THE WORLD ALWAYS seemed peaceful early in the morning before the sun rose.
I rarely saw those fleeting moments before the land awoke, mainly because I wasn't an early bird and slept in—even on school days.
On the morning after my night out with Dallas, however, I woke up at 4:30 AM and couldn't go back to sleep, so I stayed up and thought about anything and everything, but mainly about Noah.
I felt bad about choosing Dallas over him, and wanted more than anything to run over to his house and tell him that, to try and make him forgive me.
I didn't want to have to wait a full school day and then tell him at work with so many people around us.
That thought propelled me out of bed, because he went to work around the same time I went to school. Maybe I could catch him before he leaves and tell him.
I quickly did my makeup and changed out of my pajamas, dressing warmly in jeans and a sweater to fight off the frosty, autumn air. By the time I was getting in my car to leave, it was 5:15 AM, a little early for him to be getting up and ready for work, but I left anyways.
The drive to his mother's house was quick, mainly because there wasn't anyone on the road yet. I crossed paths with his mom when I pulled into their driveway, catching her eye as she opened the door to her SUV.
"Hi," she said in surprise as I exited my car. "Can I help you?" She moved away from her car and toward me, zipping up her padded jacket over her blue scrubs.
"Uh, no ma'am," I replied. "I'm sorry I'm here so early, I just wanted to talk to Noah about something before he went to work. I'm a friend of his."
She smiled and nodded, her blue eyes assessing me. "I know who you are, Claire. I've been hearing about you since you moved here."
"Oh," I breathed out in surprise, my breath visible in the cold air.
She smirked, the action looking so much like Noah I felt my eyes widen slightly. "You've got that boy wrapped around your finger, you know." She turned around and went back to her car, reaching inside to press a button on her rear view mirror.
The garage door growled as it opened in response to the button, and she turned back toward me, tipping her head toward the open garage. "He's in his room. He's supposed to be getting up soon to go for a run, so you can go ahead and wake him up, if you'd like. He normally sleeps past his alarm, anyways." She slipped into her car, sending me a wink before backing out of the driveway and zooming down the street.
I watched her go and then turned toward the open garage and stepped inside, disappearing through the door that lead into the house.
It didn't take long to find Noah's room despite having never been inside his house before. His door was plastered with stickers and posters and a metal sign that read: NO GIRLS ALLOWED—UNLESS YOU'RE HOT.
I laughed at that, and then took a deep breath to calm my nerves and knocked on the door.
When I didn't hear anything after a few seconds, I knocked again. And then again. And then I cracked open the door when I still didn't hear a reply, because I was nosey and impatient.
A small nightlight shone in his room, allowing me to see Noah sprawled out on his bed, one arm thrown over his forehead as the other hung off the side of his bed, his blankets tangled around his legs and revealing his bare torso.
I gulped, and then slowly padded my way into his room, unsure what I should do. His mom said I could wake him, but was that really a good idea?
The sound of his alarm going off made me nearly jump out of my skin. The light of his phone lit up with the alarm on his nightstand, and I crept forward when I realized he was going to sleep right through the alarm just like his mother had told me.
I turned off the alarm, returning the room to silence once more, and then gingerly sat on the side of his bed, placing my hand on the arm that was dangling over the side of the bed, gently shaking him.
"Noah," I called out. "It's time for you to get up."
He didn't budge. If it weren't for the fall and rise of his chest, I would've thought him dead.
"Noah," I tried a bit louder, my grip on his arm firm. "Wake up."
That roused him, his muscles tensing under my touch. He removed his arm from his forehead, running a hand over his face as he stretched out his legs. He opened his eyes, blinking the sleep away and looking up at the ceiling until catching sight of me. He frowned and stiffened.
"Claire?" he breathed out, sitting up slightly. "What are you doing here?"
"I, um, I wanted to talk to you before you went to work," I said awkwardly, looking down. I quickly moved my hand when I realized it was still clamped around his bicep.
"Talk to me about what?" he asked, his voice raspy from sleep. He ran a hand through his hair, flattening down his bed head.
"About yesterday. About the whole Dallas thing. I just wanted to tell you that it wasn't what you thought, and that, um, that if I were to do it over again, I'd pick you instead. I'm really sorry, Noah."
He watched me for a while with his half-lidded eyes, and then a sleepy grin broke out on his face. "Take off your shoes," he told me.
I frowned in confusion, but did as he said, kicking them off and barely having time to set them aside before he reached out and wrapped an arm around my torso, flipping me onto the bed and pressing my back against the firm mattress, pinning me underneath his warm chest.
"Noah!" I squealed, and then broke out into laughter.
He ignored me, nuzzling his face into my neck. "It's so hard to stay mad at you," he said, pressing a kiss to the side of my throat. "Stay with me like this for a while and I'll forgive you for everything."
I didn't have a single wit about me when his voice was so husky and his chest was so shirtless, so I just mutely nodded and let him hold me like that, soaking up all the warmth and affection I could get from the moment.
I ended up getting a lot out of that moment, because it stopped being a moment after a few minutes. And then I woke up what felt like an hour or so later to a crick in my neck and a warm hand in my hair cradling my head to Noah's broad chest.
I heard his heartbeat against my ear, slow and steady in slumber, his breaths deep and even. We had fallen asleep together, I had realized. I didn't dare move, even though my neck hurt like fire and my arm pinned underneath me ached.
So, I stayed there in his arms for thirty more minutes, until some idiot with a rumbly truck revved their engine down the road and made Noah wake up with a jolt, his arms tightening around me.
They relaxed when he realized he wasn't in danger, his cheek coming to rest against the top of my head, his arms readjusting their hold on me and bringing me closer to him, his lips pressing a kiss to my head.
"Are you awake?" his raspy voice asked.
I nodded and tilted my head to look up at him. "Let's do this, like, all the time," I blurted out.
A laugh rumbled in his chest, and I was pressed so close to him that I could feel it. "Sounds good to me." He let go of me so that he could stretch, and I sat up and tried to fix my messy hair.
"What time is it?" I asked him.
He glanced at his phone, and then laughed. "7:32."
I laughed with him, because we were both very late. "Great. I'm sure that'll go over well with my dad."
He stood up and went over to his attached bathroom, his hair sticking up in the back. "Since we're already late," he called out, "why don't we swing by that coffee shop across from the school?"
It was a horrible idea because I had a test in my first class of the day, but I nodded despite the fact. "Sure," I said, trying no to sound too excited.
I laid back on his bed while he got ready for the day, looking around the room at the knickknacks and memorabilia he had accumulated, and gawking over the fact that I was in Noah Caraway's room. On his bed. The same bed that I had just slept with him on.
It was all completely platonic, of course, but I liked how the facts sounded.
I mentally squealed in my head, and then silently squealed some more when Noah walked out of the bathroom in nothing but jeans, slipping on a black tank top over his head and shooting me a wink as I ogled him before walking over to where a Whitlock's Auto Care work shirt hung on the back of his door.
"Come on, Champagne," he said as I swung my legs over the side of the bed and put my shoes back on. "Let's go get you that coffee."
He held out a hand, helping me off of the bed, and then didn't let go of my hand until we reached our cars.
"Race to the coffee shop?" he asked as he walked around my car to open my door for me. I nearly melted at the action. "Loser has to kiss the winner."
I rolled my eyes. "How about the loser has to pay?" I suggested instead.
He smirked. "That's not nearly as good of a reward as I came up with, but fine."
He ended up losing on purpose, practically tailgating me the whole way despite the road we drove down having two lanes.
I stuck him with a glare when he parked next to me and motioned for me to stay put while he rushed out of his Mustang to open my door for me.
"You totally didn't even try to win," I accused.
He draped an arm over my shoulders. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
I savored the warmth of his arm as we walked into the coffee shop, ordering our drinks and two breakfast sandwiches before sitting down at the window that faced the school with our goods.
We sat and ate in silence for a while until Noah finished off his sandwich, turning his attention to his drink as he sipped on it.
"I guess I should apologize for last night, too," he said, tearing his eyes away from the window to look at me.
"It's just not the best feeling in the world to feel like second best."
I set down my half-eaten sandwich. "But you're not second best, Noah," I told him. "I didn't choose to go with Dallas because of that," I told him, though I wasn't sure if that was the case or not.
My emotions and motives had been too entangled in my decision to go with Dallas, and I didn't want to even begin trying to delve into that mess to understand why I did what I did. My feelings for the two men were already starting to blur together at this point, anyways.
"I went with Dallas because he was really stressed and I could tell he needed a friend," I informed. "If it makes you feel any better, I didn't really have all that much fun and I was wishing I would've gone with you by the end of it."
Noah smiled. "Yeah, that does make me feel better." His smile lessened, his eyes dropping down to his drink. "A lot better, actually."
I frowned. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
"I'm trying to figure out if it is or not."
"And why would it be bad?"
"Because I'm not the boyfriend type," he said, locking eyes with me, "but you're making me want to be."
My face went red, and I blurted out, "Then do it. Be the boyfriend type." Because that's what I wanted. I wanted him to be the boyfriend type. With me.
He laughed under his breath. "Claire, I don't think that's the best idea."
"But why? You like me and I like you, right?"
His smile faded. "Yeah, but if I mess things up with you, I'll really mess things up. My job, our friendship—it's just not a good idea."
I scoffed inwardly. I knew exactly what would happen. They were the exact same variables I'd gone over when I thought about telling Dallas how I felt about him those past few months.
"I know," I said dejectedly, and the mood started to sour from there, but Noah tried to put a halt to that by reaching across the table and grabbing my hand in his.
He smiled. "We're just crushing on each other, Claire. It's not like we're in love or anything." He laughed the matter off, and I joined in, despite it not being funny to me in the slightest.
That night, after a long day at school constantly reliving our conversation and his rejection and an even longer day at work where he flirted with me and acted like everything was fine, I was more than happy to get home and try to unwind.
I curled up in bed after showering the day away, turning on an episode of Friends to play in the background while I doodled in my notebook and tried to escape my own mind.
Sometime around midnight after filling up three full pages with doodles, when the little circles I was drawing started to form one, big blob, and Phoebe Buffay's voice started to sound a million miles away, I set everything aside, turned off the TV, and was off to dreamland the second my head hit the pillow.
I dreamt of Noah that night, of course. It started out as a weird dream, where I was at Denton High except it wasn't Denton High and a bunch of people from my old school in Illinois were there. Noah found me in the hallway and started kissing me—the type of kissing that should not be done in the halls of a school.
My dream took off from there, going through a montage of Noah and I together, and ended with Noah and I getting married.
I woke up from the dream when the sun started to rise, my room cast in a dark blue. I was still tired, so I rolled over to my right side and tried to go back to sleep.
I hope I pick up where that dream left off, I remember thinking to myself. Hopefully we'll have babies together. I would like that with him. I love him.
And then I was sitting bolt upright in my bed.
"'I love him?'" I repeated aloud, shaking my head to myself. "No the hell I do not." Because you can't be in love with two people at the same time, right?
But as I sat there, and really analyzed my thoughts and feelings, I ended up groaning into my hands, because I realized that a person could, in fact, be in love with two people at the same time.
And I was that person.
"No freaking way," I whined. "How did this happen?"
I whined some more, my hands over my face as I sunk down against my headboard, scowling.
And then I started smiling, and laughing because of course—of course—this would happen. Me falling in love with another guy that I shouldn't date.
It was a horrible way to start the day—on an emotional rollercoaster at 5:30 in the morning.
Knowing that I wasn't going to be falling back asleep anytime soon, I rolled out of bed and took a shower, feeling incredibly energetic despite having had horrible sleep.
But that's what being in love could make you feel like.
It could also make you feel a whole lot of other things—nasty, horrible things—but that's for later on in my story.
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2,795 words.
Question: Do you have any hidden talents?
I'm not sure if it's a talent, but I can dislocate my shoulders and hips on command without feeling any pain. Apparently I have hyper-mobility (double-jointed) so I have flexible joints. It also kind of sucks because my shoulder will dislocate if I pick up something heavy, but I'm also okay with that because then I have an excuse not to do any heavy lifting lol.
Oh, and my hip started hurting recently because I started exercising to be all healthy and whatnot and my hyper-mobility was not having it.
PLEASE VOTE AND COMMENT TO MAKE ME SMILE!!!