The Boy I thought I Knew

Door step

It's been three years since me and my three girl friends moved out and into our amazing home. We lost contact with the three boys we grew up with and considered our best friends after graduation when they all went on their mission for the church. We started fresh and have been living our best lives without too much to stress about aside from the monthly mortgage and how many pizzas we want to order for dinner. The four of us had decided that since we all had the night off, we'd have a fun family game night. Play some board games, watch movies, order junk food, and just soak in the free time we all had together for a single night. Having decided that three boxes of pizza would be our dinner for the night, the lady on the phone said it would be delivered in about thirty minutes. However the doorbell rang in twenty, we didn't think too much of it considering we were all starving. I pounced up with my wallet and rushed over to the door. Counting out a few dollars, I asked how much it would be without looking at the person in the door. I finally made eye contact with the boy I had been in love with since sophomore year of high school and found myself lost for words. After two years, Noah finally crept his way back into my life and I didn't know what to think in that instant. His eyes looked puffy and he was shivering from wearing nothing but a thin long sleeved shirt and what looked like a ripped pair of blue jeans. It felt like we were staring at each other for ages before he finally said, "I know we haven't talked in a while, but something bad happened and I was hoping you'd let me stay with you for a little bit?" I thought of saying no for a second and wanted to be anywhere but standing here right now, but being the person I am and under the circumstances that I was still madly in love with this boy no matter what he did, I felt obligated to say "yes of course, what happened?" Noah came inside and I shut the door, rushing to the living room to grab a blanket for him and proceeding to wrap it around his shoulders while taking him to sit on the couch where the girls were. They all looked just as shocked as I was and didn't have anything to say in that moment. We all sat there in silence for a few minutes before I asked if he wanted to talk about why he suddenly showed up on our doorstep after so long without even sending a postcard. He asked if I could give him a couple days to form up a proper explanation of why he was here and I agreed. We went about our night, having the pizza show up ten minutes after the situation. What we thought would be a simple night in as the independent woman we are now, turned out to be a bit more of a shock than we had planned. And none of us would've guessed that this was only the beginning.