No matter how much I blinked, nothing changed. Noelle was here, in my dining room, like it was nothing.

“What are you doing here?” I said, my mouth feeling dry. “How do you even know where I live?”

Noelle’s eyes glimmered, and I found it hard to look away. “Oh, you know,” she said lightly. “I have my ways.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s not not an answer.” She smirked. “Maybe I tried every house on Dustin’s block, since I know you're neighbors. Or maybe I was a student aide in the school office for a semester and they aren't very good at keeping passwords secret. Who can even say?”

My father shuffled his newspaper a bit, flipping to a different page, but I could see him glancing between the two of us as we talked, clearly curious about whatever was going on. What had Noelle told him? Had she explained about the project? Had she just said she was a classmate?

I shook my head. Seeing her again, it was like all of my emotions had come back in full force, leaving me all twisted up and uncertain of how exactly to even react. “So why did you— Oh. Your clothes. Right.”

Noelle shrugged, smiling. “No, you can keep those if you want. I have too many clothes to begin with and I think those are cuter on you than me.”

In my peripheral vision, I could see my father blinking owlishly, and my face flushed red. He didn’t say anything though. My mouth formed a line as I kept staring at Noelle. “Then what?”

“I just wanted to talk about last night,” she said.

I knew what I needed to say to Dustin. Or at least, I knew what feelings I wanted to express. Noelle was another story entirely. Thoughts ping-ponged around my head, unable to latch onto anything meaningful. I didn’t know how to deal with this. I didn’t know how to deal with her. I still wasn't even sure exactly what had happened last night, and I was scared as hell to find out the truth. Wouldn’t have it been better for me to just disappear, and her never to have to think of me again?

“Okay. Then talk,” I finally said. My voice came out rougher than I expected, and I winced. “I mean. It’s fine. Whatever. I just don’t see why you needed to come all this way.”

Noelle’s eyes drifted over to my father for a moment as she hesitated. I kept standing there, gripping the back of a chair too tightly as I leaned on it. I could read her thoughts plainly: she didn’t want to say anything in front of my parents. 

But… Unexpected stubbornness rose up in me. Fine, then. I could use that. If they were here, she wouldn’t say anything at all. Maybe she’d just leave.

She gave me one last beseeching glance, and I pursed my lips. She shot me a tight smile, and as obstinance flickered in her own eyes, I suddenly realized with horror that she was more than willing to call my bluff. 

“Okay. So last night, when I kissed you—”

There was a crash that caused all of us to suddenly jump. I looked with concern over into the kitchen, where my mother was standing over the shattered remains of a plate that she had dropped.

“Clumsy me,” she said. She gave my dad a significant look. “Dear, can you go get the broom and the dustpan?”

He hadn’t even glanced over. He was still just staring at Noelle, his eyes wide. “Sure thing,” he said, setting his paper down. As he stood up and walked past me, he reached out to give my shoulder a squeeze. I looked over in confusion just in time to catch a sort of confused but proud smile, which made me feel even more uncomfortable.

My shoulders slumped. “Maybe… uh. Maybe we should talk in my room after all,” I said.

Noelle looked relieved. “Sure.”

“Honey?” my mom said. She was crouched down as she tried to gather up the bigger chunks of ceramic in a dishrag. “Remember the rules? Please keep your door open when you have… a guest over.”

“What?” I frowned. That was new. She hadn’t ever insisted on anything like that when Trav had visited. ”Since when? What do you think we would even—”

She stood and crossed her arms, an eyebrow raising.

Suddenly I realized her implication. I realized exactly what she was thought that Noelle and I might get up to behind a closed door. I felt my face turning red. “Sure thing,” I muttered, looking away from her and Noelle both. 

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

 

“Well, that was awkward,” Noelle said, as soon as she had stepped into my room. She started poking around, browsing through the clutter of my room as if it were her own.

I closed the door behind her, leaving it a crack open. I didn’t want my mother to get any other weird ideas about me. Particularly not if they included Noelle.

Of course, Noelle also took that moment to find the makeup pouch still sitting on my bed, the bottle of nail polish next to it. Her eyes lit up. “Hey!” she said, hopping up onto the bed to sit cross-legged. She twirled the bottle in her fingers, glancing back at me and focusing on the one hand I had finished doing. “That looks great.” She reached out like it was nothing to grab my other hand, pulling me closer. “Here, let me do the nails on your right. It can be kind of tricky working with your non-dominant hand.”

I pulled my hand back, and she looked up in surprise. “I’ll do it myself,” I said. “I’d rather make sure that I can— Look, it’s not important. Why are you here, Noelle?”

She grinned. “Like I told you, I wanted to talk about last night.”

I crossed my arms, complicated feelings welling up inside me. I felt weirdly frustrated—this wasn’t what I had asked for. I wasn’t supposed to be the one having this conversation. Dustin was. And now… this just felt like a lot to have to deal with, and all of it suddenly dropped on me. Or dropped onto my bed, at least, in the form of a high school crush that had wound up way more confusing and complicated than I had ever expected.

Noelle’s face faltered a bit at my silence, but she rallied, putting on a chipper smile. “So, some mistakes were made, I think, and it’s really unfortunate that you got pulled into all of it. And I— Okay, I’m going to be honest. I’m not exactly sure how to fix things at this point. That’s what I wanted to talk about.” Her voice dropped a bit, becoming a bit more vulnerable. “I was hoping that maybe you could talk to Dustin for me? You two seem awfully close, after all.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think that?”

“Well, he took you over to his house.” She looked away. “He’s never done that for me.”

I blinked. “Really?” ...But it made sense. Dustin’s mom had thought I was Noelle at first, hadn’t she?

“Yup,” Noelle said, popping the ‘p’ sound.

I pressed my lips together. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. It’s not really my place to talk to Dustin.”

“Why?” Noelle let out a frustrated sigh. “What is with you? You’re acting really weird today.”

“How would you know what’s weird or not for me?” I said. “We’ve known each other for, like, two days.”

“Yeah, but…” She looked a bit pained. “I don’t know. I really enjoyed getting to hang out with you. And now… now it feels like you’re mad at me.”

Oh. 

Huh. Now that she had verbalized it, it seemed like at least some of the mixed-up emotions started to make more sense.

“I think I am mad at you,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “But that’s why I came over and apologized!”

“You didn’t, though.”

She looked at me blankly.

“You didn’t apologize. You just said that ‘Mistakes were made’ and moved on, like it was no big deal.”

At that, Noelle’s eyes dropped, a frown appearing on her face. “Oh. Yeah. I guess.”

“I just…” The frustration was boiling over now. Even though I felt sick to my stomach, it was like I couldn’t hold it back. “Why? Why would you do that? Why would you kiss me? You have everything—”

She opened her mouth, eyes flashing, but I raised my hand to cut her off.

“I know you have your own problems and your life isn’t as easy as it looks. I get it. But the one part of it that’s unambiguously great is you and Dustin together. Do you know how much I wish I had something like that? Why would you screw that up? Particularly over me? It’s such a waste. I hate it. Hate it!” I cut myself off, wincing slightly at just how heated my words had gotten.

Meanwhile, Noelle was quiet, her shoulders slumping. For the first time today, I realized how tired she looked, at least when she wasn’t pretending to be chipper.

“Yeah, well. It’s not perfect. It never has been.” She looked up and shook her head at my disbelieving expression. “I’m not saying it’s not good. Great, even. Dustin means the world to me. But… all relationships are difficult in their own ways.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is it takes work. And I’ve never been good at putting in work.”

I sat down on the bed, plenty of space between us, and pulled my knees up in front of me. I stared across the room at the opposite wall, not really focusing on it. “But...” I finally said. “Dustin is worth it. Isn’t he?”

“...He is,” Noelle confirmed, her voice quiet but determined. “But I wasn’t kidding about needing help. I… I screwed this up, pretty bad. And I don’t know what to do, Josie.”

I let out a long breath, trying to sort out my feelings. Something about Noelle now, about how sad and tired and hurting she was underneath the casual bravado tugged at my heartstrings. I should probably just tell her to go, the same as she had done to me last night. And yet...

“I… I’m not going to talk to Dustin for you,” I said. “But you can talk to me about it, if you want. If you think that will help.”

“...Thank you.”

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

We talked for quite a while after that. Noelle hesitated at first, but the more words she got out, the easier it seemed to get. It wasn’t always easy to follow her train of thought. But I just nodded and listened, doing my best to hear her out, and making sure to ask questions when I didn’t quite get what she meant.

I thought she and Dustin understood each other so easily, but… that too was just an assumption on my part. It seemed that for every cute moment where they effortlessly shared something in an unspoken connection, there was another time where Noelle felt shut out, kept in the dark. She talked about how frustrated and helpless she felt when she could see Dustin struggling, but that he wound up being evasive and distant when she asked about it. 

And she described how her frustrations had boiled over when it seemed like instead of talking to her, he had opened up to someone new that he had just met: me.

“Not that I resent you for it,” she had hastily said. “It’s more like… I was jealous.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I couldn’t imagine Noelle Campanelli being jealous of me in any way. But it didn’t really feel like the right time to air my own insecurities, so I just said ‘Mhm,’ and nodded for her to continue.

That’s when she talked about her family, and ruefully admitted to having been raised in an environment of carefully maintained passive aggression. Given what she had said about her father, it wasn’t exactly surprising to hear that he took appearances into consideration above everything else. What I hadn’t thought about, though, was what it meant for Noelle, having to learn to survive in that kind of world. 

Even though Dustin wasn’t like that—even though he’d never be a person like her father—when Noelle felt hurt, all she knew to do was lash out using the same things that had once been done to her, playing the exact same kind of mind games. As she explained, I could see her look more and more guilty and sad. Not that she necessarily wanted to, she said. She realized it was terrible, and it made her feel doubly awful to know she was acting just like her family. But it was hard to step away from that entirely.

“...That’s why I kissed you,” she admitted. “It really was just because I knew it would hurt Dustin. Which makes me a garbage person.”

I was quiet as I stared forward, and that’s when I heard the faintest sniff. When I looked over at her, she was rubbing at her eyes, trying in vain to keep from silently crying. 

I swallowed, the sight immediately bleeding away the last of my anger at her. I couldn’t hate her. As frustrated as I had been, I never wanted to see her like this.

“No, you’re not.” I said firmly. “You’re not a garbage person. You just screwed up.”

She gave up on not trying to cry, instead just looking away from me. “Yeah.” She sniffed again. “I screwed up like I always do. I—” She cut herself off with a choked sob.

I scooched a bit closer on the bed, feeling really uncertain about what to do. But… 

“Hey. Can I…?” My arms hovered awkwardly, and then suddenly she was clinging onto me, burying her face in my shoulder as she sobbed in earnest. 

I held her as she cried, rubbing gentle circles on her back. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “It’s going to be okay.”

A few minutes later, she finally pulled back a bit, but still remaining in my arms. A good-sized patch of my hoodie was wet, and she looked aghast as she touched it.

“It’s fine,” I said. “And after all, you already gave me some replacement clothes, right?”

That got a choked laugh from her. “I guess so,” she said quietly. 

“Do you feel any better?”

“Yes. And also no.” She looked up at me, looking serious for a moment. “Hey,” she said. “I… I’m sorry. I really am.” She hesitated for a long moment, something further clearly on the tip of her tongue. “I’m… I’m not sorry for kissing you. But it shouldn’t have been like that. I never should have tried to use you as a way to get back at Dustin. That was awful.”

“Thank you,” I said. “It… kind of was. But look: I know you’re not your parents. I know you’re better than that. I know you can make this right if you talk to Dustin.”

She looked up at me again. “I hope so. But… I need help.”

I chewed on my lip, not meeting her eyes.

“I know you don’t want to talk to Dustin for me. I’m not asking you to do that. I just…” she squeezed her eyes shut, letting out a sigh. “I’ve never said some of this stuff out loud before, and talking with you about it… It helped. Normally I just keep everything inside, until… until sometimes it feels like I’m going to explode. And that’s when I do things that I regret, things that hurt people.”

“What are you asking?”

“I need…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I need a friend. I need someone like you. I need someone who can actually call me out when I start falling back into the same bad habits, and who can listen when things get to be too difficult to handle. Is that too much to ask?”

I hesitated, complicated feelings warring in my mind. She was really asking me? I didn’t know why she’d want to be around me, even before I got kind of mad at her, and here she was asking for me to… to be her friend? Literally anyone else would be better. 

How could she ever think that I deserved to get to spend time with her? How could I say yes? Particularly when my firm plans were to cut myself out of her life entirely, for her own good?

And yet… When I looked down at her, still so close to me and so warm in my arms, I felt like was going to sweat right through my hoodie. When I saw her eyes still red from crying a moment before… How could I say no to that?

Indecision warred within me.

“Okay,” I said. “Yeah. I can do that.”

She smiled again, and it was like sunlight finally breaking through an overcast sky.