Dead To You

49. follow you home

There Noel was, after explicitly telling me earlier that afternoon he wasn't going to come to the game, at the game. My heart stammered for a moment as I took in the sight of him, walking along the edge of the sidewalk with his hands shoved into the pockets of his denim jacket, a heathered gray hoodie layered underneath, his head lowered so the strands of his hair fell over his forehead and the auburn glinted almost like gold beneath the glow of the streetlight. 

It was almost two hours after the game had started, a few minutes before halftime was over, and between the end of the marching band's performance and the lead the Panthers had secured against the opposing team, several people had already begun to leave, but, for some reason, there was Noel Preston. I was vaguely aware in the back of my mind that Blane Harding was still following me, that I should probably weave through the cars in the parking lot in hopes of neither one of them spotting me, and slouch down in the backseat of Ethan's car as we made our getaway with speeds respectable to the school zone, but there was something that made me hesitate, lingering against my better judgement until he lifted his head and his eyes caught mine. 

The muscles were tense along the edge of his jaw, his hair was tousled, and something shifted in his gaze that tinged at my chest like a rubber band snapping against bones, and all I could think for those seconds it took him to resume his stride and meet where we were standing, meet me, that he must have been there because he didn't want to be home. 

And that made it feel even more crushing when I curled my fingers around my phone and remembered that I couldn't stay here with him, after I had literally invited him to come myself. Now, I almost kind of hoped that Blane would find me and punt me over the goal post. I probably deserved it.

"Hey," Noel said, his voice a quieted blend of uncertainty shrouded beneath a faltering sense of bravado, almost as if the side of him I usually heard with a raised hand in the classroom had been combined with the version I sat across from in a cracked vinyl booth a few weeks earlier, staring down at his napkin while he talked about his parents. I felt like withering and dying right here on the sidewalk as he noticed the blanket balled together in my arms. "Are you leaving?"

"Um," I replied, quickly turning to look over my shoulder while I desperately hoped that Blane had decided against further pursuing me and was sitting on the bench, guzzling a Gatorade, doing stretches on the field like the rest of the football team, but he wasn't. He was sauntering over toward the parking lot, nodding at someone who had tried to preemptively congratulate him on the good game he had barely played in, but it seemed as if he wasn't going to make the same mistake of allowing himself to engage in conversation. He knew what he needed to do, and I guess I did too. 

"Yeah, um. We're leaving. The game is, um, you know—I'm sorry," I said, so apologetic that the words practically burst from my mouth, and I felt like burying my face into the plush material of my blanket. "I didn't think you were going to come."

He shrugged a little too casually, but I noticed the maroon tinge crawling up his neck from his collar. "I wasn't going to. I just...finished all my homework, so..."

"Right," I said, even though I just wanted to groan until all my atoms finally exploded and burst into scorching flames. Maybe then I could at least singe Blane Harding a little bit, melt the numbers from his jersey that were shining in glitter on the stands, all of the community that came out to support him after the loss of his girlfriend while he was hooking up with Thea Foster in the shadows just a few yards away. "Right, yeah, again, I'm sorry. I just—" 

I paused to sneak another look behind me, and I understood for the first time why people called it a chest cavity, because now my heart was sinking through and tumbling down an endless hollow chasm. The ground beneath my feet seemed to stretch away from me, everything in my peripheral version distorted and rounded, like I was in some sort of dream where Blane Harding was stalking me through a football stadium and just a few feet away from me.