Special Episode: Wild Ideas
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
They’re all staying in one house during this trip out into the country. It’s an old place, with a lot of rooms. Walls heavy with ivy, windows glowing with soft golden light from outside.
The parents and Logan are out for the evening, so the house is still and quiet. Makes the rush of the storm seem deeper and wilder by comparison.
Leaving behind a trail of raindrops, Gage goes up the stairs to the second floor and pauses in the hallway. He was headed for the closet with the towels, but he just noticed there’s a light on in her room. The little lamp she switches on when she’s drawing.
He hesitates, then very quietly walks over to her door. It’s been left open. He stops by the doorway, peeking in.
The windows are open to the dripping ivy, the rainy hills beyond. The darkening night spills into the house, and the damp, cool air carries in the natural perfume of the meadows, the sigh of raindrops. Only the small lamp is switched on. It spills off a warm glow, but moonlight laces the room everywhere else. The fluffy white bedding is rumpled up, a comforter of deep dark green falling halfway to the floor.
There, on the bed, in the center of all this serene silence – is Noelle.
Gage catches his lip between his teeth and bites down hard on it. He knew he’d like her from the moment their eyes first met. What he didn’t know was how bad.
He didn’t know that on top of being elegantly beautiful like some sort of moonlight fairy, she would be so impossibly sweet, and real kind-hearted and absent-minded, with a bright laugh like a little bubbling fountain spilling over…
Or that sometimes she’d unpredictably turn into a whirlwind and make everything break out into extreme revelry. Eyes blazing, cheeks burning with such brilliant fire that it seems like too much for one delicate human body to handle. Which sometimes it is, so she’ll sit down and drop instantly to sleep.
All she needs is a soft surface to rest her head on. The grass, her scarf. The shoulder of the boy sitting next to her, holding as perfectly still as he can. Even holding his breath, hoping she can’t sense the wild careening of his heartbeat through her cheek against him.
He didn’t know that she would be really cool, and wear really cool clothes and make really cool art, and ask for his opinions on things even though she knew he was too nervous to give them, and…
Well, this particular list is long.
She’s gazing out through the window, watching the rain spill down on the darkening landscape. Her waterfall of long, dark hair is damp from a recent shower, loosely held up and back in a clip. More than half of it is escaping to fall free down her shoulders. The breeze carries a trace of her sweet-smelling shampoo to him where he stands in the doorway.
She’s wearing her white and blue silk robe, not her pajamas. It drapes over her legs, clings to her softly where her skin is still damp. She bought it in the little beach town they visited, which she kept a light sun glow from, too. A soft brilliance that makes her the light of the whole room.
Her sketchbook is beside her on the bed, her forgotten pen threaded through her fingers.
Gage realizes with a guilty start that he’s been standing in a silent reverie in her doorway for several minutes. It took a particularly forceful rumble of thunder to startle him from his daze.
He hesitates. Keenly aware that she’s not really dressed at all, he should probably just go away.
Something makes him knock softly on the doorframe instead.
She turns to look at him, and he freezes, blinking hard. Her beautiful grey eyes are glistening with tears.
“Oh – Gage,” she sniffles, quickly dashing away the ones escaping down her cheeks. “I didn’t know anyone else was home…”
Without a word, without meaning to, he walks into her room and sits down in the chair beside her bed. Seeing a girl like her cry will have a powerful effect on a person.
He stares at her with anguished, questioning eyes.
“It’s nothing,” she stammers, then lets out a watery laugh, staring back at him in confusion. “You look like you fell into a lake. Why are you drenched?”
He summons up his timid voice, with difficulty. “Me and Noah went out into the meadows right before the storm started.”
“What-?” Noelle, who was handing him a towel, stops and blinks at him. “Why did you do that?”
“Grounded. Bored. Looking for that mud pit we were kicking around in the other day.”
“But what sense did that make?”
“None.”
Noelle pauses, then stops crying for a moment to let out a laugh, her eyes sparkling with warm fondness. He loves it when they do that. Makes them glow, like the surface of a river at twilight.
“I’m glad you’re here, Gage.” She gives him a trembling smile, the golden lamplight starring her eyes. “You always make me feel better.”
Gage glows inside. He was cold from the rain clinging to his clothes, but she warmed him like a sunbeam. Even though really she’s all silver and jet, often asleep during the day and brilliantly alive at night… his moonlight girl. Even now, she’s wearing its pale glow like jewelry.
Makes his heart sore to watch that trembling lip, though.
He tries to keep his expression under control as he asks again, this time out loud – “What happened?”
“Oh, I just – I feel like I’m so helpless, sometimes,” she sniffles, trying to laugh it off. “I wish that for once I could just get myself to stick to the plan, do what I set out to do. But it’s okay, I – don’t want to talk about it.”
She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. Gage hastily drags his eyes away from it and drops them elsewhere.
They land on Noelle’s open sketchbook. She’s been working on some of her sketches from Paris. Turning them into full-fledged, colorful drawings. Gage stares admiringly at the one she was working on, a picture of the big windows at Le Train Bleu.
He thought he didn’t like Paris. He’s since learned that he loves it with the Rauniers there. With the Raunier siblings, Paris is one massive playground to explore, with places to swim and run and get lost, endless foods to try and drinks to sample, endless things to uncover and do. All of a sudden he has all these good memories there to think of fondly.
The golden lights of the little bistros on Noelle. A quiet moment spent wandering in the Paris Mosque. Watching Noelle sort through boxes of old buttons in a little boutique. Stealing a quick, wide-eyed look through some vintage erotica found in the back of a bookshop with Noah. Sprinting wildly up Rue Montorgueil with both Raunier siblings after a misunderstanding with a cheese vendor, frantic but laughing.
Gage’s heart aches as he stares at Noelle’s drawing. So badly that he nearly flinches right in front of her.
The inevitable day is coming when the Rauniers will go back to America, and he’ll be here without them again.
“That looks really nice,” he tells Noelle, timidly, but full of earnestness. “And I know my opinion doesn’t matter, but I don’t think you’re helpless.”
Noelle’s little smile grows warmer. She tilts her head to the side and gazes deep into his eyes.
She bites her lip.
“Can I draw you, Gage?” she blurts out abruptly, in a surprisingly breathless voice.
He blinks at her stupidly for a second, stunned by the offer, then sits back in his chair and kneads his thumb into his palm. The idea makes him feel painfully shy, but to be drawn by an artist like her is too good of a gift to turn down for any reason. Also, he’d do basically anything she asked of him, so…
“Please?” she adds. “It won’t be a full picture of this summer without one of you.”
Crimson-cheeked, he nods in silent agreement. Resisting the absurd impulse to rush to the mirror and fix everything about himself real quick.
Instead he dries off his face with the towel she gave him, then hastily drags it over his hair. He’s not quite as drenched as she accused him of being, anyways. He pushes the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows to hide the mud that Noah splashed on him.
Noelle quietly begins sketching him. She breathes out a laugh when he starts nervously twisting the towel around in his hands.
“It’s okay, just sit there like you were before. You don’t have to do anything differently for me.”
He tries his best to comply. All too aware that his cheeks are blazing, with her looking at him like this.
Trying to avoid her eyes is difficult. He drops his gaze, finds it on her mostly bare legs instead, and hastily lifts it again, only to find himself gazing at the very loosely-tied ribbon holding her robe closed. When he desperately lifts his eyes higher they land on the curve of her neck, and the warm, thick masses of her inky hair spilling down around it.
He turns his face to the window instead, suddenly very grateful for the cold breeze.
“Look at me?” Noelle murmurs softly, over the quiet sounds of her unseen hand at work, moving across the paper. “How you were before.”
Gage does, with great difficulty. But it’s too hard to sit here in silence and let her look at him, while he looks back at her.
“I noticed,” he begins haltingly, “That a lot of the time when you’re upset, I find you drawing?”
She glances up from her sketchpad, a little smile turning up her lips.
“How come you get to ask questions about me, but I can hardly get a word out of you about yourself?” she murmurs, a teasing tone coming into her gentle voice. “I wonder what goes on in that head of yours, but you won’t say.”
Gage gives his shoulders a shrug, puzzled and smiling at the weird question. “I’m happy to talk to you about anything, but why should I waste your time talking about me? I’m not worth it.”
Noelle stops drawing and looks up, a sudden, stern frown darkening her eyes.
“That’s not true!” she tells him, startled and indignant. “Don’t say it again!”
Now Gage is startled, too, but he finds himself smiling back at her, his heart throbbing. “Okay.”
“I don’t know where you get some of the things you say!” Noelle goes back to drawing, shaking her head again. “Anyways, to answer your question, yes. I started drawing when I was sick, and bored to tears with being stuck in bed all the time. So I guess it is like a comfort thing, now. Makes me feel better, or at least takes my mind off of things.”
Gage can’t help himself, so he tries one more time. “What happened? Did you and Logan get in a fight?”
Noelle’s lip trembles. She bites her lip, her drawing hand slowing down.
“Yes, but it’s not really about that, it’s…” She lets out another rasping laugh and flutters her fingers at him, carefully keeping her eyes on the sketchpad. “Don’t worry. I’m okay. It’s a whole thing, you don’t want to hear it.”
Gage hesitates, then gently answers – “Please?”
Noelle lifts her eyes to stare at him for a moment. She bites her lip very hard.
“Okay, well… when – when I was sick, as a kid…” Her voice is trembling. “When the fevers were really bad, and I was in the hospital a lot and stuff… I would sometimes get this – this horrible fear. About what would happen to me, or if I would ever get better, or – I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m not even sure how to describe it. I wouldn’t want to describe it to you, anyways. I don’t even want it in your head. That’s too nice a place for something like that.”
She accompanies that thoughtless little comment with a distracted touch of her fingertips to his damp hair. Gage’s hands tighten around the towel.
“But just trust me, it was bad,” she goes on quietly. “More terrifying than anything else I could remember. If your normal fear is a pool, right, it can seem bigger than it is, but you can find a way out. There’s someplace where you can pull yourself up. This felt like an ocean, with no way – there was just no-”
She cuts herself off sharply, then stammers – “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay,” Gage answers quickly, watching a tear streak down her cheek, his heart twisted up into knots. “You don’t have to.”
Noelle nods appreciatively, drags the back of her hand across her eyes, and hurriedly gets back to work on her drawing.
“Anyways, I did tell my doctor about it, and he said it’s something that can happen to people who have experienced a traumatic illness. Which – okay, my illness wasn’t traumatic, he didn’t have to put it that way. It was forever ago, and tons of other people have had it so much worse, and my family was really supportive, and I’m totally fine now. I’m all back to normal, so.”
Gage bites the inside of his cheek. Noelle looks up, examines Gage’s hands intently, then adds something to her drawing. She’s been working swiftly all this time, her hair stirring softly on her shoulder with the movements of her hand.
“But the thing is, sometimes… when I get sick now, just regular sick, just a little sick,” she murmurs waveringly, “That same fear comes back. Out of nowhere.”
Gage freezes, understanding all at once. She was sick earlier this week, in bed with a fever. Only for three days, but she was noticeably quiet after.
“It just messes me up so bad, for days afterwards,” she rasps softly, in a broken voice. “And I just want to get out of it. I just want to have some fun, and not think about anything…”
Gage is working hard to keep his expression calm. She’s such a sweet, soft, delicate thing, and he hates that the world has already caught her on its jagged edges. For some reason it seems fine when that happens to him, but it wrenches him to pieces to think of it happening to her.
Noelle falls silent, then firmly shakes her head.
“But it’s no excuse. I mean, Logan is right! I get a little upset, and all of a sudden I’m off to the wind, doing whatever ridiculous, impulsive thing pops into my head! I just go out and do something completely crazy! Because it feels right!”
Gage sits back in dismay. “That’s what you and Logan fought about? What we did yesterday? That wasn’t crazy. I thought we all had a blast.”
Noelle widens her eyes at him. “Gage – we took my dad’s car without permission, let Noah drive, and went all the way back to Brioude! Without telling anyone! For a whole day!”
“You wanted to see the lace-making museum,” Gage protests, puzzled. “You said you were sad we didn’t get to go when we were in town.”
Noelle blinks at him, then lets out a disbelieving sputter of laughter. “You say that like it makes what we did okay!”
“Wasn’t it, in the end? I don’t think your dad was actually mad at us. And it wasn’t that far of a drive.”
“No, but your dad was actually mad at you, and we drove straight across someone’s yard on the way back!”
“Well, Noah’s still learning,” Gage points out.
“Yes, which is why he doesn’t have his license! Besides, that was my fault, not Noah’s, I’m the one who had the idea for that so-called shortcut! The whole thing was my idea, come to think of it!” Noelle shakes her head at herself, letting out an agonized sigh. “I’m setting such a bad example for my little brother, and I – we shouldn’t have done any of that!”
Gage strongly disagrees. Noelle was radiant that day, back to her usual warm, smiling self after that stretch of being pale and withdrawn. Besides, the lace-making museum was nice. Noelle was delighted, Noah was so bored it was comical, and Gage was just happy to be with them.
“Now we’re all in trouble,” Noelle goes on, in a pained voice, “And once again, I stupidly let things get the better of me…”
She trails off, sniffling again.
“I just… I don’t want to be different because I was sick.” Her eyes are brimming with sadness as she looks at Gage. “It’s behind me. That’s where I want to leave it.”
Gage meets her eyes in sorrowful, heartfelt sympathy.
She gives her head a determined shake, squares her shoulders, and swipes a few more tears away on the back of her hand.
“That’s why I’ve got to get myself in line, or at least figure out where the line is,” she murmurs, returning her focus to her sketchpad. “Develop some actual self-control. It’s good that I have Logan to help me. That’s exactly what I need.”
Gage, who had started to lift a hand and reach for her – with no idea of what exactly he intended to do – quickly drops it back onto his knee.
“Are you…” he begins carefully, after a moment, “Are you sure it all comes from that, Noelle? All of it?”
Her eyes flit to his face, her dark hair moving in the breeze. “What do you mean?”
“Like… maybe sometimes it has to do with when you were sick, but the rest of the time, most of the time…” Gage smiles affectionately at her. “I wonder if you and Noah don’t just have a wild streak you were born with. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, either.”
It’s just Logan and his type who make you think that it is, he barely refrains from adding.
Noelle doesn’t answer for a moment, just draws silently.
“Well, I would just like to be normal,” she says softly, not looking at him. “Or at least have the option to be. To fit right in. It seems so – so easy, for other people.”
Oh, man. She doesn’t know how much he knows what she means by that.
She glances up, sees the expression on his face, and – maybe does know how much. They share a look of unspoken understanding.
Noelle seems relieved, for some reason. She lets out a watery laugh and gives herself a shake, her cheeks coloring up.
“Here I am telling you all this heavy stuff! I’m sorry, I’m so embarrassed. Please don’t repeat any of this to Logan. Normally I would never tell anyone any of this, it’s just because I know I can talk to you about anything.”
She says that last part in the distracted way she has, without hearing herself. Gage once again glows inside, his heart beating hard and fast.
“No, don’t be embarrassed. And definitely not sorry.”
“But I am! Both!”
“Don’t do it!” Gage protests.
“Sometimes,” Noelle announces, setting aside her black paint pen and reaching for a blue one labeled Porcelain, “I wish I could just turn into a little bug, and fly off to where I can’t embarrass myself.”
Gage can’t help the adoring smile that instantly takes over his face. God, she’s – she just -
“Fly right to me, Bug,” he answers, without thinking. “I’m always there for you.”
She stops still, then slowly lifts her smiling grey eyes to him.
“You shouldn’t be so shy, Gage,” she murmurs softly, warmly. “There are plenty of us who’d be happy to hear you talk all day.”
Gage is so dumbstruck by that, he doesn’t even try to answer. He lapses into nervous silence, and just lets Noelle draw him.
Quiet falls over the room, aside from the rush of the storm. Gage tries to find a safe place to rest his eyes, but it’s difficult. Noelle’s silk robe occasionally stirs with the breeze, otherwise drapes close to her body. Her dark hair she absent-mindedly begins twisting through her fingers when she pauses to assess the drawing.
Gage watches the specks of moonlight move in her grey eyes, his heart aching. He had a lot more he wanted to say about everything she told him, and if he wasn’t so painfully goddamn shy he might blurt them all out right now.
He’d like to tell her that even if she is different from being sick as a kid, there are people who don’t mind that one bit. Who would be happy to have her lean against him when she’s suddenly tired, and take her out for whatever kind of fun she wants when she needs to shake off the dark thoughts.
There’s definitely someone who loves her in both her unexpected moments of wild revelry, extreme naughtiness, and her stretches of serene, peaceful stillness. Someone who thinks her ideas are brilliant.
Someone who’d pretty much do anything for her.
She looks so beautiful, sitting there before him in the windy moonlight. A timeless picture of everything that makes the world feel warm and welcoming.
His heartbeat comes in strange, slow waves as he looks at her. Rising slowly, hovering in place, falling slowly again. Echoes of it roll out through his body, and they have their own echoes. He’s breathing a little strangely, all of a sudden itchy in his clothes, his body warm and his face burning. His imagination is running away with him, despite his best efforts, and in his imagination she’s slowly letting the silky robe fall open, sitting forward to take his face in her hands, kissing him before she guides his lips down towards her thighs…
He gives a guilty start, fighting not to start bouncing his knee.
“Gage,” Noelle says, with a soft laugh. “Why did you close your eyes? And why are you fidgeting so much?”
“Guess I’m just nervous,” he hears himself answer, keeping his eyes shut tight. “No one’s ever drawn me before. Don’t know why anyone would want to.”
“Really?” Noelle sounds considerably surprised. “Don’t you? But you’re – you – I’m – sure there are plenty of artists who’d be happy to work with you.”
That felt like a compliment, which doesn’t make things any easier for Gage.
“Just hold still while I’m working on your neck,” Noelle says gently. And then, with sudden realization – “Oh! That reminds me!”
Curiosity finally gets Gage to open his eyes, only for him to be faced with the sight of Noelle sitting up on her knees, stretching out to get something from the night table behind her. For a brief second the moonlight illuminates the vague, shadowy silhouette of her body through the thin robe.
His eyes snap back up to her face as she turns to sit down facing him again, holding out her hand.
“Here,” she says warmly. “I got this for you.”
Gage stares at the necklace dangling from her fist, with the chip of blue stone on the end.
“I just – wanted to say thank you,” Noelle goes on, with a sheepish smile. “For being so patient during that day trip, when everything ended up being too fast for me. I really appreciate you trying to help. I know this little thing isn’t nearly as fancy as everything else you have, but it seemed like you really wanted it, so…”
Gage stares at the piece of blue stone, his heart in his throat.
He actually hadn’t much noticed the necklace, even though he was holding it and looking at it for a long time. It was just that Noelle was telling him a story that was making her laugh through her words, and she was wearing her pretty little sundress with the blue flower print. He had to look at something else, because it felt dangerous to let his eyes linger on her too long.
Just like now.
He may not have even really seen the necklace he was holding, but – she went back and got it for him. She got this. For him.
He slowly reaches out and takes it from her. A spontaneous smile breaks out across his face as he lifts his eyes to meet hers.
She blinks at him, suddenly holding very still. Gage’s heartbeat takes an inexplicable, staggering trip over itself. All the longing and burning tenderness in his heart seems to lift him up, towards her.
Noelle stares at the expression on his face with wide eyes, then snatches her sketchbook back up.
“God, look at you! Stay just like that while I draw your face, okay? That expression.”
Easy. So easy to smile at her like this.
She’s drawing so fast, come to think of it. She has been almost this whole time, going at a much swifter pace than she usually does.
“Okay, I’m about to look up again, and you better still have that look on your face.” She lifts her head, and laughs a little. “Oh, good, you do…”
She trails off, looks at him silently for a moment, then goes back to drawing ferociously.
Gage feels his smile fall. He got swept away for a second, but the truth is he has no real chance with her.
“I can stop with all my wild ideas, you know,” Noelle blurts out abruptly, out of nowhere. “There are ways to deal with them. Other outlets, ways to get them out of your system instead of just running off with them.”
Mmm. In Gage’s experience, once Noelle has an idea in her head it’s happening, no matter how firmly she sets herself against it. Sooner or later.
“Oh, yeah?” he asks, trying not to sound doubtful. “Other outlets, huh?”
“Yeah,” Noelle says distractedly, carefully tearing the page out of her sketchbook. “Like – even like drawing, for example. Anyways – here – for you.”
She hands him the drawing she just did.
Gage stares down at Noelle’s portrait of him with astonished eyes, momentarily stunned.
“You can keep it for when you’re feeling shy,” Noelle adds, with a teasing smile. “That way you’ll remember you look good.”
Gage lets out a startled laugh, then stares adoringly at the portrait again, blown away. It’s in her cool, bold, comic book style, but full of softness and tenderness. She even drew the wind blowing into the room around him, as a graceful, porcelain blue ribbon twined around his body.
Gage freezes suddenly, struggling not to crush the portrait. A belated, staggering realization just shot into his mind. Noelle’s words swim around in his head, trying to put themselves together. Outlets for wild ideas… drawing…
Gage stares down at the beautiful, heartfelt drawing she did of him.
Very slowly, he lifts his eyes to her.
She gets out of the bed, shivering when her feet touch the cold floor. She’s let her hair completely out of the clip, and a wing of it falls forward, hiding her expression.
“Alright, off with you,” she says gently, touching his shoulder. “I’m gonna warm up and get into bed. I’m so tired, now that I feel better. And don’t tell Noah I was crying, okay? He’ll only worry.”
Gage nods immediately, getting to his feet. He can’t find a word to say, but at the door he realizes there’s something that needs to be said.
“Hey,” he calls softly, then holds up the portrait and the necklace when she glances at him. “Thank you. Bug.”
She blinks, then lets out a startled laugh. “What – no! That is not sticking!”
“Oh, it is,” he says, breaking into an irrepressible smile. “I’ll say it a few times now just to make sure, though. Bug. Bug. B-”
“Bastard!” she laughs, swatting a hand at him. “I’m going to ditch all of you and move into the lace-making museum!”
“I think those ladies would be happy to have you,” Gage answers seriously. “They seemed to like you very much.”
“Oh, shut up!”
“You can bring a lot to the table.” Gage looks down at the portrait, then back up at Noelle, laughing a little. “Can’t believe you called yourself helpless. Look at this. You did that.”
“Out!” she laughs, blushing and pointing at the door.
Dazed, with his heart full to bursting, Gage leaves his silver flower in her room and goes back out into the hallway. He automatically walks to his bedroom, then pauses in surprise when a scrawny, hoodie-wearing figure appears in the light of the doorway to meet him.
“Dude, I was looking for you!” Noah drags him the rest of the way into his bedroom, grinning widely. “I’ve gotta show you something.”
He holds out something puzzling: a few old, vintage books and magazines. Some in French and some in English, it looks like.
“Books?” Gage asks, confused. “But we’re not good at those.”
“They’re mostly pictures.” Noah grins broadly, giving his eyebrows an absurd waggle. “Snagged ‘em from the erotica section of that bookshop we went to.”
“Whoa, really?” Gage’s eyes grow wide with awe. “They sold it to you?”
“Nah, but I left money on the counter,” Noah tells him reassuringly.
Gage bites back an enormous, affectionate grin. All the Rauniers seem to be under the impression that if someone won’t sell you something for whatever reason, the unspoken agreement is that you should just take it and leave the right amount of money on the counter. He thought it was just Noah and Noelle at first, but now he’s even seen their dad do it.
“Nice grab,” he says approvingly, with a little laugh.
“Mostly,” Noah agrees, sorting through them. “I mean. I was trying to get out of there fast, so I just took a bunch without looking. There’s one completely about spanking. Nothing else.”
“Cool, sure,” Gage laughs.
“And I think there might be a gay one mixed up in here. I assume so, anyways. I didn’t look through it, but it’s called Supple Juicy Marines.”
Gage quickly turns aside to set down the portrait, mostly so Noah doesn’t see the anxious blush that just sprang to his cheeks. “Oh. That – certainly paints a mental picture.”
“Yeah, but hey.” Noah holds up the rest of the magazines, grinning widely again. “Juicy Marines aside, we’re going through the rest of these later, right?”
Gage grins back at him, and he laughs.
“Sick, dude. Or we can do it right now, so long as no one’s home yet-”
Noah hurriedly breaks off and sweeps the books behind his back as someone knocks on the open door, leaning into the half-lit bedroom.
“Hey, Dad!” Noah says quickly, in French. “How was dinner?”
Mr. Raunier drifts into the room with his hands in the pockets of his dress pants, his shirt down a button or two. He has a warm smile in his grey eyes, and rain clinging to his inky hair, his beard, his leather bomber jacket. He must have just gotten back.
He comes over and affectionately runs a hand over Noah’s short hair. “Hello, my troublesome child. Dinner was good.”
He’s supposed to be mad at them about their unapproved adventure yesterday, but it’s obvious that this fact has slipped his mind. His deep voice is full of tender fondness, and so is his hand on Noah’s head.
Experiencing a stab of absurd, senseless jealousy, Gage bites his lip, then blinks in surprise as he gets an affectionate smile from Mr. Raunier, too.
“How was your night, boys?” he asks.
“Good,” Gage and Noah chorus back.
Mr. Raunier nods slowly, glancing back and forth between their guilty faces, loosely tucking his hands back into his pockets. “Didn’t leave the property while we were away, did you?”
“No,” they lie, together.
Mr. Raunier nods again, contemplating that with a faint smile tweaking up his lips, his eyes lingering on their wet clothes which clearly prove they’ve been elsewhere. “Didn’t get into any trouble?”
“No.”
Mr. Raunier nods again, then wordlessly takes one hand from his pocket and holds it out. Makes a beckoning gesture.
Wincing until his eyes close, Noah reluctantly hands him the stack of books and magazines he’d been holding behind his back, which unfortunately has an old Penthouse right at the top.
Mr. Raunier blinks down at what he has in his hand. Gage and Noah shift from foot to foot anxiously, but he looks up with a little snicker of laughter, shaking his head.
“Did you pay for it, at least?” he asks Noah.
“I left money on the counter.”
Mr. Raunier nods approvingly, then pauses, staring at one of the magazines.
Gage freezes in aghast silence as Noah’s dad holds up Supple Juicy Marines, arching an amused, questioning eyebrow.
“Grabbed that one by accident,” Noah explains, red-faced. “Sincerely. All I saw was Juicy.”
He winces again, mortified the instant he hears what he said. His dad bites his lip, his expression wavering with barely suppressed laughter.
He gets control of it, leans in closer to the two of them with a stern, serious look on his face. They stare anxiously at him, then blink hard when he says:
“If you’re caught, not a word to your mother or sister to imply that I knew.”
Noah draws back in surprise, then breaks into a wide grin. “Nope.”
Mr. Raunier hands all the old books and magazines back to Noah, except one. “And I’m taking this spanking one away. Start with the basics.”
“No!” Noah shouts, so loudly that he startles a laugh out of both Gage and his dad.
“You two scoundrels,” Mr. Raunier says, his deep voice warm with fond indulgence. “Nonstop trouble, aren’t you?”
Gage and Noah break into abashed laughter, and Mr. Raunier cuffs Noah’s cheek. Then Gage’s, too, leaving behind a faint whiff of his cologne. Once again making Gage freeze in surprise.
“Goodnight, boys,” Noah’s dad says softly, turning away.
“I think he forgot that he’s supposed to be mad at us,” Noah laughs softly, once Mr. Raunier has shown himself out. “At Noey, too. D’you see he had a bag he set down in the hallway before he came in? That means he bought some kind of present for Noelle while they were all in town.”
“Your dad is so cool.”
“You think so?” Noah asks, surprised. “Guess he’s got a leather jacket. We should get leather jackets, dude. Then maybe we can get ourselves some real-life centerfold girls.”
He holds the Penthouse copy in front of his face, then says in a high-pitched voice to go with the model on the front: “Ooooh, Gage, I love your leather jacket! Date me, date me!”
“I wish it was that simple,” Gage laughs helplessly.
Noah groans in agreement, then tucks the books and magazines under his shirt.
“Alright, I’m going to bed. Wish me luck getting to my room undetected. By the way, did Noey invite you to breakfast?”
“No.”
“Oh, she must have forgotten. We’re going with my dad to try a new place in town. You should come, unless you’ve got something with your parents and Logan.”
Gage gives him a grateful smile, shaking his head. “No, I don’t. Sounds great.”
Noah gives him a thumbs-up, looking not at all incognito with the large rectangles of the magazines showing through his shirt. Gage has to bite his lip brutally hard to hold back a rush of fond laughter.
Noah starts towards the door, then pauses, looking at the portrait Noelle did.
“Wow,” he says, staring at it admiringly. “She got you perfectly, huh?”
“It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever had,” Gage blurts out, very much without meaning to.
Noah lets out a snicker of laughter. “Yeah right, rich boy.”
Gage startles backwards at the playful punch to the shoulder Noah gives him, then breaks into laughter, shaking his head.
“But it is, seriously!” he insists.
For some reason it’s important to him that Noah knows he wasn’t joking.
“Alright, whatever.” Noah walks backwards for the doorway, pointing at Gage. “Breakfast, though? And then!”
He reverently gestures to the old books and magazines so clearly visible under his shirt.
“It’s on,” Gage laughs, earning a dimpled grin in answer.
Silence falls over the bedroom after Noah leaves. Gage shuts and locks the door. He stretches out on the bed and stares at the portrait Noelle drew of him, his heart in his throat.
He slowly changes his clothes, then sits on the bed again, thinking. Feeling uncomfortable in the stupidly expensive pajamas his dad got him for Christmas, such a random gift that it must have been the last thing on the shelf. They’re not even the right size.
Gage flings the pajamas off, puts on the necklace that Noelle gave him, and climbs naked back into his bed. For some reason this instantly makes him feel better, more like himself.
He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, taking deep breaths. Fidgeting with his new necklace. The storm begins to slow down, letting other noises drift through the air. At some point he hears his parents and Logan come into the house and upstairs to their rooms. No one comes to knock at his door. The muffled voices fall silent again.
Eventually Gage sits up in the bed and looks at himself in the mirror.
Come on, now, he tells himself cheerfully, encouragingly. No point in getting upset about things you can’t control…
It doesn’t work. The eyes looking back at him in the mirror are already flooded with sudden tears.
Summer is winding down. Soon he’ll have to part ways with the Raunier family. Soon he won’t matter to anybody again. No one will do things like ask him to please come to breakfast, and steal things to share with him, and give him nice drawings of himself, and come into his room to say goodnight, and generally look at him with a kind smile in their eyes.
He can spend all the time he wants daydreaming – of Noelle and Noah deciding to stay here with their dad and asking Gage to come live with them, or even wilder, them asking him to come with them to Ketterbridge – but it doesn’t change what’s really going to happen.
It feels like his real family is leaving, and now he has to stay with a bunch of strangers. That’s the exact opposite of what will technically happen at the end of this summer, but that’s what it feels like.
The worst loss of all is Noelle. The others are very bad, but that one is unbearable. Gage’s heart is breaking just thinking of it.
He’s terribly afraid that once she leaves he’ll never see her again. If Gage knows his brother, Logan will break up with her as soon as she’s out of reach, and then she probably won’t want to hear from anyone in the Hollins family ever again.
A jolt of sudden panic flashes through Gage.
Noelle is going to leave. She’ll never even know how he feels about her. She’ll probably forget him. Maybe Gage can take a good clear photo of the portrait and give the original drawing back to her, so she might remember him one day. But that’ll be it.
The thought is shattering. It’s how things have to be, though… she told him outright what she wanted, and it sure doesn’t sound like him.
Then again…
There was that moment when his heart stopped, after she handed him the drawing and said what she said. For a split second, a wild, blazing, brilliant second, he thought maybe there was hope.
His heart pounding in his ears, Gage picks up the drawing and stares at it again. Thinking about what Noelle said when she finished it and handed it to him.
Bug… he breathes silently, hardly daring to believe it. What wild idea did you need to get out of your system when you drew this?
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