“It’s just something I’ve had for a very long time. Something that was given to me by someone special.”
I nodded at this very vague description. He wasn’t telling me something, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it was, and who had given it to him. I didn’t want to pry. It was clear that, whatever it was, it wasn’t something he wanted to share with me, and I didn’t really know how I felt about that.
Soon we were driving again, rather aimlessly, it seemed. But the drive didn’t feel comfortable. I squirmed in my seat, still feeling the warmth of Noah’s lips on mine. And then I looked down at my leg, as Noah slid his hand onto it.
“You know what that was?” he asked, smiling.
“What?”
“We just got into trouble with the police for making out in a car, another quintessential teen experience!”
I reached down and slid my fingers through his. “Really?”
He nodded. “In the last two days you’ve re-lived your teens and, today, we re-lived childhood.”
I smiled. He was right. And I’d had more fun in the last few days than I’d ever had before.
“I’m having so much fun!” It was uncanny, but Noah and I had said it at the exact same time, and then found ourselves smiling at each other.
“Me too.” Again, we said it at the same time.
“These last few days with you have been . . .” I wanted to saythe best of my life, but maybe that was too much?
“I know,” Noah said. “It’s been amazing.”
“It has.” I wanted to say more, only I didn’t.How much did I say to him?That from the moment he’d held my hand in that ambulance, something inside me had felt so comfortable with him. That even though we’d only known each other for nearly two weeks, it felt like he’d been in my life forever. It felt like we were old friends, meeting once more. And everything about that just felt right. Everything about him and me felt right. But I didn’t say any of that to him.Not yet anyway.
CHAPTER 62
We drove a little longer and soon we were going in circles.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked.
He squeezed my hand. “No. Do you?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Well, I don’t know about you.” Noah sounded tentative now. “I could seriously do with something more . . . adult, in my life right about now.” He dragged his eyes away from the road momentarily and glanced at me. A bolt of lightning seemed to rush through me. Splitting me in half like an atomic bomb, only for me to crash back together again with this internal force that made me jump out of my chair a little.
“Like what?” I crossed and uncrossed my legs; the wordadulthad conjured up all sorts of images in my head. His hand moved up and down my leg in a sweeping motion . . .yes, that was very adult.This was getting adult. We were moving away from PG and I had no idea what to do.
“What about a date?” he asked.
“A date?”
“Dinner?”
“But we’ve had dinner before, and lunch, and breakfast, and strange midnight snacks at a garage.”
“Those weren’t dates.” He said it in this tone. Rough and masculine and, my God, the tone made me feel like the chair was a hot frying pan and I was the bacon. And then the clincher, the thing he said that turned the sizzle into a downright burn.
“I’d like to take you on a real date, Zoe. Real.”
I flushed. I blushed. “I’ve never really been on a . . . well, I mean, I did internet dating for a while and it was horrible, and they weren’t really dates, you know?”
“I know what you mean. There’s seldom anything romantic about meeting someone online and going to a restaurant to eat food with them.”
“No,” I said.
