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Even though it had been nearly three months since Noah Marshall’s name was cleared for Jazmyn Park’s murder, it was still a surreal experience to walk freely out in the open. His natural instincts to duck away whenever he saw someone coming were still there, and it never failed to make Jaz laugh.
“You think you can disappear under the table?” she’d say, to which Noah would usually quip back, “You still try to disappear into the wall whenever things get uncomfortable.” Jaz never had anything to say to that, because in truth, he was right.
It was a normal Tuesday morning, and Jaz and Noah were visiting the Westchester coffee shop before attending their GED classes at the community college, just like they always did. Noah ordered his usual almond milk coffee along with a blueberry muffin, and Jaz ordered her usual chocolate cookie cappuccino with extra pumps of sugar because, according to her, it was the one thing so far that she could almost taste.
But there was something different about today. After Jaz set down her drink at their corner table, she paused instead of sitting. “I think I need to go to the bathroom.”
Noah lifted an eyebrow. “You think?”
“Yeah…” Jaz nodded, slowly at first and more confident after a few moments. “Yep, I need to pee. I’ll be right back.” She gave Noah a quick peck before spinning around and hurrying to the women’s restroom.
One side of his mouth pulled into a smile, and he shook his head. They’d been living together for a couple weeks by now, and he’d grown used to Jaz’s peculiarities. It was like she was still trying to remember how to be a person, and he was happy to be there with her every step of the way.
As he leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee, he noticed a small group of girls from across the cafe, whispering to each other and looking in his direction. He glanced over his shoulder to see what they could be looking at, but he was in the corner. There wasn’t anything behind him that they could be looking at, unless they were just extremely fascinated by the poster depicting a cow and coffee beans.
He turned back around, and they looked away. Noah’s brow furrowed with confusion. What the hell were they looking at?
He took another sip of his coffee just as one of the girls got to her feet and approached his table. She looked to be about his age, maybe a few years younger. She was tall and skinny with straight blonde hair. She smiled at him when she reached him.
“Hi,” she said.
Noah glanced behind her to the girls at her table, and they dissolved into half-stifled giggles. “Uh… hi,” he said.
“So, I just have to ask,” the girl started. “You’re Noah Marshall, right?”
Noah’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Um, yeah. How did you—?”
Before he could even react, the girl whipped out her phone. “Would you mind if I took a selfie with you?”
“...What?”
“You’re Noah Marshall, from that crime that was unsolved for over four years! Everyone thought you killed that girl, Jazmyn Park, but me and my friends, we didn’t. And when we heard that your name was cleared and you were back in Westchester, well, we had to come see.”
Noah just blinked at her.
The girl held up her phone. “So… would you mind taking a picture with me?”
“Um, I don’t think—”
“Please? We drove all this way from Portland to hopefully see you.”
Noah didn’t really want to, and he wasn’t used to all this attention. He’d known about the true crime fans, of course, and the forums that speculated about what had happened to him. But when he went out in public, running into one of the true crime fanatics was the last thing he was expecting.
But the girl was looking at him with such pleading eyes, and if he agreed to take the picture, it might make her leave sooner. So he sighed and nodded grudgingly. “Okay, fine.”
The girl all but squealed with excitement. “Thank you!”
She moved to stand beside Noah and held her camera up in front of them. She smiled, but Noah didn’t. He just gave the camera a flat look. After she took a few pictures, she turned her phone off and stuffed it back into her pocket.
“Thank you so much! That was honestly so super cool of you.”
Noah shrugged. “Sure, no problem.”
She started back for her group, but paused and turned back to Noah. “If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly happened? What did you do all that time that everyone thought you killed her? And like, is it weird that you’re together after the way things went down?”
Noah’s mind drifted back to the past four years—to the time spent alone, drifting from place to place, to the cigarettes he used to cope, to the way Jaz used to be as that sweet, adorable shadow creature. He had been through so much, and most of it he’d spent either alone or with just a shadow for company, at least before Connor took him under his wing. And these memories weren’t really the way he wanted to start his day.
“I’m not interested in talking about it,” he said. “But uh, thanks for the interest, I guess.”
The girl looked like she was going to say more, but before she could, a tiny, 5’1 girl strode up to the table, her arms crossed.
“Can’t you see he’s not interested in talking to you?” Jaz said, a scowl on her face. For someone so tiny, she sure could pull off looking intimidating.
The girl looked between Noah and Jaz, like she couldn’t believe she was looking at both of them at the same time. “Wow. The two of you are really here—”
“Yeah, we are, and we’d like to drink our coffees and then go to our classes in peace, please and thanks,” Jaz said. She took her seat across from Noah and glanced back at the girl. “Have a nice day, now.”
The girl started back for her group, and the moment she was out of earshot, Jaz dissolved into quiet laughs. “Did that seriously just happen? Are you like, the new favorite of all the true crime girlies?”
Noah bit back a smile. “Well, at least one of us is enjoying this.”
“Admit it, you thought it was fun to be fawned over.”
“Shut up, I do not.”
Jaz laughed again, and they continued eating their breakfast. Aside from the group of girls who continued to watch them for their entire meal, the rest of the morning passed like normal.
And after a life filled with the strange and unusual, normal was exactly what he needed.