Noel Cries
He doesn't like for anyone to see him do it, but Julie sees him cry. She finds him sitting on the bottom step outside a bar a few weeks into her junior year and knows how he has to be feeling. She used to feel the same way when she would watch Felicity with Ben, the natural way the two of them just seemed to work together. She wanted it to be easy like that for her, but it never was. It wasn't easy for Noel either.
The way he cries reminds her a lot of the way her mother used to cry, silently and completely. The sobs encompass his whole body, working their way down from his streaked cheeks to his quaking shoulders to the pit of his stomach, held tightly by strong arms. He doesn't hide his tears. He isn't ashamed of his sadness. Whatever Noel feels, he feels it out loud. There is something to admire about that.
Julie has had a lot of things to cry about in her life, but she mostly just keeps them inside. It makes her feel a little more okay with herself to see Noel being so expressive in the open. She used to be like that when she younger, back before she found her biological father and found out that she was nothing more than a donor to him. These days, she doesn't cry as much. It feels like she is giving too much power away when she does.
And maybe that's why she doesn't need to ask why he is crying. She only knows that he is and it probably has to do with Felicity because everything has to do with Felicity. That somehow makes it worse for her because she doesn't know that the wayward curly-haired girl is really worth shedding tears about. Julie has cried more than her fair share of tears at the hands of her old friend. She pretends that she has forgiven Felicity and so does Noel, but she suspects that they never really got over the way freshman year ended and wasn't really sure that they ever would.
Noel wipes at his eyes with the back of his hands and then swipes at his nose with his shirt sleeve. There are a few sniffles and as big sigh as he struggles to regain his composure. And then she hears that telling gulp, the one where you choke on a sob and do your best to keep that second wave of tears from falling. That's the moment that breaks her heart.
