"Wow"
That's the only word that manages to come out of Noah's mouth as we step into the basement and I turn on the lights. A little laugh escapes me as I see him gaping.
When my family moved to this house, around ten years ago, my dad made it his personal duty to turn the basement into a games room. He installed the hardwood floors by himself, painted the walls a pale, sandy brown color chosen by my mom, and built an entertainment unit from scratch. Then, his long search for items that would make the games room the best one he'd ever seen began, and two years later his work was complete.
The basement is laid out in an 'L' shape. The first thing that catches your eye as soon as you step foot in the room is the pool table. Next to it, in the corner is a little bar where my dad stores his best aged wines, which apparently he keeps for decoration because I've never seen him open one of them, and at this point I don't think I ever will. Off to the left side of the stairs stands a foosball table and a big, wall-length closet meant for storage. Finally, turning the corner to the right is the seating area, that has a black leather, L-shaped couch, half of it faces the entertainment unit, which has a TV incorporated into it, and the other half faces the projector screen.
"I take it you like it?" I ask Noah as I attempt to drag the queen sized mattress from it's storage place behind the unit, to the space at the foot of the couch in front of the screen.
"Are you kidding? I'm never leaving this place," he replies, shooting a goal with the little players in the foosball table and I smile to myself.
"Do you mind passing me the sheets? They're in that cabinet." I say pointing to the wooden doors to his left. He nods and approaches me with the sheets in hand, spreading them open to help me make the bed. I crouch to lay down the duvet, and as I stand back up and turn around to face Noah, he takes me by surprise and lifts me over his shoulder, making me squeal.
My blood rushes to my head as I'm hanging upside down, and I start having a laughing fit while I lightly pound my fists against his back in an attempt to get him to put me down. Although, I don't really mind the view of his round backside and the hem of his boxers visible above his pants.
"Noah stop!" I say in between giggles, "I'm getting dizzy!"
"Oh, sorry, my bad" he says, and I think he's about to put me down until I feel the grip his arm has on the back of my knees tighten, and he starts spinning both of us around.
"I'm serious Noah! Put. Me. Down!" I yell trying to catch a breath through all the laughing.
"Your wish is my command," he says, coming to an abrupt stop and bending down to roughly toss me onto the mattress. I fall hard on my back and my breath catches in my chest from the impact, but because of the soft mattress, the fall doesn't actually hurt. Unfortunately for him, he miscalculated how far he should bend and his force causes him to topple down with me.
We go quiet as his weight rests on top of me, his face inches away from mine, close enough that a loose strand of hair falling on his face tickles mine, and I'm once again delighted by his minty breath. He brings his hand up to caress my cheek and tucks my hair behind my ear as he stares into my eyes, his face somehow getting even closer to mine.
I know he's going for a kiss, that much is obvious, and I would've been fine with that, had it not been for the wave of nervousness that washed over me as I suddenly became very aware of our position, and his hardness pressing between my legs.
"Movie?" I say, my voice quivering as I quickly scoot out from under him and get on my feet before our lips get the chance to make contact. With a racing heart, I turn to him, eyebrows raised and hands clasped together waiting for his answer and trying not to think about how painfully awkward I am. He lightly shakes his head and smiles amusedly, biting at the corner of his bottom lip.
"Sure, you can pick," he says, putting his arm behind his head and falling back to rest against a pillow. As soon as he turns away from me I let out a sigh of relief, glad he didn't make a comment about my obvious dodging. I turn the lights off and the projector on.
Halfway through the movie Titanic, I'm sitting on the makeshift bed with my back against the couch, and Noah's head resting on my lap. I run my fingers through his soft, sandy hair and I trace the outline of his ear with my finger playfully. He looks up at me with a charming smile, which I return, all the while feeling self conscious about how I must look from his angle.
He rolls over, facing away from the screen and directly at me, as his arm wraps around my thighs. He looks up at me with his beautiful green eyes, more than plain old green, the kind of green you only see in the summertime when the earth comes back to life after a harsh winter. Combined with his thick, dark and perfectly curled lashes, his eyes make my skin burn every time his gaze is directed my way. Never have I ever felt so much just by having someone looking at me, and that alone has me terrified.
"What are you thinking about?" he asks.
"Nothing in particular..." I lie, "Same question."
"Your parents are really cool," he says.
"They are," I smile, "I'm glad you liked them, and you seem to have made a pretty good impression on them too. I'm actually shocked my dad offered you to stay, and I'm still half expecting him to come down here in the middle of the night and chase you out of the house with a shotgun."
He laughs, "You seem to get along with them really well, they care about you a lot, and it shows," he pauses, the same sad look he had during dinner appearing on his face again. "Must be nice," he finishes, staring off into the darkness behind me, his mind elsewhere.
"Noah," I say softly, grabbing back his attention, and his eyes that have lost that spark they had just a few minutes ago stare back at me. "Your parents divorce...that wasn't a simple decision to split, right?"
"Does my mom seem like the kind of lady that would peacefully separate from someone without putting up a fight?" he asks and I purse my lips together, pretty sure he doesn't need me to answer that question.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to talk about it." I add.
"No, I want to tell you. It's just I usually don't usually talk about this stuff because it's in the past, and I don't like bringing old things back to the surface. But it's fine, if you're getting involved with my family you should at least have some context." He takes another pause, looking deep in thought. "Look, there's certain things I can't talk about, things that happened in my family and things that I've seen that I don't feel comfortable sharing. At least not yet. But let's do it this way, I'll tell you a story that I think describes my childhood in a nutshell," he waits for an answer and I just nod telling him to go ahead. I rest my hand on his and he takes it, lacing our fingers as he continues.
"The short version is that my parents fought a lot. And not the screaming match kind of fight. It was...intense, for a lack of a better word. When we all still lived in the same house, my mom would spend most of her time locked up in her room, curled into a ball on their bed and my dad would be away at work for the majority of the day. But when their paths crossed, all hell broke loose. They would go at each other for hours. Insults were thrown around, things would get smashed against the walls, and it only escalated from there. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't always like that, and there was a time when I know they really did love each other. But they weren't meant to be, and neither of them was very stable, so that was the only way they knew how to solve their problems, even though their 'solutions' only made things worse."
"One night, when I was around eight years old and my brother was ten, my dad came home late from work. He was exhausted and just wanted to say goodnight to his kids and go to bed. When he walked through the door, he found my mom sitting at the kitchen table, heavily intoxicated, and she confronted him about something she had found, I'm not sure what. Aiden and I sat on the stairs, listening, and watching it all unfold, neither of us daring to try to stop them. My mom got progressively angrier and she started shoving my dad as she insulted him, calling him all kinds of things. He took the first shove, breathing deeply to stay calm, but then came the second one, and then the third one, and it was only a matter of time till he couldn't take it anymore and he shoved her back, making her hit her head on the wall behind her."
"At that moment, Aiden ran out the front door, and I went after him, afraid to stay inside my own house alone with them. It was freezing outside, and we were both in our pajamas, but he kept going and going. He was much faster than me, so it was a matter of minutes until I lost sight of him and I found myself alone wandering the streets. I eventually heard the sound of him crying coming from inside an abandoned house that had been left halfway through construction, just brick walls and windows that were missing the glass. It was dark and I was terrified to go in, but standing in the street alone was scarier, so I entered to find him crying in the corner of a dusty room downstairs. I sat beside him unsure of how to comfort him, and he told me there was no way he was going back to that house as long as they were in there, so we laid down on the floor, hugging our knees close to our chests to keep us warm, and we stayed the night in that abandoned house."
"The next day we walked to a little store a block away from the house. The owner knew us, as his son was part of our soccer team, and seeing we were hungry and had no money, he let us take a couple of sandwiches for breakfast. After we finished them we decided to go back home. When we got to the house my dad's car was gone and my mom passed us by without saying a word, or even sparing us a glance as we stood at the entrance hall. They hadn't looked for us, they weren't worried about us. Hell, they probably hadn't even noticed we were gone. That was the day that I realised that you can't rely on other people. Growing up, it was always just Aiden and I, he was and still is the only one I can trust, and the only one that has always had my back. But now that he left the house for good and I rarely see or hear from him, I guess it's just me."
I listened to his story quietly, stroking his hair and rubbing my thumb on the back of his hand. I listened quietly, feeling my heart aching for him, calling out to him, and making me want to hold onto him so tightly that maybe all his broken pieces would stick back together. And I listened quietly, as my perspective of him changed with every word he spoke.
Every single word drove me closer to the realisation that there was so much more to him than he let on. Now, looking at him, I don't see the tough, strong, confident guy he leads everyone to believe he is. I see the broken eight-year-old boy laying in that abandoned house, hoping that someone would come looking for him.
Tears make their way down my cheek as I became conscious of the fact that I would do anything, anything, to make sure that he never felt like that little boy again. To show him that he now has someone to rely on no matter what, to prove to him that he isn't alone anymore, and that he never will be again.
"Hey," Noah says wiping my tears away with his thumb, "Don't cry, I didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have told you about that." He says, comforting me when I should be the one comforting him.
"I'm so sorry you had to go through that, Noah" I say, my lip quivering.
"Please don't feel sorry for me. It was a long time ago and I'm over it now, I have been for a long time. Seriously, I'm fine," he says with a smile that doesn't look genuine to me in the slightest.
I know that he's not fine, and my heart breaks for him knowing that he's surely been through so much worse than that, and knowing that he's probably supressed his feelings for so long that he's convinced himself he's okay, when in reality he's just used to the pain.
I'm about to speak when he lifts his hand up to stop me, "Let's just change the subject," he says sitting up in front of me. I would push the conversation to comfort him, but he obviously doesn't want that, or at least he feels like he doesn't need it.
"I have something that'll cheer you up," he says twisting around to put his hand inside his back pocket. He pulls out a thin, black, rectangular box and holds it out to me on his palm. He has a genuine smile on his face, and I notice his usual glow returning to his eyes. "Take it," he encourages me, inching the box closer to me.
"What is it?" I ask unsurely, taking it from him.
"You'll have to open it to find out."
I do as he says and open the box, feeling the tears rising back to my eyes as I look at it's contents. Resting inside, on a tiny white pillow, lays a silver necklace with a small, ruby-red heart pendant.
"I saw it at the store the other day and it made me think of you, so I had to buy it." he says taking it from me and bringing his hands to the back of my neck to put it on.
I'm speechless as I rest my hand on the little heart hanging from my neck. "I-I don't know what to say Noah," I breathe out.
"Say you like it," he smiles.
"I love it, I absolutely love it. But you shouldn't have."
"I know, but I wanted to." he smiles sweetly.
Without a second thought I launch forward to kiss him as hard as I can, toppling him down onto the mattress and laying on top of him. He laughs as I kiss all over his face, from his dimpled cheeks, to his forehead, to his nose, down to his beautiful smile.
And from the moment I kissed that smile, I knew. This is going to fucking hurt.
But right now, I don't care. I don't care at all, because I know I'd let him hurt me over, and over, and over again. I'd give him everything I have and everything I am just to see him smile. And I know I'd lose myself and break myself, if it meant I could heal him and rid him of his pain. I don't care how scary it is that I now know that no matter what he does,
I'll still love him.