Page 15 of Backslide
“Wow,” Noah says. “That’s dope. It’s like figure drawing or…?”
“Alright, then,” Damien interrupts. “Noah, dude. She said she’s late. Maybe let her go instead of asking for an art history lecture. Sorry. Not ‘her.’Nellie, right?” Despite his feigned ignorance, Damien clearly knows her name.
“D, don’t be a dick.” Noah shakes his head, lacing his hands behind his neck and stretching his arms out like he is sunning himself. His shirt rides up above his baggy jeans, revealing a strip ofhard skin above an elastic Calvin Klein band. A bolt of heat scorches through Nellie’s body at the sight.
She tears her eyes away again. But the image is already stored in her memory bank. For all eternity.
She has broken up the party. The boys nod goodbye and weave past the girls on the sidewalk, heading the opposite way. But, at the last minute, Noah turns back around.
“By the way, I don’t think I actually got to meet you guys at the party either,” he says, leaning in slightly. “I’m Noah.”
Oh, I know.
“Hi,” Nellie says. “Nice to meet you.” All formal. Like this is a cotillion and not a littered street corner.
The sun kisses his forehead, his cheeks, his neck, so that he glistens. He winks like he knows. “Hope to see you soon… Nell.”
Nellie can only nod dumbly as he shoots her his winning smile, turns, and saunters away.
She exhales. Now she is irrevocably late. But just catching a glimpse of that boy—thatNoah—feels worth a billion dirty looks from her teacher. He is just as Nellie remembers from that night. He isn’t like the boys she’s friends with and has dated before. He looms larger, incandescent,more.
Now in something of a daze, she sighs as she and the girls resume walking. She’s actually only a few town houses away from drawing class now.
“Okay!” she says, exhaling. “I’m out for real.”
She kisses Cara on the cheek and stupid Lydia too, and she starts toward the steps.
“How come that boy was staring at you?” Lydia barks, before Nellie can get to the top.
Nellie whips back around. “Which boy?” she asks, her heart suddenly pounding. “The blond guy? Damien?”
“No. Not him. The cute one. With the shaved head. And the sixpack.” Cara shoots Lydia a look, mock scandalized. “What? Are you saying you didn’t notice?”
“No, I noticed.” Cara grins.
A rush of joy washes over Nellie, leaving her feeling refreshed, like she’s just emerged from a cold lake into the summer heat. “He was looking at me? Are you sure?”
“Definitely.” Lydia frowns.
Nellie looks to Cara for confirmation. “Yup,” she nods. “I saw it too.”
Nellie’s heart is bursting at the seams. Almost too full. So full that she’s tempted to run back and hug Lydia for saying this, stink face and all.
Maybe not.
As Nellie runs up the final steps to class, behind her, she hears Lydia gripe, “Maybe she had something in her teeth.”
Gleeful, Nellie laughs and jogs to the door. Nothing can tamp down her joy, her insides twinkling.
As the boys turn the corner, Noah glances back as nonchalantly as he can, just in time to watch Nellie disappear inside the doors, swallowed up by a building whose interior he has never seen. He is oddly desperate to know what world exists within, what halls and passageways with tiled floors, what pulpy drawing pads perched on easels and still-life vases stuffed with chaotic carnations. What smudges of charcoal and smells of turpentine. And he has the distinct sense that—in the admittedly very short period he has known that Nellie exists on this planet—he has already lost sight of her too many times.
4NELLIETODAY
The drive to wine country is drop dead.
Enough so that it distracts me for a while from my angst.Mostly.
When my driver, John, and I leave the airport in our gargantuan black SUV with its perforated leather seats—presidential motorcade style—the skies quickly morph to full white. In the distance, clouds obscure the crests of green hills.
