Little colored plastic bowls of different flavored chips and popcorn laid on the floor beside our crossed legs. Each of us, except for Nolan, who chose to have a bottle of water, had a different carton of fruit juice sitting in front of us. Mine was guava, and it was so good.
I rarely drank juice now because of the high sugar content, but on occasions like these nothing could beat them.
With all four of us inside, Ashley's room felt especially cozy tonight. Admittedly, that was probably because there was barely enough space for us and the board game we had squeezed into the middle of the circle we were sitting in.
"I'm bankrupt! Are you happy now, you cold unfeeling tycoon?" I complained, handing the paltry remnants of my properties over to Cody, the guy who was currently swimming in Monopoly money.
At my melodrama, Ashley laughed softly.
Nolan snorted, which caused me to turn my glare to him.
"Ashley I can understand, but you? You're supposed to be on my side!" I snatched up a handful of buttered popcorn and took an ungraceful bite from it.
"I am," he said. "I haven't collected rent from you once, even when I could have."
Oh. I totally thought he just hadn't noticed and missed his chance when I landed on his property. I wasn't going to bring it to his attention in the moment if he really had. I mean, it was his loss, right?
My feigned pout had already melted away, and now I was grinning at him. "Really? You did that for me?"
"He totally went easy on you," Cody said, arranging his new properties. "He hasn't forgotten to collect from me or Ashley even once."
"Oh, well, fine," I said, feeling myself smile despite all attempts at suppressing it. "I suppose I can forgive you."
A familiar groan sounded in the room, but I ignored Ashley in favor of prolonged eye contact with Nolan. She hadn't been lenient with collecting rent from me, so now she just had to live with the consequences of her actions.
"Excuse me," he said, but his lips were already spreading into a lazy smile. "You accused me of betrayal where there was none. I think you need to make it up to me."
"Sorry! Don't worry, I'll make it up to you by cheering for you." I scooted nearer to him so that our knees were touching. "I'm gonna be your personal cheerleader!"
"I'm pretty sure that was what you were going to do anyway after losing, but yeah, sure."
Reaching out, he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me even closer until our thighs were pressed up against each other. I ruffled his black hair, the softness of it making me never want to retract my fingers. I wouldn't mind petting Nolan's hair for the rest of my life.
Ever so slightly, I felt him lean his head into my touch.
"Suddenly, I feel like a third wheel," Cody said, throwing the dice.
"Imagine how I felt every day back in high school." Ashley shook her head. "They somehow managed to make Melissa and Derek feel like third wheels, too."
"When they were already a couple? Wow."
"Yeah, their flirting game was—and still is, obviously—strong."
He looked impressed as he moved his token, and I rolled my eyes at them both.
With some reluctance, I withdrew my hand from Nolan's head. "We are not flirting. How many times do I have to say this?"
"You don't have to say it, actually," Ashley said in a kind voice, flipping her golden-blonde hair over her shoulder. "It doesn't change anything even if you do."
"Hey!"
"Chelsea's right. We're just talking normally," Nolan said with a straight face, like the loyal love of my life that he was.
"Yeah!" I hugged him from the side.
With a raise of his eyebrow, Cody popped a chip into his mouth and spoke while crunching on it. "I can say that I'm not eating a chip right now, but does it change the fact that I am?"
Ashley laughed and high-fived him. "Exactly!"
I scowled. "That's not the same thing! It's just how we talk."
"Then you're unconsciously flirting with him every time, then," Ashley said, picking up the dice. "But I'm pretty sure he's conscious about it. Aren't you, Nolan?"
That was news to me.
"Are you?" My eyes grew large as I stared up at him. "Because I'm not!"
"Well," he said, giving my nose a light tap with his index finger, "half the things I say to you I wouldn't say to anyone else."
The moment I saw his fingertip approaching my nose, I was already scrunching it up.
"You're flirting again," Cody said, collecting rent from Ashley.
He wasn't going easy on her for sure.
After wriggling out from under Nolan's arm, I tapped him back on the nose. "Leave my nose alone!"
Making a face at the money she was forking over, she said, "No, I think he was just stating a fact with that particular line. He doesn't talk much when Chelsea isn't around."
"I'm right here, in case you forgot." Nolan twirled a lock of my shoulder-length brown hair around his fingers.
Grinning at the pleasant tingling sensation the mild tugging left on my scalp, I grabbed a nearby bowl of chocolate coated popcorn to sit on my lap.
Smiling, Ashley drank from her carton of orange juice. "Oh, I was just explaining the context to Cody."
"Do you?" I asked, watching him roll the dice. "I wouldn't know since, you know, I wouldn't be around to witness anything."
"I only talk when I have something to say," Nolan said. "So, probably."
Flattered by the implication that he had more things to say when he was in my company, I beamed and nudged his arm with my shoulder. "Thanks."
"Flirting again." Ashley sighed.
"See? Anything I do is flirting in your eyes," I said, sighing back. "I give up."
We'd been playing Monopoly for the past thirty minutes. In between dice-rolling and snacking, we talked about our classes and classmates with each other.
Apparently, Cody had someone in the archery club who viewed him as a rival and was always trying to show him up. Ashley didn't seem to think much of the supposed rival, though, because she scoffed dismissively every time he was mentioned.
Ashley flexed her biceps to show me the muscles she'd gained from learning archery, obviously pleased that she'd made some progress in terms of physical fitness.
When it came to his turn, Nolan insisted that he only had acquaintances he spoke to when they were assigned group projects, so he didn't have any stories worth telling.
Eventually, though, after the rest of us had shared a few different times, he told us one about a guy sneaking into class an injured kitten he'd found mewing under a bush.
By some weird logic that obviously required intensive mental gymnastics to arrive at, Kitten Guy had thought he could get away with no one discovering the kitten he had in his bag, unzipped halfway for said kitten's sake, during class. Nolan said that he couldn't understand why Kitten Guy wouldn't simply skip that class to bring the kitten back to his dorm—at least he wouldn't get caught then.
The gray kitten started crawling out of his bag in the middle of class, and Kitten Guy just couldn't get it to stay put. It made its way to the front of the classroom, where it proceeded to engage in a staring contest with the professor, who was clearly stunned by the appearance of a random animal.
To everyone's surprise, it turned out that the professor was a cat person and adored it at first sight. Kitten Guy got off with a light warning for the inadvertent class disturbance. At the end of the class, a couple of girls went up to Kitten Guy to offer to look for its mother together with him, expressing pity for the cute little kitten.
At the end of the tale, Ashley and Cody both wondered if that had been Kitten Guy's true goal from the beginning. Nolan shrugged and said that he didn't care.
The story had absolutely nothing to do with Nolan's own life, but I enjoyed listening to him talk anyway.
"I don't miss having dorm parents and curfews, but I miss when we were always together," Ashley bemoaned, leaning her head against the side of her bed.
"Me too," I said, examining Nolan's money and properties. "But sadly, that's life."
He was probably going to lose soon.
I lifted my head from the board to see that he was looking at me.
Giving him a tiny smile, I said, "Hi."
"Hi," he said before leaning over to whisper in my ear. "Do you miss sneaking out together?"
"I want to say yes," I whispered back, "but I really appreciate not getting up at one to stay awake until five anymore."
"You have a point."
When Nolan pulled back to watch their moves, we finally noticed our friends eyeing us with open amusement.
A small groan escaped his lips as Cody turned to Ashley. "They're going to be flirting with each other until they die of old age, aren't they?"
Snickering, she threw the dice. "Seriously, I won't be surprised if you get married. The two of you getting together came out of nowhere, but then you just kept going strong."
"Since the start of the year, I've seen a lot of my friends break up with their high school sweethearts," Cody added. "Freshman year of college is apparently heartbreak season."
I rested my head on Nolan's shoulder while munching on another handful of salt and vinegar chips. "Well, we want to be together forever and ever, so that's not going to be a problem for us."
Nolan uncapped his bottle of water. "Yep. What she said."
After he drank some water, he tipped the still-open bottle in my direction as an offer. Upon seeing me open my mouth, he tried to put the bottle to it.
The clumsy angle he'd tilted it at caused water to dribble down the side of my lips, dripping down my chin.
"Ack!" I batted it away before more spillage could occur, and Nolan laughed. "Don't laugh! Look at Ashley's poor floor!"
She shook her head while handing me a box of tissues. "Oh, I'm sure it'd survive."
"You knew it was going to happen." Nolan's half-grin bordered on amusement. "When have I ever successfully poured water into your mouth?"
I narrowed my eyes at him. He was right, but he also knew that it never stopped me from trying in the hopes that maybe this time, it would somehow work out.
Cody, who was sitting opposite me and beside Ashley, pointed to the bowl of salted popcorn situated in front of Nolan.
"Could you pass me that?"
With a nod, Nolan gave it to him.
"It looks like you haven't even touched it," he commented, looking down at it. "Don't like popcorn?"
Shrugging, Nolan said, "Yeah, I don't really feel like eating snacks tonight."
Ashley's lips curved upwards into a smile that looked almost wistful. She threw a glance at the small popcorn-filled bowl that Cody was now holding.
"You really haven't changed one a bit since high school," she said. "Come to think of it, is it just me, or does anyone else think that Nolan looks exactly the same as he did back then?"
Beneath my head, I felt Nolan's shoulder stiffen. I couldn't blame him—my own heartbeat had picked up at her remark.
Observing subtle changes in other people's physical appearances had never been one of my strengths. There were several times when I hadn't noticed that a friend had gotten a haircut or a change of hairstyles until it was specifically pointed it out to me. Then again, despite being aware of the potential stagnation in Nolan's overall appearance as he'd informed me, I hadn't truly paid much attention to whatever changes he had or had not undergone over the past few years.
His height had stayed the same, I was certain of that. From the beginning, I already had to raise my forearm to comfortably hold hands with him, so I would've realized if he'd grown taller. However, I hadn't really noticed that his face wasn't looking 'older', and I definitely didn't want to check now.
Trying to ignore the sinking sensation in my chest, I shut my eyes.
"Um," I said. "D-does he?"
"Yeah," Nolan echoed. "Do I?"
"A bit, right? But you're the one who spends the most time with him, Chelsea, so you should know best," I heard Ashley say.
"I didn't hang out with you much back in Fairwood." Cody's deep voice was contemplative. "That's probably why I can't tell, but yeah, you don't look much different to me."
"I wouldn't know." I felt Nolan shrug, my head bumping against his shoulder as he did so. "I see myself in the mirror every day. I wouldn't spot all these little changes."
Following a soft shuffling sound, I heard the muffled noise of dice falling on cardboard.
"That's true." It was Ashley. "I guess if it's yourself, you're less likely to notice. But"—here she paused—"now that I'm really looking, Chelsea does look a little older than you, especially when you're sitting side by side."
With a jolt, I opened my eyes in record time. "Wait, I do?"
I pulled away from Nolan enough to study his face. His green eyes were trained on mine.
I didn't even care that Cody and Ashley were both now poised forward, blatantly scrutinizing our faces.
I could only look at him.
Grimly, I noted the tense frown on his face. What was he thinking? Had he ever paid attention to any changes in my appearance over the years? Was he noticing them now?
As my eyes roved over his handsome face, I couldn't pick out anything that looked different.
Nolan never had acne or pimples or anything like that, so his face always seemed the same to me. I just never considered that maybe there weren't any changes to it at all over the years.
Ashley was right. Maybe it was confirmation bias, but even after some careful examination, he really didn't look any different from his high school sophomore self.
"Oh," I whispered.
Lowering his gaze, Nolan faced the board game again. I could only stare blankly at him. When the familiar feel of his long, slender fingers intertwined with mine, I started. He still wasn't looking at me.
"So?" Ashley prompted, raising her eyebrows at me. "He does look the same, right, Chelsea? Unless I'm wrong."
"I guess," I said. "He does look the same. Could it be because I'm used to seeing his face every day?"
She considered it. "I see you almost every day, and I saw you every day back in Fairwood, and I can still tell that you look a bit older."
"Why are we basing this off pure memories?" Cody waved his phone at Ashley before nudging her. "We can just compare from your old pictures."
Her expression brightened. "Oh, yeah! I don't know why I didn't think of it!"
The vague sense of horror I'd been trying to keep a lid on burst through and escalated as she jumped to her feet to get her phone.
Soon enough, she'd gotten it and we were gathered around her, watching her flick through her gallery. Nolan returned the light squeeze I'd given his hand. I could see the tension in the set of his shoulders, but I couldn't say anything to reassure him right now.
"Wait," I said. "Why are we doing this right now? What about Monopoly?"
"This is more interesting," she said, waving dismissively at the board game. "Who cares about fake money and fake properties?"
Cody peered over her shoulder. "I'm curious about this too."
"Okay, this was from senior year," she said, zooming in on the group photo until Nolan's face took up a third of the screen. "You look the same here, Nolan."
He really did. When I turned from the screen to him, and then back to Ashley's phone again, it was as if the photo had been taken today.
"Yep," Cody said.
"Now this was taken when we were juniors."
It was a photo of me, Melissa, Derek, and Nolan holding up a huge bag of tortilla chips—the 'trophy' we were showing off for winning the snowball battle that day—together in front of the camera. Ashley hadn't participated, of course, but she did join as a spectator, so she was the one who'd taken the picture.
I remembered this one, because in it I was beaming at the camera, but Nolan was glancing at me. After seeing it, I'd asked Ashley to send it to me immediately.
Again, she zoomed in on his face. "Looks the same to me."
I studied Nolan, cocking my head sideways to better inspect his jaw. Not only did his facial features look the same, but so did the shape and size of his face and jaw.
I frowned. Had mine changed at all? I almost never spent any time checking myself in the mirror unless I was dressing up for a special occasion, and it was most certainly not to look for those minor physical changes.
"Huh," Nolan said.
His facial expression was neutral, as though he didn't have any opinions on this.
"Wow," Cody said, sitting back and stretching his arms. "Your face really hasn't changed at all over the last two years. I'm kind of impressed."
Nolan shrugged again, before he moved back over to his previous sitting spot.
"Isn't this a good thing?" Ashley said. "You obviously have good genes. You get to keep looking young!"
"Wait, what about me?" I protested.
"I mean, your junior year picture is right here." She zoomed in on my face. "You do look a bit different, a bit more mature. Just a bit, but it's there."
"I agree with Ash," Cody said. "Compared to Nolan, the difference in your face is a lot more obvious."
Her grin was lighthearted as she kept her phone. "We'll see when we're all in our thirties. Maybe Nolan will look like he's in his twenties! Man, this really reminds me. I have to stop forgetting to use my skin care stuff."
I gulped.
Ashley shot me a curious glance. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said, unable to keep my eyebrows from knitting together.
Nothing was wrong yet.
"Are you worried he'll look younger than you when we get older?" she said, her tone teasing and her brown eyes sparkling. "Even if that happens, I'm sure Nolan won't mind. He's already said he wants to be with you forever, remember?"
"I—"
I didn't know what to say.
It's not that.
I'm not worried about if he minds.
Ashley and Cody had known him since high school, so maybe his appearance was just, well, 'Nolan' to them. They didn't really think about if he looked young or not.
But no one else noticed, right?
Did anyone else think that he looked like a high schooler? Did anyone else think that I looked older?
Did I look older?
I was so used to seeing his face every day that the possibility of it hadn't even crossed my mind.
"Yeah," Nolan said to me, the corners of his mouth turning up to form a gentle smile. "You look the same—beautiful—to me no matter what."
Ashley's groan about flirting was mere background noise to the numerous loud questions that had taken over the forefront of my thoughts. As I forced myself to settle down on the floor beside Nolan again, I could barely hear Cody's response to her.
Nolan clasped my hand in both of his and rested his chin on my shoulder, facing them as he said something. I couldn't focus on what he was saying.
All I could concentrate on was the cold tug of dread coursing through my body.
I didn't mind, right?
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AN: happy Thursday! i hope you're all having a wonderful day! thanks so much for voting and for commenting, i appreciate the support so much （*'▽｀*） love you guys!!
For those who want to read in advance, Patreon supporters will be able to read two chapters ahead of what's currently available plus other YASTMT bonus chapters! (the link's in my profile)
also, shout-out to AndiJ37, an amazing writer who has tons of completed works. her books are so underrated--if you like romances with loyal characters and no petty drama, her stuff is a go-to! ik you guys love to binge-read completed stuff, which is why i'm recommending her stuff! and for the ones she starts writing, she updates really frequently too!
i'm reading The Love Letters of Boaz Jackson (check her romance-specific profile AuthorDani for this one) rn and it's so sweet and CUTE. (also, it's complete) you can also check my personal recs reading list for this one (ﾉ'ヮ')ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧