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I couldn’t do it anymore. I turned and slowly started to walk out. I had to get out of there before I changed my mind.
She could do that; she could make me forget my anger and take her in my arms. I was suddenly thankful for her stubborn silence.
As I neared the door, I left the pieces of myself that Noa had uncovered. I left my soul in there with her, to keep her company. Because that’s what you do when you love someone.
You leave before shit blows up in your face, killing you both. And you leave them with the parts of you no one else would ever be able to claim.
I decided it wasn’t self-preservation that made me leave. It was the hope that she had a better chance of surviving without me—the way she had before I bumped into her.
If you love someone, you set them free…
She’d never come back.
Still, I walked.
“Dex, no,” she sobbed when I’d gotten a few feet out of the door. “No. Don’t leave me.”
One step after another, I walked away from Noa, until I could no longer hear her crying out for me.
* * *
The last fewdays of school passed in a blur. No one asked me about Noa. No one even saw her again after we got back from the lake house.
It was rumored that she had her diploma mailed to her and skipped town. But I knew how false rumors tended to be. And if it weren’t for the rumors, it’d be like she never existed at all.
I wondered and I thought of her and…
I missed her.
I missed her so much, I played everything over in my head. I went back and forth between regretting everything to blaming myself to dialing her number, only to never actually call. She came into my life like a bolt of lightning and was gone just as catastrophically.
Am I the only one suffering?
She was gone, and while I’d promised her the world, it seemed all I did was ruin her like she warned me not to.
“Ready?” Tracey asked as she took a picture of me in my shorts and white shirt. “Oh, I wish you’d wear something nicer.” She fussed over me in her dress and heels.
I merely grunted and pulled my hair into a bun, it being too hot to let it stick to the back of my neck.
“You can always go back, Dexter.” Her eyes were on her camera when she said it.
“Can we not talk about this today? I’ll see you there.” I grabbed my keys and got in the car, determined to get through this graduation ceremony and get on with the life I was pretending to live.
Sure, I was headed to an elite school. I had my future successfully mapped out, ensuring that, monetarily, I would do well. But once you had a taste of what really mattered—what wars were fought over, what poems were written about—it was hard to look toward the tepid horizon with anything more than dread.
When I pulled up at the school, I parked and sat there, my forehead against the steering wheel. I heard a knock on the passenger side window and looked up. Ralph opened the door and got in.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, putting my head back down.
“Of course you don’t,” he muttered, exhaling.
It was quiet, with neither of us speaking. I looked up, noticing everyone lining up for the ceremony.
“We should probably go,” I said, before opening the door and getting out.
Ralph walked up to me and hugged me. It was unexpected, and a huge part of me wanted to push him away. It was too hot.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, man,” he said.
