Chapter 17
NOEL
I do feel better after Baltimore.
Not that it was everything I was hoping it’d be.
For starters, the conference was a bit of a wash, and now I’m sitting here looking at these half-finished illustrations for work and seeing every single flaw in them.
Thinking how much better I could be if maybe I’d gone to graduate school, or at least taken graduate level A one wasn’t enough to contain it all.
It was more like three. Or four. The blunder years of my childhood and adolescence took two alone.
Then there was a third devoted solely to Jordan and all the damage he did, the fourth to Luca…
Frankly I’m lucky that she didn’t drop me after all that; there are a lot of therapists who won’t work with people who have BPD at all.
I guess, on top of all my fucking baggage, that’s why I’m always reluctant to tell her if something new and terrible is happening in my life.
There’s nothing stopping her from one day going, sorry, it’s me, not you—actually that’s a lie, it’s definitely you, and then I’m out on my ass.
Then I’d have to find a new one that won’t turn me away just because I’m a cluster B mess and do it all over again, be raw and vulnerable and all the things I hate.
And then they could dump me, too.
I don’t mention any of this to Danika or Jamil when I see them next, which is the following evening when they come over for dinner.
I’m not particularly in the mood to hang with them, not only because I’ve got a travel hungover from the trip, but because Luca’s been sending me suggestive as fuck texts all day from the shop and I’d been planning on video calling him without my clothes on.
But nope, they’re here with takeout from my favorite sushi place so it’s hard to say no and I’m trying really hard not to be a bitch about it.
“How was it?” Danika wants to know as we crowd my tiny dining table.
“Were you scared of flying? Did you puke? When I was little, my big brother and I took a plane to see my grandparents in Florida, and I was so terrified I threw up all over the guy next to me. They moved me to first class for the rest of the trip. Elijah was so jealous.”
“Is Baltimore nice?” Jamil asks me. “I’ve heard the harbor’s cool.”
I want to tell them that the best part of the trip was when my boyfriend was blowing my back out. I shrug. “It was fine. The plane was fine. Inner Harbor was nice.”
“That’s all?”
“I went for work, Dani. It wasn’t a sight-seeing thing.”
“But did you get pictures or anything?”
I think of all the selfies I’ve got on my phone—with Luca. “I mean…”
“Dude, you’re braver than me.” Jamil plucks a California roll from his plate with his chopsticks. “I couldn’t ever just go somewhere alone. I mean, far away. You know? I’d want at least my mom with me.”
“I don’t think his mom would be allowed on a plane,” Danika says dryly. “Nor do I think she’d want to go.”
“I’m not saying his mom should go with him. Just someone.”
I’m actually over this. Time to rip the bandaid off and get all the lecturing and scolding over with now. It’s not like I can hide Luca from them forever. “I didn’t go alone,” I say, and both of their heads swivel towards me. “Luca came with me.”
There’s a brief and very loud silence before Danika shatters it. “What do you mean you went with Luca?” she demands, dropping her fork (she says she hates chopsticks; I think she just doesn’t know how to use them).
“Wait, what?” Jamil’s just confused. “When did Luca come back?”
“Um. Last month.” I unlock my phone and go to the pictures we took in Baltimore. I hand my phone off to Jamil for him to scroll through. “Don’t swipe right, you might see my dick.”
“That’s not much of a deterrent.” But he obediently swipes left. “When last month?”
“We—actually, we met up again that night at Anathema.” No need to get into the whys and hows of that.
“Really?” he says with interest, thumbing my phone screen.
“Must’ve been after I left. Hey, this is cute.
” He indicates one of the pictures we took at the aquarium.
It’s the two of us out in the rainforest exhibit, colorful parrots perched in the trees just behind us.
I distinctly remember one of them screaming into our ears shortly at five million decibels after we snapped the shot. “You guys do look good together.”
Danika’s seething. “No they don’t,” she snaps at him. “Don’t encourage him.” She swaps her burgeoning fury to me instead. “Jesus, Noel, isn’t he having a baby with his wife? Or did he abandon her, too? Oh—” She presses her fingers to her cheeks, struck by a sudden thought. “Did she lose it?”
“Nope. That’s all still happening.”
She throws her hands in the air. “Well, what the fuck.”
“I’m not asking you to like, understand or anything,” I say. “It’s a weird situation, but we’re working it out.”
“Weird situation! That’s a funny way to say he’s married and having a baby and you’re his sidepiece.”
“I’m not his sidepiece,” I say indignantly.
“You believe that?”
Jamil lets out a whistle. “What’s this from?”
The this he’s referring to is a few pictures from the night we went to Body More, of course, and that’s when I decide to take my phone away from him. “We went to a leather bar that night.”
Danika casts a beseeching look at our friend. “Are you going to just sit there and gawk, or are you gonna back me up here?”
“Why bother? Noel’s gonna do whatever he wants, anyway.” While true, it’s not quite as supportive of a position as I might hope Jamil would take.
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and talk him out of it!”
“They aren’t even together, Dani.” I attempt to placate her. “Him and his wife. They’re just living together until after the baby comes, and—”
She lets out a laugh. “Oh my god, listen to yourself, Noel. Do you really believe this isn’t some excuse to keep you on the hook? If I came to you with this exact problem, do you know what you’d tell me?”
I fold my arms and watch Jamil continue to eat more than his fair share of the Cali roll, which is irritating, but not as irritating as Danika is being right this moment.
I regret saying anything at all, of course—but on the other hand, how the fuck can I keep hiding this massive part of my life? It’s unfair is what it is.
“You’d tell me I was being an idiot,” she goes on. “And you’d say to run.”
“Okay,” I return, “but I wouldn’t snarl at you at every opportunity if you decided not to.”
“This is the first opportunity I’ve gotten to! You didn’t even tell us when this has been going on for weeks. That says it all, doesn’t it?”
“Because of this!” I gesture wildly. “Because every time I do something you even remotely disagree with, it turns into this whole thing. I can’t take a step wrong without getting my face ripped off.”
“Hey,” Jamil interjects with his mouth full. “I don’t rip your face off. I’m just like, y’know, mildly disapproving. But you can do whatever you want.”
“Can you stop fucking eating the entire roll?” I snatch a piece off his plate. This conversation has sort of gutted my appetite but it’s the principle of the thing; I paid for a third so I’m gonna eat a third, even if I sort of feel sick at this point.
“I’m not ripping your face off, don’t be melodramatic. It’s called tough love with healthy a dose of reality. Someone’s gotta give it to you, Noel, ‘cause fuck knows no one else will.”
“But I don’t want it. I’m not asking for it.” I’m picking the piece of sushi apart, rice scattered to the four winds and seaweed shredded. Jamil’s grimacing, watching me. “You don’t have to agree with what I’m doing, just…let it be.”
“The problem is that when it all inevitably goes to shit, you make it our problem.”
“Period,” Jamil agrees.
I hate that they’re right and I hate that I have to walk this fine line with them, these friendships ever tenuous because I can’t just be normal and behave myself, and they’re never gonna fucking get it.
They don’t know what it’s like to walk around with pieces of you missing and you have to work your ass off to make up for deficiencies that were never your fault.
They don’t know what it’s like to have to shoulder the additional responsibility of self on top of everything else.
If either of them had to spend an hour in my body, they’d probably off themselves or want to very badly because it is torture, being me, being this.
“Noel, I’m not trying to be mean,” Danika says. “But really, you’ve got to look at it from an outside perspective. It’s like those crazy relationship posts you see on Reddit. ‘My boyfriend’s having a baby with his wife, should I stay?’ Like, come on.”
“Why are you on Reddit?” Jamil asks. “Isn’t that for old people and nerds?”
“Jamil, you use Facebook,” I remind him. “The main demographic of Facebook is almost exclusively old people. And you, apparently.”
“It’s for all sorts of people,” Danika says defensively. “And there’s a lot of juicy drama on there.”