Allyson In Between ✔︎

Noah | Deleted Scene 6

|photo by Michael from Unsplash|

My phone sucks. I can Google but when I get to the website, the screen freezes and the page won't...dammit. I drop my stupid phone in the console. I'm probably too late anyway. I should've looked up Faircrest's visiting hours before I drove my ass all the way up here.

"Noah?"

Ally.

I roll down my window and she smiles. Like this totally unguarded display of happiness. It's the way I used to feel every time she walked into French class but I kept it on lockdown. I was afraid to let anyone see how much I liked her.

"What are you doing out here?" I ask.

"I was walking Grace's friend to the parking lot and I saw your car. I had to say your name three times to get your attention."

Stupid phone. "Is it okay that I'm here?" I ask. "It's after 10:00."

"I think so," she says, looking at the front entrance. I've never been here at night before but I like it. The mansion is lit up like a grand hotel: spotlights on the red brick exterior and all those glowing windows. It looks like every single light is on. My dad would shit his pants if he had to pay this electric bill.

"Grace still has a visitor," Ally says. "She and her um, boyfriend are down by the lake."

Oh, right. "How was the party?"

"Short," she says. "It ended when I got there because Grace is mad at me. For some reason." Ally crosses her arms over her stomach. "Her friend tried to explain—that's why I walked out to her car but..." She shakes her head. "People are complicated."

"Yeah." Understatement.

Her eyebrows pull together and she glances at the mansion again, then back to me. "Do you want to come inside?"

"Uh...no, not really. Do you mind if we stay out here? Sit in my car for a minute?"

"I don't think I'm allowed to leave the grounds," she says, quick and sort of nervous.

"No, I mean we'll just sit here. In the parking lot." I take my keys out of the ignition and lay them on the dashboard.

"Okay," she says, slow. Like now I'm confusing her.

"I want to talk to you in private. And I think it would help me to say what I came to say if we could just stay out here?"

She nods and speed walks around the front of my car. It's all I can do to get the five boxes of Raisinets out of the passenger seat so she doesn't crush them.

"Did you come because of the message I sent?" she asks, inspecting the dashboard like she's never seen the inside of a car.

My heart thumps and the ache resonates. Like an echo I can feel instead of hear. Ally's never been inside my car. We weren't friends when I got my drivers license. Or when she got hers. We spent all that time talking about the places we'd go together when we finally got our freedom. But Ally doesn't drive anymore. I took that away from her.

"You can read what Allyson wrote about you if you'd like," she says, holding up her phone. "I have the Facebook app right here."

I have to repeat that sentence in my head a couple of times to make sure I heard what I think I heard. "Really? You'd let me read your private messages?"

"Um...yes," she says, less certain now. "It would be easier. Than trying to tell you everything I read." She blinks her eyes and lowers her hand to her lap. "Only if you want to."