~Saturday January 15th~

Just as I sit back into my couch the doorbell rings, causing me to stand right back up. So much for a few minutes of relaxation before Noah gets here, I think to myself. I had assumed that he'd be here a little after three - which is when I told him I'd be home - but it is three o'clock on the dot when I open the front door to let him in.

"Hey, come on in," I say politely when I see his oddly nervous looking expression. I notice him subtly take a deep breath before the nervousness fades away and the normal confident, mildly cocky Noah is back.

"I know I came here to be tutored, but I thought we could go somewhere else instead," he says with a growing smirk.

"Where?" I ask, confused.

"It's a surprise," he responds with mischief sparking in his eyes. I furrow my eyebrows in thought. At this point I'm pretty positive that Noah is over the whole locker incident and isn't going to drive me into a dark forest to kill me, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have something up his sleeve. On the other hand, I really didn't feel like doing French homework anyway. "Don't you trust me," he says when he notices my hesitation. I meet his eyes and search for sincerity, finding child-like hope and joy just begging me to say yes. I hold his gaze, waiting for him to get impatient and annoyed, waiting for him to give up, but he doesn't.

"Okay," I say, not being able to hold back a small smile at the way his face lights up.

"Let's go," he says turning away from the door and gesturing for me to follow him to his car. We walk up to his black Jeep and I'm surprised when he opens up the passenger side door for me. Sure, Noah and I have gotten over all of the arguments we've had, but I never expected him to become a gentleman.

"Thanks," I say softly, hating that I feel myself blushing slightly. He gets in on the driver's side and starts the car, smoothly pulling out of my driveway. "Are you going to tell me where we're going?" I say after a minute of comfortable silence.

"Nope," Noah says smiling slightly but not taking his eyes off the road.

"Will you tell me if I guess correct?"

"Nope."

"Can I have a hint?"

"Do you know what 'surprise' means?" He says looking over at me.

"Yes," I respond laughing, "I just don't like them." We're quiet again, but it's not an awkward silence. Instead of feeling like I desperately need to think of something to say to continue the conversation, I feel relaxed in the silence of his presence next to me. I simply glance out the window, watching the clouds in the sky and wondering if it will snow later, listening to the soft sound of the car.

"How was the audition?" Noah asks after a few minutes.

"Good. It felt good," I respond, truly feeling content with the audition.

"When do you know what you got?"

"Monday. They put it out around noon, but obviously everyone is at school then. Luckily I go straight from school to the studio on Mondays though, so I'll get to see the cast list earlier than most people."

"Cool." He pulls into a Target parking lot, choosing a spot far away from the door. "This is not our final destination," he says when I give him a confused look. "We have to walk the rest of the way."

"So... are we going to a park?"

"Nope."

"Ice cream?"

"Nope."

"Some other kind of restaurant?"

"Are you hungry?" Noah says, amused.

"That's besides the point. Are we-"

"Even if you guess right I'm just going to say 'nope' again." I pout, and he says, "Why don't we start walking. The sooner we start, the sooner we'll get there."

"Fine," I say, opening my door and quite literally hopping out of his car, considering it's much higher off the ground than I am used to.

"Is it far?" I ask when we are walking next to each other on the sidewalk.

"Nope."

"...is it close?"

"Nope."

"Oh, come on!" I exclaim in annoyance, only causing Noah to laugh at me.

"It's not close, it's very close," Noah says, attempting to ease my annoyance. I roll my eyes at him, before realizing this hint is crucial to figuring out where we are going. I look around, searching for a location that fits the description. Of course, I have no description to work with, so it could be anything at this point. For all I know, there isn't a surprise at all. Just the 'fun' of the suspense, which I don't find as fun as an actual destination.

I glance around. He's taken us into the city, so cars drive along the dirty snow filled road, causing the distant sound of honking. Small trees line the sidewalk, old Christmas lights still hung up but turned off since it's only the afternoon. People bustle past us, occasionally causing either Noah or myself to bump into each other, our arms lightly touching.

"I still have no idea," I admit, sighing in defeat.

"I'll give you one more hint," Noah says looking down at me, causing me to eagerly meet his eyes as we pause at a corner.

"What?" I ask, excited to figure this out. Noah simply looks back forward and walks around the corner. Confused slightly, I follow him, and gasp when I see what must have been the surprise. I look up and across the expanse of a large brick building, the windowless wall completely covered in a beautiful mural. "Swan Lake!" I recognize it immediately. A ballerina in a white tutu, her leg in a high attitude to the back, her back arched, and her arms over her head - one of the most well known poses of the ballet. She is painted across most of the building, with a beautiful nighttime landscape behind her. "Oh my god, it's beautiful! How did I not know this was here?" I had ran up to the mural, leaving Noah behind, but now I look back at him to find that he's already watching me.

"It's new. I saw them finishing it up when I was driving through a couple of days ago."

"This is amazing. This would be a great spot for dance pictures, I should come here next time I do a photo shoot," I say, more thinking out loud than actually talking to Noah.

"Why wait?" I look up at Noah, confused. "I'll take your picture now."

"I'm not exactly dressed for it," I say, looking down at the sweatshirt and leggings I threw on when I got home, along with my dirty white converse.

"I think you look fine."

"Well... okay. Can you take it? Do a burst so I can pick the best one."

"Sure," Noah says taking out his phone, causing me to stop from pulling my own out of my pocket. I had assumed he would take it on my phone so I would already have the pictures, but he was faster than me. Noah goes to the edge of the sidewalk and crouches down, squinting slightly while looking at the phone. "I can't see the whole thing, I'm gonna cross the street." As he crosses, I position myself in front of the wall. I decide I'm going to mimic the painting by doing the same pose, so I stand below and slightly behind the girl in the picture.

"Ready?" I say to Noah from across the street, having to raise my voice slightly.

"I'll tell you go when there aren't any cars coming," he responds, crouching down again. I get myself ready and wait for his cue. "Go!" I step onto one leg and kick the other one behind my head, letting my knee bend and bringing my arms up. I smile so my face looks pleasant, and hear a satisfying crack as my back folds in half and the bones pop. I stumble out of it, not caring since the photo is already over. Noah stands and checks for cars before jogging across the street.

"Can I see?" I ask, but he's already handing the phone to me. I scroll through the pictures and pick the perfect one from the height of the attitude to keep. "Perfect," I say softly.

"Did that... hurt your back?"

"What?"

"The cracking - I heard it from across the street."

"Wait really? Wow. No, it felt good." Noah gives me a skeptical look, and I assure him again that I'm fine. I look back down at his phone, zooming in on different spots to ensure that I like it and don't want to take another. "Can you send that to me?" I say looking up from the phone, immediately seeing him already studying my face with a weird look. "What?"

"Nothing."

"No, there's definitely something. You're looking at me weird. Is there something on my face?"

"No, no. It's nothing," Noah says smiling softly.

"Tell me!" I say, handing him back his phone.

"Fine," he admits. "That's the first time I've seen you smile - like really smile - since whatever happened on Wednesday." I furrow my eyebrows in confusion. I have definitely smiled plenty of times since then, even in the past hour.

"You mean for the picture?"

"No, when you first saw the mural."

"That's not true, I've been smiling plenty," I reply stubbornly.

"You've been smiling, yes, but... what do people say - it didn't reach your eyes. Or something like that," Noah says, looking down at his shoes. I frown again. Have I really let Riley's situation get me that sad? I thought I was doing okay, at least on the outside. Nobody else has noticed.

I watch as a small white snowflake lands on the tip of my nose, just barely in sight. I look up at the sky and notice that Noah looks up at the same time, also noticing the flurries. He looks back down at me, and I look at him too.

"How about ice cream? To get away from the storm. It doesn't look like it will last that long," he says with a smirk.

"Sure," I respond. "But isn't ice cream kind of the opposite thing from what we should be getting in a snowstorm? Shouldn't we get some hot chocolate?" I say as we begin walking down the sidewalk, I assume in the direction of an ice cream parlour.

"Hey, you suggested it first."

"Well yeah, but that was more theoretical. I kind of figured we weren't actually getting ice cream."

"Who cares. I think it's a good idea," Noah says as our shoulders bump due to another pedestrian. After a few minutes of calm silence, I realize that I have no idea where I'm going and I never made sure that Noah did.

"Do you know how to get there?"

"Yes. Did you think I was just walking you around the city with no sense of direction?" He responds with a highly amused expression.

"Well I don't know where we're going, I just realized I was blindly trusting you," I say, shrugging my shoulders and gesturing with my arms.

"You can trust me. I've got this." He bumps into my side, this time very intentionally and not due to a pedestrian. And may I add, quite aggressively.

"I know," I say plainly before shoving him back harder. I'm not sure how, but I do know that I can trust Noah now. He didn't do much to earn my trust, but at the same time, he did.

He doesn't bother to shove me back, but chuckles to himself instead. I am well aware that he's laughing at me because I was barely able to move him out of his walking path, while he bumped me to the other side of the sidewalk.

"We're here," he says, causing me to look up from gazing down at the concrete.

"Yay!" I say, sounding much more like a child than I had wanted. He opens the door and steps aside to let me in and I mutter a small thanks, too excited about getting ice cream to become flustered at his gesture. I order chocolate chip cookie dough and he gets chocolate peanut butter, both of us getting small cones - which turn out to look much more like larges. We thank the man who served us and pick a table by the big window at the front of the store, so that we can watch the snow.

Across the street is the park, a small stretch of grass with scattered trees and benches, and a small play set. I watch as kids - probably around ten years old - play in the falling snow, catching some on their tongue and pretending to make snow angels, even though the grass is still visible. Though it's January, we don't get much snow in Rhode Island. Enough to play in, but not enough for large piles to collect on the ground for too long.

"Looks like fun," Noah remarks from across from me. I catch his eye, and a spark lights up an idea in my mind. I look up at the sky, noting that the snow has not lightened up at all - only gotten heavier. I look down at my outfit, water already seeping through my shoes onto my socks. I look back up to Noah and see one of his eyebrows raised in question of what I'm thinking about.

"Screw it," I say, deciding that life is way too short to pretend like teenagers can't play in the snow too. I stand up from my chair and rush out the door, taking my ice cream with me. I quickly cross the street when there are no cars, and run past the kids to the middle of the park.

"Teresina!" I hear Noah calling my name from behind me and stop running. "What are you doing?" He says when he's caught up to me.

"Playing in the snow," I state, as if it were an obvious fact. I spread my arms out on either side of me, closing my eyes and sticking my tongue out as I tilt my head up to the falling snow. I move in slow circles, not caring at all that I definitely look like an idiot. I don't care in the slightest right now. I couldn't care any less if I tried. I've forgotten about school. About dance. About the audition. About Riley. About the homework I should do when I get home. None of that is important right now, because I'm playing in the snow like a little kid. And I love it.

I feel the cone in my hand release from my grip and immediately assume I've dropped it, but when I open my eyes to check I see Noah running away from me, two cones topped with ice cream in his hands.

"Hey! That's not fair! I had my eyes closed!" I exclaim as I run after him. But even still, the only care I have in the world is that Noah just licked my cone, and now it's got his germs all over it.

~~~~~

Written 7/9/18, Published 7/15/18

Hello again! This chapter is really long (2500 words) and was very exciting and fun for me to write, so I hope you enjoy it too! The chapter for next Sunday has already been written, so an update is guaranteed for next week too.
I'm currently using cellular on my phone to update this instead of WiFi on my laptop because we just had a thunderstorm and lost power, but I really wanted to update.
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Thank you for reading!!!