Nochelle - Our Stories

O H . . .

And yet here Noah is, with his great big stupid disarming heart, comforting her without hesitation.

"Don't apologise, Richelle. You have literally never done anything wrong in your entire life."

"That's not true." She mumbles. He exhales a soft breathy laugh, like he can't believe she's still arguing with him even now. It's almost affectionate, but that line of thinking never goes anywhere good. Whenever she starts to think of Noah's quirks and jokes as endearing instead of irritating, it leaves her with an unwelcome dry taste in her mouth and butterflies in her stomach.

"Uh, it is by my standards. Your mistakes are like, a sickled pinky toe or something. My mistakes usually end up with me in the hospital."

"How's your back, by the way?"

"Getting better. But y'know, I'll survive. Can't get rid of me that easily." Richelle can hear the smile in his voice; somehow, it's that, of everything, that grounds her. She still can't look at him directly, but she turns around and tentatively lets him pull her into a proper bear hug.

"Is this okay?" Noah asks quietly, a simple act of making sure she's comfortable that washes over her, warm and pleasant. She nods, burying her face into his shoulder before she can overthink the implications.

They've hugged before, they're duet partners for God's sake – Noah's a tactile person by nature, and they've both had more than their fair share of bad days. But as her breathing evens out, Richelle's unable to ignore how safe she feels, her stomach swooping with a different kind of rush entirely.

This would be so much easier if there wasn't all this history between them. All these tiny moments adding up to one giant missed connection of sorts, feelings always manifesting themselves at the wrong time, wrong place. Now every time she tries to get past this, to do the rational thing and move on, it feels like swimming against the tide. His kindness and openness are like lead, never failing to sink her sense of reason and leave her gasping for air.

She honestly could kiss him, now. He's tantalisingly close. She's ragged and exhausted and desperate to fall asleep tonight wrapped in an embrace like this. Aching to slowly reach up and gently sweep across his jaw, ghost her fingertips over the curve of his lips.

It's deeply embarrassing how many times he's done something cute or totally brilliant and her first thought has been that she wants to grab him by his shirt and kiss him senseless.

It's just not that simple. Not just because that would be a violation of so many rehearsal guidelines, but because her and Noah and feelings have been a grey area for a really long time now, and it leaves her constantly feeling like she's teetering off the edge of a skyscraper. She's not even sure if he feels the same way, even though the rapid hammer of his heartbeat certainly points to one answer.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He says softly after a minute, interrupting her intense internal monologue. She feels herself flush a deep red.

"God, no."

"...Do you want me to leave?"

It would be an easy out. A way off the ledge. But Richelle knows herself, has catalogued and mapped every inch of her brain in an effort to control her anxieties, and knows that she needs him to stay.

"...No."

"Okay then." She still can't really look at him, shame twisting up her insides and clenching her weary, stuttering heart, but she feels him. She focuses on the pressure of his newly muscular arms wrapped around her and how it almost banishes her self-consciousness entirely.

There's all this guilt, then, about how it's creepy and shameful to take such solace in Noah's embrace when he doesn't even know how she feels about him. In truth, Richelle isn't sure, never really has been. But she doesn't dare to make the first move. She's calculated the risk, over and over again, late at night while she lies awake. The stakes are just too high, and it's just easier for them to remain friends. It's just easier to let it all be left unsaid.