Backslide

Chapter 6 Both Back in the Day #3

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 something would happen 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 framed Goodfellas poster, mounted on a nearby wall. Ben is so obsessed with mafia 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 for Street Fighter as 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 of oh shits and damns 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.

This is not his usual mode. Nellie has thrown him for a loop.

“I’m in,” he repeats anyway.

“Into what?” comes a husky voice from beside him. Noah turns to find that redhead—Lydia, maybe?—standing too close to him with a hand on her hip. “Into me?”

She laughs, like she might be kidding or she might not, depending on his response.

“Oh, um.” He is at a loss. Because no. Not into her. So, he pops a Cheerio into his mouth instead of answering. It tastes like a better time. In the kitchen. With that girl Nell. Just minutes before.

Why had he pretended he didn’t know who she was when she said that they’d met before?

He knows who she is. He does. He knows. He’s known since that night at the club, when he first spotted her looking at him from across the room through the flashing lights and ambient shadows. He’s known for sure since he watched her disappear into her art class weeks back, better places to be.

So why had he lied?

He shouldn’t have. He should have said he knew.

He should have kept her talking, taken advantage of the moment.

Because what were the chances of him going into Ben’s kitchen to grab a glass of juice and finding her—this girl who keeps popping up in his mind—there alone, in Technicolor?

Just waiting for him. Smelling like orange trees.

Her straight thick copper hair falling in her face as she covered her eyes and tried to right herself.

Her wolf-gray eyes, like none he’d ever seen before, flooded with panic.

In need of help he was actually able to offer?

Regret settles in, dark and heavy.

“Hey, didn’t you just leave with Sabrina?” he asks Lydia now.

“Yeah, but I came back. They were being so wack! They were just going to chill on a stoop on West End.” She looks him up and down in a way that feels both clumsy and deeply suggestive. It makes him want to put on and zip up his hoodie. “Things are more interesting here.”

But they aren’t. Not for Noah. And suddenly he realizes he has no interest in staying. He’d rather be sitting on a stoop. He’d rather be wack. With Nell.

“I’m out!” he calls into the room, throwing a peace sign to Damien and anyone else who cares.

“Out? What?! But we’re next! Dude, what the fuck?”

But he is already slamming the apartment door behind him as he pushes the elevator button—one, two, three times—like that might actually speed things up.

When the elevator finally comes, it’s packed with people—an elderly woman, a middle-aged bald man, a girl around his age in pajamas with a basket full of dirty clothes.

And it stops at what feels like every floor, including the mezzanine laundry room, as he taps his foot impatiently and does his best to smile and look friendly and not too tall and intimidating.

Finally, he bolts out of the building like it’s on fire, realizing only then that he doesn’t know which way to go. Uptown? Downtown? He has no clue where Nell lives or in what direction the girls may have headed.

He arrives on the corner, breathless, looks up and down the manicured avenue toward rows of prewar buildings for any sign of them. No luck.

Shit, he curses. Wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.

And that’s when he spots a small figure, alone, about a block away, receding into the distance.

Nell. Apparently, she and Sabrina had abandoned their stoop hang.

He can’t say why he feels like this is his one and only chance, like if he doesn’t speak now, he will forever have to hold his peace. But he does.

Call it lack of impulse control. Call it instinct. Call it teenage hormones run amok. But he jogs across the street, slowing to a speed walk as he nears her.

Sensing his presence, Nellie stops, swivels, and looks up in surprise, her eyes still a bit glassy.

A nearby doorman standing under a pristine awning eyes the scene, assessing if Noah is friend or foe.

“Hey,” Nellie says, squinting like she is trying to see Noah through a haze. “What are you doing here?”

“Well,” Noah says, a little winded. “I realized you forgot something.”

His first instinct had been relief at spotting her, at not having lost her, but now, as he stares into her beautiful, confused face, he realizes he’s a man without a plan.

No plan at all.

“I forgot something?” She slips a hand into her jean shorts pocket, pulling out her gum and keys and exhaling to find them there. “What did I forget?”

“Cheerios,” he offers, holding out his palm, where only seven or so os still sit. “They lower cholesterol—and make you less high, so. I wouldn’t want you to be without them.”

She looks down at his hand and then up at his face and grins. “Straight from your hand, huh?”

He flushes. “I like to think of them as handpicked.”

She laughs and the sound—and the fact that he elicited it—floods him with warmth, eclipsing his embarrassment.

“Very thoughtful of you to be so concerned for my health,” she says. “And my sanity.”

“Well, I take health class really seriously.”

“As you should. Five servings of fruits and vegetables a day!”

“Especially during baseball season.”

She blinks up at him. “You need to be healthy while you watch baseball?”

“I need to be healthy while I play baseball.”

“Ah,” she sighs, dropping her lids closed for a moment. “That makes more sense.”

She didn’t know? It’s not that Noah consciously uses his athleticism as social currency, but of course he’s aware that being the star of the team, the way he performs, makes him shiny in some kids’ eyes—in some girls’ eyes.

But Nellie doesn’t even know that he’s a star player.

He can’t rely on his prowess as a crutch.

Maybe he couldn’t have anyway. She’s the kind of girl who likes art classes and books and freaks out from one hit of pot.

When he says he plays ball, people’s interest is usually piqued.

They ask him what position he plays or his favorite pro team (an unholy tie between both the Yankees and the Dodgers, oddly), but she looks completely unmoved.

He shuffles his feet, suddenly nervous again. Forces his hands into the pockets of his low-slung jeans. She doesn’t know shit about him. What if now she thinks he really is some kind of oats-obsessed idiot?

“I’m kidding,” he blurts out, as she looks up at him expectantly. “I’m not, like, uptight about health. I mean, I’m healthy. In a regular way.”

“As long as you’re not healthy in an irregular way.”

She shoots him a flirty smile, which he wants to return, but he feels like he’s losing the thread of this conversation, slipping deeper and deeper into some kind of social quicksand.

And it doesn’t help that he is so distracted by her pink lips, by the way she bites the lower one periodically as she listens. By the way her crop top stretches across her chest, layered gold necklaces a bit tangled above. By the curve of her waist, smooth and toned above frayed jean shorts.

This isn’t like him at all. Normally, Noah can win anyone over—talk to anyone. Charm anyone. But now he has gone blank. He can’t think of a single thing to say.

The silence is torture.

“Anyway,” Nellie says, eventually, glancing down the street in the direction she’d been walking. “I guess I should head home.”

“Totally,” he says. “It’s getting late.” Which it is not. At all. It’s still the full light of day.

She cocks her head slightly, glances up at the brilliant blue sky. “Right. Well, thanks again,” she says, holding her hand out expectantly.

It takes Noah a beat to realize she’s asking for the Cheerios.

As he drops the cereal bits into her palm, his fingertips graze her skin, putting every nerve in his body on alert.

And that minuscule contact makes him instantly desperate for more.

To run his hands through her hair, over her shoulders, her back, scraping down her hips, up her thighs and under her…

What is happening to him?

He is losing his goddamn mind.

She takes an o between her fingers and pops it in her mouth, letting it rest for a moment on her tongue. She closes her eyes, obviously still a bit stoned.

He watches, rapt. Trying to tamp down what’s coursing through his body.

“My God, Cheerios are good,” she sighs—and it is almost like a soft moan. “I’m definitely adding them to the grocery list.” When she reopens her eyes, they’re shining. “Hey, thank you, by the way. For real. You really helped me back there.”

“At Clark’s house?”

“At Clark’s house.”

“No problem,” he says, almost bashful. “Anytime.”

“Be careful what you offer.”

“I stand by it. Anytime.”

He holds her gaze for a beat, tension humming between them like a live wire. And, in that instant, he lets himself believe that maybe he’s not the only one who feels it.

“Alright,” Nellie says, finally. “But next time I smoke too much pot, don’t be surprised if I send up a flare.”

“I’ll be on the lookout.”

She smiles, hesitates, gazing down at the sidewalk and then back up at him. “Okay. Well… bye.”

“Bye,” Noah says. Stupidly. Moronically. Idiotically.

Like a fucking fool.

And, as she starts to walk away, he turns to leave too, making incidental eye contact with the nearby doorman. The man shrugs from under his cap, looking a little disappointed. Like, you win some, you lose some—and today you lost.

Why is this happening? Noah is never this way. Sure, he’s liked girls before. Made out with many. Dated a few. But this girl… this is different.

And he doesn’t even know her.

It’s not even because she’s hot. Even though she is. There’s just something about her.

He takes one step. Then two. Then he thinks, fuck it. And he pivots back around.

“Hey, Nell!” he calls out.

And she turns around, looking—could it be?—hopeful.

“Yeah?”

He jogs back toward her, so they’re only a couple feet from each other. He is reminded of the moment in the kitchen, right before Sabrina walked in. The electric pull between them as they drew closer.

The air between them thick.

“I was just thinking, flares don’t work that well. So, we should probably exchange numbers. You know, in case there’s an emergency.”

Her cheeks flush, pink. And though she tries to restrain it, her million-dollar smile wins out.

“That would be smart,” she agrees. “In case of emergency.”

And only after a full minute of staring at each other dopily do they realize they don’t have a pen.

“Here,” says a deep voice from a few feet away. The doorman digs into his blazer’s inside pocket and pulls out a shiny ballpoint. He hands it to Noah with a wink.

Nellie pulls a piece of gum from her pocket, unwraps it, pops it in her mouth, and hands Noah the foil, matte white side up.

Leaning the paper against a scratched-up blue mailbox, they both scribble their phone numbers. He rips the wrapper in half, and they each pocket their jagged scraps.

“So, next time I get super paranoid, you’re the first person I’ll call.” Nellie smiles, fiddling with the fringe of her shorts against her upper thigh.

“Okay. But that’s gonna be soon, right?” Noah says. “Like, should we run back upstairs and roll a blunt? Start another freak-out?”

“Now?”

“Well, the thing is, I’d kind of like to talk tonight.”

And he’s back. Back in his swagger. Thank God.

Still, he holds his breath while he awaits her response.

“Oh,” she says, surprise and then amusement in her eyes. “Sure. Try me. After all, I might still be feeling the effects of today.”

“So true.”

And then he leans down and kisses her on her soft cheek, not in a perfunctory sort of way, but with intention, so that he can take a beat to notice her orangey perfume again. He watches her shiver slightly at his touch as he slowly returns to his full height.

“Talk to you later,” he says.

“Talk to you later… Noah.”

His name on her tongue threatens to take him down.

And when they part ways, both turning back at least once to steal a glance, he feels like he just hit a game-winning grand slam. Maybe even a season-winning one. He feels that light.

A warm breeze blows past, rustling the leaves of the English elm above.

Eyes twinkling, the doorman nods as Noah returns his pen, and he nods in response.

And making sure that precious gum wrapper is safe in his pocket, Noah heads back the way he came. Now he could go for some video games.

Then he needs to get home. He’s got a phone call to make.