Page 49 of Going the Distance
“Like you’re any better. You get jealous every time I mention that I’m hanging out with Levi, just the two of us. I know you do. Is it one rule for you and another for me? Like I’m not allowed to be cagey about hearing a conversation like that with some bitch you—”
“Amanda’s not a bitch.”
“Stopdefending her. Stoptalkingabout her. I don’t want to hear how nice she is.” I was practically screaming now, and I wassoglad that nobody else was home. “Do you haveanyidea how humiliating that was for me?Everyonesaw that picture online.Everyoneknew, and they assumed that we must’ve broken up.”
“I know, Elle, and I’m sorry, but you have to believe me when I tell you—again—that nothing happened. And nothing is happening or is going to happen. I don’t know how else I can say it. Amanda doesn’t mean anything to me like that; she’s just a friend.”
“A friend you didn’t tell me about!”
“You’re the last person who should be getting jealous of a girl I’m friends with,” he snapped at me. “Look at you and Lee!”
“That’s different—you know it is.”
He scoffed, shaking his head. “And Levi? Do you tell me every time you hang out with him?”
I grit my teeth. What did Levi have to do with any of this?
“We have lab together, classes together. It’s intense. It’s…You wouldn’t understand.”
Maybe it was a fair comment, but it felt like a stab in the stomach. What, like I was too stupid? Like he was so much better now he was in college? Like I wouldn’t get it, butAmandawould?
“Why were you on the phone to her?” I asked, quiet now. The yelling had taken it out of me, and so had his last comment. “What was that about? Because if it’s not what it sounds like, then please, please, just tell me.”
Noah opened his mouth to answer, but words appeared to fail him, and he faltered, looking away. He closed his mouth, defiant, not answering me.
I shook my head. I wanted to believe him, but when I closed my eyes I could see that dumb photo: her arms around him, his around her, her lips on his cheek, leaving an imprint of ruby-red lipstick, the drunken grin on his face.It’s intense,he’d said. What did that even mean?
Nothing good, judging by the way I felt right now.
“Please, Noah. Just tell me the truth.”
All I got was silence.
Then, he sucked his teeth, took a breath…and kept saying nothing.
I watched him. The way his shoulders sagged, the torn expression on his face, the fact that whatever the hell was going on, he couldn’t talk to me about it—wouldn’ttalk to me about it. The longer I waited, the worse it got. My mind raced, picturing them in compromising positions, imagining them laughing together, cozied up in some cute little coffee shop or on the quad or in his dorm, or…
My whole body felt weak, and my head felt heavy. Noah closed his eyes, refusing to look at me.
And suddenly the rift between us wasn’t just a small crack we could patch up with a surprise visit home or more video calls. It was a chasm so deep and so wide I didn’t even know who I was looking at right now. This new, mature Noah, who refused to talk to me and kept secrets from me was a stranger, and everything I’d been worried about since he’d left for college.
I heard the next words come out of my mouth as if somebody else were talking. My voice was dead, flat.
“I don’t think that this is working out.”
I counted four heartbeats of silence. Noah was holding his breath—I knew, because I was, too, and it was so silent between us that I should’ve been able to hear him breathing. All the tension, the anger, even the pleading had drained from his face, leaving his complexion ashen. I couldn’t look him in the eye, so I focused on the frayed hems of his jeans and where a loose thread brushed his bare foot instead.
“What?”
He sounded like he was being strangled. I winced.
“I can’t do this any longer.”
“Do what?”
“This.Us.I can’t do it. I hate being away from you all the time. And I hate knowing that you’re at college with all these other girls, smarter, prettier girls, who are probably throwing themselves at you, and I…I just…”
“You don’t trust me,” he filled in, every syllable carefully controlled.
