Love, Lilly

Sam

 We walk into Noah's beautiful house, it's the same size as mine, if not bigger. I love his neat house, it is full of color but still organized in some way. It is clean though because he's an only child.

"I'm home," he calls out to his dad, who is sitting on the couch in the living room reading. He likes to read like Noah does, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Noah's dad looks up and smiles.

"Hey, Sam! How are you doing?" he says, I love Noah's dad.

"Good, how are you?"

"Good, good. You guys have fun!"

"Hey, Dad," Noah says "Can Sam stay over for a few nights?"

"Sure," his dad says, "do your parents let?"

"Yeah, they're fine with it."

"Okay, don't stay up too late!" Noah's dad laughs. Noah and I used to stay up and eat candy all night. We walk up to Noah's room. It's neat and clean like the rest of his house but from the ceiling hang many model airplanes. He also has shelves of models, experiments, and experiment notebooks. I love Noah's room; it never changes, just accumulates more things. I sit on the bed while he pulls the mattress I'll sleep on, out from under the bed. The first time I slept here we had a full on argument on who would sleep on the mattress. He didn't want me to have to sleep on it, because I was the guest, but I wouldn't let him be nice. I won and we agreed that when we went to each other's houses the guest would sleep on the bad bed so the other wouldn't feel bad the next time.

We sit on the bed, side by side for a while. His company relaxes me and we are comfortable in the silence.

After a few minutes, I hear Noah take a deep breath.

"Sam... I really am sorry that I lost track of Ricky," he says.

"I told you, Noah, it's fine. It's probably better that it happened this way, to tell you the truth. I never would have come out on my own," I reply.

"It still sucks," he says quietly, after a moment. I let out a long breath.

"Yeah. And it probably always will," I admit.

"Not necessarily," Noah points out. "I mean, there's Lily, right?" He sounds so hopelessly awkward and sweet that I have to laugh. But he's right.

"Yeah," I reply. "There's Lily."