Chapter Thirty Two
I had a recurring nightmare when I was younger. A version of me would be hanging from a jagged rock on a cliff face, fingers straining underneath the pressure of holding tight.
That version of me would be wearing a frilly dress. She had been dying her hair blonde like my mother had always wanted me to do and she didn't have a single blemish in sight. Of course, how much can you see of someone when they're dangling towards their death? Maybe she did have acne.
I was looking at her as myself. Young, ginger, acne-speckled, and full off teenage hormones. I stood not ten feet away from her and she didn't look up at me once. She didn't even cry for help - her face remained perfectly pleasant, almost stoic. But her fingers whitened against the rock.
My battered fake trainers from the local supermarket were laced up wrong and I distinctly remember the rage that lit a fire throughout my body when I saw her beautifully white expensive trainers wrapped around her feet.
Hot liquid fire entangled in my blood. I'm not sure why - she was me, I was her. It was just shoes, but it was as if another force had taken over my body.
The seven times I had the nightmare I walked over to her and pried her fingers off the rock one by one. Every time.
My mother said it meant that I wanted to be prettier. I thought it meant that I was my own worst enemy, ruining my own life bit by bit. Finger by finger. I didn't date the right boys; I didn't pick the correct GCSE subjects; I wasn't a very good friend.
The last time I had it I was still in school. University made me into a better person, and I hadn't thought about the nightmare since.
Perhaps it's dramatic, but it's what I'm thinking about once the words have spilled out of my mouth.
So you love me, huh?
I may as well have pushed myself out of the car and into the middle of the road.
Off the cliff you go, Madelaine.
I'm hyperventilating. No, I'm not. I'm staying silent - I'm inwardly hyperventilating because I don't want to make a big deal out of it. There are sweat beads forming on my forehead and I want to wipe them away but know it won't be subtle.
I chance a look at Noah.
Wide eyes staring back at me reveal that it is a big deal. I shouldn't have said that. Fuck, why can't I just keep my mouth shut?
I wish I was dangling off a cliff right now. It'd be less painful than the flush clawing its way above my collar.
I quickly look away from him.
"I-" He clears his throat. "Look at me, Madelaine."
I jut out my bottom lip before grimacing at myself in the window reflection.
"Hm?"
His hand is hot. It turns my face to him in one swift movement and then drops back onto the gear stick. My gaze involuntarily flits from his eyes down to his soft lips, half pulled into his mouth. A sign of nervousness.
I want to smooth out the worry lines next to his eyes with my thumb, or kiss that bottom lip out of his mouth. I do neither though, waiting for him to continue.
I'm not sure what the bundle of nerves sat in my gut means. Do I want him to love me or don't I? Which one am I afraid of?
He stares into my face looking for an answer I don't have. Then he huffs and drops his head back against the seat.
"I fucking hate your brother," he sighs. "He does nothing but piss me off."
"I can't tell if you're serious or not."
He smiles, still looking out of the window in front of us, "I'm being completely serious."
More people spill out of my office building. Noah pulls away from the curb and joins the queue of cars on the road.
"He's been more annoying than usual lately. Skye is keeping at him and I don't think he knows how to deal with her since they're such good friends, especially with Sara and Dan stuck in the middle of it all. They've been friends for years - longer than Matt and I have known each other."
"They were his first year flatmates," I add. Noah glances at me. "What? I know things."
He snorts.
"So he's annoying? He's annoyed me for the past twenty three years."
A shake of the head. I can tell he's holding his tongue though; we're skirting around the subject entirely. I wonder whether he'll avoid it the whole drive like he's avoided me since Matt said it. We'll get home and he'll go hide in his bedroom.
Noah sighs. "I can't believe he said that."
Okay. So we're talking about it.
"Is it true?" I add, like it needs clarification. "You don't date unless you're in love?"
A small sound comes from the back of his throat.
"It's not - false."
"Making it true, then?"
"I guess."
I eye him. "You're usually so full of words, Noah. You're making this really weird."
"Your brother made this really weird."
I scoff. "He's your best friend."
"Not by blood."
We merge onto the motorway. The car engine becomes louder and louder as Noah shifts the gears up, then finally settles into an even pace in line with the cars around us.
"Matt could fuck anything with a pulse. I mean that in the nicest way possible and I don't judge him for it, but he can and he does. Skye is just someone persistent in a long list of one night stands."
My heart constricts for a fraction of a second, remembering the red lipstick she wore on New Years and the downturn of her smile when Matt told Noah to take her home after her drunken stay on our sofa.
The guilt I feel suddenly flashes before me. Maybe I really should've tried harder to be friendly with Skye these past few months - she's obviously in love with Matt and won't stop breaking her own heart over him.
Our lack of friendship feels wasteful. I wanted to please her and Sara so badly that I didn't try harder to put her off the relationship thoughts and now we're not friendly anyway.
"Isn't that sad?"
We speed up as he overtakes someone.
The daylight is disappearing before our very eyes.
Hues of reds and oranges drop beneath the cars in front of us and the sky is a rainbow of colour as the sun sinks behind the road.
It's been getting darker and darker since Christmas, soon I'll be leaving work and it'll already be pitch black outside.
"It used to be sad. It's beyond sad now, there's only so long you can feel sorry for someone making the same mistake over and over again.
" A pause. "I can't do that like he can.
I don't want to wake up next to some stranger whose name I can't remember and I definitely don't want the shit he gets himself into when they want more and he can't bring himself to let them down nicely. "
We pass our exit but I say nothing, worried that he'll stop talking. Worried that he won't get to the point and tell me what all of this means.
I can't help but tease when worry lines begin breaking out onto his face.
"You're not making him sound very good."
A smile. One that sets me at ease again.
We continue driving towards the sunset.
"So yes. I won't date someone I'm not in love with," he eyes me as he uses the same inflection Matt did. Like it's a bad thing. I realise that I did the same when I used the words too.
I say, gently, "you don't have to say it like that."
He nods, a flicker of an emotion ghosting over him so quickly I don't catch what it is.
"I won't date someone I'm not in love with," he repeats, with a gentle tone replicating my own.
"So because you've only had one girlfriend.
.?" I ask. He nods but says nothing further.
I twist in my seat to face his body. The beginning of a smirk starts to show - which is a very familiar sight in the passenger seat of Noah's car.
"Okay. Right. So. I'm going to ask you a different question now. "
"Are you?"
Cocky, fucking-
How that smirk could be plastered on his face is beyond me. I could ask him anything; there are a multitude of question gurgling in the hollow of my skull, all based around love, his ex, and whatever our relationship status is. If I was him I'd be vibrating in my seat.
"Uh huh," I drawl. "Were you still in love with her when you broke up?"
I don't know where that question comes from.
Possibly jealously, bubbling in the pit of my stomach, or maybe just a need to dig deeper into his psyche before I start asking the question that will make me vibrate in my seat.
It seems to take Noah by surprise too.
"Uh, no. I wasn't. Like I said, she wasn't very good for me-"
"But how?"
Overtaking another car. Eyes firmly on the road in front of us.
"She was older than me by two years." My eyes widen.
Noah was fifteen when they met, I remember that much, making a two year age gap very significant.
"She'd been working with Damien for a year and she held a lot of influence with him.
There was always - I don't know - a pushiness, about her.
" He looks embarrassed to admit it. "I was young and running drugs and dating a girl old enough to be in college, so I wanted to impress and she took advantage.
I took a lot of heat for stuff that I wasn't around for because she didn't want to get in anymore trouble with the police than she was already in.
"Our relationship was centered around working anyway. We weren't very," he waves his hand around like he's looking for the word.
"Couple-y?" I offer.
"Yeah." The word sounds small and vulnerable. So unlike Noah that I'm unsure what to say in response to him. Instead I reach out for the hand lazily resting on the gear stick and lock our fingers together.
How different our childhoods were. I may complain about Matt being annoying and my mother being insufferably prone to taking his side, but I was never forced into a street gang. I was never trapped in a relationship with someone who did nothing but get me in trouble.
I squeeze his fingers and bring our conjoined hands to my lips, kissing the clock tattoo and then each bone running down the length of each finger. A shaky breath sounds to my right.
We finally leave the motorway only to do a loop around a roundabout and enter the same motorway but in the opposite direction. Back towards home.
"I know you want to ask," he says quietly, finally.
He won't even sleep with a girl unless he's in love with her.
So you love me, huh?
Of course I want to ask. Although I'm not sure how I'd respond no matter what he says so maybe it's better I don't. Ignorance is bliss.
"Maybe," I shrug. "I haven't decided yet."
That surprises him.
"Alright. Well, I'll tell you something else instead, okay?
But you let me know when you're ready to hear the answer.
" I squeeze his hand in response, urging him to continue.
"Those few days we spent apart at Christmas.
.. they made me ache. Not being around you everyday didn't feel right and that's probably why I ended up dropping in and stealing you away on Boxing Day. "
I hold those words tight against my heart, unwilling to stop hearing them like a broken record in my head. In an alternate universe I've got physical heart-eyes bulging out towards Noah.
He breathes some sort of half-laugh out when I don't reply.
"I'll give you a second to take that in then, yeah?" He teases, throwing me that familiar killer grin. "We're almost home."
So we are. We've just come off the correct exit on the motorway and soon we'll be face to face with Matt like we are every night. He'll have made dinner - it's his night and he's got a new recipe book that doesn't include fried chicken or oven chips.
And I'll have to sit through that dinner wondering whether I'm in love with his best friend. Thinking that I probably am but that I'm being too chicken shit to admit it because it's far too soon to be in love with someone. I'm not. I am. Am I?
Christ, I might have a heart attack.
Made him ache. It wasn't just unpleasant or slightly missing you, but an ache deep inside him. I yearned. Definitely. I wanted nothing more than for him to come back home and sneak me into his bed so we could wake up together, but I don't know if that want was an ache.
(It probably was.)
I still haven't said anything by the time we're pulling up to our street.
Then we're parked on the driveway and the door is being opened for me and my work bag is over his shoulder and suddenly I'm out of the car.
Matt's going to fucking kill me, I'm thinking. He's just going to end my life - even worse, he's going to twist it with our mother and I will be the bad guy for seducing sweet, innocent Noah, who needs to be in love to let someone in.
As I'm lifting up my arm to put the key in the door Noah cages me against the wall. Not against the door this time, which is definitely an improvement regarding the noise we make against surfaces that rattle.
He blocks out the small remainder of light being cast by the just-set sun.
"Time to tell me something embarrassing," he whispers, "since we're not going to talk about what I said."
"Is that our thing? Tell me something embarrassing?"
"Don't deflect," he smirks. "Tell me."
I don't even have to think about it.
"I'm not very good with words," he opens his mouth to interject but my eyes narrow.
I continue, "So I think I'd rather show you what your ache means to me, rather than tell you about me sleeping in your bed to smell you on the sheets while you were away, or spraying your cologne on the shirts that I'd wear, or waiting for you to text me back.
But I can't show you right now because Matt's home, so I guess I'll tell you this instead: I have been so much of a mess these past two days thinking about what my idiot brother said about you that I forgot to put on a bra before work this morning. "
His eyes immediately drop to my breasts.
"Show me how?"
I laugh. "What?"
"How would you show me?"
I lean back against the wall. His body follows mine, still caging me in. Like I'd even try to escape.
Kissing up his jaw, I begin to undo the top few buttons of my blouse.
He doesn't notice at first, too busy nibbling at my ear and rubbing my hips, but the second my lack of bra is evident his head is dropping down.
He takes one of my nipples into his mouth like we're in a dark bedroom and not in a garden that faces several other houses.
Then the other one. His hand covers which ever breast his mouth isn't on but I'm sure if any of the cars passing us looked over it'd be obvious what we were doing.
"I'm meant to be showing you my appreciation," I gasp.
He licks down to where the buttons are still done up on my shirt, coaxing a unexpected moan out of me.
I look to the way window next to my arm - through that netted curtain is my brother, somewhere in the house.
At certain angles he'd definitely be able to see us. Another car drives past on the road.
"Car?"
He nods against my chest, blindly pressing the button on his keys that unlocks the doors. I wrap my shirt around his chest and let me pull me towards - the back seat, Jesus. Here in the driveway. At six in the evening.
"We can't have sex in the driveway," I groan. "It's still light out. We have neighbours."
"Baby if I don't fuck you right now I think I'll die."
I glance around as if a shaded bed will appear out of nowhere. Noah presses me against the car, kisses down my chest again, pushes my legs apart with his thigh.
"Shower?" I offer.
He looks to the house and then me, nodding. We jog to the door. I fight the key into the lock and then drop my bag in the hallway, my blouse still hanging open in front of me.
Noah's arms wrap around my waist and then cup my chest, head buried into my hair. The TV is playing in the living room and the door is open, but Matt doesn't seem to have noticed our entrance.
We manage to take two steps up.
"Noah, I need you to take me to Skye's!"
I swear I hear his teeth grind next to my ear.
He grits out, "I need to shower."
The TV pauses and Noah peels himself from my back. I frantically do up buttons as Matt walks towards the hallway. I'm still facing away from him when he sighs at the bottom of the stairs.
"I need to pee before he showers," I explain once I'm facing the correct direction. My brother just scoffs at me, waving me away. "Did you say Skye's?"
"Go pee then," Matt says, trying to wave me away again. "Just drop me off, man. It's a ten minute drive. Stop looking pissed off at me."
"Right now?"
He makes a face that I want to slap. "Obviously."
"Did you even make dinner?"
"I left my card for takeout," he defends. "Go wild."
Is he always this much of an asshole? Or is it just because he's stood in the way of Noah being inside me again? By the look on Noah's face I'm sure he's asking himself the same questions.
Matt starts putting on his shoes.
Noah's murderous look in then in my direction. I hold up my hands, shrugging. Matt is an anomoly and I don't know my way around him either.
Empty house, he mouths. When I'm back.
He's still glaring as he follows Matt through the front door though.
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