Lena sat on the edge of the school fountain, her fingers tracing the patterns on the stone as she watched Ella and Noah talking near the lockers. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could tell from the way Ella tucked her hair behind her ear, and Noah smiled awkwardly that it was happening. The back-and-forth do-they-like-each-other-or-not situation. It was finally moving forward.
“You know, staring at them won’t speed things up,” Gabriel said, plopping down next to her.
Lena rolled her eyes. “I’m not staring.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “You totally are.”
Lena sighed. “I just…. I’ve been giving Ella advice for weeks. If they don’t figure it out soon, I’m gonna lose my mind.”
Gabriel laughed. “Yeah, Noah’s been the same way. He overthinks everything. It’s exhausting.” He stretched out his arms behind his head. “But hey, maybe once they sort things out, we can finally talk about something other than their feelings.”
Lena smirked. “Doubt it.”
They sat in comfortable silence for a while, watching their friends fumble through whatever relationship they had going on, but then Gabriel said something that caught her off guard.
“Noah’s actually been kind of stressed about the whole thing,” he admitted, his voice quieter now. “Not just because of Ella, but… you know, being Jewish and all.”
Lena turned to him. “What do you mean?”
Gabriel shrugged. “It’s a big part of his life. His family traditions, holidays, stuff that’s important to them. I don’t think he knows how to bring up that stuff with Ella. Like what if she doesn’t get it?”
Lena frowned. She had never thought about that. To her, Noah was just Noah, the quiet, thoughtful guy who clearly liked her best friend, but now she had realized it was a whole part of him she had never considered.
“I think Ella would care,” she said after a moment. “She might not understand everything but she’d try.”
“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “But sometimes it’s easier not to bring up the parts of yourself that make you different.”
Lena thought about that for a second. “Do you feel that way?”
Gabriel hesitated, then shrugged. “Sometimes.”
Something about the way he had made Lena feel prompted her to start seeing him differently for the first time. Gabriel was always a funny one, the guy who kept things light. But , right now, he wasn’t joking.
“You know,” Lena said, nudging him with her elbow, “I think you’re smarter than you let on.”
Gabriel grinned. “Don’t tell anyone I have a reputation to maintain.”
Lena laughed, but something had shifted. Maybe she had spent so much time focusing on the Ella and Noah story that she hadn’t realized she might be in the middle of her own.
And maybe just maybe Gabriel was part of it.
