Under the Cornerstone (29 page)

I spiral into a panic attack and hide out in her stairwell once again until it passes. I wait for my breathing to even out and the tingling in my hands and feet to disappear.

Shit, Noe, I’m so fucking sorry.

I sit against a brick wall in the stairwell and think about the last fifteen years I’ve spent with her. I was mad at the fucking world until the day someone put glue in her hair. For some reason, I had to have her from the moment I saw her. I’ve always had some higher calling to protect her. I can’t fucking breathe without her.

My relationship with Noe was platonic through the first years of our friendship. I’ve tried to recall when it changed, at least for me. I’ve tried to pinpoint exactly when I knew it was more. A memory from eleventh grade overwhelms my mind.

I’m hanging out on top of the school roof with my guitar in my lap when Noe, Rich, Ryan, and Jimmy loudly enter the space from the door at my back. I’m having a shit day. My biology teacher is a cunt and when I pointed out she made a mistake, she sent me to the principal’s office for being disrespectful. Luckily, Mr. Taylor and I understood each other. He sent me to the roof with my guitar in hand with instructions to stay out of sight for the rest of the day. He actually laughed when I told him how amateur my teacher’s mistake was, and agreed, as a previous science teacher, that I was correct.

Fuck her.

My four friends approach quickly.

“Fuck Mr. Peterson,” Jimmy says with an angry scowl on his face.

“Yeah, Peterson is going to fuck your grade,” Ryan laughs.

“He hates me. Noely wrote that fucking paper and he only gave me a ‘B’. We all know she writes ‘A’ papers. I’ve been telling you he’s got it out for me.”

Noely laughs and I turn around to see her in a long black cotton dress that slightly flows when she walks.

“Maybe it’s because he caught your dick in his daughter’s mouth last year,” Noe chuckles.

“That’s discrimination!” Jimmy yells.

“Against your dick?” Rich asks with amusement.

“Yeah, and against his daughter for being a slut. I can’t help she shoved me against a wall and unzipped my pants. Was I supposed to tell her to stop when she pulled my dick out and shoved it in her mouth?” Jimmy asks.

“You have a point,” I join their conversation as they near.

When Noely reaches me, I notice how the gold pieces of her blonde hair sparkle in the sun. She smiles, pulls her dress up, and sits down behind me on the wooden pallet I occupy. She wraps her legs around me from behind and then her arms slide around my chest and pull me to her.

“Heard you pissed off Mrs. Brantwell,” she whispers.

“She’s a bitch. I corrected her, so she sent me to Mr. Taylor. He sent me up here,” I answer.

As the boys continue to fuck with Jimmy, she whispers into my ear, “No panic attack?”

“No. Just pissed off.”

She lays her head against my back, “Then play me something.”

Just like that, my world was right again. My day was no longer shit. She’s always had that effect on me. Her presence is so soothing and it helps me find peace. So, I play her one of her favorite Counting Crows songs, and listen to her hum along with me. She can’t see me, but I smile the entire time, while she holds onto me tightly listening to me play one of her favorites.

When the lunch bell rings, she tries to leave. She isn’t one to skip class or ever get in trouble. I have no idea how she’s managed that over the years since she’s our friend. But when the bell rings, I realize I can’t wait over two hours for her to be done with classes. I want her here. I want her against me. My heart began racing the moment she touched me.

“Don’t go,” I tell her and grip her ankles so she can’t unlatch herself from me.

“What’s wrong Johnny?”

I offer her a shrug, but think, fuck if I know. I don’t want you to go. Don’t leave me today. Stay with me for the rest of the day so I can keep feeling this way.

“Okay,” she relents to my surprise, not forcing me to voice my thoughts.

“We’re skipping,” I announce.

“Fuck yeah!” Ryan says and we all file off the roof with Noely’s arm tucked into mine and my guitar firmly gripped in my other hand.

We sneak from campus and once we’re out of sight and in the sun, I smile down at her. I hand my guitar off to Rich and reach out for her hand. As we walk through Brooklyn I continue to randomly spin her around as if we are dancing. I just want to see that smile that lights up my world. I want to see the way her blue eyes light up when she’s happy. I like the way her dress twirls at the bottom when I spin her, and I like finding her eyes back on me when I complete the turn.

For the rest of the day, she stays by my side. I touch her more than I should have, more than I ever have in the past. I know touching her would become my addiction if I didn’t stop. I kiss her forehead and breathe in the way she smells before I tell her goodnight at her room.

“Night, Johnny,” she whispers.

She kisses my cheek, smiles at me with that fucking dimple in her cheek, and walks away.

I stand outside her room, telling myself to man up and go inside after her. I should at least kiss her so I know what it feels like. I should touch her so I can know… know what?

Fuck.

I run my hands through my hair and pull on the ends in frustration.

Go to bed, man. Do not fuck with her. You’ll lose her forever.

That was when it happened. That’s the day I fell in love with her. Maybe it had been there all along, but that was the day I knew for sure, and I have spent all these years since telling myself not to touch her. I’d been right all along not to touch her. I knew then I’d lose her.

I step out of the stairwell just as a delivery boy comes up her hallway.

Please be for Noely.

I sigh and look up to thank whoever is up there when I see him walk past her neighbor’s door. She opens the door and looks between both of us as if she’s wondering if I orchestrated this with the poor guy. She shoves a twenty-dollar bill at the boy, and grabs her food.

"Noely, we need to talk," I say.

She rolls her eyes at me and slams the door in both of our faces.

"Noe, I'm serious."

Goddammit! I kick the door in anger.

Please open the door. Please talk to me.

"If you break it you buy it!" she yells from her apartment.

"Open the door, Noles," I say harsher than I should.

She doesn’t answer and I don’t hear her moving around in there.

"Fuck!" I shout and slam my palm into the door.

I pace the hall for a few minutes before I throw my hands in the air and decide to spill it all through the door.

“Noe?” I call out to her and wait, but I never get a response. “Fuck.”

I turn and slide down her door until I’m sitting on the ground against it.

“I love you. I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you for so fucking long. You’re the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing when I go to sleep at night. The thing is, my entire day is full of you. I don’t just think of you twice a day. I see things that remind me of you all day. No matter where I go, I see something that makes me think of you. Sometimes when you’re in the same room with me, I can’t breathe. My chest hurts. I like when you don’t know I’m in the room, so I can look at you without you knowing. I can look at you the way I really look at you without you seeing straight through me.

The other night… Fuck, Noe. I’ve tried not to do that for over a decade. I’m so fucking afraid I’ll lose you, that I fought this shit I’m feeling for so long I don’t know what it feels like not to fight against the shit. I have to keep myself from touching you in the ways that come so fucking natural to me. I have to remind myself to let you go after a certain amount time when you hug me. Have you ever noticed you’re the one that always hugs me? I couldn’t reach out to you on my own, because if I ever saw one tiny sliver of spark in your eyes I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.

Something else I’ve never told you is that I have panic attacks over you. It’s not your fault. Since I was a kid and your mom died… when you weren’t at school that day I knew something was wrong. My mom left me and I found you, but the thought of losing you was my undoing. It always will be. Don’t you get it? I can’t fucking lose you because the thought of it sends me into hysteria. I’ve spent fifteen years being afraid of losing you, and I’ve tormented myself for almost the same amount of time with this shit I feel inside.

I didn’t mean for it to happen the other night. I really didn’t. God, please don’t think I took advantage of you. It just happened. I spent all those years locking that shit up tight, and then I had one little slip. I fucked up. I know that, but I can’t lose you. You’re my constant, my fucking light. You’re the only way I can breathe. I’ll lock my shit back up if that’s what you want. I’ll do it for you.

I didn’t skip out on you that night. I woke up and you were sleeping. I was so scared that I’d lost you. Not in a million years did I ever think I’d wake up next to you like that. I felt a panic attack coming on, so I slid into your stairwell so I didn’t wake you. I called Rich and he came over to calm me down. He wanted me to leave for an hour or so and calm down before you woke up. I went back to his place and ended up drinking too much. I woke up the next morning with Jimmy throwing me across a room into a wall. He picked up my phone because his phone was dead. He saw the pictures I took for proof that night. Dumbass thought I did it, but once he realized I didn’t he made call after call until he found out it was Tony. Then he searched half of Brooklyn until he found him. I tried to stop him. I begged him not to do anything to Tony because I knew you didn’t want anyone knowing. I didn’t tell anyone, Noe. I kept my promise to you. I didn’t tell them anything.

I went after Jimmy when Rich called and said they’d found Tony. I was hoping he’d get in one good lick and let it go. Jimmy showed Tony the pictures I took of you and that motherfucker smiled at them. I lost my shit, baby. I lost it. I told you a long time ago, nobody puts their hands on you and he smiled about what he’d done. If the situation were reversed, and some bitch clawed me up, how would you feel? What would you do? I didn’t mean to hit him, it just happened, and well, I guess you know the rest.”

I pause and press my ear to her door.

Nothing.

I pray she’s sitting on the other side of it and that she hears every word. Maybe she just needs time to process it.

After an hour of waiting to hear something, anything, I get nothing. I move to the wall across from her door and lay my head against it so I can see her when she opens the door. My phone rings a few minutes later.

“Yeah?” I answer without looking at the screen.

“Where are you?” Rich asks.

“Waiting for Noe to open the door,” I say and I know he can hear the sadness in my voice.

“Shit, man.”

“What’s up?” I ask, hoping he’ll get my mind off of her for a few minutes.

“Ryan picked up the Village Voice today. They named Noely in Leo’s harebrained scheme to turn us into white knights.”

“Can they do that?!!” I yell.

“I don’t know. I thought victims had rights, but man… I’m pretty sure Leo leaked that shit. Noe probably doesn’t know about the article though. You may want to give her a head’s up before she finds out from someone else.”

“Fuck!!!” I scream.

“Let me tell her,” Rich suggests.

“She’ll only hate you too,” I reply.

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“It sure feels like she does.”

I hang up moments later and drift off to sleep for a few hours.