Newborn

PART TWENTY-FIVE

That, apparently, was a legitimate excuse because Noah placed his keys onto the mantel and then took a seat on the free lounge. He turned the sound down on the TV, until he heard moans, and then he turned it back up again.

I realised then that what I said about being drunk might not be a complete lie, because as I tried to focus on the TV, the room was starting to swirl around me.

Still, I poured up another shot and spilled a little bit of liquor onto the table. Something about that made me giggle. I felt like a young child who had just done something naughty, so I swiftly used the bottom of my shirt to try and wipe up the mess. As I turned, I noticed that Noah was staring at me, so I offered the shot to him.

"Do you want it?" I asked. Truthfully, I wasn't sure about my logic here, but I figured it was either a peace offering or that I didn't want to be drunk alone.

"No, thank you." He shook his head. "I don't drink."

That was hard to comprehend. "Like, on Mondays?"

"I just don't drink," he stated flatly.

"Why not?" I fumbled around so that I was kneeling on the lounge and staring at him.

Noah took one look at me before he took the shot from my hand. My expression brightened because I thought he was going to drink it, but then he just placed it down onto the table and picked up his novel. He opened the book to the place that he had marked, and then, to my horror, he started to read. I cleared my throat and he peeked over his book to stare at me.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" I arched a brow.

"Hm?"

I glared. "You didn't drink the shot I gave to you and it was a present."

His eyes returned to his novel. "Sure, I did," he said.

"No, I saw you."

He didn't answer.

"It's sitting right there," I said, pointing toward the shot.

"No, that's another one..." he murmured, his eyes still glued to his novel.

My gaze narrowed. I was about to debate him until I vividly remembered him taking the shot from my grasp. From that point, I started to believe that maybe he had, indeed, taken the shot and simply poured another. Either way, he was off the hook because watching him read now distracted me.

There was a serenity about him when he read, his expression was calm, and though those eyes were fixed onto his novel, I could tell that his mind was worlds away.

I wasn't sure whether it was the inner workings of the alcohol, or if I had always thought it, but he was kind of beautiful. His skin looked like it was sculpted from ice, his pale blonde hair sat perfectly in its organised chaos, and though his dark eyes contrasted with his pale skin, there was something alluring about that mixture.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" I asked him.

He seemed surprised by my question because his eyebrows perked up. "Excuse me?"

"Are you seeing anyone?"

"Oh, no."

"Why not?"

He placed his book onto his lap and shrugged. "I don't know. It just hasn't come up."

"Is it true what Darien said? That you haven't been laid since dinosaurs?"

"I'm not that old!" Noah seemed offended.

"You know what I mean," I replied, my words slurring a little. "It's just that I see Darien with all these women, and Roxanne with Oliver, and then you just sit here alone and read your books." I picked up the shot on the table, throwing it back. "Aren't you lonely?"

A long pause followed, but it was different from his usual pauses. He didn't seem to be carefully structuring his words; it was more like he didn't know how to respond. For a moment, I thought he simply hadn't heard me, but then he responded with, "We're all a little lonely sometimes. Some fill that void with liquor, some with sex, and others with tea. Literature is my vice because when I'm with a book, I'm never truly alone."

I couldn't really comprehend it. "But how do you survive without sex?"

Noah returned to his novel. "I'm asexual."

"What?" I gasped. "So, you don't have parts? Like a cartoon character?"

"No, I think you're confusing asexual as a sexual identity and asexual reproduction, like with plants, when they reproduce by a single organism that—" he glanced up at me and I'm not sure how my expression looked, exactly, but he simply exhaled and said, "I have parts."

My eyebrows scrunched together. "You just choose not to use your, erm, parts?"

"Correct."

The thought of sexual abstinence of any kind was something I struggled to comprehend. This was because my sex drive had always been incredibly high. Hell, I even hit puberty before my peers, going through it at the young age of nine. "So, you've never . . ." I tried to word it carefully.

"No, I have."

"And you didn't like it?"

"It was fine." He gave a small shrug.

I chewed on my lip for a moment, not quite sure how to word my next question. "How do you know it wasn't just the person you were with? Maybe they just didn't do it for you? I mean, I've had many a bad lay in my lifetime."

Noah placed his book back down onto the coffee table, seeming to accept that he wasn't reading any time soon.

He glanced over at me, with this whimsical look on his face. "If you try every type of chocolate, numerous times and don't find any particularly stimulating for your tastebuds, would you still eat chocolate?"

I was never any good with metaphors. "Like plain chocolate bars?" I arched a brow. "But they're all the same inside."

"Exactly my point."

I needed more alcohol. A lot more alcohol. "Maybe it was just a bad batch of chocolate?" I shrugged a little. "You shouldn't give up on eating chocolate forever just because it didn't tingle your tastebuds yet. Maybe chocolate is an acquired taste? Maybe you just weren't in the mood for chocolate at the time?"

He looked at me very seriously. "I'm never in the mood for chocolate."

"Then don't actively eat chocolate," I said.

Even though we were clearly speaking in code, it made me happy that Noah and his sister were starting to get to know me. It also made me wonder why my Maker wasn't. The fact that he was currently upstairs, naked and getting to know two other women—who weren't bonded to him for an eternity—bothered me even more. I mean, surely, I was more important than they were, or at least, I should have been. I wasn't sure if it was the booze in my system, or something else, but I decided that I would get to know the man who created me, whether he wanted to or not. It was within that same burst of knowledge, within that same drive of inspiration that I turned toward Noah.

He was sitting on the corner of the lounge, which was a small space across from mine. I folded my legs as I faced him with an equally serious expression. "But you shouldn't give up on browsing through the candy aisle from time to time," I said, "because you never know, someday you might find a jellybean."