Are you mine?

Chapter 27

It's a bright, sunny day outside as we ride in Noah's car with the windows down, soft music playing through the speakers. Letting my hair fly in the wind, I close my eyes and hum along to the mellow tune. When I open them I catch Noah staring at me in my peripheral, making my cheeks flush red from his penetrating gaze. "You look cute when you blush." he smiles as he faces the road again.

"Do you have those lines rehearsed to purposely make me flustered, or is it just like spontaneous?" I inquire, narrowing my eyes and crossing my arms as I shrug.

"They just sort of come to me," he mocks, gesturing at his head, "Must be my natural charm," he shrugs and I roll my eyes. Chuckling, Noah grabs my hand that's resting on my thigh and hooks his fingers through mine.

We find ourselves outside of town, driving down a narrow, gravel road parallel to the highway, heading for the countryside. Noah takes a right turn and we enter a pathway shaded by a line of tall trees on both sides, new green leaves growing as Spring slowly approaches us.

The road ends before a tall iron gate, a white and green wooden sign hanging above it that reads: 'Silent Hills Memorial'. Noah parks outside, indicating this is our final destination and gets out of the car, rounding the front to come open my door for me. I step out and he offers his hand, which I hesitantly take in mine as we head for the entrance.

The gates open with a loud creaking sound to reveal a large stretch of land, bright green and perfectly mowed grass covering as far as the eye can see. My attention is called to a small, white church, standing in the distance as the bells start ringing marking midday.

Holding my hand, Noah leads me down a marked pathway towards the church, walking over a wooden bridge above a small pond where two white ducks are swimming around. An old woman walking slowly, with short steps and carrying a bouquet of flowers catches my eyes. She kneels on the grass, picking up a bundle of brown, dried up blossoms and replacing them with the fresh and colourful ones she was carrying, as she wipes at her face with her free hand. I fixate on her as she stays on her knees looking down, palms laid flat against her thighs, smoothing down her dress.

"This way," Noah indicates, taking my attention away from the woman. Our path leads to a roundabout, where a tall, white statue of a winged guardian angel stands, looking down with its arms opened. Noah sits crossed-legged at the foot of the statue, which is surrounded by a lavender shrub, and I sit across from him, a granite headstone between us.

I remain silent as Noah shifts, taking something out of his back pocket. He holds the plastic rose I'd seen on his desk, and places it on the stone. "This," He runs a finger over the carved name, "Is my Tyler." he says, his lips pressed together into a thin line.

'Felix Lockwood, 1998-2017'

I notice a clear vinyl sticker, with the trace of a red rose on it, stuck to the tombstone. Noah keeps his head down as he brushes some dirt off the plaque, "I met him when I was a kid." he starts, "My dad has always been a big sports enthusiast, so he enrolled me in this kids soccer league, where I met Felix. I played defense, and he was the best nine-year-old goalie there ever was," he smiles.

"We quickly became close friends, and found out we lived only a few blocks away from each other, nothing our little bicycles couldn't handle, so he came over all the time. I had a treehouse in the backyard at that time. It was a group project my brother, my dad and I built, and it was also my safe space to get away from all the yelling inside my actual house. In the afternoons, when we'd come home from soccer practice, Felix and I would climb up there, where we had a secret stash of snacks, and hide from my parents until it got dark.

"He was a couple of years older than me, my brother Aiden's age, so as we got to our teens they kind of took me under their wing. They took me to parties, taught me their best hangover cures, and while Aiden is more of an introvert, Felix was a real ladies man, so I guess you could say I learnt that from him." he smiles. "He had that kind of personality that draws you in. He walked into a room and made it brighter, everyone loved him. I don't think there's one person that could have anything negative to say about Felix. The guy was a saint."

"What happened to him?" I ask hesitantly.

"It was last summer, a couple of months after graduation. He was on his way to med school and just before he left for college he went to a party with his friends to celebrate the end of the summer. They all got plastered and were having a great time, until Felix started having an asthma attack. He'd left his inhaler at home, and all his friends were too drunk to take him to the hospital. They called him an ambulance, but by the time they got there, it was already too late. He passed in the back on their way to the hospital." he twirls the rose in between his fingers as he speaks, his eyes fixated on it. "At his funeral all of us got a rose just like this one. A flower that never wilts to represent the eternal mark that Felix left in all of our lives."

I sit there listening to him, waiting for the ball to drop, waiting for his casual expression to fall from his face. I even expect tears, but he doesn't shed one. There's something so upsetting about sitting on the ground above someone who's supposed to be a few years older than you. I didn't even know Felix personally, but my heart aches for the kid that didn't get to grow up, and for the mother that was unlucky enough to outlive her son. I wipe at my face with my sleeve and catch an unruly tear that wouldn't stay behind my eyes, looking up at Noah to see him staring at the ground with a blank expression. At this moment, it becomes clear to me that he's got a pretty tough armour on him.

I stand up, walking behind him and kneeling to wrap my arms around him, as if to hold him together. "I'm sorry," I say leaning my head against his. Reaching up with one hand, his fingers wrap around my wrist over his chest.

"You don't need to be. This is just the way things go, we lose the people we love, we mourn them, and we move on." He speaks calmly with no sadness behind his words, and I realise we're not talking about Felix anymore. He says this as if it is the clearest thing in the world to him that my relationship with Tyler is over and it always will be from now until forever.

I stay silent, thinking of what to say, but he gets up escaping my embrace and heading towards the path that brought us here. Running my hand over the rose sticker on the headstone, I take a moment to pull myself together, before standing and hurrying to catch up to Noah. I follow him back to the car and he drives me home in silence until we park on the street outside my house, my parent's car sitting in the driveway.

I look into his eyes as I unbuckle my seat belt. "Thank you Noah, for everything."

He gives me a half smile, reaching out to touch my cheek and press his lips against my forehead. "Call me if you need anything, okay?"

"Yeah," I tuck my hair behind my ear as I step out of the car "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Have a good night, Mads" he says and I close the door heading towards my house. As I hear the sound of Noah's car getting farther and farther away from me, I stop to think and try to process his reasoning behind bringing me along with him today.

I know he meant well, and I'm glad he gave me a look into his past, but this experience only made the hole in my chest grow even bigger. He tried to show that you can let go of the people you love and go on without them. But I haven't lost Tyler. This is just a bump in the road, and with time, we'll get over it together.

I'll get to watch him grow, overcome his fears, become a successful actor. He'll have an apartment in the city, just like he always dreamed of, and I'll stay in the suburbs. But we'll make it work despite the distance between us, because we'll make the commitment to meet to catch up over dinner as often as we can. My kids and his kids will grow up together, following in our steps to become best friends and continuing the cycle we started. Our current situation wasn't part of our plan, but no plan is perfect. I refuse to believe that I now have to picture a life without him, I won't accept that.

I just hope Noah doesn't know what he's talking about.