Page 44 of Five Things I See in You

I stop myself. Noa raises her eyebrows and waits.

“I don’t know,” I admit with a long sigh. “Right now, I don’t know.”

She puts her bag on the floor.

“Then I’ll have breakfast with you until you figure it out. After that, we can watch a true crime documentary. I’ve got time. I’m on vacation,” she reminds me, coming closer and resting her forehead against mine.

***

Beth calls that afternoon.

“How are you?”

I explain which documents I still need and how long I have until the hearing.

“Jordan. I asked how you are.”

I set a page on the table and smooth its corner with my thumb.

“Scared,” I admit.

My sister is quiet for a moment.

“Okay. Now that sounds more like an answer.”

We talk for a while. She doesn’t take the fear away, but she doesn’t try to. She just reminds me she’s there if I need anything, and tells me to get out of the house, even if it’s only to grab a coffee. Not to hide away until the hearing.

***

The night before the hearing, I sit with Noa on the couch.

“And you wonder why you can’t sleep,” she says, taking my coffee out of my hand.

She sets it on the table and settles beside me.

“There’s something I want to tell you before tomorrow.”

I tell her about the days after I drove her home, when I already knew how I felt but hadn’t spoken to Tessa. The messages I wrote and never sent. How I’d see her in the cafeteria and find any excuse not to approach her.

“It took me four days to ask for help. I knew I needed to, but I kept telling myself it would be easier the next day.”

Noa holds my hand between hers and squeezes.

“Is that why you were being so weird around me? You stopped coming to watch practice.”

“Yes. You hadn’t done anything wrong. I started avoiding you because my own feelings scared me. Then I asked you to come to my office so I could tell you in person that I was stepping away from the program.”

“I remember,” she says. “I gave you a chance to admit how you felt. I felt the same way.”

“I also went to that coffee shop in Ballard one Saturday. Sat across the street just in case you showed up,” I confess.

“Really?”

“Really. I didn’t even go in. I suppose that let me keep pretending I’d only gone for a walk.”

Noa takes off my glasses and puts them beside the coffee.

“Thank you for telling me.”