We Were Restless Things by Cole Nagamatsu

Author:Cole Nagamatsu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2020-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Noemi

Noemi had heard a violin in the woods once before, though she had then dismissed it as imagination.

She and Link had skipped prom. He’d purchased a small bouquet of bright pink tulips from the grocery store—even though he knew, after the Valentine’s Day debacle, they weren’t her favorite flower. Cesca and Matt, as well as Audrey and Diana, were present when he met her at her house. Noemi smiled in spite of herself when she took the bouquet. She refused to let her mother take pictures because they “weren’t even going to prom,” but Cesca snapped candids with her cell phone whether her daughter liked it or not.

They walked through the lupine field together. Noemi wore a two-piece dress with a sweetheart neckline, Link a pair of slacks rolled at the ankle to disguise that he was too tall for them. She removed her heels in the woods and stepped barefoot over tree roots. Together, they sat on the stone dock of the lake with their feet in the water. They ate food Link had made—some sort of avocado-stuffed sweet potato. Noemi had brought three cupcakes that she’d decorated to look like the raccoons he’d adopted.

When they danced, Noemi wondered if Link had set up music somewhere discreet—she heard what sounded like a violin—but he said he hadn’t. Fireflies weren’t a very common sight in Shivery, but there they were. The insects arrived even before sunset and glimmered faintly. Then it started to rain, and they took shelter under the trees.

“Hey, Noemi?”

“Hm?”

“What are we?”

“Stardust?”

In truth she was evading the subject, but it would not have been unlike Link to mean the question literally, so she hoped with this answer he’d let it drop.

“I meant what are you and I?” he asked. “As a couple. Or not a couple. I really like you, but I’m not sure how you feel.”

“I like things the way they are,” she said.

“Okay, but I don’t know what that is. That’s what I’m asking.” Their eyes met. He glanced down to her lips like he might kiss her, and she wasn’t sure how to suspend this moment so nothing would ever change.

“We’re friends.”

“And nothing else?”

“That’s just not what I want.” She frowned. In truth she didn’t know what she wanted, but saying so would only confuse him. She wanted things to stay the way they were. She wanted to revel in his adoration without offering any in return. She wanted to always feel the way she did now when she ran into him somewhere unexpected: suddenly safe and less alone. She wanted to open her locker door and find a forest built for her by someone decent, someone who thought about her all time, heart racing, throat tight. She wanted to give him whatever he needed in return, but she couldn’t. Link was wonderful, but if whatever she felt for him matched what he felt, wouldn’t she be happier now? Wouldn’t she know what should come next? Everything he made her feel was more about

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