Page 29 of Backslide
“Yeah!” Nellie adds, a little more indignantly than she intends. “Why couldn’t he like me?”
“Oh, he could like you. I’m sure hedoeslike you. But not as much as he likes weed. You’d have to carry Cheerios with you everywhere you go.”
“Cheerios?” Sabrina’s brow furrows, reasonably. Then she shrugs and takes Nellie by the hand, leading her out of the kitchen. “Whatever. We gotta go.”
“Later, stoner,” Noah says.
If he waves goodbye, Nellie is gone before she can see.
The girls wait for the elevator in a hallway that smells of simmering garlic from some other, more civilized apartment.
Sabrina scrunches her nose. “What was all that about Cheerios?”
“Long story,” Nellie says.
“That’s the guy we ran into on the street a while back, right?” Lydia asks.
Nellie nods, turns to Sabrina. “Honestly, I think I might be more into someone like him than that Sebastian guy.”
“Who? Noah?” Sabrina asks, eyebrows raised. After all, Nellie hasn’t confided anything about her obsession, even to her closest friends. And Sabrina wasn’t even around when they met on the street.
“Yeah,” Nellie sighs, propping herself against the pockmarked wall. “Unfortunately. Since I just totally humiliated myself in front of him.” She looks up at her friend, hesitantly. “Do a lot of girls like him?”
Sabrina bites her lip. “Honestly? Yes. A lot of girls like him.Allthe girls like him. And I think he likes them all back. He’s like… a jock. Like a white-hat frat boy type, sort of. You guys have nothing in common.”
“Duh,” Lydia snorts again. “He’s hot.” She twists a strand of her hair around her finger like she’s trying to cut off blood flow. “Nooffense, Nellie, but, like, he’s kind of out of your league.” She turns and presses the already illuminated button again, leaving Nellie’s heart to drop behind her.
Noah grabs a handful of Cheerios before he leaves the kitchen. He’s eating them out of his hand as he walks back into Ben’s crowded bedroom and leans against the doorjamb. This is one of those classic New York apartments, old and stately, but in need of some love. Paint is chipped along its deco edges.
Mostly, this gathering is a sausage fest. Dudes everywhere. Most of them high as kites. Hip-hop blares, loud and careless. As Noah scopes out the room now, his eyes can’t help but wander toward Sebastian and he feels an unwelcome—not to mention irrational—pang of jealousy rise in his chest.
He coughs to clear it.
What is wrong with him? He’s known Seb since they were eight years old and in Little League together. He’s a good dude. A nice guy.
But not good enough for her.
The words reverberate through him, unbidden, and he shakes his head like that might reset his thoughts, like his brain is an Etch A Sketch.
He knows girls think Sebastian is hot. I mean, he’s a good-looking guy. Even Noah can see that. But don’t girls say that about him too?
Nellie had seemed defensive about Sebastian liking her. Did that mean she liked him back? That she was hoping somethingwouldhappen between them?
The thought takes the wind out of his sails. Noah slouches, defeated.
But then he catches his faint reflection in the glass of a framedGoodfellasposter, mounted on a nearby wall. Ben is so obsessed withmafia movies; he basically thinks he’s a mobster instead of a nice Jewish boy from the Upper West Side.
Noah runs a hand over his short dark hair, then down along his cheek and chiseled jaw. He looks alright. Maybe not like Sebastian. But decent.
“Hey, pretty boy! If you can stop gazing at yourself long enough, we got next ups forStreet Fighteras soon as Ben loses, which is any minute… ’cause he kind of sucks balls.”
“Hey! Fuck you,” Ben scowls at Damien, though even his scowl is good-natured. “I don’t suck. Your mother sucks.”
“Your mother sucks too,” Damien grins. “My dick.”
Noah shakes his head at the chorus ofoh shits anddamns that emanate from the homeboy peanut gallery. It doesn’t take much when they’re this fucked up.
“I’m in,” he says to Damien, though, truth be told, he isn’t in the mood for video games. He’s sober, for one thing, which he always is during baseball season—and that makes these guys seem like fools. But he also feels antsy, on edge. Like he can’t sit still.
