It Lives In The Woods

Chapter Eleven

Bee had just showered and dressed for bed when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rising, standing to attention, getting ready to make battle with some unseen enemy. "Hello?" She called, slowly rising out of her bed, looking around her room, the sounds of crows cawing in the distance adding to her unease.

Knock

Knock

Bee jumped and shrieked as she watched a figure climb up the tree to her window, she stood in horror for a moment before recognizing Noah's smiling face in the window, black curls blowing in the nighttime wind. Bee slowly tiptoed towards the window, remembering how real the creature disguised as Jamie had appeared the night Blue nearly killed her, just a few nights before. "Noah, is that really you?" She asked, in a surprisingly timid voice. Noah nodded, "I promise, you can even smell me if you want!" He called from behind the thick windowed pane. Bee smiled a sigh of relief and unlocked the window, allowing him to climb in. "See, I don't smell like sulfur or earth, I smell like man and pizza, so we're all good." He joked, laughing at his own comment as Bee cocked her hip to one side and crossed her arms over her tank top. "Not funny, that night was really scary. So what can I help you with? And why not use the door? We're not kids anymore you know, you don't have to sneak around." Noah shrugged, looking around at the room with nostalgic eyes, "Just wanted that dramatic effect I suppose." He shifted awkwardly and took a deep breath, stepping away from her uncomfortably as he opened his mouth multiple times like he wanted to speak, but couldn't remember how. "Noah are you okay? What is it?" She asked, reaching out and caressing his shoulder comfortingly. Noah sighed once more and turned his brown eyes to her from beneath his curls. "I have some questions about the last time I saw you."

-2008-

Norah's funeral had been the day before, yet the wound still felt fresh in Bee's young heart, like someone had physically taken a knife and sliced her arteries open from her rib cage and left her to bleed out. There was a large, unfillable hole in her life now, a hole no simple therapy session could fix, she, and all the others knew it was permanent. The cut on her hand from her and her friend's blood promise was still aching, only a day old now, and still pulsed with pain and heat. Bee was sitting on her bed in an empty room, looking out her bay window, longing for her grandparent's house where she had spent so many carefree days with Norah and their friends, longing for the memories of the past. She was crying before she even realized it, big, fat tears sliding down her pale cheeks onto the mattress, making the bland room seem even more depressing. "Mrs. Pierce please, I promise I won't be long." Noah's voice drew her out of her trance, tears collecting in her eyelashes as she listened with confusion, heard the desperation in his voice. "Thank you, you're the best!" She heard him call, followed by the familiar sound of his footsteps bounding up the oak stairs to her room. Bee quickly wiped her tears away and stood up, meeting him with a forced, guilty smile as he slowly entered her doorway, horrified eyes finding her blank walls. "So it's really true huh? You're moving away." Bee looked away, cheeks burning with shame. Her parents had decided after Norah's death, that Crescent Point was no longer a good place for their only child, and had bought a house in upstate New York in a matter of days. The thought of telling her friend's, her family, goodbye was too painful at that time for her to handle, so she simply didn't. "Yeah, it's true. We leave tonight." Noah stumbled backwards like she'd struck him, tears filling his big brown eyes, and this, this was precisely what Bee hadn't wanted. "You weren't even going to tell us, or bother to even spare a goodbye?!" He asked, his voice an array of pain and anger. Bee's blue eyes didn't leave the ground, "I just can't bear anymore pain Noah, it's too much for me to handle as it is." Noah shook his head, "You're in pain?!" He stepped forwards and grabbed Bee's small heart shaped face in his hands, forcing her eyes to meet his, "Bee please, I just lost Norah, I can't lose you too. Please don't leave me here with them Bee, I won't make it, you know I won't, not without you." He begged, the tears slipping down her face collecting in the folds of his hands. "My parents don't think it's a good idea for me to live here anymore Noah. Too many bad memories, and I don't think they're wrong! I see Norah everywhere I turn, those final moments are engraved in my head, and I can't sleep, can't eat, I have to get out of this fucking town!" She insisted, pulling away from him and turning towards the window that overlooked the small lake in their backyard. She held Noah sniffle, struggling to recompose himself. "Bee I," her body tensed, she could hear the devastation in his tone, "I love you."
Those three words hit her like a bullet train, knocking the breath out of her lungs, sending her whipped around to face him. "What?!" She whispered in disbelief. Noah looked away in embarrassment. "I never told you because, well, because of Andy for starters, and then after you broke up with him, the timing just never seemed right. But it's true Bee, I love you, I am, and have always been, in love with you." Despite the dire situation Bee found herself in, she couldn't help feeling the least bit excited, all the pent up feelings she'd suppressed for Noah for Norah's sake all those past few years rising to the surface as nothing more than a crimson flush across her face. "I-I don't know what to say..." She whispered, her blue eyes boring into him. "Do you love me?" Silence swelled inside the room as she decided between her answers, the truth, or the easy way out. Bee watched Noah's every move as he wrung his hands together and shuffled in his standing position. "It won't change anything Noah, I still have to leave." Noah stepped forwards, till she could feel his hot breath on her cheeks, and grabbed her hands, interlacing them with his own. "I need to know Bee, you owe me that much." She stared up at him, her closest friend now that Norah had left their world, the only person she'd ever held herself back from. "Yes. I just, I couldn't betray Norah like that, or Andy." His wide brown eyes glistened, "You love me?"

"I love you."

Noah bent down, his jaw clenched, cursing the world for his miserable fate, destined to be infinitely alone, his twin, rotting in her grave, the girl he loved, preparing to move states away from him and all they've ever known. Their foreheads pressed together gently, intimately, Bee's long eyelashes scraping the bones that framed his sharp eyebrows. Bee could feel his arm slid down and wrap itself around her tiny waist, his hand shaking as they stared into each other's eyes, eyes filled with love and pain, a marriage between the two. "Kiss me then, please, just once before you leave, before you leave me." Bee closed her eyes briefly, tears slipping rapidly down her pale face, "Noah, if I kiss you now, I don't know if I'll be able to leave." She sobbed, pressing her forehead harder against him. His other hand left her cheek and slid up into her dark brown hair, pulling her even closer. "Please," he pleaded, and she could hear that he needed it, needed her to validate those suppressed feelings they'd had for so long. So with a shaky breath, Bee reached up, and pressed her lips against his, the lingering taste of salty tears coating their lips. The kiss seemed to go on forever, as soft and gentle as a summer's breeze, and for a moment, everything in their lives seemed perfect. Until Bee pulled away, and hugged him with all her might, taking him in, his scent of old cigarettes and strawberries, the feel of his black curls between her fingers, and it all, it all felt so final. "Bee, we have to go tell your grandparents goodbye before we leave, are you and Noah almost done up there?" Bee wiped her face clean of tears, "Yeah mom, we're coming now." Noah grabbed her hand as she went to go down the stairs. "Promise you'll call at least?" Bee forced a smile and nodded, "Promise." But she never did.

-2020-

Bee sat down on her bed, sighing with shame, staring down at the dark oak floor. "Oh, that. I wasn't sure if we were ever going to talk about it, I kind of hoped we wouldn't." Noah flinched like she'd slapped him and stayed where he stood, shuffling awkwardly. "Was anything you said even true? Did you ever love me at all?" Bee thought back to all those years ago, sitting with Noah on hot summer days on the deck of her parents house, his pale chest glistening with sweat as water droplets from the community pool dripped off her bikini clad body onto the white wood, between the cracks to the ground, or the cold winter nights when he would climb through her window with bloody lips, and the two would share their hopes and dreams, and fears. "Yes. Yes I really loved you, more than anyone. But Norah had made me promise so long ago that I would never pursue those feelings." Noah nodded, not looking up at her, "Why didn't you call me ? At least once, it's the least you could've done Bee." Bee nibbled on her bottom lip nervously, her stomach doing somersaults as the memories of crying in the car rushed back to her. "It hurt too much, I didn't want it to hurt you as badly as it hurt me. In part, that's why I've never been with anyone else, I don't want to feel pain like that again." Noah finally looked up at her, his brown eyes boring into her, into her soul. "What about now?" Bee's breath caught in her throat as her heart skipped a few beats. "What?" She asked quietly, though she knew what he meant. "Do you think you could be with me now ? I know it's been so many years, and we've both grown as individuals, but I like who you've grown into, hell I could even love the woman you are now. Would you even be willing to give me a chance?" Bee shifted her eyes away, blinking rapidly, like she was trying to blink away the fast paced thoughts that were flying through her head. "We'd never be able to see each other after we finish this with Blue. I will never come back to Crescent Point, and with my busy tour schedule, what would you do? And what about your store, you can't just throw it away-" Noah stepped forwards and grabbed her hands, towering over her from where she sat on the bed, "I'd give it all up Bee, my store, Crescent Point, everything for a life with you. That's all i've wanted, ever since I was a kid. Is that so bad?" She smiled to herself at his remark, would it be? Settling down after her tour, getting married, having the life she had envisioned for herself as a teen. "No, that doesn't sound bad at all. But there's still so many conflicting factors and-" Noah bent down and kissed her sweetly, his curls ticking her forehead. "Let's not worry about that now, let's just enjoy the time we have together, okay?" Bee nodded, her face breaking out into a grin as he bent back down and kissed her. The kiss was full of passion and longing, it was a kiss they'd both anticipated for years, decades even. And as Noah laid her down, Bee's mind was clear of all shame or fear, it was nothing but pure bliss.