There was a full second or two where Noah just stood in wait, hand over his eyes, shoulders flat against the brick where it pressed warm through his shirt. This wasn’t all bad, he thought. Rory’d had that light in her eyes, at the crosswalk – maybe I’ll love the inside of your apartment like it was already settled – so he wasn’t embarrassed, not really, not in the way that mattered. There were worse things than a quick-spreading blush. It was just, you know, his chest felt heavier now. And he knew that would stick ‘til he got home tonight, where he could lie in his bed with all his white noise humming, and he could wonder how much more of the father he’d buried was still waiting to show up in him. It had been happening like this, lately: little flashes of recognition, like that week he hadn’t bothered to shave, or that night he bought the wrong cigarettes and found he liked them better. Parliaments. He’d smoked three back-to-back and then tossed the rest. That wasn’t who he–
Wait. Did she just say adorable?
Noah snapped back into it, then. Didn’t take long. She was gasps and giggles, bent over her knees, and he was watching her hair shake with the rest of her, where it fell to cover her face. A guy can’t stay stuck in his head when there’s a girl who laughs like too many wind chimes – and that was him who did that, he made that happen, oh, he smiled without showing any teeth. “Good,” he said. He didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but he figured she’d get it, anyway. She’d gone along with everything else so far. “I mean, yeah, my mom’s already got us a table. That’s cool, right? They go on all my dates.”
He was trying to let her set the pace, he’d told himself, except when Rory actually grabbed his hand and took off, Noah was right there with her. No more blushing, this time; let’s call a spade a spade, okay? Let’s admit that her palm against his palm, no pretense, actually made him feel a little more at ease. And he nearly tripped on Winslow, but he could respect that the dog stayed so close to her heels. At the next corner, he tightened his grip to hold her back. “Hey, hey,” he laughed, mostly breath, “hang on.” Noah slid his fingers more comfortably in the spaces between hers. “We don’t even know where we’re going.”
But they weren’t going anywhere, now, they were just standing again, and he couldn’t quit looking at her, like he – Christ, he wasn’t gonna kiss her, was he? No. He was definitely not gonna kiss her. “And you’ll probably want to pick, ‘cause I… don’t actually know a place with a patio,” he admitted. “That was, uh, that was kind of a lie. A small one, though!” Noah held up his thumb and finger in a sign for tiny, his smile on the side of his mouth.
