Falling Upwards

/The Boy With The Blue Eyes\

Later, once we've introduced all of ourselves, I become fond of Noah. He reminds me of me. Maybe I can put up with him.

"Well, I just love this casserole! You have GOT to lend me the recipe sometime, Joan!" My mom, Charlotte, gushes to Noah's mom.

"Anytime, dear!" She replies. They do the fake/awkward small talk thing and then an awkward silence fills the air. I excuse myself from the table saying "I'm gonna go play GTA 5, now, if that's alright. Mrs. Peterson, Noah, it was lovely to meet you both. Mom, thanks for dinner, it was great. May I be excused now?"

My mother curtly nods at this, and gives me a light smile as to thank me for my respect towards our dinner guests.

"Oh, my god. You have GTA?" Noah seems baffled.

"Yeah. And COD, COD: ghosts, Battlefield 3 and 4, Halo 3, and Black Ops on the Xbox, and Outlast multiple Amnesia stories, Resident Evil, and tons of random short horror games on the computer. And I have a few miscellaneous zombie games." I say. He looks either like he's gonna shit himself, or cry. I can't tell, and I don't think that's a good thing.

"You have to let me come!" He shrieks.

I raise my eyebrows at Mom to see if she's alright with that. She, again, nods and I beam at her.

"Sure. This way." I walk away from the kitchen and up the stairs after putting my plate in the sink. It takes Noah a few seconds, but he quickly does the same and follows me up to my room.

I open the door, and hold my arms out. "Welcome to my lair of evilly evilness!" I don't know where that came from, but Noah seems to find it funny as his shoulders slightly bounce up and down as he chuckles.

He laughs and runs and jumps onto my bed, giggling like a 7 year old. This makes me giggle to myself. I begin laughing, however, when he starts to make duvet-angels on the bed.

"Move over." I laugh, and hand him a controller as I sit down at the foot of my bed next to him. I restart my game of "Dead Island" that I was playing this morning and set it up for two-players.

"So, why isn't your dad here?" I ask, making awkward small-talk.

"Some bullshit with work. He's basically never home anymore. Whatever, though." He says, not bitterly at all. "So...I see that window looks straight into my room. Ooh! We need to get white-boards and go 'Taylor Swift' on this shit and hold up messages to each other!" He says, giddily. I can't help but smile at his eagerness for something so silly.

"Okay. You're paying for em." I say, bitchily, but sarcastically.

"Alright, you have a deal!" He says and flashes me an absolutely goofy grin. He sticks out his hand and I take it in mine, and we shake on it.

We eventually get around to playing all of the games that I have at least twice before I even realize that it's like 2 am.

"Oh shit! Look at what time it is!" I say, suddenly feeling panicky.

"So? My parents don't mind if I'm out this late at a friend's house. I'll text them to make sure they know where I am, though." He says, not looking away from the screen. He expertly hacks the top half of a zombie's head off with a machete, earning him bonus points.

"Okay, first off, we're barely friends. And secondly, I'm a girl." I say, wondering why he isn't understanding what I'm trying to say here. Like. What the hell, dude?

"Well, first off," he says mocking my tone, "you're my friend. And secondly, you're easily the coolest girl I've ever met in my life. And I've already known you forrr...." He checks his phone, "like 8 and 1/2 hours! We're practically related!" He smiles. God, he is so enthusiastic about literally everything. It's really refreshing to see someone this positive about life.

"Okay. Fine. Are you even gonna go home tonight?" I ask, genuinely curious. He looks pretty comfortable.

"Probably not. If that's okay with you, of course." He says.

"Eh, I don't care. As long as you're not a bed-hog." I say smiling. Even though I would take the floor tonight, and let him have my bed.

"Alright! Sleep over!" He laughs and says in a very fabulous gay voice.

After a while of some not-really-all-that-hardcore gaming, I'm suddenly aware of the fact that I'm exhausted. I begin to pull half of the pillows off of the bed and one of the blankets. He sees what I'm doing, and moves to stop me.

"Max, what're you doing?"

"I'm gonna sleep on the floor so you can take the bed..?" I say, almost ending it as a question.

"No, no, no. Absolutely not. I'm not making you sleep on your own floor when I take your bed. No way. I'll sleep on the floor." he argues.

"What? No! I want to be a good hostess!" I respond.

"Well, then we're both just gonna have to share the floor. Or the bed. Or wait, would you be weirded out by that? We could make like a wall of pillows between us, if that would make you feel better."

I really don't mind sharing a bed with someone, but considering that he is a boy, he is new to me, and my parents aren't home (they went to Grandma's and I asked if I could stay home) I will need this pillow wall to be put in place. "I guess I'm alright with the pillow wall idea. I mean, I do have a queen sized bed, so it won't be crowded." I shrug my shoulders.

"Alrighty then, let's get wall-buildin'" he flashes me a joker-like smile, and picks up the pillows I had placed on the floor.

Once we've finished the pillow wall, I hand him a pair of large sweatpants to wear, and a huge t shirt. It hangs down to my knees, so it shouldn't be too little on him. I go change in my bathroom, and I let him change in my room.

"Done yet?" I knock on the inside of the bathroom door, considering that my bathroom is in my room, so there isn't another door between the two rooms.

"Yep," he calls out to me.

I open the door and make my way to the bed, where I see that he's taken the right side, the outside portion. He's doing something on his phone. I guess he sees me looking at him so he tells me that he was texting his parents and they said he could stay.

I climb over him, delicately, and press myself up against the wall. Not the pillow wall, either. It's not like he grosses me out or something, I just enjoy personal space.

"Goodnight, Noah. Flick off the lamp, please?"

"Goodnight, Max. Sure." He says quietly, and calmly, a different tone from his usual loudness. "I think you might be my new best friend, Maxine Prichard. I really mean that. Sleep well."

"Sweet dreams." I say, groggily. I don't know if I was already dreaming or not, but it seemed as if he leaned over and kissed my forehead. I was out like a light after that. Best sleep in months.