Tunnel Vision

“What are you doing here?” I ask him. I’m still standing outside of the store and he’s still sitting in that crappy blue car that’s parked out on the curb.

He kind of looks at me before rolling the window down. “Hey,” he says, his lips curling into a smile. “You’re Claire right? From the bridge?”

I only nod because he’s being so nice.

He laughs a little. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to see you again until tonight.”

I can’t help but to smile at the thought of him actually planning to show up. I run a hand through my hair as I shift my weight from one foot to the other. “Uh…” I start, not knowing how I’m going to finish. “Do you mind if I ask why you’re here?”

Noah shakes his head as he opens the door to the car and steps outside. He looks around a bit before crossing the short distance between us and claiming the spot to my right. He fold s his arms before nodding toward the scrapbook store. “My grandmother is in there. She said she wanted to catch up with an old friend.”

“Oh.” His grandmother was Charlotte. Charlotte who repeated her name as if I hadn’t already heard it already.

“Yeah. Did you see her? I noticed you just walked out of the store.”

I nod. “Yeah. She, uh…. She’s in there.”

It made me nervous, knowing that I was talking to him like this. I never really talked to anyone other than Darcy, and when I spoke with her I really only said a few words since she was so desperate to tell somebody about her boring, typical, teenaged lifestyle. It was simply boys this, parties that, drunken Saturday nights here, desperate hookups there. It was simple and I really didn’t have to pay attention in order to participate. In a way Darcy made me feel a little better about myself. She reminded me that there were people who were worse off than I was.

“Did it look like she would be a while?”

I shook my head. “It’s hard to say. I wasn’t paying too much attention.”

With Noah it was different. Even after a mere two minutes I could tell I would have to put some sort of effort into talking to him. I couldn’t get by on an “uh-huh” here and a “Hmm” there. I had to work my mouth into forming words and use my brain to come up with sentences. I had to respond. I had to be present. And, while it wasn’t hard to remember to breathe and to get myself from point “A” to point “B”, I didn’t have all that much experience in the friendship area, let alone the opposite sex.

All I had was Darcy, and we all know how big of a help she is.

“I guess I’m going to be here for a while,” Noah tells me, a small smile on his lips. He looks at me and his lips stay turned upward as he does so.

I don’t know what to say because I don’t know what to tell him. I guess it doesn’t help that I think he’s cute. Maybe that’s what’s got me feeling a little tongue tied.
“Hey. What do you say we go grab a slice of pizza or a coffee? Something to kill the time, you know? What’s good around here?”

I scratch the top of my head. “Uh… there’s a pizzeria a few blocks down. It’s not too bad.”
Noah looks back at the car and motions for me to hold on. He jogs to the driver’s seat and checks for the keys. Once he has them on hand he tells me he’ll be right back before walking into the shop.

I turn around and watch as he says something to his grandmother. She simply nods and gives his shoulder a small squeeze before taking the keys from him. Noah waves goodbye, saying something to Gretchen before he comes back outside.

“Okay. Now that that’s taken care of, how about some pizza?”