I still had sand in those shoes, and even thinking of the song made me want to cry.
Nope. I wasn’t doing this. I was getting back to normal.
Food, I went shopping for it. Bought healthy items and stocked my freezer. Went back home and ironed my shirts for the week. Refused to look at the phone.
Then I had to set my alarm, and perhaps it was too early to go to bed and maybe I was just tired. Jet lag was a thing. But it meant I had to tap the screen on my phone.
So I sat there, phone in hand, the fear in me overwhelming. If there was no message? He’d cut contact. It was over. I already knew it was.
Any message in there would be him asking me to go to hell. I didn’t know which option was worse.
Truth was. I would do it. Overwhelmed or not, if he asked me to?
There was nothing for me here, apart from this house and my car and my job.
All of those could be easily transferred to somewhere where he was.
Could I practice in Scotland? I hadn’t even looked it up, too frightened to give myself hope.
Deep breath.
There would probably be messages from my mum. Some links sent from my dad. Had I seen this article on kidney function research? I was trying to mentally prepare myself here, and not die.
I was not about to die. I had to laugh out loud, and then I tapped the screen because I was being ridiculous. Four messages from Mum. Three from Dad. A reminder of my upcoming dentist appointment. I shook my head.
And a text. Not on WhatsApp, like normal people would. A proper text. A number I had already memorised in my head because I forgot most things, apart from things that mattered.
Can I call you?
Could he? My hands were shaking, and I was sat on my bed. My heart? I needed to invest in a defibrillator for my bedroom at this pace. What did he want? Apart from telling me he never wanted to hear from me again and to block his number.
Ridiculous.
I dialled his number. Because I could. Because we were, after all, adults and he’d asked to speak to me.
Or I’d asked to talk to him. What did I know?
He answered. No video. Just a normal phone call. His voice in my ear.
“Noah?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey.”
Normal. Simple. Utterly terrifying.
“You home?”
“Yep. Got in a while ago. Sorted out my life for next week.” Stupid words meaning nothing.
“Yeah, me too. Straight back to work. Lots of things to sort out before term starts.”
“I see.”
“Yeah.”
“So…”
“You said you wanted to talk.”
“Mmm.” Here I was. Him on the line, and I couldn’t say a word.
What was wrong with me? Making sounds and stuttering and not being able to get anything of substance out.
Because there was nothing to say. Maybe there was an entire essay to be screamed at him, loud and desperate.
Still? I had no words. Yet…we needed to talk.
We fucking needed to get things said. Clarity.
Real life. Fuck. I wanted all of it, when I knew full well how impossible that was.
“You don’t have to speak to me, honestly, Noah. We can just…sit here. Just please don’t hang up on me.”
Okay? Silence I could do. His breathing in my ear.
So many things I wanted to tell him. That he was perfect.
Kind. Funny. Loved. He was fucking lovely, and sexy, and he did it for me.
I just had to look at him, even the memory of him, and I would go all warm on the inside.
He was attractive and beautiful, and he didn’t judge me when I was quiet.
Didn’t tell me I was weird and unsociable and uninteresting.
Didn’t want anything from me, apart from me…
being me. That was a weird realisation, and I was relieved we weren’t on a video call because I didn’t want him to see all the frustration in me.
What him not being here made me. What him leaving me had made me feel.
“I miss you,” my mouth said before I could stop myself. “I know I have no right to, but I bloody do.”
“Noah,” he said, and I wanted to cry. I was nobody. I was just emotional and overwhelmed and sad. I was so bloody sad.
“We had such a great thing going on. And now we don’t, and what am I supposed to do now? Just go on Grindr and look for someone who looks like you?”
“I hope not,” he huffed. Even that made me smile, despite me suddenly wanting to punch walls.
“Well, nobody is like you, and I’ve deleted all my apps and I’m just sat here like a useless blob and I’ve been too chicken to check my phone all day after sending that text. I’m sorry, by the way. My mum got your number from Pawel. Apparently, he’s easily bribed.”
“He is. Buy him a drink, and he’ll do anything. Idiot.”
“Yeah.” Now I was smiling. Then I’d be ready to cry in a second. Again. I couldn’t control all these emotions.
“You ran away,” I said. A bit too sternly, actually.
“No. I didn’t run away; that’s your thing.
I broke it off because it was getting too much for both of us.
I didn’t want to say goodbye to you, and if we’d continued on like that, we would have ended the week being all fucked up with broken hearts.
I couldn’t do that. Not to you, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it.
So I left you sleeping. It felt like the better option. ”
“You’re probably right,” I reluctantly agreed, even though I didn’t, not really. “But at the time? It was goddamn shitty waking up without you.”
“I know. I had to wake up without you too. Didn’t really go out for the rest of the week.”
“How’s your foot?”
That made him laugh. “I’m fine, Noah. Wore proper dress shoes for dinner this evening. It’s what we do here. We dress up properly for meals, and the headmaster of Kilmartin School dining with only one Croc would have been frowned upon.”
“I assume there would have been complaints,” I said in a pompous voice.
“Complaints indeed. Not the done thing, Mr Fairweather.”
He did that. Made me this, this smiling loon with butterflies in my stomach. I wanted him back. So, so much.
“So what…what happens now?” It felt safe to ask because he was being so nice. And we were talking. I loved that we were.
“Maybe we can talk? Keep in touch?”
“I’d like that.”
“I’d like it more if you were here in my bed and kissing my forehead and pulling my hair. You do that. Always getting your fingers all tangled up in my hair.”
Hearing him saying it soothed my soul. Perhaps he was telling me off, but it felt like he was…just painting a picture of what we’d been. Showing it to me like a holiday snap.
“I love your hair.” A safe statement.
“One day it will fall out, and I’ll be bald.”
“Then I’ll buy you a woolly hat. It gets cold up there in Scotland, I hear.”
“Freezing. It’s an old building, built in the fifteenth century. Historic.”
“Haunted?” I had to say it. Smiling.
“Probably. Never seen or heard anything, though. Just me and a hundred kids and a bunch of farm animals. Staff and teachers. The odd ghost probably wouldn’t get a word in.
And we’ve had fibre broadband installed all over now, so people can stream and all that.
Probably scared anything paranormal off for good. ”
“Thought screen time was bad for kids.”
“Our seniors are young adults; we can’t really police it. And for what the parents pay for their time with us, comfort and accessibility are key. A lot of our lessons use…”
“Sounds like a good school.”
“We’re a very good school. I’m the headmaster.”
He was such a child. And all I could think of was the way he felt against me. The scent of his hair. The look on his face when I made him come.
I shuddered. Because I was just that. Being ridiculous.
“I need to go to bed, Fox. Early start tomorrow, and I need to be sharp for work. Can I call you again sometime?”
Weird. Rude. Intrusive. Over the top. Also? Desperate. So bloody desperate.
“Same time, tomorrow?” he said gently.
“Yes.” Please.
“Noah?”
“Yeah?”
“Those two days we had were wonderful. I need you to know that. I have no regrets about anything we did because…you’re…”
“I’m what, Fox?” The smile on my face. Ridiculous. Happy. Fuck.
“You’re wonderful too.”
“Good night, Fox. I’ll speak to you tomorrow then?” Just double-checking. Hoping he meant it.
“Night, Noah.”
Enough.
I hung up on him. Then I went outside, barefoot and half naked, and picked the Crocs up from the bin. Shook sand all over the drive. I think some landed on my bare feet. A small memory of him.
Tiny pieces of sand from his skin now on mine.
Ridiculous. But I was still smiling when I fell asleep.