Page 41 of Backslide
Noah was always good like this, I remind myself, though sometimes it’s hard to remember through the fog of so many years—a narrative rewritten countless times and finally cemented. But is memory truth?
One thing is for sure: We were always good. Until we weren’t.
Him being caring, thoughtful, that was never the problem. Until it was.
As he walks away, I try not to watch him. His muscular back, the slope of his shoulders, his tight…
At the French doors to his room, he stops and looks back, and I glance quickly away like I’ve been studying my nails and not his ass.
There’s a glimmer in his eye. Like heknows.
“Nice T-shirt,” he says, then disappears inside. A minute later, “Pack the Pipe” starts to play from his room.
Was that sarcasm? An acknowledgment of our shared history? A nod to the fact that my shirt is totally transparent?
I’d ask what he meant. But there are too many whys.
8NOAHTODAY
It’s too early in the day to feel this mind-fucked.
I almost need to go on a second run, just to exorcise the frenetic energy agitating through me like a coffee grinder. Shaking my shit up.
Thatfuckingwoman.
Nell was always challenging. Even when she trusted me. She always acted like accepting help was like admitting weakness. Maybe because she had an older brother who demanded endless attention—mostly the negative kind.
She liked her independence. Maybe she didn’t want to stress her parents out. I don’t know.
But God forbid you try to order her around or give instructions; she was not a fan of authority. I used to joke that the best way to get her to do something was to tell her to do the opposite.
Only it’s not really a joke. And it’s all coming back to me now, along with a flood of other memories I’m not ready for. Andshit.I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the next five days without drowning in it.
Because when I touched her shoulder—which I intended in a completely innocent way—I barely managed to pretend I was fine. That it wasn’t like being blown sky-high by an electric shock, waves of history rocketing through me like in a sci-fi B-movie. Details I’d thought I’d lost years ago. Details that both wrecked me and gave me life like some Frankenstein monster. Flashes of skin. Visceral heat. Like what it felt like tobewith her.
I thought I’d come on this trip. We’d be polite. We’d exchange banal pleasantries about our lives now; I’d impress her with my shiny-ass career. Maybe—after a few glasses of wine—we’d even laugh and reminisce about the way things were when we were kids. Because we werekidsthen. Children. And how could any of that matter now? It wasn’t real, right?
But I completely underestimated the situation—myself, her, maybe even what we had. Of course, throughout the years as I periodically broke up with girlfriends out of boredom or just incompatibility, struggled to find footing, I thought about Nell from time to time. About how well we’d worked—until we imploded catastrophically. But I figured I’d romanticized or at least exaggerated our relationship.
First love. First sex. The heightened fervor of teenage experience, raw and uncut.
But now, seeing Nell in the flesh, I’m not so sure.
Literally in the flesh. All beautiful and rosy from sleep. In that see-through T-shirt and no bra.
So, maybe anyone would respond to that, right? Maybe this is just me reacting like any red-blooded dude. And I’m overanalyzing, which is something I don’t usually do. And now she has me using phrases likered-blooded.
Who am I?
Even telling Nell about my job, the fact that I’m a surgeon, that I went to school for three billion millennia so that people could trust me with their lives and limbs, with theircareers, wasn’t as satisfying as I’d imagined. I don’t know how I pictured she’d react—but maybe I at least expected an eyebrow raise. Instead, she called me achiropractor.
The truth is, I might as well let this go anyway. Whatever this is roiling through me. Because, as an added impediment, the woman fuckinghatesme.
And, though it barely matters, she drives me insane, too.
Now, as I tear off my running clothes and throw them in the seagrass hamper, I can’t help but ask myself, insane in what way?
That’s when the doubt creeps in.Was she the one?Is there even such a thing? Can you meet the right person when you’re only seventeen? Can you fuck it up forever when you’re just old enough to vote? Can you really get that one chance at supreme happiness when your brain isn’t yet fully formed and you’re too dumb to know that there’s life beyond baseball and hanging out with your wasteoid friends?
