If I’d ever had any doubt about Noah’s talent, he quashed it as he shifted into Malec right in front of me. His posture, his voice, even that dangerous glint in his eye. “You’re right, I did choose to be good. And I didn’t go anywhere. See? I’m here.”
The girl rushed forward, throwing her arms around his neck, and I swear, my ovaries exploded. The hug finished and she asked, “Do you want to play Skee-Ball with me?”
“I do.” He stood back up, and she wrapped her tiny hand around one of his fingers, and my heart squeezed at the utter adorableness. I heard him ask, “Are you a princess?” as she led him out into the arcade.
There was a lightness to my whole being, a joy I couldn’t remember feeling before at how happy he looked and how good it felt that I was the one who put that smile on his face. He started playing with the little girl, at one point picking her up so that she could roll the wooden ball up the ramp easier.
How had he so quickly become my favorite person in the whole world?
Then I flashed back to my conversation with Shelby last night. Was I doing this because of a guilty conscience? Trying to fit in a bunch of good memories before I told him the truth?
I was going to tell him. When the time was right. He turned around to grin at me, and I waved back. Not yet. The time wasn’t now.
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.”