Before She Even Knows

Chapter 29 - Tell me what's going on

"Mads, open the door. Come on baby, talk to me." Mark has his head resting on the door, his hands up pounding on it, trying to make her open it.

"Don't you dare call me baby. It's over Mark, we're over."

She's yelling through the door, her voice is shaky and I know she's crying. There are a few doors open down the hall, meaning that their shouting got the attention of all the curious girls known as our neighbors.

Mads is the popular kind, being a cheerleader, president of the school newspaper, member of the sports committee, president of in-campus events, well, you got the picture. Add to that the fact that she's Noah's best friend, a fact that is well known by boys and girls, although for different reasons.

Boys want to be Noah and girls want to date him, so being his best friend also made her pretty famous around campus.

Mark notices us and takes a step back from the door. His eyes dart to our intertwined hands and an almost imperceptible confusion is on his face, but he recovers fast enough.

Yeah, buddy, you have bigger problems to worry then my sort-of-relationship.

"Do you guys know what happened? She won't talk to me and I have no idea what I did wrong."

Noah lets go of my hand and glares at him, bumping him on the shoulder while going closer to the door. Yeah, he's definitely pissed at Mark.

I glare at him as if telling him to be nice, but he rolls his eyes.

Mark is lucky that Noah just bumped instead of punching his face. Being a forty years old soul trapped in a twenty years old body, I don't see Noah getting into a fight, but his hands in fists are indicating otherwise.

I just hope he got my plea for taking it easy. We still don't know what happened, so it's too soon for murdering Mark.

He nocks on the door and looks at me while we wait for Mads to do something.

"Go away." It's the answer he gets after a while.

"Mads, it's Noah. Open the damn door."

The fact that he called her Mads instead of Madeleine doesn't go unnoticed by me and I guess is his way of showing how much he cares and is worried about her.

Much to our surprise, she does open the door just enough to pull Noah by his shirt inside the room before slamming the door shut once again.

O-kay...

Now, I'm alone with Mark. Well, not entirely alone.

"Show's over, mind your own business people." I say loudly and the curious girls start going their way, mostly getting back into their dorms.

Mark has slid down the wall opposite to our room, sitting on the floor with his knees up and his head also resting on the wall. He stares at our door as if this would make it magically open.

I take a minute looking at him to realize he's also a complete mess. His hair is messier than usual, there are begs under his eyes and his beard started to appear, a sign that he didn't shave the past couple of days.

He seems utterly confused and lost.

I almost feel sorry for him. He doesn't look like someone who would cheat on his girlfriend, but well, you never know.

I'll give Mark the benefit of the doubt though and try to make sense of whatever is happening.

There's not a single sound coming from inside our dorm, so I'm not sure how the conversation with Noah is going.