Behind the Falls Read online

  “I went to the kitchen for a drink, saw you standing here. I thought I’d see if you were okay. You’re not, are you?” She shrugs.

  “It’s not like anyone cares anyway,” she says in a tone dripping with self-pity. “I’ve been out here for like hours and no one has come looking for me.”

  “It’s been more like thirty minutes, tops and I’m here. I came looking for you.”

  “Right, you came looking for a drink and found me instead.” She’s really working this self-pity thing. It’s not very becoming.

  “Well I came looking for a drink but abandoned my own needs to see if you were okay. I’m risking dehydration for you. The least you could do is act nice.” I bump my hip into her to try to make her laugh or something. She’s not done feeling sorry for herself and for some reason she wants to take it out on me.

  “Oh yeah, you’re Saint Noah, always thinking of others. You’re always so darned sweet and nice and innocent and you probably don’t even HAVE a mean bone in your body. UGH! You’re such a goody two shoes!” She stomps her foot into the ground.

  “Hey, Tabitha, are you honestly mad at me? What did I do?” I ask and I’m really concerned. She seems more upset than her usually crankiness.

  “I’m just mad in general. Boys are so stupid!”

  “In my gender’s defense, girls are not exactly easy to understand. Seriously, Tabitha, did you just orchestrate that entire game because you wanted an excuse to kiss him? Why don’t you just tell him how you really feel?” She shakes her head and the frustrated breath she blows out makes a white puff in the cold air.

  “Kyle is such a jerk and so not the point,” she says. She won’t meet my eyes.

  “I’m not talking about Kyle,” I say gently. I put my arm around Tabitha’s shoulders and pull her closer in a one-armed hug. At first she stiffens then she lets go and leans into me. The next time she exhales it’s shaky. She’s not crying yet but she’s not far from it.

  “Tabitha, seriously, just TELL him. He thinks you’re just friends…”

  “We ARE just friends,” she interrupts me. “He thinks of me as a sister.”

  “I’ve seen the way he kisses you. I wouldn’t kiss my sister like that.” This earns a sad little chuckle from Tabitha.

  “What do you know? You don’t HAVE a sister. Besides, he doesn’t kiss me at all anymore,” she tries to laugh but it comes out broken and closer to a sob. I give her another squeeze and put my cheek on top of her head.

  “Tell him,” I try to get through to her. She shakes her head and her hair tickles my cheek with the movement.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says in a voice that’s thick with tears she won’t cry. “He likes someone else anyway.” She looks up at me for my reaction and I have to lift my cheek off of her hair.

  “Really?” I ask. I guess I’m surprised that for as much as Max and I talk that he hasn’t mentioned anything to me. Tabitha laughs bitterly.

  “Yeah, I sort of thought you didn’t know,” she says.

  “Well then if that’s the case maybe you should move on, find someone else. Don’t waste your senior year pining away for a guy you can’t have,” I tell her.

  “Oh what do you know? Before you moved here you’d never even kissed a girl. Innocent Noah, youngest senior at Lansing high, pure as the driven snow…”

  “Again with the mean…what the Hell, Tabitha?”

  “You don’t know how it FEELS,” she sobs. “Have you ever even liked a girl?”

  “Well, no but…” I’m glad she interrupts because I have no idea where I’m going with this.

  “You have no idea how it feels to care so damned much about someone that it hurts! I can’t even say anything or we can’t even be friends anymore because he’ll want to put some distance between us so he doesn’t feel like he’s leading me on or something. That’s bad enough but because we’re supposedly best friends he tells me all about this other person because he doesn’t even know how much it kills me to hear it…that he thinks he’s falling in love…”

  Now there are tears. I can see her lower lip trembling in the light from the kitchen window. She runs her fingers through her hair and pulls at the ends. That must hurt!

  I feel so badly for her then. I guess I can understand her moodiness lately. If he really is in love with someone and it’s not her, God, I can’t even imagine how much that must suck. But I have no words of comfort for her. She’s right. I have no idea how she feels. She pulls herself together quickly though and wipes the tears from her face.

  We’re quiet for a little while. She leans into me and I give her another reassuring squeeze. Eventually, she looks up at me with a strange little smile on her face. I still have my arm around her shoulders and she holds it in place as she slips around to stand in front of me and then she takes my other hand and puts it on her other shoulder. Her hands are at my waist and she leans into me, pressing my back into the wall.

  “You know, you ARE pretty cute,” she says in a voice barely above a whisper. She puts her arms around my waist and leans into me, raising her face to mine and I’m leaning so I’m not at my full height but she still has to rise up on her tip toes to kiss me. She’s shivering slightly but her lips are warm. She usually wears too much lipstick but she kissed it all away playing the game earlier and her lips are strong and sure as she takes my bottom lip between hers.

  I’m not really sure what to do. I know how she feels about Max but if it’s true that he doesn’t feel the same way, does in fact like (maybe love) someone else then where is the harm? I’ve never really thought of Tabitha that way because I’ve been pretty sure how she feels about Max ever since I met her but she is really cute and she can kiss like nobody’s business.

  “Don’t overthink it,” she whispers against my lips as if she can read my troubled thoughts. “Just go with it,” she says as she licks my lips before kissing me again. Max is right. The girl can really kiss! She sucks my lower lip gently into her mouth then tickles it with her tongue before pressing her mouth more urgently against mine. When her tongue finds mine it’s soft and teasing. She pulls away slightly and pecks softly at my mouth a few times before once again sucking at my lip, this time the top one.

  She still has one arm around my waist, using it as leverage to press herself against me but now the other hand reaches up, moving to the back of my head where her fingers curl in my hair and pull my head closer to her. So far she’s doing the real work and I’m just reacting. I can feel my heart beating like I’ve been running. My breaths come in shorter and shorter gasps.

  I can’t say that I feel that excitement of butterflies in my stomach, that roller coaster rush or anything like that but it still feels good…exciting. I get why Max thinks kissing Tabitha is fun. I’m not even sure how I really feel about Tabitha but right now this feels good so I don’t even care. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t either. I have no doubt that this has nothing to do with me and everything to do with Tabitha trying to forget about Max even if only briefly but when she wraps her tongue around mine like that I can’t seem to care.

  The hand that was around my waist moves across my stomach and then down and down lower and lower and then she’s grabbing me through my jeans and I’m pretty sure my brain stops functioning as I gasp in surprise. I might be clueless but my body knows what to do when my brain stops working and I press myself into her. She continues to rub her hand against me, lightly alternating squeezing with rubbing and varying pressure. One of the last coherent thoughts my brain manages is how unbelievable the situation I’m in feels. A month ago I’d never been kissed and now I’m being felt up and kissed like I couldn’t have ever imagined.

  When Tabitha takes her hand away I make a pathetic noise of regret. Tabitha kisses the corner of my mouth then moves along my cheek and down to my jaw and follows the jawline to my ear. The sensation when she licks my ear lightly and nibbles my earlobe before teasing her tongue inside my ear is like nothing I’ve ever felt. I feel goose bumps run down my entire rig
ht side as she puts her mouth to my ear and draws in a breath causing an odd coldness in my ear that wakes every nerve ending on that side of my body.

  She kisses along my jaw again and then my neck and throat until she ends up at the opposite ear and does the same thing. Now the goose bumps run down my left side. “God,” I sigh because it’s the only speech I’m capable of. My eyes have been closed through most of this but I open them then to see Tabitha smiling at me.

  “Who knew you were so tasty?” she leans in to whisper it in my ear causing the goose bumps to rise again. She takes my face in her hands as she presses her body deeper into mine and teases her lips across mine. “Kiss me, Noah,” she whispers against my lips and it tickles in a way that I feel all over. “Please just kiss me.”

  I put one hand on her waist and the other finds its way to her neck and jaw. She parts her lips slightly in welcome and then I crush my lips into hers. She taught me well and I gently suck on her lips like she did to me and she sighs into my mouth what I think is the word yes. I keep my eyes open as I kiss her so I can gauge her reaction. Her eyes are closed but her lashes flutter lightly against her cheeks. Her eyebrows are raised and it seems she’s enjoying it.

  Suddenly I want to kiss her neck, need to in fact and so I do and she puts her head back to give me better access. I kiss and lick and kiss up her neck and across her throat as she moans but then I need to feel her lips again and I return to her mouth. She takes over again and once more she presses into me and I can feel the rough wall through my jacket because she’s pressing so hard but it’s nothing compared to the feeling of her mouth on mine.

  She has her arms around me inside of my jacket and neither of us can feel the cold night air anymore. She picks up the intensity of the kissing and it’s all I can do to keep from moaning and I’m wondering if it would be wrong to take her hand and put it where it had been all too briefly before when Max’s voice breaks through everything.

  “Really nice, Tabitha. Just fucking brilliant,” he hisses in a tone I’ve never heard him use before, especially not with Tabitha. I pull my face away from hers and drop my hands instantly but she continues to lean against me and looks over at Max slowly.

  “What?” she asks with exaggerated innocence and then she looks back to me and begins to open the buttons of my shirt. I’m trying to steady my breathing but my heart is pounding faster and harder than before when she was kissing me. When she has some of my chest exposed she teasingly spreads my shirt open wider and looks at Max briefly before she presses her lips into my bare skin. “Don’t you think Noah is absolutely adorable?” she says as she leans into me but looks again to Max.

  “Tabitha, what the Hell?” he says and his voice sounds angry. He looks to me briefly then looks back at her and he may sound angry but the look on his face and in his eyes is hurt and betrayal.

  Tabitha ignores this and kisses me and grabs me through my jeans again but this time, with an audience, with Max so obviously not okay with it I don’t feel the pleasure any more. I try to pull away from her but the wall is in the way. She lets her hand drop but she doesn’t stop kissing me immediately. She uses more force and more tongue than she did before, being obvious on purpose like she did when she and Darcy kissed during the game. This is all for show now, even I get that. She’s doing this on purpose, to make Max jealous, to hurt him or to punish him I can’t tell but it’s having an effect on him.

  “Jesus, Tabitha,” he says in a tortured voice that I almost don’t recognize as Max. Tabitha keeps pressing against me placing small, pecking kisses on my closed mouth like she doesn’t notice his obvious pain. I know she does though. It’s impossible to miss it. It’s palpable. Finally she stops kissing me but she doesn’t let me go. She stays pressed against me with her arms inside my jacket and her head laying against my chest as she looks at his tortured expression.

  “Well SOMEONE had to do it,” she says almost threateningly. “YOU obviously weren’t going to,” she continues and her words have such an impact on Max that he takes a step back. He looks at me again with those pained eyes. I realize that with those two simple sentences Tabitha just made it sound like I kissed HER. Like this was all MY idea. He brushes his bangs away from his face, combing his hair with his fingers and for once they stay that way and I can see both of his eyes which is worse because it’s double the pain.

  “Max, I…” I start to say but he cuts me off immediately.

  “No? I think you should go home now,” he says very quietly with a kind of tight control. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. All I wanted to do was be a good friend to Tabitha while she was down and she twisted that and used that to what end? Did she just want to make him jealous so that he would realize he had deeper feelings for her? If so it seems to have worked because he’s beyond angry.

  “Max, I didn’t mean to…I mean, she…it happened. I didn’t think….” I can’t even form a coherent sentence but it doesn’t seem to matter. He’s not listening.

  “Noah, I just really need you to be gone right now,” he says and now he can’t even meet my eyes. So this is what it feels like to lose your best friend? I feel confused and hurt and betrayed mostly by Tabitha but also a little bit by him because he won’t even listen to me.

  “Max, I’m sorry…”I try again.

  “Noah, PLEASE just go,” he says and this time he does look at me and his eyes are pleading and I know there’s nothing left to say. I nod and I try to move away from the wall, away from Tabitha but she doesn’t let me go right away and why the Hell won’t she? She got what she wanted after all. It took ruining my friendship with Max but he’s obviously got to admit his feelings for her now.

  Max takes Tabitha by the upper arm and tugs her away and she goes willingly enough. She gives me a sly smile and a wink then she blows a kiss at me and all I can think is Bitch! But I don’t say anything. It’s not that she doesn’t deserve it or that I don’t have it in me to call her that but I know if I do Max will have to stick up for her and it will just be that much worse. This tightly controlled emotion he’s showing is bad enough. If he actually yells at me I don’t think I can take it.

  “Bye, Loverboy” Tabitha says in a sing song voice. I’ve never wanted to slap a girl before now.

  “Shut up, Tabby,” Max hisses. I don’t stick around to find out what happens next. I push past them to go through the house to get to the street out front because it’s quicker. Elliot is inside but I don’t even pause to say goodbye.

  “What’s going on out there?” he asks, concerned but I don’t answer and I’m at the front door and gone.

  Suddenly I’m aware of the cold again and I button my stupid shirt and close my jacket. I cross my arms and hunch my shoulders as I walk the few blocks to my house. The entire time I’m replaying the whole thing over and over and over in my head. A month ago I almost told Max my theory on how Tabitha really felt. I thought he should know that her crush on Kyle was just a front and that her real feelings were for Max. I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want to be in the middle.

  How did I end up in the middle anyway? This was SO much worse than if I had just told Max from the start. I mean, if he really didn’t feel the same way he wouldn’t even have to let Tabitha know I’d said anything. If he did feel something more for her he could let her know. Instead I was used as a tool by a bitter girl I’d thought was my friend. I lost two friends tonight. How can I even face them at school on Monday?

  What is she telling him right now? Is she telling him that I had gone looking for her and that when I found her alone I’d made a move? I’d never even kissed a girl before last month, would he believe it had all been my idea? Would he care where jealousy was concerned?

  I know I’ve only known him a little more than a month but I thought we were better friends than this. I can’t believe he’d turned me away so easily. And Tabitha?! For all her cranky prickliness I thought we were actually friends too. How could she do that to me?

  I can’t stop seeing his eyes. I
can’t stop remembering how much pain there was in his eyes, in his voice. He’s always so happy in general and always so confident and tonight I’d had a hand in ruining that. Tabitha. That smirk and wink and that parting shot as I’d left…I can’t stop thinking about it. I think I hate her.

  I’m at my house and I don’t even remember the walk home. I’ve been worrying over this the entire way. I know it’s more than worrying. I know the difference between a simple case of worry and anxiety. I sit on the front steps before going inside. I need to calm myself. I need to act normal when I go inside or my parents will know immediately. I don’t want their concern. I don’t want more sessions with Dr. Cooper. I don’t want any of this.

  I can’t do it. I can’t find my calm. I finally decide that I have to go inside because it will be worse if my parents notice me just sitting out here in the chill night air. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll be in bed. Maybe I can just sneak in and slip into my room without them noticing anything. Maybe my parents have been replaced with pod people while I was gone. That’s the only way they won’t notice something is wrong. They know me too well. My mom especially is too observant.

  I fit the key in the lock and ease the front door open. The plan is to sneak down the hall into my room without hanging my jacket. I’ll get into bed before they even know I’m home and then I can feign sleep and avoid a conversation. The plan would work if today wasn’t one of the worst days of my whole life. It doesn’t play out that way of course.

  “Noah? Is that you?” Mom calls from the kitchen. Who else does she think it is? Do burglars carry keys these days? I cough and hope I can keep my voice neutral.

  “It’s me,” I call back to her. She comes from the kitchen carrying a bowl of popcorn and I know she and Dad are watching a movie. She stops and looks at me.

  “Why are you home so early? It’s barely ten o’clock?” she asks and the searching look lets me know she’s already attuned to the fact that I’m not right. I keep my hands in my pockets so she can’t see them shaking and I shrug.