"Noah, that was very rude of you," Grace admonished as she watched Gwen walk down the driveway. "I'm honestly surprised by your actions. She could have needed our help and all you could do was call her names."

He stared down the driveway after an angry Gwen. "What? That's what everyone called her. She knows it. And's it not as if she didn't get the last word, calling me Benji," he said, swatting at his neck. He didn't know why, but hearing the name so much in one night must have been bad for his health. He'd never been so uncomfortable in his life!

"And anyway, she's rich. What could she possibly need from us," he turned towards his mother only to find her gone. She appeared moments later, carrying his windbreaker jacket.

"Here," she said, throwing it at him.

"What's this for?"

"Go after her, Noah."

He stared blankly at his mother.

"I'm not joking, Benji," Grace said, purposefully using the name he hated.

"Ma," Noah groaned.

"If you don't bring her back I'm going to get everyone, your sisters, your father, and all your friends, to start calling you that. And don't think I can't or I won't. I will."

He saw the flare in his mother's eyes before she turned her back on him. It usually came only when she was either very angry or looking at his father, and since Dad wasn't around he could surmise that she was ticked.

"Fine," he said, pulling the jacket over his head. "But I will never forgive you for this, ma."

He stomped out onto the porch, making sure she heard him leaving. The only thing he heard was the door closing shut. "Great," he thought to himself, finishing with the last button on his coat. He looked up to see precious little Gwen Hotchkiss turn the corner at the end of the driveway. He shook his head in disbelievement.

Sure, his friends had always tried to get with her but he'd known better. Gwen was high society. She was the kind of girl a guy would expend all his energy to please only to receive the boot when she'd had enough attention. Those periods usually came and went depending on where Ethan Crane was. Deciding he'd better hurry if he was to catch up with her, he started jogging.

Turning the end of the driveway, he saw her walking towards what looked like a vehicle in the distance.

"Gweny," he called out, knowing she hated the name. He saw her body stiffen in disapproval, but she never stopped walking...or hobbling as it looked. Breaking out into a run, he caught up with her in no time.

"Come on now, Gwen. Can't old buddies joke around?"

"I have never associated myself with the likes of you," came her angry voice. "And I never will."

Noah shrugged. "That's fine with me, but if I don't take you back to the inn, people are going to start calling me by my kiddie name courtesy of my mom."

Gwen stopped, turning to look at him. Though he couldn't really see her face, he knew from the way she currently held herself that something was wrong.

She saw him staring at her and it made her skin crawl. "Well Benji, you should just get used to it."

Noah winced. "Okay, I deserved that. Let's just make a deal, alright? You stop calling me that and I won't call you by your nickname."

"First of all, its not my nickname, just a name immature creatons like yourself use. Second of all, I don't ever plan to see you again to call you by any name."

Oh, come on, Noah thought to himself. He almost rolled his eyes, a practice his little sister Jessica had somehow passed up to him. "Fine," he said, thinking it was best to just play by her rules. God only knows, that was the only way she thought anything could be done. He looked over to the left at the car parked by the road. "Is that yours?"

"That's none of your concern," she said in that annoyingly snotty tone before she began to move towards the car.

"Well, if it's broken maybe I can fix it. I took Auto my Senior year at Harmony High." When he received no answer, he looked back towards the Inn. If he just left her out here, his mother wouldn't let him back into his room, much less invite him home for those great meals she cooked. He didn't even want to think about the name thing.

Noah followed Gwen, walking past her to open the door of the little red sports car. Figures.

"Hey! What are you doing," Gwen screached.  She hurried her steps to the car, but he had already popped the hood and was looking under it.

"I'm trying to help," came his mumbled voice.

Gwen opened her mouth to tell him it was just a lack of gasoline that had causd her car to stop, but thought better of it. "Well..." If he wanted to waste his time getting dirty trying to fix a problem a little gasoline would solve, who was she to complain? She walked beside him, looking over his shoulder into the cavity of her car.

"Do you see what's wrong," she asked in the most distressed voice she could venture.

Noah scooted back, unknowingly knocking into her. He immediately reached out a hand to steady.

"Would you stop doing that," she said, wriggling out of his grasp.

He smiled. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you like it."

"As if."

He shrugged. "You're probably right. You never were interested in anyone but your one and only Ethan Crane. I swear, the two of you must have been connected at the hip."

"You know nothing about our relationship. I don't even know who you are."

"I wouldn't expect you to, Gweny. Geez. You only see what you want to see. Always have and probably always will." Noah broke thier gaze looking back to the car. "I couldn't find anything wrong except a little low on the wiper fluid. The car's in pretty good shape."

Gwen didn't hear him. She was still stuck on the fact that he seemed to think he knew her so well when she couldn't even remember him. "Did we date," she asked him.

"Hell no," came his reply, his eyes sweeping over to her. "Like I said, I knew better. Unlike Thomas, and Derreck, and Greg. Then there was Vick, and Steven, Paul, and his brother Jack. You messed Jack up good."

Jack, she wondered silently. She ran the name through her mind, along with the others, trying to remember anyting. "You don't mean Jack Sullivan," she asked, coming up with the only person she could remember with the name.

Noah smiled again. "The one and only. Those Sully boys were ga-ga over you. When you dumped Paul after Ethan came back from his adventures overseas, Jack was already making plans for your boyfriend's next trip out of town. He waited like a sitting duck for the minute Ethan left and swooped in for the kill. I actually thought the two of you would make it. But sure as the sun comes up every morning, you dumped him the second Ethan set foot back in Harmony." Noah shook his head, walking around to the front of the car. He looked in at the instrument panel, seeing the gas gage on empty.

"You're out of gas," he told her, swinging his head out of the low vehicle. "But I'm sure you knew that and figured I should get all dirty and sweaty trying to find a problem, right?"

Gwen was taken aback. She still couldn't get over what he'd told her about Jack Sullivan. She remembered they had started going out right after another one of Ethan's world excursions. And she clearly remembered the day they had broken up. Ethan had come home that morning. She'd immediately called Jack and told him it was over.

"... get some gas at the service station down the road. Or, I could just have my dad bring some on his way home." Noah looked at Gwen. She wasn't even paying attention to him, apparently stuck in her own world. Figures.

"Okay, then," he said, a bit louder.

Gwen blinked, returning her thoughts to the present. "I'm sorry. What did you say," she asked.

"I said," he emphasized the word, "my dad can get you some gas on his way home. I'll just call him when we get back to the inn." He started walking back towards the house, not faulting himself if she didn't follow.

She watched him go. It angered her that he knew so much about her when she couldn't even remember his face. It irked her that he seemed to have such great insight to the type of person she was, though he possibly couldn't know what her life entailed. Not seeing that she had much of a choice, she followed him back to the house.

[b a c k]   [n e x t]