“Oh,” Noah exclaims, surprised as realization finally dawns upon him, his mouth forming the familiar ‘O’ shape, but he says nothing more of it.
“Oh?” I mimic, feeling all my blood go straight to my head and I get a dizzy spell. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
Or not say, in his case.
I wanted him to burst out laughing upon hearing that ludicrous assumption until there are practically tears pooling at the corners of his eyes, calling me crazy and insane for believing any of it, but instead he’s frozen like a marble statue, like time’s stopped for him. And his face is so ghastly white that he looks like he’s seen a ghost.
Eventually, he scratches the back of his head, glances down at his feet before he dares look at me, but he has ‘awkward’ written all over him. “It’s…,” he begins, tensing up before he takes a deep breath while trying to choose his next words carefully and minimize the collateral damage, “complicated,” he says at which I almost jump across the island and strangle him with my bare hands, consequences and prison sentence be damned.
“What’s so complicated about that?” I bellow, slamming my hands down on the island in a fit of anger. “You either are in love with me or not. It’s pretty simple if you ask me,” I tell him, my heart racing in my chest and my palms sweating.
“What do you want me to say?” he fires back, pressing his lips in a thin line and glowering at me, as if any of this is my fault. Like I’m the one who’s talking crazy. “Fine,” he shouts out before another word leaves my mouth, “I like you,” he declares, “as more than a friend.”
“God, Noah,” I basically snarl, then rub my temples because I so feel a massive headache coming, “that’s….”
I don’t even know how to describe what that is. What’s more, I can’t even wrap my head around this newfound information, too.
It’s bad, that I’m sure of, but this is as far as my observations go at the moment, considering that I need time to process what just went down in my kitchen, no less, where I’m surrounded by sharp knives and frying pans that I can throw at him.
“Completelyout of line, I know,” Noah finishes for me, nodding his head in understanding and running a hand through his messy blond hair nervously. He clenches his jaw before he glances away from me since it most likely just hit him what his impromptu confession just did to our years-long friendship that I’ve always assumed is strong enough to endure the most unforgiving of circumstances.
“I should go,” he says to me in a quieter, more resigned voice, not meeting my eyes as he leaves my kitchen, but rooted to my spot, I don’t follow him, realizing that the more distance between us, the easier I find it to think straight.
*
As Noah leaves my house (and probably my life, too), Brayden comes strolling in.
At first, when the doorbell rings, I get antsy and my palms start to sweat, thinking that it might be Noah, coming back to finish what we started, but then, I belatedly realize that Noah never rings the doorbell.
I’m torn between feeling relieved that it’s Brayden, who’s at my door, and nervous precisely because of it.
Instead of his usual greeting – a swift kiss on the lips, he looks back and tilts his head to the side. “What’s up with Noah? I just saw him storming out of your house. Is there something wrong?” Brayden wonders and it’s not jealousy that I detect in his voice at having seen another guy come running out of his girlfriend’s house, like the devil’s chasing him, but unadulterated curiosity and concern for his friend’s wellbeing.
I motion for him to come inside, all the while stalling for time to come up with some plausible lie to cover the whole thing up and speak nothing of what really transpired between me and the fair-haired boy in question.
How do I tell my boyfriend that one of his best friends just proclaimed he has feelings for me, not even having the decency to lie for all our sake?
There’s really no right way to go about it.
Brady’s looking at me curiously, making me realize I haven’t responded to him yet. I shake myself out of whatever trance I’ve fallen into and turn to face him, keeping my face blank of any emotion, even if I find it hard not to grimace and just come clean.
“It’s Noah,” I say with a roll of my eyes, “you know how he is. Something doesn’t go his way and he gets pissed off at the world,” I blatantly lie, biting my lip and gauging Brady’s reaction, wondering if he’s going to take my word for it or not.
For better or worse, Brady doesn’t look suspicious at all, the thought that one of his best friends would go behind his back and fall in love with his girlfriend doesn’t even register in his brain nor has it ever crossed his mind, even fleetingly, so all he does is nod at me in understanding, not suspecting a thing.
“So Emily asked me to give this back to you,” he tells me, dropping the subject of Noah altogether as he holds up the shirt I loaned to Emily today and it’s just then that I realize he hasn’t come empty-handed.
Blinking, I take the shirt from his hands and clutch it in my own as the image of Emily’s badly bruised back flashes across my eyes and gets my blood running cold.
“Do I even want to know what happened?” Brady asks, half-amused, but mostly curious as to Emily, whom I’ve made it pretty clear I’m not the biggest fan of, has something of mine in her possession.
I shrug at Brady, not knowing if it’s in my place to ask what’s going on with her. “She just spilled tomato sauce all over her shirt during lunch and I offered that she borrowed mine.”
“That was… surprisingly nice of you, Syd,” Brady tells me, smiling down at me softly and dare I even say... with a hint of barely contained pride shining in his eyes. “I thought you didn’t like her.”
That I don’t and I’m sure the two of us will never be friends, but I don’t have to like her in order to feel bad for her and allow myself to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe Brayden wasn’t exaggerating and selfishly defending her when he said that she’s going through a rough patch. And maybe, just maybe the last few days have forced me to come to terms with some things, one of them being that there are people I don’t know as well as I previously thought because it’s oh so crazy easy to close your eyes to things you don’t want to see.
“I don’t. The jury’s still out,” I tell him honestly, reminiscing about all the times I’ve felt like Emily’s come between us, “I just… found out some stuff about Emily today that made me reconsider,” I admit to him, sucking in a breath because sometimes saying you were wrong about someone is the hardest thing to do, especially when every nerve ending in your body is demanding that you’re full of hate towards that certain someone.
I don’t, however, say I’ve changed my mind. Only that I’m considering it.
“Really?” Brady asks, his interest peaked as he asks, “Has she told you something?”
“She didn’t have to,” I reply, swiftly shaking my head and wringing my hands, “I saw the big-ass bruise on her back that looked like something straight out of a horror movie,” I say to Brady whose surprise (or lack thereof) doesn’t match mine. Whereas the very mention of Emily’s mysterious bruise has my skin crawling with an army of invisible, flesh-eating ants, Brady doesn’t even blink an eye. He sits down in one of the kitchen chairs and messes up his hair, like he always does when he’s about to deliver bad news and doesn’t have the slightest of ideas how to go about it.
“Did you know about it?” I ask, barely restraining myself from gaping at him as I too follow suit and lower my body into one the chairs.
“I told you it was bad,” Brady retorts, which all but confirms my suspicion.
“You didn’t tell me it was that bad,” I groan, feeling like a heartless monster for playing the jealous girlfriend part so well when my jealousy just might be the least disconcerting things of all, “who did that to her?”
I don’t expect Brady to actually tell me the truth. I expect him to tell me to mind my own business instead, but he surprises me by speaking, “It’s her step-father. Things have been getting progressively worse over the last couple of months. That’s why I’ve been spending so much with her,” Brady explains to me, looking partly relieved to have gotten this off his chest whereas I can’t say I share his sentiments. I rather wish I hated her still.
“But why don’t you call the police? Can’t they do something?” I gasp, my head reeling, thinking that even if Emily’s, indeed, in love with Brayden and he feels the same way about her, too, I wouldn’t wish such kind of cruel fate to anybody, not even the one girl who has my boyfriend wrapped around her little finger.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Brady sighs in defeat, “Emily’s still a minor. If we call the cops on him now, they’re going to take her away and put her into foster homes. She doesn’t have anyone, no living family, or anywhere to go. She can’t leave.”
“Do you see now?”
All I see is that just a few days ago, I was a girl whose biggest problem was protecting her relationship when I should’ve realized that there are bigger, far more important things than some high school romance. And I really, really miss that girl and her blissful ignorance.
A/N:See? I didn't leave you hanging for long. :) I had another minor surgery yesterday and today I've been doing a little bit of writing, so I managed to edit and post the next chap of TOG, which I sincerely hope you all enjoyed reading just as much as I enjoyed writing it. :) I'm gonna try to squeeze in another update before I leave, sooo if everything goes according to plan, chapter 15 will be up before the month's over. :)