72
THE CHOICES YOU MAKE WILL change you.
The words appeared in my mind, unbidden. I’d chosen Noah before, and I wanted to again, now that we both knew who and what we were. I didn’t care if it changed me. I did care about how it might change him.
“You make me happier than I deserve,” I said thickly. His touch, his scent, his everything was distracting me.
Noah smiled. “Then why do you look so sad?”
My hope for him, his mother’s hope for him, was that he would help create a better world. Without you, he can.
“I have no right to want you,” I said, unable to hide my bitterness.
“You have every right. It’s your choice. It’s ours. We don’t have to be what they want.”
But we were.
“We can live the lives we want.”
Could we?
Noah took off his necklace and held it out in his palm. He’d chosen. I closed my eyes and tried to remember his mother’s face, my grandmother’s words, but it was useless. All I could see was him.
I shook my head. “I tried so hard not to love you.”
“Well, you’re a failure, I’m sorry to say.” He kissed me on one cheek.
“No, you’re not.”
“No. I’m not.” He kissed the other.
“You know, when I met you, I thought you had everything. A perfect life.”
“Mmm.” My neck.
“I thought you were pretty perfect too.”
He stopped, went still. “And now what do you think?”
I didn’t answer at first. “You didn’t have what I thought you had. I think part of you must have always known how fragile your life really was, if you were willing to risk it for me.”
He shook his head. “You don’t get what you give me.”
I wanted him to say it. Needed him to say it. “Tell me.”
“It’s like you’re a mirror, and you show me who I want to be, instead of who I am.”
I closed my eyes.
“When I look at myself, I see nothing,” he said. “When you look at me? You see everything.” I felt his fingers in my hair, on my neck. “I need to be the person I am with you.”
“You’re that person all the time.”
Noah’s expression was uncharacteristically open. Earnest. He meant what he was saying. Believed it. “Maybe sometimes we can only see the truth about ourselves if someone shows us where to look.”
I didn’t need Noah to see the truth about myself—I found it on my own. But he needed me to see the truth about him.
“Maybe we are codependent,” he went on. “Maybe we are fucked up. Maybe I’m stupid and you’re trouble and both of us would be better off alone.”
“Maybe?”
He ignored me. “I don’t care. Do you?”
The list of what he would lose with me was longer than what I could give him. But no. I didn’t care.
Noah had seen me scarred and broken, dirty and limp, covered in blood and wearing someone else’s smile. He didn’t cringe or flinch or hide. He knew who I was, he’d seen what I’d done, and he knew what I would do to him someday too. But he was still here. I would be a fool to let him go, and I was many things—a liar, a criminal, a murderer—but I was not a fool.
You can be seen and not loved, or loved and not seen. Noah loved me, and saw me. But more than that, he chose me. I couldn’t give him forever, even though he deserved it. I couldn’t keep him safe, even though I wanted to. But I could give him today. Tonight. And I would try to give him tomorrow, and every day after, for as long as I possibly could. It wasn’t enough for me, but it was enough for him.
I tilted my head up and asked, “What would you do if I kissed you right now?”
He pretended to think about it for an obnoxious amount of time before saying, “I would kiss you back.”
I’d been surviving on crumbs for so long—thoughts of him, memories of us. But now, with him here and close and willing, I realized I’d been starving.
I wrapped my hands around his neck and kissed him softly. His hand grazed the hem of my shirt, and when I felt his skin on mine it was like a storm beneath his fingertips, the rolling of clouds, the snapping of lightning. All at once it was too much and not enough, and I arched against him and kissed him harder, roughly.
You think it can’t get worse than wanting someone and not having them, but it can. You can want someone, have them, and want them more. Still. Always. You can never get enough.
We broke apart to breathe, our foreheads still touching. He didn’t say he loved me. He didn’t need to. I could feel it in the way he pressed my palm against his neck. His eyes were closed, and my heart turned over. He needed me too.
What had happened would always be part of us, but we’d survived it. We were still here. The curtain would fall on us eventually, but I would fight to keep it up as long as I could. For now it was just us, together, and there was nothing in our way.
Still, I heard David’s words replay themselves in my mind, in his voice, as I led Noah back into the house and up the stairs.
“He wouldn’t love you if you weren’t what you are.”
But I am what I am. And he does.