Chapter Twenty

                                    

                                          
The Edison took us out of the student parking lot, all on its own. Intellectually, I knew it was going to happen, but to actually see a car drive by itself while the person in the driver's seat sat back in his seat, pushing his hands through his hair, was bizarre.
                          
"This is trippy as fuck," I said as the Edison stopped at a red light, left turn signal ticking.
                          
"Isn't it?" 
                          
"How reliable is it?"
                          
"Reliable enough that I can do this." 
                          
Noah lunged forward and kissed me aggressively, like he knew what he wanted. I ran my fingers down his back, acknowledging each vertebrae and grazing the slight curve of his waist. My brain noted the differences between his body and Chloe's, marvelling at how I could be with her for years and think I knew what it was like to want someone, and then spend a few hours with Noah and realize I hadn't known shit. 
                          
I wanted him straddling my lap, grinding down hard. I wanted—
                          
And then my brain realized exactly what it was wanting and had a mini freak-out. Luckily, Noah broke the kiss before I could do something stupid, like push him away.
                          
"I didn't put autopilot on so we could make out." He said it like he was reprimanding himself. "I put it on so we could talk."
                          
The Edison was rocketing along the Upper Levels Highway, headed north. The Upper Levels ran through North and West Vancouver, eventually becoming the Sea to Sky Highway—a long ribbon of winding road that clung to the mountains above Howe Sound. If we were driving north for an hour and twenty minutes, there was only one place we were going: Whistler, a ski resort town up in the mountains. My stomach fluttered. 
                          
"So..." Noah started. "Tell me something about you that I don't know."
                          
"I think the only thing you do know about me is what it's like to kiss me," I teased.
                          
He blushed. I loved that I had caused the band of pinkness that ran across his cheeks and nose.
                          
"Why don't you ask me questions?" I said.
                          
As if it had been on the tip of his tongue for a long, long time, Noah blurted out, "Did you always know you like guys?"
                          
"Um... you're actually my first."
                          
He blinked. "You were completely straight until, like, last week?"
                          
"If it's any consolation, I was immediately not-straight when I first saw you."
                          
Noah thought about that for a second. I could almost hear the machine of his mind. The obvious fact that we were each other's match loomed, so obvious.
                          
To distract him, I asked, "How about you? Did you always know?"
                          
"As early as my first memory."
                          
I was pretty sure my first memory was being forced to sit in the "naughty chair" in preschool. I tried to imagine knowing anything substantial about myself from that early on, but I couldn't. Except maybe that I liked Jell-O and thought dump trucks were the coolest thing ever.
                          
"Does your family know?" I asked.
                          
"I've never told them but my dad is my dad, so he definitely knows."
                          
"What does that mean?"
                          
Noah gestured to the car we sat in, that was driving at a hundred kilometres per hour along the winding highway all by itself.
                          
"He's... very smart," Noah said. "I mean, he made this. And Temptr."
                          
There it was, the elephant in the room. I wanted to open Pandora's box and ask him about it, but we were driving to Whistler and we'd have to drive back later. What if our fledgling relationship was fractured by that conflict? I didn't really want to wade into that.