Right Person Too Late

chapter 13

Arsema

"Love'll make you do wrong, make you stay out all night long."

Song: Love and Happiness by Al Green

"Well look who decided to finally show up."

Is what Noah and I are greeted with as we tiptoe into the apartment, clothes soaked in the salty ocean water, me giggling about the drunk guys we saw at the entrance of the building who were pretending to be pirates and tried to convince me to be their one and only princess. I so would've joined them if Noah hadn't nudged me into the building and told them to piss off.

"Where have you been?" Mia queries sitting sideways on the armchair reading what looks to be a script.

Avoiding her question I drop my stuff at the door and hang up our jackets, "What you reading?"

She waves it around in frustration. "It's this project for my drama class, we're holding a small play on Thursday and I forgot to learn my lines so I'm gonna be in this chair for the next two days memorising them...but don't distract me. Where were you?"

"Noah and I had lunch with Michael and his mum."

"In the middle of the sea?" She asks, looking pointedly at Noah who's standing next to me, looking extremely unsure of what to do.

Sighing, I grab his hand and turn to pull him into my room so we can avoid Mia's usual interrogation of any human of the male species that enters this apartment. Though to be fair I do it just as much as she does, if not worse.

Before we can take another step Mia intervenes. "What were you guys actually doing though?"

I lightheartedly roll my eyes at her. "Leave us alone Mia."

"Oh no, no, no. I wanna hear about this."

As a sneaky grin slowly makes its way across her freckled face I finally realise what she's doing; she wants to scare Noah off so she can interrogate me instead.

"You know...I think I'm gonna get going, Arsema."

"Nooo don't leave me with this woman and her script Noahhhh." I cry, pulling his arm in desperation, not wanting to face Mia.

He amusedly smiles down at me. "You'll be alright, I've got to, uh...do my laundry anyway."

"Oh, you rat, you said we could watch a movie."

He snickers before slowly pulling out of my grip to grab his jacket from the hook. "We'll do that on Friday when both Mia and Miles will be gone."

"Ohhh yeah, that's smart. Won't have to deal with their bullshit." I glance at Mia from the side to see her staring at us, looking annoyed. I smirk at her.

"What do you mean we'll both be gone?"

"Uh huh, like you forgot. Ok I'll text you later, Noah, drive safe!" I call out as he waves goodbye and closes the door behind him.

Ducking past a Mia who's flung herself out of her seat and barreling towards me I lock myself into the bathroom with a content sigh, happy to finally be able to wash the algae out of my hair.

It finally feels like things are fitting into place in a sense. My grades are skyrocketing for the first time since this year started, I've got an amazing group of friends, I've nearly finished writing my first book - that nobody knows about, and Noah and Miles are back in my life, life's just great. But I feel like it'll be even better if I figure out what to do about the Michael situation Sue was talking about earlier today.

I'm about to belt out the lyrics to One Wish by Ray J as it starts playing on my phone, shampooing my hair, when Mia barges into the bathroom.

"Uh, what happened to this thing called privacy?" I ask poking my head around the shower curtain.