I want to do a hundred things with Noah, but somehow going all the way under my Dad’s roof feels like bad luck somehow.
Bad luck for me if my Dad ever found out, that’s for starters.
But I want Noah to feel a hundred percent comfortable too, and I can tell he’s got more than just me and my Dad’s house on his mind.
I know he doesn’t want to stay, he said he can’t. As much as I try to push it to the back of my mind, I slowly start to prepare myself for the truth.
The facts.
I know I won’t be able to stay here and let Noah go anywhere without me now. Not now and not ever, I want him to claim me properly and I think we both silently know that doing that here isn’t gonna work.
As nice as it might be, it just wouldn’t work for either of us.
Enough time under the water and Noah points out how wrinkly I’m getting. I feel tired too, like the whole day and a half since yesterday is suddenly too much on top of another sultry afternoon of weather I still haven’t gotten used to.
My college was on the East coast, but it was a good twenty degrees cooler there when I left.
“I’m gonna dry you off and lay you down, Faith. You look beat. Don’t go pretending you can go all day on my account,” Noah tells me, a matter of fact.
I feel silly that he can read my mood so easily, whereas he really does look like he could go all day, and then some.
“Will you lay down with me?” I ask him, gasping and moaning lightly as he brushes me delicately from head to toe with my towel.
“Of course I will,” he whispers in my ear, kissing it. “I think you have that little spoon look about you right about now.”
The air conditioner does work, and setting it just right, Noah is true to his word and snuggles up behind me as I ease back into his nakedness with my own, wondering if I’ll ever be able to put clothes on when he’s around ever again.
It just feels so natural to be naked with him, having him hold me like this. Telling me how much I turn him on.
The one thing I’ve been meaning to ask him plays on my lips. I half ask the question a couple of times and almost hear his prompting me, but I fall asleep almost instantly.A rumble of thunder that should wake me doesn’t.
It’s not feeling Noah spooning me that makes me awake with a start, clutching the sheets to my bare chest and shivering.
I’m terrified for a moment that I might have dreamt the whole thing. The light outside, my nakedness after my shower. It’s all so much like it was last night.
Except there’s no Noah.
No feeling of his powerful eyes watching me.
I leap out of the bed, the pleasant ache between my legs reminding me that I haven’t dreamt any of it, but where is he?
I call out for him, wondering if he’s just using the bathroom or maybe getting something to eat from downstairs.
I wrap myself in my Japanese robe, feeling it cling to me once the stuffiness of the rest of the house hits me.
“Noah?” I go from room to room, then back upstairs, even calling out back from my window for him, half-imagining he’s climbed back up his tree.
But he’s gone.
Having an idea, I rush downstairs, knowing he wouldn’t leave without that old beat-up case. I saw he had it by the door when he arrived, but it’s gone now too.
It feels like something’s hit me in my chest. Like I can’t breathe properly.
A horrible ache spreads from my heart and lungs, filling my stomach with a sick feeling that only makes me want to cry.
And I do, I start to cry like I’ve never cried in my life.
What starts as a dry croak disappears into a vacant, howling sound as I curl up on the couch, hugging a pillow and still smelling him on it I cry a little harder.
Different shakes now, different sounds from my body. Different feelings from the same place he made me feel so special just a few hours before.
I don’t want to believe it, I can’t.
He said he wanted me to promise myself to him and I did. He wouldn’t just leave.
He just wouldn’t.
But he has, and the only sound apart from the heaving sigh of thunder outside is the clock on the mantle, all drowned out by my own sobs once they take hold.
I cry until I can’t cry anymore until the need to know what’s happened is stronger than my own misery.
Hauling myself off the couch, I make my way to the kitchen, struggling to remember Fitz’s number.
I just can’t remember though. Try as I might, I just can’t.