If Only (31 page)

Noah’s outside, his dark hair almost black with the dampness of his shower.

“You’re quite smiley this morning,” he observes.

I don’t say anything but instead place a palm on each of his cheeks and kiss him without restraint, unlocking in me something I never should have stored away. The effect is a pure and undeniable hunger, not only for me. His hands tangle in my hair, and our tongues don’t hesitate to meet, their prelude to a last dance.

“I thought it would be easier,” he says amid our shared gasps, “to pull back.”

“I know,” I admit, the only thing restrained being the threat of tears. “I know. But it’s not. It’s not easier, and I miss you already, have missed the part of you you’ve been holding back for weeks. I want all of you, Noah, today, for this last day and this last night. I want it all.”

I want you with my whole body, with the entirety of my heart
. Soon he will know.

“Brooks.” He pauses between kisses. “You’ve got me, all of me. You always have.”

Our little episode in front of my building gets us to class two minutes late. Oliver looks simultaneously relieved and furious when we walk in.

“We missed two minutes of rehearsal time!” he cries, ever the exasperated director.

“Don’t worry,” Noah says, the picture of calm. “We’ve got this.”

We do, I know we do, but we run through our lines anyway. And in the moments before Professor Thompson quiets us and sends us to our seats, I slip Emily the folded piece of paper from my bag.

“Use this for a prop when Hero gives the note to Benedick of Beatrice professing her love for him.”

She nods, a knowing smile on her face. The prop missives are supposed to have our lines written on them, in case we forget the important stuff at the end. But I’ve no doubt about my lines. What makes me anxious is the thought of Noah’s reaction, but I’m not scared. I want him to know. He needs to know.

Anything worth the wait is also worth the fight.

They are Griffin’s words, but he meant them for now, for this moment, and I can’t believe I ever considered not fighting.

I vaguely recall the two performances before us, but now, as we take to the front of the room, there is only this—this moment and this opportunity—to show Noah I’m willing to fight.

We sail through the scene without a hitch. Then I hear Phillip as Claudio begins one of his last lines.

“And I’ll be sworn upon it that he loves her, for here’s a paper written in his hand, a halting sonnet of his own pure brain, fashioned to Beatrice.”

Phillip hands me the piece of paper, as anticipated, my final lines written upon it.

“And here’s another,” starts Emily as Hero, “writ in my cousin’s hand, stol’n from her own pocket, containing her affection unto Benedick.”

Emily hands the note to Noah, and I suck in a breath. He looks at it, then up at me, his eyes wide with astonishment, and for a few seconds he doesn’t speak.

It is not possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

These are the words, Forster’s words from
A Room with a View,
that I wrote in my journal after tracing the healing skin of his tattoo. In all this time, I never found the right moment to ask him about it, why he got it on a day I now know he was looking for me, hoping to find me in London.

I fear for a moment I’ve ruined the performance, as he still stands in stunned silence. But then his next line comes.

“A miracle.” His voice is soft, not the usual over-the-top flourish that is Benedick and the way I’ve heard him speak the line dozens of times before. When the clear blue of his eyes meets mine, I understand. Though they are Benedick’s words, it is Noah who speaks them, and not to Beatrice but to me.

“Here’s our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee, but by this light I take thee for pity.”

Noah laughs. And, oh my God, I get it. We’ve been foolish and for too long. And I can feel something building, starting, and suddenly the next few minutes can’t move quickly enough.

“I would not deny you,” I start, stepping closer to him, “but by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.”

He does not hesitate. “Peace! I will stop your mouth.”

In front of our small cast, our peers, and our professor, Noah scoops me into his arms, kissing me with all the intensity of that night in London, with all the gentleness of the morning where he woke on my floor, having spent the night taking care of me after my Valentine’s injury. He kisses me for all the time we spent promised to another and for the time we spent alone and apart.

Applause rings throughout the class, and we finally break apart. There are lines left to speak before the end of the play, but Professor Thompson is on her feet, her hands clapping wildly. Oliver takes the cue and bows, the rest of us following, as we end the scene.

The time is so close to the end of class that Professor Thompson thanks us all and excuses us on the spot. Noah and I still stand, no longer in Beatrice and Benedick’s embrace, but his fingers are laced with mine. He doesn’t let go, even as we lean in for hugs and good-byes with the rest of our group.

“Brilliant. Just brilliant,” Oliver says as he walks out of the room.

We’re still standing there after everyone has left, including the professor.

“You never asked me about it. I knew you had to know, but you never said anything.”

“The tattoo? Yeah. I first saw it that morning in January. I wanted to ask about it, but then, well, things happened, and we weren’t talking, and then I never found the right time after. Not until you told me about London did I let myself hope that maybe it was for me.”

His chest rises and falls as he lets out a huge sigh. He turns to me, his other hand linking with mine.

“It sounds crazy. I told you I had no hope of actually finding you, even in a small borough of the city, but I felt this connection to you and to that stupid book.”

“It’s not a stupid book.”

“Let me finish.” He presses his finger gently to my pouting lips. “It’s like I somehow knew you were there. I told you when I saw you, it was then I knew what I wanted to say to you. But that’s not the truth. It was the minute the needle touched my skin that I knew I would fall in love with you, that I probably already had that day on the tour.”

“Noah.” The word is a sigh, a revelation of what I should have said when I returned from Greece.

“I am irrevocably in love with you, Jordan Brooks, and a few hundred miles isn’t going to change that.”

I’m dizzy with elation, a swarm of butterflies taking up residence in my stomach, my vision blurry with the hot tears pooling in my eyes.

“Brooks?” His thumb swipes at the first tear to fall. “This might be a good place to tell me something.”

I laugh and choke back a sob at the same time. “You mean the journal entry wasn’t enough? I love you. God, I love you, and I know we’re about to separate for ten weeks, and that you have to student teach, but I have a car, and I mapped it. It’s only five hours from my school to yours, maybe farther from where I live in Chicago to where you live, but I can do it. And I know what I want to do after graduation. I don’t want to teach. I want to write. There’s an MFA program at Ohio State and maybe, in a year…”

I’m losing my nerve. This is fast. I’m moving too fast, assuming things about a year from now. I’m going to freak him out. Does he look freaked out? I can’t tell. Oh hell. Daniel was right. I might be more than mildly unhinged.

His hands move to the back of my neck, and his lips brush along my jaw-line before he says, “Yeah, about the next ten weeks.”

My body tenses.

“I’ve been working on this for a few weeks, but I didn’t want to say anything in case I couldn’t make it happen. I received an e-mail confirmation today from my academic advisor back home. It must have come in the middle of the night, while we were sleeping. Because of my good standing with the university, and because my cooperating school is my old high school and they kind of like me there, they’re going to transfer my tuition and fees to second semester and let me do my student teaching then. I don’t need to be back until January.”

He brushes a shock of dark hair from his forehead, and I can see the smile on his face mirrored in his eyes.

“I can’t ask you to do that. That’s your career, your future.”

“You didn’t ask, Brooks. You…” His kiss is slow and achingly sweet. “You are my future, too.”

I’m his future, too.

“You’re coming with me?”

“If you still want me.”

“I’ve never wanted anyone more.”

He leans down to me, whispering in my ear. “Yawp.” And then he covers my mouth with his own.

It may have been almost three years since, in Sam’s words, I last paid my dues to the club. But tonight I realize I never really was a member. Not until Noah.

“Can we please turn off the lights?”

We are both packed and ready for the train in the morning. We said most of our good-byes at the pub the night before, so tonight is just for us, the commencement of this next phase in our lives together.

“No. Not yet. You are too beautiful for darkness.” He catches me before I react. “No eye rolling, Brooks. I’m going to admire the view, and you’re going to enjoy it.”

Well, that does it. I offer him the most exaggerated eye roll I can muster, but his smile only grows. I lie on the bed, no garment, not even my underwear, to hide me.

“Why do you get to keep your boxers on?” I pout. But really, he’s still an impressive specimen. He kneels on the floor, bending over me. His body is taut and hard with muscle, long and lean. His dark hair, a bit too long now, curls up above his eyebrows and over his ears. And those eyes, those azure smiling eyes, they smile for me, and I’m overwhelmed.

His face comes toward mine, and I ready myself for his kiss. Instead, his tongue merely grazes my bottom lip. My breath hitches slightly as his lips brush my chin, my neck, and now the space between my breasts. Inside I twist with pleasure.

“Because,” he says, his mouth trailing down to my stomach, “I want to watch you react, to hear you react, to
feel
you react when I touch you.”

He kisses the bone of my hip, and though he’s not touching me
there
, I feel him everywhere. I moan, my fists gripping the sheet.

“See?” he says, his lips still on my skin. “Noises like that,” he teases, kissing down the inside of my thigh. “When it’s time, don’t you worry. The boxers will be history.”

I let go of the sheet and slide my hand off the edge of the bed to where he kneels. Without hesitation, I grip him through the soon-to-be history undergarment. He is firm, mirroring my moan with one of his own. I let go of him and slide my hand under the waistband of his shorts, the heat of my skin on his.

He breathes in, sharp and audible, and everything inside me contracts at the sound.

“Brooks.” My name escapes him in an exhale of pleasure, and my body releases a tension I didn’t realize was there until now.

Three years. It’s been almost three years, and it’s not like my previous experience made me some sort of an expert. All this time I’ve been waiting to get to this place with him, I didn’t realize how terrified I’d be once I arrived. But there’s an instinct in the way I touch him, each sound he makes encouraging me, each reciprocal touch telling me everything about this is right.

His lips trace up my other leg, up my hip, to my stomach, his hand trailing the path his mouth left, stopping where my thigh reaches the place I want him to go.

His palm is on me, and my back arches, pressing myself against his hand.

I tug on him, stroking him, coaxing him into the bed with me.

His fingers begin to part me, and I gasp, grabbing his wrist.

“Uh-uh,” I say, the corners of my mouth turning up in a nervous smile. “I think we’ve already covered foreplay. No more waiting. Just you and me,
together
, the whole time.”

“Together,” he repeats.

I nod.

“As long as you understand,” he says, “that this is the first of a shitload of togethers.”

I bite my lip, not to contain the grin but hopefully to stave off the tears. How have I gone so long not knowing this feeling, not knowing this incredible person beside me?

“Understood,” I tell him. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Releasing his wrist, my hands clasp around his neck. I need his mouth on mine. Now.

“Kiss me already,” I demand between breaths, “before I scream.”

His grin is a wicked one. “Oh…” He drags his lips up my neck to my jaw. “You’ll scream.”

I part my lips, ready with a witty retort, but I never get to say it. He silences my mouth with his, and I sink into the bed, into the sensation of his body on mine. Eyes closed, I let him take the lead. I hear the tearing of the package, the condom, and then we are at the threshold, together.

My hand traces his right shoulder blade, where, though I can’t see them, the words of E. M. Forster reside.

“I love you, Brooks.”

“I love you, Noah.”

The threshold is crossed, and he is in me, around me, and it’s terrifying and perfect all at once. My legs tangle in his, and my palms press firm and flat against his back, eliminating any space that could have possibly existed between us.

The answer forms clearly now, the answer to the question Sam asked so long ago. He is the sign, the constellation.
This
is what I was waiting for. I thought I wanted an infinite now, to preserve a single moment and stretch it for eternity. But I was wrong. I want it all—the good, the messy, the spectacular. Not only this moment, but all those that came before and all that will come after.

At my worst and at my best, he knows me, has always known me.

The poets
are
right.

And so is Noah, because I do scream.

“Are you asleep?” I pick up Noah’s right hand and trace the scar with my finger. His eyes open, and his lips part into a smile.