Page 83 of Intermission

A cold, heavy lump forms in my stomach. I try to swallow, but there’s no moisture in my mouth.

He just said he loves me. Surely he won’t—

“Noah.” His name exits my lips on a hoarse whisper. “Are you... breaking up with me?”

Noah is quiet. With each passing second, the lump in my throat grows, until my neck aches from the pressure of it.

Finally, he squeezes my shoulder. “No.” He leans over and kisses my hair. “I thought I could. I probablyshould. But I can’t.”

“Oh.” A bit of the pressure releases, but I can’t shake the tightness in my chest. “Good. You scared me.” I swallow. “Having you so far away is going to be hard enough next fall, but not having you at all when you’re so close would be—”

I can’t finish the sentence, can’t allow myself to imagine the emptiness that would consume me with Noah near, but inaccessible. I’ve had short tastes of it, and it is a bitter, sour thing.

“I have an idea,” he says. “It’s a long shot, but it might solve our problem. What would you think of us trying to build a deeper friendship, but without—without the, um... romantic stuff?”

My mind whirs in confusion. He just said he couldn’t break up with me, but...? “Are you saying you just want to be friends?”

“Yes, but... No.” He shakes his head and closes his eyes. “But, ultimately,yes. Your parents don’t want you to be romantically involved with me, right? So if we can agree to take out the element of romance, we can still be togetherandstill honor your parents.”

I ponder that. “So what you’re saying is, you think that if my mom and dad see that we can be friends without being romantic for a while, then maybe later we could, um, add the romance back in?”

Noah nods. “Yeah. Maybe. After they’ve gotten to know me as your friend. After we’ve played by their rules.”

I try to imagine being with Noah and not holding his hand, not letting myself snuggle into his side, like I’m sitting right now. “How do we even do that?”

“Um, well, I guess I hadn’t thought that far. No kissing, for sure.”

I like it when Noah kisses me. I like it a lot. But we aren’t like Jenna and Cole, who consider it the gold-medal event of every date. “Okay.”

“We should probably stop the hand-holding, too.”

“So snuggling like this would be out?”

“Right.”

And yet he makes no move to release me.

I smile at that. “Can we do that? I mean, when I’m near you, I just want to be, well, closer to you.”

“Uh, yeah. Exactly. I think that’s what your parents are afraid of.”

It takes me a second to catch his meaning. “Oh. Right.” Can he feel the heat of my cheek through his sweatshirt? “So when would this whole ‘just friends’ thing need to start?”

“Soon.” Noah stands up and holds out his hand. “Dance with me?”

“Here?” My head spins. “Dancing is pretty romantic, Noah.”

“So we’ll stop being romantic later.”

“But there isn’t any music.”

“I guess we’ll just have to create some, then.” Noah stands and pulls me to my feet, into his arms. “After all, we’ve finally identified our song. I think we ought to use it at least once. This may be our last chance.”

As we go into May, keeping romance out of my relationship with Noah turns out to be much easier than I expected.

Probably because Noah’s final exams, his two jobs, and my mother, who is determined to occupy every spare instant of my time, leave us literally no time to get together.

At least my phone is back in my possession.