Then the second birthday party noticed that he was there and emptied out of their party room to come over to him at the Skee-Ball game. He did more pictures and talked to more kids, and I saw when his face shifted from a real smile to a pretend one. He was looking overwhelmed.
I gently pushed my way through the crowd and said, “Sorry, guys! We have to get going. Thanks for letting us come to your parties!”
There was a chorus of sad protests, but I’d brought Noah into this mess, and it was my job to get him back out of it.
One boy seemed particularly upset about Noah leaving—he started screaming and throwing a tantrum. His mother, trying to cajole him into behaving, said, “Maybe if you’re a good boy Malec will come to your birthday party, too.”
Noah’s face darkened, and once we were outside I asked him, “What’s wrong?”
“That mom lying to her kid. I’m not going to be at his birthday.”
“She was just trying to calm him down.”
He shrugged angrily. “I hate lying. My parents always lied to me my entire life to get me to do things.”
My stomach went queasy and my heart beat dangerously hard as I tried to figure out what exactly he meant. “Like about Santa?”
“No. Like one more take. One more hour of rehearsal. You’re almost done shooting for the day. Talk to one more reporter on the red carpet.”
I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? Anything that came out of my mouth would be adding to my ridiculously high amount of hypocrisy.
When we got in the van, he had shaken off his anger and seemed like himself again. “Up to the end, that was fun. I wish I’d experienced it when I was six years old. Or that it had been my actual birthday. Which is ten months from now.”
I caught my breath. Did he . . . did he think we’d still be hanging out ten months from now?
My guilt was threatening to suffocate me, and I did not know what to do with that new piece of information.
I was going to tell him. I was.
“That cake wasn’t enough to fill me up,” he said. “I’m starving. We should go grab something to eat.”
There was a pain at the back of my throat that I didn’t want to identify. I was going to push these feelings out. Like I’d told Shelby, I’d been compartmentalizing things my entire life, and I was going to spend whatever time I had with Noah enjoying him and his company.
I said, “You don’t want to eat here and have paper-thin-crust greasy pizza topped with a cheese by-product?”
“I was thinking something more substantial. Do you know of anywhere good to eat?”
Did I . . . “Are you ready for this conversation?”
He laughed. “I was being polite and trying to find out if you are on any kind of dietary plan. Like gluten-free, vegan, keto, paleo—”
“I’m on the eat-eo diet. That’s where if I want to eat something, I do.”
Another laugh. “I have the perfect place in mind. The food is incredible. Head west on this road.”
I started up the van. “When you’re giving me directions, you can’t use words like west.”
“Go left.”
It took us about twenty minutes, but he had taken me to . . . a tiny hole in the wall called Quixote’s. I’d expected a super nice, fancy place, and this was like its evil twin. We headed in, and somehow the inside was worse than the outside.
“Does the health department know about this place?” I whispered, and he nudged me with his elbow.
“It’s good food and everybody here leaves me alone.”
A hostess approached us. “Two?”
“Yes,” Noah said, and we followed her to a table. We sat down and she left us with menus. “Their burgers are amazing.”
“Doubtful.”
“You’re going to eat your words.”
“Yeah, that may be the only thing I eat,” I told him.
We silently read the menu and he asked, “Do you want to get appetizers? The oysters here are pretty good.”
“Oysters are disgusting. They look like somebody already ate them. They’re basically sea vomit.”
“The ones here are fried.”
“I’m not interested in fried ocean puke,” I said.
“Well Miss Appetizer Snob, do you know what you want?”
“I’ll try one of their burgers that you promised are good. And know that our entire friendship hangs in the balance, because if they’re terrible, I’ll never get over it.”
That twinkle I loved sparkled in his eyes. “I’ll take my chances.” He raised his arm to gesture for our server to come over. “I’m about to order enough food to freak out the other patrons,” he informed me. I was good with that.
We placed our orders, Noah making good on his threat to order an insane amount of food, and I asked for a cheeseburger and fries along with a side of ranch. The server took our menus. Noah reached across the table and took my hand, and I loved the happy blue butterflies that twirled around my heart at the expression in his eyes.
“I missed you when I was in New York,” he said.
Those tiny butterfly wings flapped more intensely. “You already said that when you got back.”
“I just wanted to make sure that you knew. That I thought about you the whole time while I was away. And I almost called you half a dozen times, but I didn’t know if it was okay for me to do that because we’re just . . .” He let his words trail off.
“Friends can call each other,” I said, ignoring the warm feelings that were bubbling up inside me at his words.
“Right.” An expression I didn’t recognize crossed his face. “Friends can do that.”
There was an awkward silence, and it had been so long since that had happened between us that I didn’t know how to respond to it.
Thankfully, he spoke first. “Speaking of New York, I found this article online that said staring into each other’s eyes is supposed to increase intimacy and put our brains in sync with one another.”
“That sounds made up.”
He made an X on his chest. “I swear it’s not.”
The server returned with glasses of water for both of us, and we thanked him. When he had cleared out, Noah asked, “Do you want to try it?”
“Sure.”
We leaned over and began staring into each other’s eyes. Even if people did normally leave him alone here, I had the feeling somebody was going to call in a padded wagon if we kept doing this. I felt silly.
Until I didn’t. I was focused on his light-brown eyes, the way there was a darker-brown ring around his pupils and another one surrounding his iris. How had I never noticed that before?
He spoke, and it startled me because I was so caught up in staring at him. “I love your eyes. The way the color seems to swirl between green and brown, depending on how the light hits it.”
Why did this make me uncomfortable? Him seeing me this way? I pitched forward slightly so that my hair would fall like a curtain around the sides of my face. “They’re just eyeballs. Almost everybody has them.”
“It’s not just your eyes. Do you know how beautiful you are?” he asked, reaching up to lift my chin, and then tucked my hair behind my ears.
I accepted myself, flaws and all, and considered myself pretty average, but for him to call me beautiful? That did something to me. Some kind of exhilarating free fall was happening in my gut. Like he’d somehow infused me with some of his confidence and strength. I believed him, that he thought I was beautiful. His words shifted something inside me, and I found myself saying, “I want you to kiss me.”
There was only a slight glimmer of fear, so faint I almost didn’t feel it. There was more anticipation than anything else. I knew what would happen after, but I was willing to risk it.
“I was planning on it.”
He wasn’t understanding what I was saying. I put my hand on top of his. “No. I mean, I want you to kiss me.”
I saw the moment when comprehension set in. “Now?” he asked.
�
��No, not now.”
“In the van?”
“We can’t kiss there,” I said.
“Why not? A lot of kissing happens in cars. Are you worried people will see us?”
“Maybe.”
“And that they’ll judge you?” he asked, and it was a bit annoying how perceptive he was and how he seemed to understand things about my psyche that I hadn’t even considered. “No one’s going to judge you or laugh at you. If anyone does notice, they’ll just be jealous that you’re kissing me.”
He was teasing, and it was a bit on the egotistical side, but also quite possibly true. However, I also didn’t want to end up on a magazine cover with him. Because even though he thought himself safe here, I’d seen enough paparazzi photos to know that they sometimes lurked and got personal moments on film.
The server arrived then with our food, and it was enough to completely cover our table.
I picked up my burger and took a bite and couldn’t help but let out a little moan of appreciation. This was amazing.
Noah asked, “So was I right or were you wrong?”
“Okay, yes to both, and I am definitely eating my words, because this is worthy of being offered as a sacrifice to the old gods. But good doesn’t necessarily equate to healthy.” I waved my hand at the stuff he’d ordered.
“If I’m not eating right, at least I’m eating a lot,” he quipped back. “I don’t see any vegetables on your plate.”
I pointed at my ranch sauce.
“Ranch dressing is not a vegetable.”
“I eat it with vegetables, so it’s basically the same thing. Your onion rings aren’t vegetables, either. I think the healthy parts are negated after you dip them in batter.”
I was halfway through my cheeseburger when I realized he hadn’t eaten anything and was looking around for our server.
“What are you doing? You’re the one who said this place was amazing.”
The server came over, and Noah said, “Can you box all of this up and bring us the check?”
“What?” I laughed.
“We have plans,” he said with a wolfish grin. “I wanted you to have a chance to eat it hot, and you did, so now we can go.”
I wanted to ask him if he was being serious, but it was plain that he was. The server brought over a mountain of boxes and two bags while I ate a bunch of my fries and put the rest of my burger into a box. I didn’t take the fries, because they were never good once they were cold. Noah was busy shoving boxes into bags until everything was packed up.
He stood up, throwing several (American) hundred-dollar bills on the table, while I marveled at how well this server was about to get tipped. He grabbed the bags with one hand and mine with the other and said, “Let’s go.”
I was surprised by how excited I was to leave with him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Noah definitely was in a hurry. He even asked me about how committed I was to the idea of driving the speed limit. “I’m against tickets, so I’m practically married to it,” I told him.
“I could pay the fine,” he said and I wanted to laugh, but he was kneading the back of my neck with his long, clever fingers and his touch was turning me into a pool of jelly. We weren’t going to break the law; I was going to get us into an accident.
It seemed to take forever to get back to his house, but when we arrived, everything happened very quickly. In a matter of minutes, Noah had paid Joe and sent him on his way, put the food away, and grabbed dinner for the dogs. While I stood in the kitchen and watched him. Like his touch had numbed my mind and made it so that I wasn’t thinking clearly and couldn’t pitch in and help.
He took off his bomber jacket and hung it up on a hook.
Then he came over and said, “Let me help you with your coat.” He turned me around and slid it off slowly, and it fell to the floor. Then he pushed aside my hair with one hand and pressed his lips to the back of my neck.
It was like being held against a live electrical wire—sparks popped all along my skin. It felt incredible.
“Oh, wow” was all I could manage.
“This is pretty good for me, too.” He murmured the words near my hairline and those sparks turned into currents, snaking along my nerve endings. I closed my eyes against the onslaught of sensation from him running his lips across that sensitive skin.
“I can, uh, I can see why people pay you to be the romantic lead in movies. You’re very, very good at this.”
I felt his smile against my neck. “You’re not even getting my best stuff.”
“Someday, I will.” And whether that was a promise to him or to my misfunctioning brain, I didn’t know.
Thinking of him in the movies prompted me to ask him something I’d been wondering about. “You said once that you could be anyone I wanted when you kissed me. What did you mean?”
“I meant that I could be, like, aggressive.” One of his hands went to my hip and pulled me straight back against him, and I gasped at the contact. “Taking control. Knowing exactly what to do to push all your buttons and drive you wild.”
He released me and then gently ran his fingers up my right arm. “Or I could be shy, unsure of myself, but eager. Using light, feathery touches until I figured out what you liked.”
I turned around to face him. We were so close together that I could practically feel him against my skin, even though we weren’t touching. I drank in his warmth, his strength. “What would you, Noah, do when you kiss me?”
He framed my face with his hands and just looked at me, and his expression . . . I couldn’t have named it, but it felt soft. It caused a lump in my throat and made my limbs shaky. “I would be gentle and kind and patient for however long you needed it.”
My heart skipped at his words. “I think I like that one the best.”
And my breath caught in anticipation when he reached down and rubbed his nose against mine, breathing me in. The fear was there; I worried the fear would always be there. But it felt different. Manageable. It felt more like an echo than something I had to worry about.
Again, like he could read my mind, he asked, “Are you feeling afraid right now?”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a yes,” I told him. “But, a little bit. Although it’s not like before. This is different. Like it’s changing.”
“I’m glad,” he said.
So was I.
“Come on,” he said, moving to take my hand. “You should be sitting down for this.”
I followed him but said, “Oh, should I?”
“Yes. I noticed what happened last time.”
When my legs had given out on Gladys’s porch? What could I say? He was right.
He led me to the couch in the library and sat us down close together. He was stroking my hair, almost like he was trying to calm me down. To reassure me that everything was fine. I was all pins and needles waiting for him to make his move and kiss me. To see how differently it would feel when he was the one to initiate, how I would react. Especially after all the positive affirmations I’d been doing. Did he know that I’d been looking forward to all of this? Maybe I should tell him.
“Can I confess something?” I asked him. “I thought about this while you were gone.”
“This?” he asked, letting his fingers trail along my jawline, over my ear, down my throat. Everywhere he touched he left behind a trail of goose bumps, like they were chasing his caresses. Then, as if he couldn’t stand waiting any longer, his lips replaced his hand, and all of my bones turned completely liquid. I was just a gelatinous mess, incapable of doing anything other than reveling in what he was doing.
“Uh-huh. I wanted you to touch me just like this. Kiss me like this.”
I both heard and felt his groan against the underside of my jaw. “Do you know how hot that is?”
“Saying what I want?”
“Yes.”
His mouth seemed to melt against my flesh, and I reached up and put my arms around his neck, pulling him closer. There was this onsl
aught of sensation, the feel of his lips on me, his hypnotic scent, his soft hair against my fingertips. I tried to pull him closer. He was so good at everything he did, like he was a master musician and I was his instrument.
When he reached the part of my throat where my scars were, there was no hesitation. It was no different to him than any other area of my skin. He didn’t seem grossed out by it like I imagined a man would be. He didn’t even seem to care, which made me blink back some unexpected hot tears. It was just another part of me that he wanted to touch and kiss, and my heart utterly melted over his actions.
Then I kept opening my eyes to look at him, to make sure I wasn’t making this up. How could it feel this amazing? I tried exploring him with my touch, to follow the shape of his high cheekbones, his strong jawline, the cords in his neck, the way his shoulders flexed beneath my hands. But I kept getting distracted by what he was doing. Currently he was teasing the skin along my collarbone, and my abdomen tightened, swirling with heat and want.
He was enchanting me, using my body’s reactions against me. Not against me, against my phobia. And it seemed to be working. I wanted this feeling to go on, to expand. So that when he kissed me, it would be like this, only a thousand times better.
My skin felt pinprickly and warm, overly sensitized from his lips, and he was acting like he had all the time in the world to explore and enjoy me. His kisses were so delicate and gentle and swoonworthy that I had to imagine it would be the same when he finally kissed me.
Along with this fear/anticipation/excitement mixture I had going on, I was starting to feel frustrated. I wanted more. Even if it meant I was going to have what felt like a ten-minute-long heart attack, it would be worth it.
So worth it.
“Were you planning on kissing me sometime tonight?” I asked, and my voice sounded airy and desperate.
He pulled back, and the grin he was sporting reached into my chest and wrapped itself around my heart.
“I’m working up to it.”
If he worked any harder, I was going to be rendered unconscious. I didn’t know how much more of his teasing I could stand. “I think you’ve sufficiently worked up to it.”
The Seat Filler: A Novel Page 21