Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
CADE
“He wanted to come over last night, after my class. We’d kind of planned a last minute dinner.
” I pull my hand down my face, wishing I could rip it off instead of just rub it.
That’s how talking about this makes me feel—like I’d rather tear flesh from my bones than try to discuss my feelings about anything other than English literature, and maybe the quality of wool.
Nice frames, too. I could go on about that for a few hours.
But feelings? No thank you.
My sister sighs, sinking her fingertips into my shoulder. “This is good, Cade. Let us help you figure it out.” Next to my sister is her fiancee, Zennie, who tips her head to the side.
“Wait, so, you cancelled?” She asks, reaching for her glass of red wine. I’ve drank two glasses and I don’t even feel a thing because my stress is at an all-time high.
I answer with a nod. “I did but… only because I was exhausted after lecture and—” I shake my head, leaving out the part where I texted him before the lecture and asked him to come another day.
I’d told him it was a review lecture that night and he wouldn’t get much from it, not ideal for peer reviews.
I cancelled the moment we were apart, because the idea of it sounded too good.
“It doesn't matter. Grown adults can cancel on grown adults. We all have lives. We understand.”
It bugs me that Kat and Zennie do not rush out there to agree with me.
“I’m telling you guys this because he asked if he could come to the wedding when I told him I’m not taking a date,” I explain, my skin growing heated just from playing it back in my mind.
Noah’s charismatic and bold, his regular banter bordering on flirtatious in many ways.
I shouldn’t torture myself by spending the entire night pulling every word apart in my mind, trying to see what he meant or why.
He’s just Noah. Good times, good looking, charming, fun, Noah Ryan.
“You couldn’t get a date for one single night?” My sister tisks.
I glare. “I don’t want a date, for one night.” I continue to glare. “Noah suggested that I bring a colleague instead, and asked if he could join.”
Kat just blinks at me like I grew a third head. “Yeah but like, you want him to go, obviously, or you wouldn’t be here asking us.”
Why must she point it out? I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose, looping an arm of my glasses through the neck of my sweater. “Yes, I would like to have someone there I can talk to and hang out with that isn’t obsessed with catching a bouquet or sucking up to Dad.”
Zennie laughs. “That one always surprises me. No matter the age or gender, they always so shamelessly kiss his butt.”
I pluck a cashew from the bowl on the table, and toss it back. “So?” I cut a questioning glance to my sister.
“Bring him. I can’t wait to meet him.”
Relieved that she said yes and feeling exponentially guilty about cancelling via text message mid-class last night, I quickly get to my feet and pull their invitation off the fridge. I hold it out, snap a photo, and text it to him.
Since you didn’t get the chance to see this last night
Here’s the invitation
My phone is already returned to its spot in my back pocket when it vibrates, making my groin come alive. I take it back out, and find that Noah is somewhere within a fifteen mile radius of me, texting me.
Feeling better?
Yeah, crashed hard last night.
Heat swamps my neck and drifts down my shirt as I place the invitation back on the fridge, sliding the bottle cap magnet over the corner.
I did crash hard last night, that isn’t a lie, but not before putting in another 5 miles on the treadmill at the campus gym, then lint rolling half of my closet and meal prepping quinoa salads for the rest of the week.
People without exhaustive inner turmoil just don’t understand how a person can be absolutely exhausted from continual thought but be physically energized and able to tackle a list of crap.
That’s me. So sick of thinking or choosing to not think about certain things that at the end of some days, I just don’t have hanging out or socializing in me.
It’s not because Noah makes me face things about myself I’ve since made peace with, and it’s not because Noah makes me feel things I’ve never felt.
It’s the social battery thing, one hundred percent.
Kat and Zennie send me home with a loaf of chocolate chip banana bread, because Zennie is an incredible baker.
She kept her mother nourished through her chemotherapy, and she’s gotten Kat a lot healthier in terms of eating regularly between the cigarettes and showings.
Actually, Kat even gave up smoking for Zennie.
As I walk back to my house, enjoying the moonlight glowing through a haze of ethereal fog, I think about my sister and Zennie.
Kat has always been loud, bright, and vivacious, in her temperament, her personality, and her soul.
She’s the life of the party with the loudest laugh and the biggest smile, and she’s my polar opposite, even down to her box-dyed black hair.
Even in our stark differences, we’ve always been close.
She’s always been a best friend to me, and I know I can go to her with anything.
My close relationship with my sister has taught me that opposites can attract, and do all the time. Case in point, Zennie is so different from Kat, too. And when I think about how different they are in nature, in the way they dress, their music tastes and expressions, I think about Noah.
Noah Ryan is charismatic, the type of man who can take part in any conversation and leave as a highlight. He’s never been in a room alone, because he makes fast friends with everyone, and both men and women swivel their heads to follow his gait.
At home, I place the bread in the freezer, thinking about Noah’s walk, the way he pairs something timeless like a cable knitted short sleeved polo with something youthful and unprofessional, like oversized barrel chinos or baggy, raw-hemmed jeans.
He’s got a smattering of tattoos up his forearm, none of them cohesive with the last, none of them obvious to their meaning.
His ears are both pierced, and that’s not something I’d ever thought I’d like.
But the way all the things I normally dislike become so hugely attractive on Noah, when it comes to Noah… that’s what’s on my mind.
That may or may not be part of the reason why I cancelled. He stirs up things in me I don’t know how to explore. If I can explore. I don’t know if what I’m feeling is really about Noah, or me.
I’ve come to terms with who I am. Scholastic, hard-working, professional.
Not everyone needs a torrid love affair or loveless marriage to be complete.
Not all lives require romance, hot sex and dates.
Is it nice? I don’t know, I’ve never had it, but I’m sure it is. But is it essential? No, no it’s not.
I grab my favorite white wine and the new stemless glass I got from my dad, and sink into my couch, turning on the TV to discover the worst version of Pride and Prejudice streaming.
“No one wants a latter day retelling of Pride and Prejudice,” I grumble at the general direction of the flatscreen as I glug my wine and stupidly don’t change the channel, cursing Romeo and Juliet for starting this stupid trend.
From my pocket, my phone dings, and a small vibration follows the noise, sending a raw tingle through my thigh. I finish my first glass of Sonoma Sangiacomo and unlock my phone to see a text message from Noah waiting.
The wine makes my stomach clench, and I sit up on the couch, the movie instantly becoming a faceless blur of background noise.
Glad you’re ok. How about tomorrow morning for the peer review? I was thinking you could sit in on my 9 o’clock before your 10:20 lecture?
Normally, I arrive on campus at least two hours early before my first lecture, in case a student needs me, as well as to answer emails, and to ensure my lecture for the day is prepared.
I’ll already be on campus, and since we lecture in the same auditorium, all I’ll have to do is stay put once I’m done sitting in on Noah’s popular fiction class.
It’s a plan that makes sense.
Sounds good
I pour more wine and drink it, chasing the delighted hum in my veins as Noah’s dots jump on screen.
Cool. See you first thing tomorrow.
I get caught on those five words. See you first thing tomorrow. I wonder, briefly, in the privacy of my home, with the TV playing and the lights low, the city buzzing all around me outside…
What does Noah Ryan look like first thing in the morning?
When he rolls over, does he stretch his feet into the undiscovered pockets of cold left in the abandoned part of the sheets?
Does he like to sleep in on his weekends, and does he have pajamas or does he sleep in the nude?
Does he have more tattoos that I haven’t seen because I’ve never seen him the way a lover would?
I sip the white, the back of my nose stinging when I finish the second glass relatively quickly.
Between my legs, there’s a heaviness, a perpetual, unattended hungriness rearing its head, begging for my attention.
I set the wine glass down on the side table, and flick off the TV, lock up, and head to my room.
I ignore the blazing desire running rampant through my system as I take a hot shower, complete my skincare routine, and plug in my laptop to charge.
I run through my lecture in my head as I’m drifting off, and eventually, the discomfort of my raging erection dissipates.
“Is there anything I need to know?” I ask Noah as we walk the corridor leading to the university library.
Noah’s favorite coffee is here I think, because he’s always offering for us to get it when we come this way.
We try to make it here instead of the cafeteria when we have the extra time to cross campus.