Chapter 14: The Confession

Rain

Noah and I lay in his bed on our sides, breathing each other in the same way we did two weeks ago. It was uncomfortable lying like this with my hearing aids on, but I didn't care. His transformation was the most beautiful thing I had ever witnessed. It was magical. He was magical. The way he effortlessly changed into a magnificent creature. It was amazing. 

My feelings for him expanded each minute I was by his side. It was getting harder to contain within my heart. This feeling was so strong that I wanted to hold and comfort him whenever he cried. Who made him feel like his most authentic self was anything less than amazing? I hesitated before I asked the question, but I wanted to know. 

“What happened last time you shifted for someone?” 

Noah had turned to lay on his back. He stared at the ceiling, his eyes becoming sadder. I was afraid the question might have been too personal, so I grabbed his hand to let him know that he didn't have to tell me anything he wasn’t comfortable sharing. My thumb lightly massaged Noah’s knuckles, and I waited for his response. His eyes fluttered closed, and he pinned his bottom lip under his teeth. 

“I was 15,” he said. “I was dating this girl for a few months.  She was 17. A senior. I was like…stupidly in love with her,” he laughed, but I could hear the pain in his voice. “I thought we’d be together forever, you know like you usually do when it’s your first love.” He closed his eyes. “She knew I was hiding something from her, and she said she’d break up with me if I didn’t tell her. So I told her. And then I showed her,” he paused, gesturing at his body, “myself…and she left anyway. She was so scared—”

I pulled Noah closer to me when his voice started to break, telling me about his past. I was angry at that girl for breaking his heart, but I was angrier at myself for asking him to talk about the unhappy memory. 

Noah exhaled deep into my chest before he rolled over again onto his back. He wiped his face with the back of his forearm and laughed. 

“Wow. I can’t believe I almost cried about something that happened so long ago,” he said. 

Noah had turned back to me and propped his head up with his hand. He was looking down at me. The same way he was when we first shared a kiss. “Is it my turn to ask a question?”

I nodded, wanting to be as cooperative as possible. “If you want.”

“Why did you come to the diner tonight?”

Where would I even begin? That family meeting was an awful moment I didn’t want to remember. I hesitated at first. “My father wants to send me to live with my mom.” 

“Why?” 

I took a deep breath, thinking of the best way to explain my situation.

“Well, um. He believes that if I stay here, I might…relapse.” I held my breath, waiting for Noah to react, but it never came. 

My palms were starting to get sweaty under his gaze. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked, lacing his fingers with mine.

“Not really.” I wasn’t quite ready to share that chapter of my life.

Noah accepted my answer with a nod. 

“Your turn,” he said, not taking his eyes off me.

“What?”

“It’s your turn to ask a question. Ask me anything.” There was a hint of playful laughter in his voice. 

I racked my brain thinking of what I wanted to know about Noah. He was a bit mysterious. I thought about his social media feed that was fake and manufactured. Then I thought about getting to know about his past dating life, but to be honest, I didn’t want to hear about all the other people who have laid in Noah’s bed staring at him the same way I do. My mind finally settled on a question that had me confused since we first lay in this bed together. 

“What happened the day we went diving?” 

Noah bit down on his bottom lip. Was I getting too personal again? Sometimes there was a hint of fear in Noah’s eyes that flickered for a second, and then it would be gone. It was like he was forcing the emotion away. 

“It was similar to this dream I’d been having for a while,” Noah said almost too softly. I had to concentrate a bit harder to catch all the words.

“What was the dream about?” I asked.

“It always started the same,” he said. “I was shifted, and I’d be happy and free. Then the water became terrifying when I heard the singing. Then a shadow tries to kill me.”

All the words rushed out of his mouth, but my interest caught on one word: singing. I wondered if it was the same thing I had heard. 

“What did the singing sound like?” I asked.

“Haunted. It would sound beautiful, but in my dreams, when I hear it, it means the shadow was coming.”

I nodded my head quickly, getting more curious the more Noah told me about his dream. 

“It tells me to follow it,” he continued. 

Noah had been looking away when he was talking, but when I squeezed his hand tighter, he looked at me. 

“I dream about it too. The singing” I confessed.

Now we looked at each other with disbelief. 

“My turn to ask something,” Noah mumbled, trying to get the words out as soon as possible. “What’s your dream about?”

“I guess…it's similar to yours, but mine is more of a memory than a dream,” I began. “I was happy because I was with Romaris. Then it got worse when Romaris fell in the water. I jumped in to save him, but I was distracted by a song. A beautiful song. It told me to follow, and I did. And then—”

“Take deep breaths,” Noah interrupted. He was intensely staring at my face. 

I hadn’t even realized that my breathing sped up. Talking about the boating accident was easier to tell. Everything that came after was the hard part. Noah already had his hand placed on my chest to try and calm me. I laced our fingers together and took a deep breath. 

“You don’t have to keep going,” Noah told me. 

I laid on my back to stare at the ceiling, steadied my breathing, and then continued.  

“Then…Romaris stopped moving and floated away. And I started drowning. Before I passed out, I saw the…siren, I guess.”

“What did it look like? Did it look like me?”

“Yes and no?” I said, confused about how to answer. “It had grey skin, long white hair, webbed hands and claws, and fins and a tail.” 

“So it did look like me.”

“Hmm…not quite. Its eyes looked…soulless? Less than human? I don’t know how to explain it,” I trailed off. 

“Oh,” Noah said, looking away from me. “Do my eyes… look soulless?”

Noah sounded so sad when he asked that. My heart strained from the sound of it. I wanted to tell him his eyes had more soul than anyone I’d ever known. Though Noah calculated his emotions, and I recently noticed that he also compartmentalized them, that didn’t mean he didn't have any. I was amazed by how many emotions his eyes could hold, but also I was concerned that he wasn’t letting himself feel.

 His eyes were the calm sky after a storm. A grayish-blue that appeared in the sky right before the sunsets. Noah’s eyes always expressed what he was feeling for a second. A flash of how he really felt, and then he forced it away. I didn’t know how to communicate that without embarrassing myself, so instead, I pulled him close to me. 

I wrapped my arms around his waist and breathed him in. He smelled like coconuts on a tropical beach. It was the kind of smell you’d miss after coming home from a long vacation. A smell one tried to imitate repeatedly, but nothing ever came close to the real thing. And Noah was the real thing.

I assumed the action was enough to express everything I failed to say because Noah wrapped his arms around me as he exhaled. His breath was warm against me, and the jump of my heart forced the words out of my mouth.

“I really like you. And I don’t know what to do about it.”

Noah pulled away from my embrace and stared at me. So many emotions swirled around in his blue eyes. I was worried that I had said the wrong thing, the heat in my face was rising, spreading to my ears. I prepared to apologize, but Noah dissolved all my thoughts when he spoke. 

“I like you too.”