Page 38 of Two Weeks to Fall in Love

Two Weeks to Watch the Movie

“Sky? You okay?”

I snapped out of my thoughts and turned to face Noah. At some point, while I was zoned out, he’d started drumming his hands against the wheel. A nervous habit. I was making him nervous with my silence.

“Yeah, sorry, just have some stuff on my mind,” I said, running a finger up and down the blue headphones that were back around my neck.

Even though I’d been uncomfortable with the attention, the guilt of them being stuffed in my bag, coupled with the guilt of the fun little revelation I’d had in the bathroom, was a bit too much for me.

“Wanna talk about it?” he asked, and the concern in his voice just made me feel worse.

I offered the best smile I could muster and shook my head. “It’s nothing important. But thanks for offering.”

“Anytime.” Noah smiled back and then focused on the road. “Well, how about a distraction, then? Up for a date tonight?”

I hummed and clicked my tongue. “Depends, is it finally my turn to plan the date?”

He looked at me with wide eyes and let out a surprised laugh. “Didn’t know that was bothering you, Fox.”

“It’s not. Just curious how charming you’d be in a situation that wasn’t straight out of a fairy tale,” I said, and snorted like the lady that I was.

“You think I’m charming?” Noah’s selective hearing kicked in and he turned to me with a wicked grin on his lips.

“Of course that’s the only thing you got out of that,” I said, rolling my eyes and turning to face the passenger-side window so he wouldn’t see the red that was coloring my cheeks.

Even though I wasn’t facing him, I heard him chuckling. The arrogant jerkface—I should have been more careful with my words. It wasn’t like his ego needed a boost, it was already—

His hand found mine and he squeezed it lightly, and all hateful thoughts instantly evaporated.

“I’ll look forward to seeing what you plan.”

My head automatically whipped toward him. He was staring in front of him with a big smile on his face. I pursed my lips together to stop myself from smiling.

The location for the date had been long planned in my mind. He always found some unbelievable place that made it easy for him to look as if he walked straight out of a romance novel, but would he be able to maintain his dreamy allure while on a regular, run-of-the-mill date?

Time for an actual challenge.

*

My walk to Noah’s car had started out full of confidence. But when I saw him leaning against it, his signature smile on his face, I faltered for just a second. As he opened the passenger door for me and gestured me inside, my legs felt uncomfortably wobbly.

I collapsed into the seat with a loud exhale as Noah casually walked to the driver’s side, the epitome of chill. It was at that moment I realized I was never going to win against this guy.

“So where are we going?”

“We’re going to have the quintessential dating experience today,” I said, grinning as he frowned at me.

“And that is . . . ?” he asked, clearly puzzled by my simple statement.

“Food and a movie.”

“Food and a movie?”

“Yup.”

“Interesting,” Noah said, nodding as if the thought had never crossed his mind. “Where are we getting food?”

Welp, I did not think this through .

In my defense, this was the first date I had ever planned and it wasn’t like I’d had a lot of time to figure out the details. My main objective was forcing Noah to do something completely mundane, and food and a movie seemed like a slam dunk.

“Uh, I was thinking maybe we could grab something to go and uh—” I mumbled, trying to come up with a plan in my head.

Noah glanced at me and grinned, letting out a humming noise as if he was thinking. Which I should have known spelled trouble right then and there.

“I might have an idea, then.”

He was going to hijack my simple date and do something unusual with it again. I just knew it. It was a mystery to me how someone could take something as mundane as food and a movie and make it remotely interesting.

I looked at him, still convinced that my plan for a simple date night would come true until I saw the thoughtful grin he had. Oh no .

“I don’t like that look on your face.”

“What look?” he asked, the picture of purity and innocence.

Bullshit . I could see those wheels turning a mile away.

“Food and a movie, Archer,” I warned him, just to make sure he didn’t get any funny ideas.

“Food and a movie, I promise,” he echoed.

*

“I give up.” I groaned and bumped my head against the dashboard in front of me. “You cheated.”

He laughed, and I leaned my head to the side to glare at him. Noah was leaning back in his seat comfortably, his hands crossed behind his head as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“What?” he said between laughs. Taking one arm from behind his head, he gestured to the fast food in the middle between us. “Food.” Then he gestured in front of him, toward the huge white screen playing some old rom-com from the early 2000s. “Movie.”

“ Cheating ,” I mumbled again, digging through the bag for my burger to distract myself. “I don’t understand where you even found this drive-in movie theater.”

“I have my ways,” he said, as mysterious as ever, and I groaned again, much to his delight.

“You like this movie?”

“Love it. I’ve seen it ten times so far.”

Noah laughed and shook his head. “Well, the next showing starts in an hour so, if you wanna pass the time, we could do some more questions?”

I nodded, eager to distract myself from the fact that we were stuck in his car with much more privacy than we would have had in an actual movie theater.

“What cherished memory do you think about the most?”

That was easy. “Happiest place on earth,” I said, and couldn’t keep the smile off my face as I remembered.

“My parents and grandma took me to Disneyland when I was thirteen. It was for my birthday. But what they didn’t tell me was that they’d made a plan with Melissa’s and Lily’s parents to take them with us. It was the best weekend ever.”

“Funny, my memory is also from when I was thirteen.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s from Christmas that year, actually.

I remember my mom seemed so happy, and to my eyes my parents still seemed in love back then.

Tara was smiling too. It’s the last memory I have like that, with so much laughter in one place.

It was the last Christmas we all spent together too.

” Noah finished his response with a wistful expression on his face.

By the time he’d said that last sentence, the excitement that had lit up my face had vanished. That was heartbreaking. Faced with my Disneyland adventure, the last happy Christmas was enough to bring tears to your eyes.

“That’s not a happy memory,” I said, biting the inside of my lip to stop my eyes from tearing.

Noah laughed and tapped me on the nose. “The question was the most cherished memory, not the happiest.”

I sighed, realizing that there was indeed a difference between those two things that I seemed to have missed.

For me, a treasured memory was a happy one.

But that didn’t mean that everyone’s treasured memories would be what could be considered superficially happy.

Sometimes even the sad or bittersweet memories could be the ones you treasured the most.

“Next one?” he asked, and I nodded.

“When was the last time you cried, alone and in front of someone?”

I looked at him, waiting for his reply. After a few moments of silence he turned to stare at me and muttered an a-ha .

“Sorry, I forgot it was my turn. Last time I cried and someone saw it . . . damn, can’t remember. Like a year ago in front of Tara? Nothing more recent comes to mind. Last time I cried by myself was Saturday.”

The fact that as a guy he had no problem admitting his vulnerability like that was a huge green flag, but that didn’t mean I should have just gone and prodded into why he was crying in the first place.

But the reason I almost exploded in a barrage of questions was the fact that Saturday was the day he ghosted me, without offering any explanation other than a cute teddy bear and a mountain of apologies.

That should have been enough for me, and until now, it had been.

But now that this was in the open, my innate curiosity was going to eat me alive.

“Your turn,” he added, and I nodded, taking a deep breath to push all the questions that were on the tip of my tongue way down.

“Last time I cried with someone? It was with Melissa a few weeks ago. We cried a lot together after Lily left. Well, during and before she left too. Last time I cried alone was watching A Dog’s Purpose , maybe two weeks ago.”

“Oh, that movie killed me.”

“Right? It’s so beautiful. I begged my mom for a dog after that. We usually foster cats, though, so that was a no-go.” I sighed, remembering how swiftly my mom had shot down my repeated pleas for a puppy.

“I’m definitely getting a dog one day,” Noah said, and I nodded in agreement.

“Next,” I said, a smile on my face now that we were on a roll.

“What is your worst memory?”

My face dropped. “Seriously?”

Noah just laughed and shrugged. “I told you, I didn’t come up with these questions. They were already written.”

“Sure they were, in this mysterious journal . . .” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “Great date mood you’re setting, Casanova.”

Noah narrowed his eyes at me playfully, probably because of the nickname I’d borrowed. I let out a sigh and pursed my lips together.

“The day my grandma died. She’d spent the last few weeks in the hospital and I didn’t want to go see her.

I don’t know why. Maybe a part of me didn’t want to accept what was happening.

Or maybe I didn’t want to see her like that because it didn’t look like her.

” I bit down on my lip to try to stop my eyes from tearing up.

“So I just made excuses why I couldn’t go.

Like I had a headache. My cramps were superbad.

Or brought up that she didn’t remember me so why did it matter anyway?

My parents made me go finally, that particular day.

I was pacing outside of her room first because I felt so guilty, then I went to get some air, found myself on the roof of the building .

. . and then a boy I met gave me some harsh truths. ”

I glanced at Noah, wondering if saying this would be revealing too much.

“He said that if I couldn’t get over my own feeling of discomfort when someone who loved me needed me, then I didn’t deserve all the love I’d already received from that person.

That hurt. I went back into the room then, and spent the rest of the visitation time with her.

And even though she didn’t remember me exactly, god, she was so happy to see me.

She held my hand with such strength it was hard to believe it belonged to the frail woman in front of me.

She died that night. As if she’d been holding on just to see me one last time.

But those words he said haunted me for a long while.

” I finally finished my extremely long answer and looked up at Noah.

He was frowning in a way that seemed like he was lost in thought, but then he shook his head and focused his eyes, full of compassion and warmth, on me.

“I’m so sorry,” Noah said, voice quiet, as he reached out and took my hand into his.

“I don’t think you should listen to what some random guy told you. ”

Some random guy called Noah Archer . Only there was no way I would tell him that, not after I’d gotten to know him.

The words no longer seemed as malicious and mean as they had that day.

After all, the thing I’d really resented wasn’t his words.

It was the fact that they mirrored my own fears.

My own insecurities. My own thoughts. But it was easier to blame someone else for the harsh truth I was given.

“It’s okay, I don’t blame the boy anymore. Everyone loses someone they love, eventually,” I said, hoping I sounded more casual than I probably did. Noah looked away from me and swallowed without saying anything. “Uh, how about you?”

It took a few moments before he looked back, a sad smile on his face. “You kind of know already.”

Thinking through my Noah facts, it didn’t take long until I realized what he was referring to.

“Oh, the Jake thing,” I said, half question, half statement.

He nodded and sighed, looking away. “The Jake thing, yeah. A lot of stuff happened then. None of it good. That whole period, it changed everything.”

There was so much sorrow in his voice. It made it clear that it wasn’t just things that had happened, it was how they had changed him.

Looking at him now, he seemed lost, even just thinking of this.

There were layers to what had happened, parts he hadn’t shared yet.

Parts he might not ever share with me. And while before I probably would have tried to dig for more information, now all I wanted to do was make that vacant look leave his eyes.

Those empty eyes that made my stomach clench.

I used my free hand to take the bag with the remaining food and put it on the dashboard in front of me. Noah looked at me and frowned, probably confused about what I was doing.

Taking a deep breath, I entwined our fingers and then pulled myself closer to him, so that I was leaning against his side, and put my head on his shoulder.

“No more questions,” I muttered, squeezing his hand tightly.

Noah was quiet for a second before letting out a shaky breath. He squeezed my hand back.

“Wanna watch the movie?” he asked, and I nodded against his shoulder.

Even though I couldn’t see him, I heard him let out a soft chuckle before his body relaxed against mine. Then, when he probably thought I was immersed in the movie, he leaned slightly toward me.

And pressed a light kiss to the side of my head.