Dating: On the Rebound

by Stephanie Street

  Hannah’s expression was compassionate as she put her arm around my shoulder and hugged me. I didn’t want to cry, but I couldn’t seem to stop the flow of tears. Hannah hugged me tight and when she pulled back, her own eyes were red and glassy. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for you. For Lizzy.” Hannah shook her head. “I can’t imagine how her family must feel.”

  I nodded my agreement. “Yeah, the weeks after it all happened were rough. There was an investigation. Lizzy had written a note detailing all the things Alexa had been doing to her. Her parents had gone to the school just like my mom had, but I guess they felt like they couldn’t do anything about it. It was because of the letter and statements made by some of the other girls who had witnessed Alexa’s behavior that she got expelled and eventually charged with bullying. Last I heard she was in a place kind of like juvie, but she’s getting counseling, too.” And I hoped she was there for a really, really long time.

  “So, what happened tonight?” Hannah asked.

  I hadn’t really explained all of that yet. “Noah kissed me.”

  Hannah’s eyes widened.

  “Again.”

  Despite the seriousness of the conversation we’d been having, Hannah squee-ed. “Really? Again?”

  I nodded, squee-ing on the inside. “He kissed me before. The night you found us after his game in the hall.”

  “Oh, my gosh. Are you serious?” she asked and then narrowed her eyes at me. “I knew something was going on between you two that night. You both had guilty expressions.”

  My face burned, yet I laughed, because I was sure we did. “It was kind of sudden.”

  Hannah leaned back against the pillows on my bed and sighed. “Are you even kidding? Was it just amazing?” Hannah smacked herself in the forehead. “Of course, it was amazing. This is Noah Jacobs we’re talking about.” Her eyes met mine. “Did it make your toes curl?”

  I smiled a little. “Oh, yeah.”

  Hannah sighed again, this time with her eyes closed. “Holy smokes.”

  I flopped down beside her. “No kidding.” I replayed tonight’s kiss in my head and just the memory of it had me tingling from head to toe. I’d never had a kiss in my life like Noah’s kisses.

  Hannah turned her head on the bed so she faced me. “If it was such a good kiss, why’d you run out of there like that? How come you aren’t still making out with Mr. Perfect himself?”

  “Well, I have to tell you all of it or you won’t understand.” I went all the way back to the first day of school, telling Hannah about becoming lab partners and Homecoming committee co-chairs. “We were thrown together all the time and at first we were just friends, but then things started to change.” I told her about Trina and how Noah couldn’t stand her anymore. I told her about the scratches on his arm and about the calls and texts. “She wouldn’t leave him alone.”

  “What a psycho,” Hannah said and we both sat up criss-cross-applesauce in the middle of my bed facing each other.

  “No kidding. It set off all kinds of alarms for me and I knew I should keep my distance, but Noah,” I let my voice trail off with a shrug.

  Hannah eyed me knowingly. “Yeah, I get it. I’d have a hard time ignoring that body, too.” She blinked. “I mean, that boy.”

  That made us both laugh. She was right, but not for the reasons she thought she was. “It’s not just because he’s gorgeous-”

  “Although it doesn’t hurt,” Hannah interrupted.

  A small giggle burst from my mouth. “Like at all. But it isn’t just that. Noah’s amazing. We’ve spent a lot of time together. I can see why they call him Mr. Perfect, the guy’s got it going on.” I frowned remembering the only flaw I could really think of. “Well, except he’s a pig. His room is a disaster.”

  Hannah’s eyes widened until I thought they’d pop of their sockets. “You’ve been in his room?”

  I nodded. “Yes, and it is super messy. He has laundry all over the place and papers.” I smiled at the memory.

  Hannah was quiet and I glanced at her face to discern what she was thinking. I couldn’t tell really, but she wore a smirk on her lips.

  “What?” I asked.

  She pointed at me. “You really like him.”

  I shook my head. Not because she was wrong, but because I couldn’t. “I can’t, Hannah. Don’t you see? I can’t go there again.”

  Hannah’s eyes clouded with confusion for a moment before they cleared and she gave me a look. It said, you’re older than me and should know better than you do. “Tierney,” she chided.

  “You don’t understand-”

  She interrupted me again. “I do. I mean, I don’t, but I do get it. You’re scared. And I don’t blame you one bit. What Trina did? Whew. Crazy. But that isn’t Noah.”

  I knew that, but it didn’t matter. “It doesn’t matter. Drama like that follows popular people around. It’s why I’ve done everything in my power to be invisible for the last year and a half. And it was going just fine until he got involved.” I shook my head. “No way. I don’t need that in my life again.”

  Hannah’s brow pinched with concern and I knew she didn’t really get it. If she did, she wouldn’t be looking at me like that, like I didn’t know what I was talking about, like I hadn’t already experienced what popular people can do when they think they have power over you.

  “Tee, no. You can’t lump people like that. Noah isn’t anything like Trina. You know he isn’t. And he isn’t like Alexa, or her friends, or that boy from the dance back then, either.” She shook her head. “If you had seen the look on his face as he was rushing you out of the dance, you would know that. The guy was crushed.”

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to hear that. I didn’t want to think about Noah hurting. This was for the best. We were lab partners and that was it. We’d go back to being friends, better yet, acquaintances. There would be no more hanging out. No more phone calls or texts. No more inside jokes. No more basketball games. And sweet mercy, no more kissing.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  It just didn’t matter.

  20

  Noah

  If there was ever a nightmare, it was the night of Homecoming. What had begun as one of the most amazing nights of my life, ended with the girl of my dreams slamming the door in my face and a trip to the ER.

  “What happened?” I asked as soon as I saw my mom. She was standing beside a large window, staring into the darkness, only turning when she heard my voice.

  “Oh, baby,” she cried into my shoulder as I wrapped her in a hug.

  “Mom, you’re scaring me. What happened?” I wanted to just be there for her, but I wasn’t lying. I was scared. After the roller-coaster of a night I’d had, I couldn’t take much more.

  “He was in so much pain. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t even get him in the car. I had to call an ambulance.” Her tears soaked the front of my shirt.

  “Oh, man, why didn’t you call me?” I mumbled, the thought of my petite mother trying to help my father, who’d lost a lot of weight but still dwarfed her, into the car and not being able to do it, crushed me. Suddenly, all the bullshit from earlier seemed so insignificant I wondered why I went to the dance in the first place.

  Mom shook her head. “I didn’t want you to have to leave the dance. I know how excited you’ve been to go with Tierney. Anyway, the ambulance was faster.”

  In my head, I knew that was true. Talk about perspective. I had been excited about the dance. I’d been beside myself since Tierney agreed to be my date. But this? This was bigger than any date. Bigger than a dance.

  “Mom,” my voice broke and I hugged her tighter before pulling back. Her eyes were red and shining with tears. “How is he now?” I wondered why she wasn’t in there. Shouldn’t she be with him?

  Mom looked down at the floor and my heart sank. “Let’s sit down,” she said. Taking my hand, she led me to a set of chairs beside the windows.

  I didn’t want to sit. I didn’t want to hear what she h
ad to say. I could already tell it wasn’t going to be anything good. I’d told them I wanted to be kept in the loop, but at that moment all I wanted to do was hide from the reality that was my dad’s illness.

  Mom held my hands between our knees as we faced each other in our respective chairs. I could tell she was trying to keep it together, but it wasn’t easy and the dread I’d been feeling since getting her phone call that they were in the emergency room quadrupled.

  “Noah, your dad saw his doctor this week and had some labs done to see how the effective the medicine has been in stopping the cancer and putting it back in remission.” She’d been avoiding my eyes, but now she looked directly at me. “It isn’t good, son. The medicine isn’t working.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. “Can they try something else? Another medicine? Anything?” I was desperate. It sounded like she was telling me my father was going to die.

  Tears welled in her eyes again and she blinked to keep them back. “They have. He’s had a couple of different types of chemo medicine since he began treatment. They’re running out of options.”

  Out of options? “Does that mean there are still options? You said running out?” I let go of her hands and ran my fingers through my hair. It was stiff from the gel I’d put in it before the dance.

  The dance.

  It seemed light years in the past now.

  I could tell Mom was struggling to choose her words carefully and I hated it. I hated it because that meant they were giving up. I jumped to my feet.

  Mom rose from her chair and took hold of my hands again, keeping me still when my body begged to move. To run. “The doctor wants to try one more thing. There’s still a chance we can beat this.”

  She wanted to believe her own words, but I could tell she didn’t. It was true, she was telling me my father was going to die.

  She tried to get me to go home, but I refused to leave her there alone. They let us sit in Dad’s room for short periods of time, but mostly we haunted the waiting room. I knew it was reassuring to her to see him, watch his chest rise and fall and know he was still there.

  Finally, after a night of observations and getting his pain under control, they released him and we took him home. I helped my mom get him settled into the downstairs room and we tip-toed around the house while he slept most of the day.

  On Monday morning I begged her to let me stay home. I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to my dad and I didn’t want to leave him, but she insisted it was important to keep our schedules as normal as possible. I heard what she didn’t add to the end of that comment- for as long as possible.

  I had no idea how I was supposed to go to school and pretend everything was okay, because it sure as hell wasn’t. Not even a little. Between worrying about my parents and everything going on at home, I’d been stressing about Tierney.

  I hadn’t told Mom anything about the dance, just saying it had been a night to remember when she asked. I was grateful Tierney shared the photos her mom had taken of us before the Trina fallout so I could show them to Mom. She’d gushed over them and I didn’t blame her. I looked like a lovesick fool and didn’t even feel silly about it. Tierney looked so beautiful, she’d have struck any red-blooded teenage boy stupid.

  “You look so happy,” Mom had said, her eyes filling with tears. The thing was, she was right. I did look happy and so did Tierney, which made this moment all the more harrowing.

  AP Bio had become my favorite class. I knew it had nothing to do with Mr. McGowan’s less than spectacular lectures and everything to do with my hot lab partner. I’d been walking into class with a spring in my step for weeks.

  Not today. Today, I felt like someone had filled my sneakers with cement. I should have called her. Or texted. Something. Anything, to make this moment easier. She hadn’t spoken to me at all since we left the gym after Trina attacked us at the dance. She’d been silent the entire drive to her house no matter how many times I’d tried to tell her I was sorry and begged her to talk about it. I wanted to pull over on the side of the road and force her to talk to me, but I knew that was wrong and it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.

  Tierney trusted me. She opened up and let me in, sharing her darkest moments, exposing her fears, and I promised I’d never let anyone hurt her. I realized over the weekend, since I had nothing but time to think about it, that it was foolish to make a promise like that. I had no control over Trina, obviously, but I did have control over me.

  I thought about the conversation Tierney and I’d had about that guy, Edward. Tierney said he ran away from the girl he wanted, the girl he loved, because he knew he wasn’t good for her. Maybe that’s what I needed to do. If I couldn’t keep Tierney from harm, then I just needed to stay away from her. Too bad that was the last thing on this earth I wanted.

  For some reason, I wasn’t surprised when I arrived to class before Tierney, and I wondered if she’d show up at all. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? She couldn’t just stop coming to school because of what happened, could she?

  I sat on a stool at our table and let my head fall into my hands. When had my life become so complicated? I knew I should be focused on what was going on at home, and I was, but I just couldn’t seem to shake the need to make things right with Tierney. The thing between us didn’t feel insignificant. It didn’t feel temporary. All weekend long, I’d had to force myself not to call her or text. It wasn’t easy. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to be with her. While I wanted so much more, if nothing else, we’d become friends and I missed her.

  The bell was about to ring. She had thirty seconds to walk through that door without being tardy. I held my breath as I alternated watching the clock and the door. Mr. McGowan rose from his desk, his mouth opening to speak when Tierney burst through the open door and sped to her seat beside me. Other than a slight raise of his brow, Mr. McGowan didn’t acknowledge the fact that his most predictable and responsible student had just rushed into the room like a delinquent.

  Her quick movements stirred the air around me, filling it with her fruity scent taking me right back to the dance and holding her close. I had more important things to be worried about right now, I reminded myself. My life was in freaking shambles and all I wanted to do was go back to that moment, the one right before our lips touched and all I could feel, all I could think about, was her.

  I wanted to relive that kiss for the next week. Month. Longer.

  Tierney slid onto the stool beside me, the curtain of her hair firmly in place. We were back to that, huh? Well, that didn’t work for me. At all. But McGowan was droning on and on. I tuned him out and focused on the girl beside me.

  Our bodies were far enough apart I couldn’t feel her, but her shoulders shuddered with ragged breaths. I wanted to believe she was as affected by me as I was by her and not just still calming down from almost being late. Was I the only one feeling this connection?

  I shifted in my seat bringing our shoulders closer. Tierney stilled. Man, I wanted to talk to her. Why hadn’t I texted her at least? Oh, yeah, because I’d been at the hospital all weekend.

  I picked up the pen resting on my notebook and wrote two words.

  I’m sorry.

  I pushed the notebook in front of her and when she didn’t react, I nudged her elbow with mine. She flinched and I tried not to be offended. I moved the notebook an inch more in her direction. I could tell she’d read the words, but was refusing to respond.

  With a sigh I picked up the pen again and wrote the question that had been plaguing me. I hated the thought that Trina had hurt Tierney physically and I wanted, no, needed to know if she was okay.

  Are you ok?

  Still nothing, no indication that she’d read the words or any sign that she would respond in any way.

  I tried again.

  Please!

  I waited.

  Nothing.

  Finally, her hand moved and hope washed over me. But instead of reaching out for me or even for a pencil to write a
response, Tierney pushed the notebook back to my side of the table and put her head down on her arms.

  21

  Tierney

  In my head, I knew Noah wasn’t responsible for what happened the night of the dance. Trina had issues and the way she behaved was on her. No, I didn’t blame Noah for anything except making me hope again.

  Monday morning was agonizing. I’d been through a lot things in my life, but knowing I’d have to see Noah was almost more than I could take at this point. It just felt like the last straw.

  Hannah had spent the weekend trying to convince me it was wrong to push him away, but she didn’t understand. Not really. No, she was caught up in the romance while I knew acting with my heart would only lead to more pain.

  I waited until the very last second to sneak into AP Bio. Mr. McGowan was already gearing up for another long-winded lecture I never thought I’d be so thankful for; I couldn’t have handled a lab assignment today.

  Every cell of my body, every inch of my skin was aware of Noah beside me. I used my hair as a shield and wished it was long enough to hide all of me. I could feel the energy radiating off him in waves and just knew he fought the urge to speak to me. Finally, he picked up his pen and wrote two little words in the bold handwriting of his I’d become so familiar with over the course of the semester.

  I’m sorry.

  I told myself it didn’t matter. I was sorry, too. Sorry didn’t bring Lizzy back. Sorry didn’t keep people like Trina and Alexa from doing the harmful things they did. There were some things you just couldn’t come back from and others that just weren’t worth the risk. As much as I cared for Noah, I didn’t believe any of it was worth the risk.

  Are you ok?