Chapter Thirty
A desert dry mouth wakes me. My lips feel like sandpaper when they touch each other and my tongue is shriveling from lack of water. I try to will liquid into my mouth as I blink my eyes open. Darkness surrounds me, envelopes me, but the familiar smell of Noah lingers in the air.
I reach behind myself and hope I left a pint of water on the bedside table.
A hard body. A moan.
I shuffle to turn around and try to make out the outline of the person in the bed beside me; on my side of the bed no less.
"Sleep," Noah grunts.
"Water," I croak.
He blindly reaches for the bedside table as well, tapping on it sporadically before his nails scratch against a glass. He passes it to me wordlessly and grunts once more when I drink half of it in one gulp and hand it back to him.
"Your bed?" I croak once more.
"Sleep," he groans.
I try to look around. My elbows click into place as I put them underneath me and try to lift my body. My brain feels fuzzy. I'm still half asleep, not quite sure where I am. Possibly still drunk.
"Noah?"
"Shut the fuck up, Mads."
Chelsea's voice startles me. I turn again. She's on my left - the two of them have sandwiched me in the bed. Her hair is splayed over the pillow we're probably supposed to be sharing and her arm is covered in sparkling glitter when she reaches up and pulls me back into a lying position with an oof.
Noah's arm snakes around me from behind, pulling me into him. He kisses my hair and breathes heavily against my neck. I relax into him and feel my consciousness slowly slip away once more.
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Matt did not take Skye home.
I have vague memories of a blonde bombshell, leggy, fit, smiley, stumbling out of the club with all of us. I don't remember her name but I do remember her leaning over me in the cab to put her tongue between Matt's lips.
Her perfume was lovely. With her hand undoing the button of my brothers jeans, I stuck my leg between the two of them and asked her what brand it was.
Chelsea managed to pull me away from the bombshell's glare. Quite literally, out from between them and into her own lap.
They were straight back to business. Obstacle removed.
"Is this better than the alternative?" Noah asked me.
I thought of the awkwardness earlier in the evening with Skye and Matt in a confined space, her so obviously in love with him and him so obviously furious with her.
A rock and a hard place. Skye's sad eyes and fruitless attempts at catching his attention, or this woman, who seemed to want an audience as she pressed her breasts against my brothers mouth.
I ignored Noah's question because I had no idea what the answer was.
I'm reminded of these moments from last night only because the blonde bombshell wakes the three of us up.
She topples into Noah's room laughing. Matt is shouting something behind her as she does and it must be his voice that makes the three of us lift our heads from the pillows. Once again, I'm greeted with the sight of her breasts - naked this time, badly covered with one hand.
Her face flames.
Matt begins pulling her out of the room and trying to cover her up.
"I thought- the bathroom-"
She looks genuinely mortified.
Noah is already lying back against the pillow and pulling the cover over his face. Chelsea is groaning about her hangover. I give mystery girl a small smile before Matt throws the three of us a curious look and pulls the door closed.
Noah's arm around my midsection, his steady breath against my hair.
I turn into his arms and press a small kiss to his lips. Chelsea groans behind us, throwing out an arm that bounces against my shoulder and then retreats. Noah doesn't seem to care as he puts his lips to mine again, a string of chaste kisses given to me like small gifts.
I push my leg through the two of his.
As I listen to Chelsea snore softly next to us, I think about his cocky attitude last night. The easy grin, the carelessness just to turn me on in front of a bunch of strangers, the fire in his eyes when Damien whispered in my ear.
Never hot and cold. Not like the other guys I yearned after during my adolescence, who would spend more time chatting up adult strangers on dodgy sites than texting me back.
Noah doesn't pretend that he doesn't want me, or hide his true feelings; he doesn't kiss other women just to see how I'd react. He just is. Even when Matt might be lurking around the corner, which - well, maybe he's a bit reckless.
"Are you going to tell me yet?"
His voice is quiet, rough. The words wrap around my body like a warm blanket and poke at my every limb.
I speak just as quietly, "maybe."
Once again my brain pulls me back to the previous night. Of drunken giggling and kicking off socks, of Chelsea and I demanding Noah give us the bed and he take the couch, of Noah - always so sweet and so accommodating, saying yes; as long as I told him what Damien Mierro whispered in my ear.
I wanted him in that bed with us. I wanted to be the (drunken) hot water bottle between the two of them, twisting this way and that so I could speak to them both as I wished.
As if playing a game, I kept my lips locked. And Noah got into the bed.
"What does maybe mean?" He asks. "Usually you can't stop yourself from saying the word 'yes' around me."
My cheeks flame. He smirks down at me, kissing my forehead.
"So easy," he coos.
"I'm not going to tell you if you carry on."
His tongue slips out of his mouth and disappears. Back to that playful, flirty attitude.
He uses his thumb to draw gentle circles on my back and when he accidentally catches me with a nail and I release a huff of breath, he scrapes more nails over my skin. Scratching my back. As if I'll roll over to him like a cat.
And yet, "he said-"
Ignore the smirk, ignore the glint. Cocky asshole.
"If my boy - you, I presume? Can't kiss you at midnight, does that mean I can.
" I don't expect the slight hint of jealously he displays.
His jaw ticks and locks, the smirk disappearing entirely.
"Then something along the lines of," I try to badly imitate Damien's deep voice, "I've not seen Noah this angry in a long time.
He's not stood up to me in ages either."
Noah doesn't respond. It's as if he's waiting for me to say something else, something worse.
"That's it," I shrug. "Then you came over and tried to break his fingers."
He huffs. I wonder if it was meant to come out as a laugh, strangled.
I run my nails down his arm, over the tattoos inked along his body. I trace each bone tattooed on each finger, wondering why he felt he had to hide the skin there and strip it back to bone. Wondering what mindset he must've been in to believe himself skeletal at one time or another.
He breathes in and out gently as I drag my touch to his chest, back to his shoulders, then his neck.
I feel him swallow underneath my palm as my hand wraps around his throat.
I don't know what possesses me to do it - maybe his mouth opening slightly, the soft breath that he releases at my touch. But my grip tightens.
His lips part further and still no sound is released.
"If I didn't know you any better," I whisper. "I'd think you liked this."
Noah's arms tighten around me, pulling me in further.
Chelsea snores softly and I quickly return to my senses. Even though removing a single finger from that tanned skin feels like a chore I pull hands away. No touching - no feeling; not like that, not where we're sharing a bed with someone.
Losing your mind.
"Damien," I mutter quickly. "Tell me about Damien."
He nods, arms loosening.
There's a voice in my head telling me this isn't just a distraction. I want to know. The bits and pieces of Noah's past that I've been fed are terrible and confusing, seemingly shrouded in some mystery nobody wants to talk about.
"I told you how he... recruited me, for lack of a better word," he grimaces.
"Most of what he had me do." His eyes flit to Chelsea then settle back on my own.
"He asked more of you the longer you were with him, the more - loyal, he found you.
I suppose I wasn't very loyal from the start, because I was young and my focus was elsewhere. "
"Elsewhere?"
"The girlfriend I told you about. We dated since I was fifteen right up until I was twenty one."
The cogs in my head spin. I shouldn't have drank so much last night because there's something niggling in the back of my mind- something about Noah being fifteen-
He strokes my hair. "And yes, I met her through Damien."
He was fifteen when he met big bag Damien Mierro. Fifteen when he stopped going to school to run drugs for him. Likely fifteen when the tattoos started, if the faded ones are anything to go by.
I mean to pose it as a question when I respond, but my voice is flat, "hence her not being very good for you."
He hums. "As well as other things."
I want to ask. I probably would've asked, had his eyes not shot to Chelsea again as he said the words. As if warning me that there was only so much he would say whilst she was in the room with us, even asleep.
"I was also twenty one when I finally cut ties," he murmurs, so softly, spoken into my skin as if placing delicate flowers over my face. "He didn't take it well. Nobody took it well."
I nod, pressing my cheek to his.
I whisper, "we can talk about it later."
His sigh of relief is quiet. Had I not been holding my own breathe I wouldn't have noticed it.
I change the topic, talking about last night and Chelsea and work. He complains about the awkwardness surrounding Matt and Skye, compliments my makeup, my dress, and speaks about previous New Year celebrations at Fiction.
I tell him he was my first New Years kiss. I was his too.
Considering the girlfriend of six years, it takes a lot to hide the shock that goes through my system. Six years, and not a single New Years spent together? I don't ask, and I don't expect him to explain either.
Time passes us by.
As we talk I hear the shower running and then not, hear birds begin singing out of the window, cars racing down the street. We continue to stay looped together.
Only to violently break apart when the door handle jiggles.
I pull the blanket up my body as if I'm naked, wide eyes staring at the bedroom door as it opens. Chelsea grunts beside me. She side eyes me, dark smudges of makeup all over her face, and turns to watch Matt and his mystery girl enter the room.
They both have wet hair.
The girl is wearing Matt's clothes - shorts too big for her, a shirt even bigger.
Her face is scrubbed clean and there isn't a spot or freckle in sight.
She's half hiding behind Matt when they walk in the room, probably because we've all seen more of her chest than her teeth; which are white and pearly when she hesitantly smiles at the three of us.
Wisps of blonde hair lay around her forehead, the rest slicked back by the water.
Matt, stepping aside so the girl is next to him rather than behind him, eyes the three of us.
I glance to Chelsea on my left, eyes blearily open and a scowl on her mouth, and then Noah on my right, permanent smirk still etched on.
Matt decides not to say anything. His shoulders slump, he takes a seat on the bed and crosses his legs over one another. Chelsea shuffles her legs out of his way. He pats the bed next to him and the blonde sits down too.
"This is Sapphire."
You are not bloody serious.
Serenity. Skye. Sapphire.
All blonde. All beautiful. All with names that begin with the letter S.
Noah, beside me, snorts before he can help himself. Matt shoots him a glare.
"I'm Maddie," I smile, hoping that my smile is not a smirk, "Matt's sister." I jerk my thumb back to indicate to her, "this is my friend Chelsea."
"Maddie's in marketing too," Matt tells Sapphire.
I nod at her and begin going through the motions - where you do work, what're your projects like, how do you plan on putting up with my awful brother - and Sapphire, who is very nice and too wholesome for said brother, responds to every polite question with a wide smile.
Halfway through the conversation a hand appears on my thigh, soft and comforting under the blanket. Noah still monotonously looks down at his phone so the small circles he rubs into my skin must be mindless.
I realise that his body is leant into mine too - our shoulders are meeting in a point and his head is tilted just slightly enough that his intention to be closer to me is crystal clear. Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend.
Chelsea's first words of the day are, "do you guys want to order pizza and watch reality TV all day?"
A resounding yes follows from all.
Matt asks Noah to go and get the pizza but he refuses to get out of bed, and so the five of us order it and then we play a couple games of rock, paper, scissors to decide who will be the one to go downstairs and collect it from the door.
Chelsea's look is murderous when she loses. She throws the cover of herself and huffs about having to put on trousers - and, of course, there is her bare ass when she stands up.
She pulls the skirt from the previous night over underwear that covers basically nothing. Matt and Noah respectfully look away as it happens, both muttering to each other about what streaming service has the best reality series.
"Why can't we just watch it on actual TV?" I ask.
Matt turns to me with a deadpan look. "Adverts," he states, in such a condescending tone that my cheeks begin heating.
That's new. Being embarrassed by my brother in front of a boy. I'd never quite liked someone I brought home enough to let his teasing words sting me, but its different with Noah. Maybe it's different because he knows Matt too. Or maybe I just like him that much.
The gentle hand on my thigh squeezes.
I have the sudden urge to throw my brother out of a window, or to yell at him that I'm doing all of this for him (not true, I'm doing Noah entirely for myself, but - well, I'm being polite about it.
I think.) I want to tell Sapphire that my brother once threw up in the battery bin at Asda because he saw a pretty girl from the year above in the biscuit aisle.
She'd love to hear about Matt pissing himself the first time he got drunk in front of all of his friends, at age fifteen, I'm sure.
The knock of the door sounds from downstairs. Chelsea cusses and stomps out of the room to collect the pizza as multiple okay-ish series' are scrolled past on the TV in front of us.
Head gently lulling against mine, Noah pulls the arm on my thigh from under the covers and instead pushes it between my back and the bed, grabbing my hip to pull me closer to him. His hand then finds my own, threads through my fingers, practically sighing at the contact.
Dangerous territory. The two of us pressed together like tightly packed sardines while half of the bed remains inviting and empty.
For a brief moment I wonder if we shouldn't bring it up at all with Matt, if we should just make subtle moves like this until he's forced to give his approval.
Push him and push him until we wear him down.
Don't date my friends.
What a stupid rule.
A year older than me and yet years more immature. Sometimes I imagine we were raised by different people because it certainly seemed like that growing up. Always at each others throats, never seeing eye to eye, different in every single sense.
Chelsea almost throws three Pizza boxes on the bed she returns. She keeps on it hand, pointedly getting back into the bed next to me and sticking her hand in a small opening for a slice. She offers me one and then complains about whatever Matt has put on the TV.
Matt argues back with her, just because he can. Everyone in this room knows he doesn't care what's on, he just likes to be annoying.
I shrug at Sapphire as they go at each other and encourage her to help herself to the food.
"Is it always like this here?" She asks, taking a bite of a slice covered in various vegetables.
I answer, "since I moved in."
She nods.
And then, like the stars align to ruin my life -
Chelsea and Matt stop arguing. I feel Noah's fingers grasp my waist. I watch Sapphire's eyes snap to the movement and then back to me. She looks to Noah. His head is still settled against mine, his phone still all that has his attention. Her mouth begins moving.
I can't think of anything to say to stop the question I know is coming.
The innocent curiosity she displays must be a complete juxtaposition to the horror that I know I'm doing a terrible job of concealing. Horror, because-
"So you moved in to be closer to - Noah, was it?"
Both Matt and Chelsea immediately turn just in time to see the tattooed hand around my back pull away.
"No," I swallow, praying that it isn't showing on my face. "No - I uh."
Matt snorts.
On either side of me, my best friend and my not-friend and frozen stiff. Watching. Waiting. As confused as I am because Matt is laughing suddenly, flipping back over so he faces the TV.
"Noah's my mate, he and Maddie are just friends," Matt explains easily.
Sapphire looks at the empty space next to my hip and at Noah's hands now firmly back on his own side of the bed, displayed like he wants them to be seen.
She's shaking side to side. No, she isn't - I'm shaking my head at her. Her eyebrows draw together and then apart, nodding quickly as Matt continues opening his very big mouth.
"Noah doesn't date."
He doesn't?
"He's... I want to say frigid."
Noah kicks him from under the blanket, then grumbles, "fuck off."
Matt laughs, happy to be teasing his friend in front of a pretty girl. Happy to have the upper hand in front of us all as he shoves another pizza slice in his mouth. He and Noah share a look that I know all too well.
I hated that look in high school. The I'm going to try and embarrass you look that my brother perfected before he turned ten. I can't count the amount of times I tried to shoo him away from my friends when I saw that look, am just happy not to be on the receiving end of it.
"Soppy, then."
Noah raises an eyebrow.
Sapphire asks, "soppy?"
"Won't date," Matt clarifies. "Not unless he's in love."
One girlfriend. One six year girlfriend and no others.
"I think that's sweet," Chelsea cuts in, scowling once more at Matt's teasing tone.
To my right, Noah doesn't even look embarrassed. He's staring at Matt with that still-curved lip, shrugging.
Matt continues, "not even a one night stand, right, Laurier?"
A laugh from next to me, breathy and wrong. Matt grins a very familiar grin, the I've hit the mark grin that sends a shudder down my spine because of the suppressed childhood memories it sprouts.
He turns to Sapphire, bright eyed, and finishes: "So yeah. He's definitely single. Very single. He won't even sleep with a girl unless he's in love with her."
I blink.
Sapphire is looking at Noah like he's the most wholesome person in the entire Universe. She's cooing and saying awww while Matt snickers next to her.
"What?" I blurt.
Matt just raises his eyebrows, grinning at his best friend.
Another hand on my thigh but it's smaller and softer, nails digging into my skin like tiny knives. Chelsea, who, as usual, is trying to regain my composure for me.
My very stupid, exceptionally big mouth brother, then holds up one single finger. The excessively roguish grin that follows tells the three of us everything we need to know.
One girlfriend. One everything.
Just one.
Noah throws a pillow at him that almost knocks him onto his side. Matt cackles behind it.
He won't even sleep with a girl unless he's in love with her.
The room suddenly feels suffocating.
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