Page 86 of Chasing Infinity

Grace smirks at Charlie victoriously. “Noah. They had a moment in the hallway earlier.”

Another blush takes over my cheeks, and I wish I could slap my hand right over her mouth. “We did not. He was just—” I pause, not wanting to air his business to more people than I need to. “We didn’t have a moment.”

“Good,” Charlie says, looking at me strangely. “That would just be…I don’t know, weird?”

“Believe me, I’m aware.”

Thankfully, my friends leave it, not pressing the issue any further. The game continues, and we end up winning with an extra touchdown. Charlie goes wild when Wyatt is the one to make the last touchdown at the last minute, and I grin, clapping along with him.

As soon as the teams leave the field, the stands begin to empty. Grace and I grab our bags and glue ourselves to the boys’ sides, so we don’t get lost in the crowd. As we walk to our cars, I can’t help but shiver as a chill comes over me. Eli is right by my side, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me close to him.

“You cold?” he asks lowly.

I look up at him, embarrassment flooding my belly, and nod, saying nothing. I snuggle into his side closer, risking another glance up at him. Eli’s got a massive goofy grin all over his face as his arm tightens on my shoulder. A ball of nervous energy is now sitting inside me at being this close to him. Eli and I have been skirting around each other recently. Both of us are unsure about what to do about these rising feelings for each other.

Grace pretends to make a gagging noise next to us, but I do my best to ignore her. I’m aware she’s not a massive fan of Eli and me being together, but to be honest, I’m not a fan of her choice for me. She’s still on the Noah-Addie train, believing that we are secretly in love with each other, but there’s just no way.

Not with the way being this close to Eli makes my body thrum with anticipation.

I’m not sure what it’s supposed to feel like to be in love, but I know that being with Eli makes me happy. He makes me laugh and always tries to ensure that I’m having a good time with whatever we’re doing. When he does things like this, wrapping his arm around me or holding my hand underneath the lunch table, it makes my stomach flip with anticipation.

Even as I walk with Eli, I think about how Noah opened up to me earlier, and I feel content warmth spread through my body despite the chill of the fall night. Before that thought can grow to be anything more than it needs to, I shake my head. I’m only feeling warm now because Eli’s got his arm around me—nothing more. I’m not sure if Noah could ever come close to how I feel around Eli. Eli is safe. He’s always liked me for who I am. And we all know that’s not the case when it comes to Noah.

Yet, my thoughts keep straying back to Noah despite my best attempts to avoid it. I replay our interaction in the hallway this afternoon once more, analyzing it for clues or nuances that I might have missed. Overall, he seemed down about the whole thing, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with that. I don’t know if there’s any way that I can help him with what’s going on in his home life. All I know is that deep in my soul, I feel things will shift after this. I don’t know if it’s intuition or delusion, but the tides changed today, and I hope it will all be for the better.

Chapter 23

Noah

Noah - Age 16

“Noah!” I hear my name being called, and I shrug my backpack up further on my shoulder as I look around for the source. From across the quad, I see Jordan waving his hand, Caleb grins at me right next to him. “Over here!”

I wander over to them. “What’s up?”

“Where have you been, man? We’ve barely seen you all summer!” Caleb complains as he takes my hand and pulls me in for a hug.

“My mom and I went down to our house in Florida for the summer. Chance to get away from it all, you know?”

My father had been on a rampage ever since the year started, going after my mom and me for every little thing imaginable. We had to act a certain way and say the right words at the right time. Thankfully, my mother was just as sick of it as I was, and the minute school let out for the summer, she packed up my bags and shoved me in a car.

Instead of listening to my father rag on me for merely existing the entire summer, I got to listen to waves crashing against the shore. A pretty good trade-off, in my opinion.

“That sounds better than being stuck in this shitty town for three months,” Jordan says.

“Oh, speaking of summer excursions, you know who else went away for the summer and came back an absolute smoke show?” Caleb asks me. His face screams mischief.

“Who?” I ask, carefully.

“None other thantheAddison Parks.”

I eye my friend. “Why do you say it that way?”

He and Jordan share a conspiratorial look, but Caleb shrugs. “No reason.”

It shocked the two of them when I told them about Parks’ and my little “moment” in the hallway last year, and they’ve been ribbing me about it ever since. There were irritating comments here and there or a nudge to the shoulder whenever she showed up at school wearing a cute outfit or something.

Irritating as hell.

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