Present Perfect

by Alison Bailey

  “Okay, I will.” He dropped his arms and stepped back giving me room to get by.

  “Thank you.”

  As I passed him going back toward the door I felt the hem of my dress rise up behind me. I quickly stepped to the side, out of his reach. “Dammit, Noah! Stop it! I can’t defend myself with these bottles in my hands.”

  Holding his hands up in surrender, he said, “I thought you had a speck of something on your dress. I was just trying to help is all.” I narrowed my eyes at him before heading back into the house.

  I passed on dessert, even though chocolate cake was my all-time favorite. I excused myself from the table, saying I needed to work on a paper, and went back to my room away from the glaring eyes of parents and the roaming hands and lips of my best friend.

  As I sat on my bed remembering how his hands and lips felt on my skin, I could feel the heat building up inside of me. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m was just sitting there thinking about him and getting all hot and bothered. The knock on my door brought me back to the here and now. “Yeah?” My voice sounded raspy.

  The door cracked open and all I saw was a floating plate with a piece of chocolate cake on it. I smiled. Then I saw my favorite pair of light blue eyes.

  “I brought you some dessert.”

  Noah stepped in and closed the door behind him, tapping it with his foot. He placed the cake down on my bedside table and sat across from me on the bed. He held up the fork, which was already loaded with chocolate frosting. I was still feeling the effects of dinner as I stared at my two favorite things in the entire world. I parted my lips letting out a slight sigh. We never took our eyes off of one another. He handed me the fork.

  Bringing it to my mouth, I slowly slid the fork between my lips. The tip of his tongue darted out of his mouth and ran across his lower lip. He watched the movement of my lips as they curled around the fork. I heard him swallow hard as I slid the fork out of my mouth. He took it from me and as he reached over to place the fork back on the plate, his lips almost grazed my cheek.

  He moved in closer and whispered, “You have a little frosting in the corner of your mouth.”

  I stayed still. My eyes were completely focused on him as he hovered for a few seconds no more than a half inch away from my mouth. The temperature of my body shot up a hundred degrees. What the hell was I doing? I needed to stop this. I was so weak and stupid for allowing this to happen. Besides, both our parents were at the other end of the house. Thoughts of losing Noah sprinted across my mind. I started to panic. I could feel my chest tightening. I felt dizzy and smothered. I leaned away from him.

  He pulled back and stared at me. I didn’t want to see the look in his eyes, but I forced myself to face him. He needed to understand how serious I was when I said these words.

  “We can’t do this. I can’t be your girlfriend.” He stared at me for a few more seconds before turning away, staying seated on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, and his head down.

  “Why?” he asked in a raspy voice.

  “I’m afraid if something happened to cause it to end, then it might fuck things up so badly you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me after that.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “No it’s not. You remember Tyler Evans? He and Emily were close friends. Not as close as we are, but very close. They decided to cross that line and date. It lasted six months and ended badly. They couldn’t even stay friends. Emily and I saw him at the mall over the summer and he was so ugly toward her. I can’t have that happen with us.”

  “We’re not them.”

  “I know, but Emily does everything perfectly. If she couldn’t make it work, I sure as hell can’t. I have to have you in my life. I won’t cross that line with you. It’s too risky and I won’t chance it, not with us. I’m sorry about tonight. I never should have let things go that far.”

  “I’m not sorry about what happened between us in here. Except that you won’t be with me.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to. I can’t. Besides, you deserve better than me, Noah.”

  “There isn’t anyone better than you for me,” he said, looking at me over his shoulder.

  “These feelings will fade away and things will get back to normal. Our bodies are going through a lot of changes. Hormones are flying all over the place. We just need to control ourselves and ride it out.” I was trying to hold back my tears. He sat up and turned to me, showing me how crushed he felt. It was impossible not to let a few tears escape. “I can’t lose you, Noah.”

  “You’d never lose me, Tweet. I’ll always be here if you need me.” He raised his hand, bringing it to my face. The tips of his fingers grazed down my jaw to my chin.

  I shook my head, leaning away from him slightly. “Please Noah, I can’t,” I whispered.

  In one fluid movement, his hand dropped, he stood, and walked to the door. His hand grabbed the doorknob.

  “I’ll see you in the morning when Mom and I pick you up for school, right?” I asked, my voice caught in my throat.

  He didn’t turn around to look at me. “I don’t need a ride tomorrow. Coach called a meeting for the team before classes. Travis is going to give me a ride.”

  When he didn’t turn and look at me the nerves took over my body. My voice got shaky. “I’ll see you at school then.”

  “Maybe. See ya around, Tweet.”

  When I heard the door click, I fell apart completely. The ache that had been in my stomach made its way through the rest of my body. I turned over and buried my face in a pillow to hide the sounds of my sobs. I couldn’t keep my body from shaking. I was burning up inside and out. I had never felt pain this intense before. The sense of loss I had when Noah walked out of this room was all consuming. I kept telling myself that I would talk with him tomorrow. He’s upset now, but once he’s had a night to think it over, he’ll realize I’m right. Why change something that has worked perfectly for us so far?

  The two most devastating feelings in the world are failure and loneliness. All others pale in comparison.

  Failure, to a certain degree, is under you’re control. In theory, if you work hard and give 100% you will achieve your goal. I think I work hard, but either I’m fooling myself or there is just an innate inadequacy gene woven through my DNA. Maybe I had a great, great, great, great, great grandparent, who was a total loser.

  Loneliness, is worse than failure. Loneliness is controlled by others. I’ve heard people say, just because you’re alone doesn’t mean you’re lonely and you can be standing in a crowded room with people, but feel lonely.

  There’s only one person in my life who reigns over whether or not I’m lonely. Whether I’m physically with him or not, knowing he’s in my life keeps the loneliness away. When he’s standing in front of me and I feel him slipping away, the ache of loneliness takes over and drowns me. Being that vulnerable to a person is frightening.

  I hadn’t talked to Noah for three days. We had never gone that long without talking. In fact, we had never gone a day without talking or seeing each other. It was not for lack of trying on my part. I called several times, but he never picked up, the calls all went to voicemail. I saw him briefly at school. In class he was very distant, practically ignoring me. He’d say hi if we were near each other, but that was the extent of it. I spent a lot of time in the girl’s bathroom, crying after each encounter I had with him. I couldn’t concentrate on anything.

  Immediately after school each day, I found myself in the journalism classroom flipping through all the pictures of him that had been taken for the article I wrote. Then I would go and stalk him. I hung out at the boy’s locker room, which garnered me some strange looks and a few phone numbers. He saw me a few times, but never acknowledged me. I was lost not having daily contact with him. I didn’t know who I was without him. My words the other night hurt him, I knew that, I guess I didn’t realize how much. He said he would be there if I needed him. I needed him now, but he wouldn’t even look at m
e.

  It was the day of the dance. I got home earlier than usual. Emily was home for the weekend to help me get ready and she told me to get home as soon as possible. She said we needed several hours to achieve my look. I wasn’t sure how to take that. It usually didn’t take me that long to get ready for anything. At this point, I didn’t even want to go to the stupid dance, but I had asked Vincent. I couldn’t bring myself to call and cancel.

  I was laying on the bed in Emily’s room while she rummaged through her closest for the perfect party dress for me. Thankfully, my sister was a pretty girl who went to a lot of dances and was similar in size to me. I was still shorter and a little curvier than Emily, but the difference wasn’t as noticeable now like when we were younger. I couldn’t have cared less about what I wore tonight. I heard her mumbling something while still in the closet. She stuck her head out when I didn’t respond.

  “Amanda, did you hear me?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “How do you feel about yellow?”

  “As long as it doesn’t have feathers glued to it, yellow is fine, Emily.” My voice was flat.

  She looked at me for a second and then started laughing. “Right, I had forgotten about Tweety. That was hilarious. We knew exactly where you were. All we had to do was follow the trail of feathers.” I looked up glaring at her. “Too soon? Sorry. Okay, go take a shower, shampoo your hair, and shave everywhere.”

  I glanced at the clock on her nightstand. “I have two and a half hours before I have to be there,” I whined.

  “I know. You need to hurry up. We don’t have a lot of time.” She tugged my arms, pulled me to my feet, and pushed me out the door.

  I did exactly what Emily told me to do even if it didn’t make sense to me. My brain was so numb I didn’t have the capacity to make any decisions right now. Noah was the only thought that played repeatedly in my head. I showered, shampooed, shaved, and returned to my sister’s room.

  The dress she picked out was hanging on the closet door. It was the one she wore the first time she ran for homecoming queen. She won, of course. The dress was a pale yellow strapless taffeta. The bodice fit me perfectly, hugging me in all the right places, giving me a curve or two. The skirt hit me right at the knee and was full and flowing with three dimensional flowers sporadically placed close to the hem. She had matched it with a pair of silver strappy sandals with almost 3 inch heels. I wasn’t sure about the heels, but like everything else, I didn’t care.

  Emily had me put the dress on first before tackling hair and makeup. I was sitting at her vanity covered in a huge towel so nothing would get on the dress. There was an awful lot to do for a dance I didn’t even want to attend.

  “I think your hair would look awesome pinned up. Oh, and you can wear my diamond teardrop earrings that Mom and Dad gave me for my sweet sixteen,” Emily said enthusiastically.

  “Whatever you want to do is fine.” My voice was monotone.

  “For someone going to her first big dance, you don’t seem very excited.” I just shrugged my shoulders. “So what time is Noah picking you up?”

  My chest tightened. I never told her who I was going with. I just told her I was going to the dance. “Noah’s not picking me up.”

  “Why not?” she asked, eyeing me in the mirror while she brushed out my hair.

  “Because I’m not going with him.” She stopped brushing for a few seconds, a look of confusion crossed her face.

  “Oh, sorry. I just assumed…”

  “Well, you know what that does,” I said.

  “Why aren’t you going with him?”

  “Because I didn’t ask him.”

  “Are we going to keep doing this or are you going to explain why you’re not going to your first dance with Noah?”

  “I just didn’t ask him. Besides, he’s not really happy with me right now.” I shifted my gaze down to my lap, breaking it from Emily’s. I was afraid if I said anymore I would start crying.

  She stopped what she was doing and leaned against the vanity in front of me. “You want to tell me what happened?”

  I couldn’t speak. I was on the verge of breaking down now. If I opened my mouth to say one little word, I wouldn’t be able to hold it together. I just shook my head. With the tips of her fingers, Emily tilted my head up to look at her. Tears were already swimming in my eyes.

  “Talk to me, Manda. What happened?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. I just know that he hasn’t talked to me in three days. He doesn’t answer his phone and he ignores me at school.” I wiped a tear from my face. It was a good thing she hadn’t done my makeup yet.

  “There has to be a reason. That doesn’t sound like Noah. You can tell me. I won’t say anything.”

  I debated whether or not to open up to her. It wasn’t that we weren’t close, because we were, it was just embarrassing to admit the problem was me. I was a loser and a screw up. I had screwed up my friendship with Noah.

  “Things are changing and I…um don’t know what to do.” My voice cracked and a few tears spilled.

  A slight smile played across Emily’s face. “It’s hard when your best friend becomes a very cute boy, isn’t it?” I didn’t respond. She could see in my eyes that she was spot on. “Is there a girl that Noah likes?” I nodded. “Do you like her?”

  “No, I don’t. She’s not good enough for him.” I looked away from her. I wasn’t exactly lying. It was just Emily didn’t realize the girl we were talking about was me.

  “Is that why he’s mad?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  “Sweetie, I know it’s hard and it doesn’t feel right now like things will work out, but they will. You and Noah have something extremely special, you always have. Nothing will ever come between the two of you for any length of time.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Let’s finish making you the hottest girl at the dance tonight.” She hugged me and got right back to work.

  The minute we pulled into the parking lot, I felt like I was going to be sick. I was nervous about everything, the way I looked, socializing with Vincent, seeing Noah and Beth together, and just plain seeing Noah. I constantly tugged on the taffeta flowers that were stitched to my skirt during the ride over here. The cherry on top of my nerve sundae was the fact that I was sitting in the back of my parent’s car. I wanted Emily to drive me here and pick me up, but my parents insisted. They said that since I was meeting Vincent here instead of him picking me up at our house, they wanted to come and see us together and take pictures. I agreed, after all it was my first dance. This whole dance thing was already a nightmare and I hadn’t even gotten out of the car.

  Dad parked and escorted me and Mom to the gym where the dance was being held. As we got closer, I saw a barrage of flashing lights as Vincent’s parents took picture, after picture, after picture. He really wasn’t a bad looking guy. Some would even say he was cute, in a nerdy sort of way. He had on a dark sports jacket, khaki pants, and a light blue button down shirt with a paisley bow tie. Not exactly GQ material, but it worked for him.

  Vincent saw me walking towards him. I smiled as I saw his mouth drop open and his eyes blink a few times, like he was amazed at what he saw. I knew I probably wasn’t, but I felt pretty for the first time in my life. Emily had done a fantastic job for what she had to work with, which wasn’t much. Vincent and I stood there suffering as both sets of parents took what felt like a million pictures of us. Finally, we said our goodbyes to them and headed inside.

  With every step I took towards the entrance, my stomach flip-flopped. The entrance to the gym actually looked nice, with an archway decorated with white roses and tiny white lights.

  When we first entered, it was difficult to see anything before my eyes had time to adjust to the dim lighting. White columns were placed at each corner of the basketball court, strung with the same tiny white lights. Balloons in the school colors of white and navy blue had been tied everywhere. The DJ was setup at the farthest wall and a table wi
th punch and snacks was set against the wall opposite of him.

  I scanned the crowd looking for Noah and Beth. Neither one of them knew I was going to be there tonight. I wasn’t sure I wanted them to see me. A ton of people were already here, so getting lost in the crowd would be easy. I just wanted a quick look at the two of them, anyway.

  Vincent and I took a spot up against the wall behind a crowd of girls and boys who were too scared to ask each other to dance. My gaze went from the entrance to scanning the crowd and back again.

  “Do you want to dance?” Vincent asked nervously.

  “Do you want to dance?”

  “Well, we are at a dance.”

  “Vinnie, let’s not let the rules of society dictate our actions. I thought you were an independent thinker, man. That’s the main reason I asked you to come tonight.” He simply shrugged and leaned back against the wall.

  I had been standing and scanning for at least 40 minutes and still no sign of Noah and Beth.

  “I’m going to get some punch. Do you want any?” Vincent sounded blasé.

  “What? Oh, no thanks. I’m good.”

  As Vincent walked away, he passed in front of me, blocking my view for a split second. When he moved I saw them. Noah and Beth had just walked in. I don’t know if it was the altitude of the heels I was wearing, but when I saw Noah, my knees became weak and I got dizzy. I had to lean against the wall so I wouldn’t fall.

  Noah looked amazing. While most of the guys wore either a sport coat and khaki pants or just pants and a button down shirt, he had on a suit. It was black and paired with a light grey shirt and darker grey tie. Even in the dim light, his light blue eyes looked even brighter against the monochromatic colors of his suit. With the combination of those eyes, that dark brown hair, and dark suit, he exuded a smoldering sexiness.