16 #2
“Do I want to know why you’re so good at this?
” Olivia asked, her arms crossed as she leaned against the side of an arcade game called “Sink It.” Noah carefully aimed another ping-pong ball before bouncing it into one of several cup-shaped targets.
The lights on the backboard flared to life, and the words “FIFTY POINTS” scrolled across the marquee in all caps.
He chuckled. “Probably not,” he admitted. “Here, you want another turn?”
“Why, so you can mock me again? No, thanks. I’ll take my air hockey win and go.”
“Aww, come on. You can’t be that bad,” he coaxed. “Well, alright, you can’t be that bad twice .”
“What about that game?” she asked instead, pointing toward a massive console along the back wall. The outside was plastered with silhouettes of hip-hop dancers and a collection of pixelated arrows in various colors.
Noah’s face went blank. “No,” he said firmly.
“No? Why ‘no’?” Olivia demanded, already backing toward the game’s platform. “You danced with me before.”
“That was different.”
“Different how?” she taunted.
“One, it wasn’t scored, and two, I was making it up as I went.”
But she kept walking, ignoring his feeble protests.
“How about you play, and I’ll watch,” he compromised, finally following her across the arcade. The weekday crowd was thin, so they almost had the place to themselves.
“Oh, that’s disappointing. I never took you for a coward.” Olivia clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “But if you’re scared to lose to a girl...”
Noah clenched his jaw and pressed his mouth into a thin line, and Olivia could see how much he hated the gauntlet being thrown down. He wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge, especially when beating her would mean pulling ahead in their overall score.
“Fine,” he finally huffed. “But this is coercion.”
She cackled happily and stuffed arcade tokens into the game slots. The two platforms in the front lit up, and Noah took his place on the one beside her before using his foot to press a blue arrow on the floor.
“Battle round!” the machine declared .
“One way or another, you’re going to regret this,” he warned, and Olivia bounced on the balls of her feet as music surged through the game’s speakers. She hadn’t played this game since high school, but surely it would be like riding a bike. Right?
Colored arrows rose toward the top of the screen, and she stepped on the corresponding buttons in time with the beat of some random song. It took a few seconds, but she finally found her rhythm.
“Perfect! Nice one! Keep going!” the machine encouraged.
When she felt confident enough, she glanced over to see how Noah was doing, and a laugh burst from her chest. He looked less like he was dancing and more like he was hopping across hot coals. Most of his arrows missed their mark and turned gray as they reached the top of his screen.
“What do you call that ?” she shouted over the music.
“Mind your own business!” he called back, and then he reached out and shoved her sideways, straight off her platform.
“Hey!” Olivia cried. She scrambled back up and tried to find her place in the song, but her momentum was gone.
“Oh, did I mess you up?” Noah asked innocently. “Here, let me help.” He grabbed her arm and tugged her first to one side, then toward the back. “Look, this is how you do it.”
“Let me go!” she cried, laughing. “This is not how you do it!” She tried to aim her feet toward the correct buttons, but Noah’s “assistance” always sent her the wrong way.
When the song finally ended, their scores were both pathetic.
“Oh, look at that, I beat you by forty points! I really thought you’d be better at this,” Noah said, his grin wide and his face flushed. He was breathing hard from his exertion. “Maybe you shouldn’t trash-talk so hard. It’s embarrassing. ”
“Maybe you should keep your hands to yourself!” she shot back. “That didn’t count. Not a fair game.”
“Totally a fair game. If you fell off, that’s your problem.”
“I fell off because you pushed me !”
“Irrelevant details. Are you hungry?”
“No, I’m not hungry! I want to annihilate you!”
“Mmm, no. The offer has expired. It’s time for dinner,” he answered. Then he bent down and grabbed her legs before tossing her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“Noah Campbell!” Olivia yelled, though it was hard to push the words out while she was laughing. “Noah, put me down and let me beat you!”
“See, there you go threatening me again. What have I said about that?” he asked, surprisingly nonchalant as he carried a thrashing woman toward the parking lot.
“Aggh!” she huffed in frustration. Then she ducked her head as he went through the front door and stepped out into the crisp March evening. “I hate you.”
“I know.”
The world seemed to tilt on its axis as he put her down, though everything stilled again when she found herself wedged between his body and the side of his car. He raised his hand and tucked her hair behind her ear, and Olivia was automatically reminded of the last time she’d been in this position.
In a secluded summer house . . .
With the lights down low . . .
And fireworks exploding somewhere nearby . . .
“Tell me you cheated,” she demanded stubbornly.
Noah’s fingers drifted down the back of her neck. “I cheated,” he admitted, his voice soft .
Suddenly, Olivia felt reckless. “So, what’s my prize?” she asked.
The corner of Noah’s mouth tipped up. “You can have it after dinner,” he said, his smile growing as Olivia’s eyes narrowed. Then he reached past her and pulled the handle on her door. “Come on.”
Almost an hour later, Olivia crumpled the wrapper of a food truck burger and tossed it into the trash can near their picnic table.
“Where did you put all of that?” Noah asked from beside her, his eyes wide, and Olivia raised her eyebrows.
“Excuse me? What does that mean?” she countered.
“It means you don’t exactly have a figure that says ‘I can eat two burgers, a bag of popcorn and a funnel cake in one sitting.’”
“Oh, really? And what does my figure say?”
“Warning: too hot to handle.”
Olivia snorted and rolled her eyes. “Wow,” she drawled, “that was cheesy. You got any other lines in there?”
Noah finished his nachos and rose to stand, discarding his trash the same way she had. “No, but I have something else,” he said, reaching into his back pocket. He withdrew a square of white paper that appeared to be blank—at least as far as Olivia could tell.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Your prize,” Noah replied. He came back and slung one leg over the bench so he was straddling it beside her. “Turn around,” he ordered.
Olivia crossed her arms in protest. “I don’t remember giving you permission to boss me around quite so much,” she said, but Noah only grinned .
“I prefer to ask for forgiveness instead of permission,” he quipped. “Now, turn.” He twirled his index finger in a circle, and Olivia finally turned her back to him.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
“But—”
“Are you going to argue about every single thing?”
Olivia almost laughed, though she bit down on her lip hard enough to keep most of it in check.
“Fine,” she huffed, and she closed her eyes.
The sights of the park disappeared, but her other senses went into overdrive.
Laughter from the playground nearby drifted through the early spring air, which played with her hair and ruffled the sleeves of her shirt.
She felt Noah move closer behind her, and his body heat seeped through her clothes as he pressed his chest against her back.
His left hand drifted down the outside of her arm, and when he reached her wrist, he turned it over—palm up—and laid it across the top of her leg.
Then he held something against her skin just below the joint.
“This will be cold,” he warned, and a moment later he wiped what felt like ice water across her arm.
A tattoo! He was giving her a temporary tattoo!
Olivia’s eyes flew open and darted down to the white square on her arm where an image was now barely visible through the wet paper.
Noah chuckled, the sound rumbling through her body everywhere they touched. “I didn’t say you could look yet,” he reminded her, but she didn’t care.
“What is it?” she asked, and Noah carefully peeled the paper away before dabbing at the moisture with a dry napkin. She cocked her head in confusion, looking at the honeybee on her arm. It was surrounded by flowers and the faint shape of a hexagon. It was beautiful, really, but why would he —
Laughter rolled out unhindered as she got the punchline. “It’s a honey bug !” she exclaimed, delighted. She twisted to see his face over her shoulder. “Where did you find this?”
“It’s amazing what you can win at the arcade,” he said with a shrug. “I looked for birds, but I didn’t figure you wanted a parrot in a pirate’s hat. If you don’t like it, you can wash it off.”
Olivia held her arm protectively against her chest, appalled by the very idea. “No!” she blurted. “I love it! I’m going to have it stenciled on my face!”
“That might be a bit much.”
“Absolutely not! And you’re going to get one, too, so we can match.”
Noah laughed faintly. “What if I get a pixie fairy instead?” he compromised.
Olivia pretended to consider this. “Alright,” she agreed, “but when people ask about it, you have to tell them it’s a birthmark.”
His smile faded slightly, and his eyes darted down to one side. Olivia followed his gaze and saw him turn his arm over, showing his own tattoo—the one that definitely wasn’t a birthmark. “This is a Daria knot,” he said. “In Celtic stories, it stands for inner strength and wisdom.”
Olivia sucked in a breath and held it, afraid to break whatever spell had compelled him to tell her the truth.
He tilted his arm from side to side, as if examining the ink in the evening light. “My dad disappeared when I was fourteen—just packed a bag, cleaned out the bank account and vanished. Turns out he had a girlfriend with a baby on the way, and he chose them over us.”
Olivia’s chest tightened as she listened. He’d said his father was a magician; now his answer made sense .
“Everything changed after that,” he went on.
“Mom had been planning to open a restaurant, but instead we lost our house. I had to transfer schools, and I stopped playing baseball because I was working every hour I wasn’t asleep or in class.
One summer, I cleaned bathrooms at a gas station and got paid in Rice-A-Roni.
” His voice changed pitch, as if just saying that out loud was painful.
“So I got the tattoo to remind me that what didn’t kill me made me stronger—that I can withstand a whole lot more than I thought I could. ”
Olivia turned all the way to one side, until she was basically sitting in his lap. “You didn’t have to tell me that,” she whispered, watching his eyes. “I was kidding about the bee.”
“I know,” he answered quickly, “but I just started feeling like you should know. I want you to know. It’s part of who I am.”
Olivia had no idea what to say. She watched the shadows on his face shift as the lamppost beside their table came on. Then, in a totally impulsive move, she took his chin in her hand and planted a kiss along the edge of his jaw. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Noah’s eyes opened wide, and she could see questions bouncing around behind them.
Questions she didn’t really have answers for.
One of his arms came around her back, and everything seemed to fade away as his hand landed on her hip, his thumb sweeping across the dip of her waist—once, twice, three times.
Olivia became keenly aware of the fact that she was very, very close to doing something from which she might never recover.
“Hey, do you know what day it is?” she blurted, grasping at straws.
Noah blinked, and it looked like it took a lot of effort for him to drag his attention back to what she was saying. “What?” he asked .
“It’s Monday!” she supplied, answering her own question. She disentangled herself from his lap and pushed to her feet. “And do you know what Monday is?”
Noah shook his head, still looking a little like he’d been underwater.
“It’s Bachelor Day!” she sang. She glanced at her watch. “If we hurry, we’ll only miss the first thirty minutes; that’s all intros and recap anyway.”
Noah blinked again and then sighed in resignation. “Fine, but we have to go to your place.”
Olivia exhaled for what seemed like the first time since she’d stood up. This felt like a reprieve—though the question was, from what?