Chapter 3 Both Back in the Day #2
“Nice to meet you, Lydia.” Damien eyes her and laughs in an unreadable way again—is he mocking or flirting with her? “I’m D. We missed you… even though we don’t know you.”
“You have no idea what you missed,” she says.
His eyebrows quirk upward. “I bet that’s true.”
It takes everything in Nellie’s power not to visibly gag.
In the wake of that bizarre exchange, there’s a lull as the members of the group eye each other. A car rumbles by, blasting Snoop. “Ain’t No Fun.” It’s a strange kind of situation—no Sabrina to connect them, no alcoholic lubrication, no real knowledge of each other.
“So,” says Damien, the mouthpiece, doing his job of filling the dead air. “Where’s Sabrina at now? How come you’re not with her? Did you ditch her? You can tell us.”
Is he making fun of Sabrina or them or no one at all? Nellie can’t tell and it makes her uneasy.
“You guys saw her at your school more recently than we’ve seen her,” Nellie says, shrugging. “How come you’re not with her?”
Damien smirks. “She’s too cool for us.”
Nellie looks him up and down, purses her lips. “I can see that.”
And he scratches his head, like he can’t decide how this exchange is going.
“Sabrina has piano on Tuesdays!” Cara forces out at a near shout. It is abrupt. And she looks like she regrets her awkward attempt. Like she’d like to crawl back into her shell.
“Sabrina plays piano?” the short one says. “That’s cool.” He shrugs at his friends. “Who knew?”
“I think there’s probably a lot we don’t know about Sabrina,” Noah says, joining the conversation at long last.
Finally. His actual voice.
To Nellie’s relief, it is throaty and low.
Matches his whole demeanor. And it feels like somehow she already knows the timbre.
Plus, there’s something about his tone, the glint in his eye, the genuine warmth of his smile, that feels in deep contrast to Damien’s slip-and-slide vibe.
Noah is, as she has suspected, the kind of person whose attention feels like a heat lamp shining only on you.
“That’s probably true.” Nellie smiles small at him. “Sab is kind of a mystery—even to us sometimes.”
His gaze lingers on her for a second, flits down to her mouth and back up. To avoid scaring him off, she pulls her own eyes away. She stares at a Dixie cup in the gutter, a discarded cigarette butt snagged in a sidewalk crack, focuses on anything else for fear of obviously gaping.
“So, where are you guys going?” the short one asks. What was his name again?
“Nowhere,” says Lydia. “Fast.”
Ugh. This girl.
All three boys widen their eyes and exchange glances.
“I have drawing class,” Nellie says, squinting at the black Swatch on her wrist. “And actually, I’m late.”
As much as she doesn’t want to leave Noah’s presence now that she has finally found him again, she really must go.
The drawing classes are not cheap. And her parents remind her of that every time she misses one.
“You draw?” Noah asks Nellie.
“I like to, yeah.”
“She’s being modest!” Cara manages to pipe up. “She’s amazing.”
Nellie smiles at her friend, genuinely touched. Cara is her biggest cheerleader.
“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 of hard 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—that Noah—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.