Page 142 of Backslide
I want to buy what he’s selling, but it feels too good to be true. And him uprooting his life… for me? It seems like so much.
“But what about your work?”
“I can work here. The good—and I guess bad—news is that everyone needs doctors.”
“But you love your job.”
He nods. Looks the tiniest bit glum for just an instant before he wipes any trace of negativity off his face. “And I’ll be sad to leave. But I’ll find work I love here, too. I have no doubt. Because the thing is, Nell—I loveyoumore.”
I am struck silent. Mind blown. Head reeling. Tornadoes spin through me, picking up my expectations and tossing them victoriously aside. Finally, I manage to make my lips form words: “You… love me?”
Noah grins at me, takes my hand in his strong own. I realize I’m obsessed with his hands. “Nell. Of course I love you. I’vealwaysloved you. I was just too young and stupid to know what to do about it.”
How is this happening? Minutes before, I was walking into my apartment ready to spend the night wallowing in the loss of this man. And now he’s sitting next to me, in the flesh, looking at me like the world begins and ends at my say-so.
“But… what changed?”
He looks down at my fingers, thinks about this for a beat. “For years I’ve been telling myself that you didn’t choose me. I think I was so used to people catering to my every whim that I expected things to work that way forever. And, after the injury, I suddenly felt like all my power was gone—like I was nothing without baseball. And I retreated inside myself and pushed you away and then, when you actually left, I think it felt like proof that you also didn’t think I was good enough. And so I spent all these years villainizing you in my head, telling myself that you gave up on me, that you didn’t chooseus. That all your talk about how I was more than sports was just bullshit. That even your family didn’t like me. But it never occurred to me that I had never chosenyou. I was so angry at you for going to college as we planned despite the fact that my world had imploded, maybe even angry at you for not dragging me with you, that it never even occurred to me that I was the one abandoning you and our plan—forcing you to go live our dream, our life, without me. Because I couldn’t see why you’d want me anymore. I kept asking you to choose me. I kept testing you. But I neverchoseyou.”
What is rising in my chest is something I can barely describe. I am overcome. I am shocked. I am still processing.
And I am, it seems, in love.
For the first time in decades, I let myself admit it. And it steals my breath.
Fuck. I love him.
“So, you just came here.”
“So, I just came here.”
“Ready to stay.”
He shrugs. “Basically.”
I tilt my head. “That’s pretty brazen. What if I don’t want to try? What if I don’t want to bone?”
He raises his eyebrows and gives me a look like,please. Then he jumps to standing. “Oh!” he says, gesturing toward the TV. “There it is!”
Noah pauses the game, then walks over, pointing to an LED screen behind home plate.
It’s an ad on a digital monitor. For something called Humbug Medical.
It has a black goat logo.
I look at him. I look at it. I look at him again.
“What…?”
“For my New York practice. I figured Humbug might be a pretty good name after all.”
“You took out an ad at Yankee Stadium for your new East Coast medical practice?”
“Well, sort of,” he says. “I called in a favor. It’s just a mockup. To show you how serious I am. I’m a ways away from actually getting it off the ground.”
And that’s it. I am ended.
Maybe it’s that adorable black goat. Or the crooked smile on Noah’s face. Or the fact that he has finally seen us from a different perspective.
