Star-Crossed ✔️

19

i keep forgetting to
write chapters for this
book until literally sunday
(i update monday)

- 19 -

Noah and I got tattoos in New Jersey.

We both got a tire swing, an homage to Road to Serendipity in all it's depressing glory. Noah just kept giggling about how stupid these tattoos were, but I felt differently. I liked the allusion to something that impacted my life.

Noah may have thought of that movie as the beginning of the end.

But for me it was the spark that lit the match. I wouldn't be where I was today without that movie, and in turn, without Noah. They could have casted any two kids who could read lines well enough, whose only experience was that of commercials and movie extras. I could have been filming with an entirely different twelve-year-old and maybe the movie would have flopped. It was that kind of thought that kept me so attached to the sad little movie.

So Road to Serendipity was important to me. I loved the new tattoo.

Noah smiled from the chair beside me. I glanced at the buzzing needle and then back at him. It was starting to not surprise me anymore, the slight shift of wanting in my body every time I looked at him too closely. But how couldn't I?

He always carried this essence of fresh air. That was the best way I could describe it. Being in Noah's presence was like the first wear of a clean sweater, that clean laundry smell that always flutters through my senses comfortingly. Noah was like that for me, like shedding a layer of doubt just by being near him.

"We don't have to post about this, right?" Noah asked, biting at his thumbnail. "I kind of don't want to."

I shrugged. "It can be our little secret." His shoulders relaxed and my eyebrows pushed together in confusion. "We don't have to post anything we do. You know that, right?"

Noah's eyes flitted to the tattoo artist, who was too busy finishing up my piece, before he focused on his hands in his lap. It was awkwardly wordless for a few beats before he answered. "I— yeah, of course," was all he said.

"Alright then."

"By the way, I'm gonna stay on the bus during soundcheck and take a nap, but I'll be up to watch the show from backstage," he said, pulling out his phone to check. I nodded without responding because I was getting saran wrapped and told I was good to go.

We grabbed some food after that and headed back to the bus. I only had an hour before soundcheck, so we just watched an episode of a new Netflix series while we ate and then I left him to get ready.

I had woken up beside him this morning. He was still asleep when I opened my eyes. Chester was no longer between us, but he very well could have been. Our bodies were completely detached with a fat orange cat sized space between us, no thanks to my overkill mattress.

It wasn't like I expected him to cling to me in the middle of the night, but maybe I hoped? Maybe after our conversation I wished something would happen between us? We agreed to stay friends and I had to get over my desperate pining. It was old.

Time to move on.

The show went great. I was a little buzzed from excited pre-gaming with Kailey. She was a terrible influence on me when it came to drinking, but I liked our friendship. If that's what you could call it.

Is it friendship if you've only recently started being cordial with one another after years of bad blood? Either way, I liked having her around. Especially because she knew about my attraction towards Noah and, unlike Dustin, at least humored me on the topic.