Chapter 10 Nellie Today
The transport Cara has booked is not your mama’s van. It is black. It is sleek. And it is idling with a purr in the dusty estate parking lot, bordered by herb gardens, as it awaits our arrival.
I am almost bolstered by the sight of John, my beloved driver from the aiport, who is apparently squiring us around today. He welcomes me at the door with a wink, a chilled bottle of water, and a capped smile.
But, as expected, the rest of the group has the patience of a preschool class. That is to say, none. And when I mount the steps and board with Noah following close behind me and pause at the front to get my bearings, it’s to hoots and hollers.
“What took you so long?” Damien calls from the back. “Play doctor on your own time!”
“Who’s playing?” Noah jokes along.
“Yeah,” quips Ben, popping up from the front seat. “Noah’s the real deal!”
Cara—dressed in a white eyelet frock presumably to reference the bridal theme—grabs her husband’s arm and shoots him a meaningful look. He sits back down, chastened. She smiles up at me.
“Sorry, CB,” I say. “My shoulder is acting up. I had a wardrobe malfunction.”
“Oh, no!” she says, her brow furrowed. “Are you okay to come? Please don’t feel obligated to join.”
“I’m totally okay to come.”
“Good. Because I was going to make you come anyway.” She grins, leaning in toward where I’m standing in the aisle. “But seriously, are you okay?”
She makes a not-so-subtle gesture with her head toward Noah.
“I’m fine,” I say, glancing begrudgingly back at him. “Noah actually called in some prescriptions to the pharmacy in town for me, so that should be helpful.”
“See?!” Ben says. “The real deal!”
Cara shoots him another look. He shrugs like, what did I do?
“Hurry it up!” Damien complains. “Some of us have places to go and alcohol to drink!”
That guy.
I make my way down the aisle, praying for a decent seat, like this is a middle school field trip and I’m the odd one out. The last thing I want is to sit at the back of the bus with Lydia and Damien and the other troublemakers.
Thankfully, Sabrina offers me a lifeline, waving me over. “For you,” she says, removing the tote she’d been using to save the seat across from her.
“You’re a saint,” I say, and she nods in agreement, humming angelically.
Beyond relieved, I drop onto the cool leather and sigh.
Until Noah comes up short beside me.
“No,” I say, as he eyes my adjoining seat. Like I’m supposed to make room.
I cannot sit next to this man. No more close proximity.
Not after the humiliation I just endured in the suite.
Not with all the discombobulated feelings currently swirling in my head and seeping into my body like something venomous.
My brain is packed so full of crap, it needs its own decluttering show.
“Um,” Noah says, tilting his head to look down the aisle, “I think this might be the last free spot.”
“It’s not free,” I say.
“It looks free,” he counters.
“Maybe stand?” I suggest. “You’re health conscious. You’re a doctor. Haven’t you heard? Sitting is the new smoking! Think of this as a standing desk. But in motion.”
“Eleanor,” he says. “C’mon.”
“Forget that! Come back here and sit with the cool kids!” Damien shouts, cupping his hands like a megaphone. “Lydia says you can sit on her lap!”
“Or on her face,” I mutter.
If Lydia was anyone else, I wouldn’t judge her for being on the prowl. In fact, I kind of admire that kind of brashness and wish I had more of the free spirit in me. So, I don’t blame her for wanting to bone. I just blame her for wanting to bone Noah—and anyone else I show a modicum of interest in.
“He’s right—I’ll scootch!” Lydia says. “There’s always room for you!”
I look up into Noah’s pleading face and across the aisle to where Sabrina is gazing pointedly ahead, but Rita is giving me a point-blank stare like, be reasonable.
“Nellie, give the guy a break,” she says.
“Fine,” I grunt. I give in, scooting toward the window to make room.
I search the seat desperately for an armrest to pull down and separate us, but there is no such luck.
We are simply next to each other and his oversized body takes up too much room to avoid.
I squeeze myself all the way toward the wall to avoid his cooties.
And, when my thigh accidentally grazes his, I jump away like I’ve been scalded.
Because I have.
Because what just happened in my room was embarrassing, sure. Never mind earlier in the morning when I basically flashed him on the deck. But, worse, it lit an ember in me that I cannot seem to extinguish.
I need some time away from this man to remember why I hate him.
Why it’s safer to play keep-away. Because there is an ache between my thighs that says otherwise.
I need some distance from the feel of his large palms running gently up my arms, then raking down my sides.
The feel of his breath on my neck, giving me goose bumps all over, as he operated on my zipper—ever a surgeon.
The feel of his eyes on me, searing up and down my body, when I swear I caught him stealing a peek.
I need distance from how easy it would have been for him to pull off my dress and keep on going, slipping off the little I still wore and tossing it to the side. To let the van wait. And how easy it would have been for me to let him do it.
Just the thought sends shudders through me.
Fuck. I’m in trouble.
It seems like the more I try to hang on to all the reasons I hate Noah, the more I remember how attracted I have always been to him—the chemical combustion between us.
It was something I once attributed to our age when we were together, teenage hormones running rampant, but now I wonder if it’s just us.
Or maybe things feel super charged because what we had together came first—before adulthood and dating and disappointments.
Before Alfie and breakups and split rents and dinners.
Logistics that sap all the fun. Something that existed, raw and unfettered, before life got so complicated and exhausting.
I chance a glance up at Noah now, at his five-o’clock shadow and chiseled face.
The open smile he shoots Rita as they banter about some sports teams I know and care nothing about.
The way that smile reaches his eyes. The scar on his cheek from when he was twelve and fell into a barbed wire fence trying to catch a fly ball in a deserted Brooklyn yard.
He still caught the ball. I know because he’d told me at least twice.
Feeling my eyes on him, he glances toward me, shoots me a questioning half-smile with narrowed eyes. A private one. An old-school one. But I don’t want it. I scowl and turn away. Throw it back.
Because we cut ties because he cut me deep. It wasn’t arbitrary.
Because he can’t be trusted to stick around when the going gets tough.
Because the boomeranging inside me is making me feel nauseous and confused—and the bumpy van ride isn’t helping. (No offense, John! No one is a better driver than you!)
Noah turns back to Rita, having been rebuffed by me. They laugh some more, rib each other like old friends. High-five. They sure seem chummy. I shoot Rita a look: Remember we hate him?
She shoots me a sheepish shrug.
“So,” says Noah, maybe catching our drift or thinking I’m sick of all the sports talk. “How’s work going for you, Sab? How did the last show end up doing?”
“Fine,” she says tightly, examining her nails. She doesn’t expand.
I know that takes major restraint for Sabrina, who is an artisan potter—literally wearing her own ceramic earrings recently featured in Vogue—and loves nothing more than to talk about her creative process. Especially her last show in Silver Lake, which sold out lightning fast. It was a big deal.
Noah shakes his head like he’s confused. Maybe even a little hurt. But Sabrina is Team NSA for life. She avoids his eyes. And I love her for it.
I decide to follow her lead. I focus out the window and ignore what’s inside.
There are winding roads with kicked-up dust, kinetic shade under the canopies of massive oaks.
We flicker in and out of speckled sunlight like we are captured in Super 8.
There are sweet-looking fruit stands and creameries, with working barns and lofted terraces, and horses and cows that may or may not know how lucky they are to live in this Eden.
There are handmade signs for biodynamic farms and lavender fields, where they sell honey and soap; and large wineries with signs full of flourishes that mark lavish driveways like grand manors.
There are ornate B&Bs in renovated Victorian homes and modernist hotels with sharp lines and sustainable style, designed to blend into the landscape.
Indoor-outdoor spaces, everything delightfully blurred.
And there are vineyards, of course, in every direction.
Meadows and rolling hills bearing horizontal stripes, like so many French tees, a grid of grapes grown with love and care.
And then, finally, there is a town. One so sweet it looks like a soundstage. Only it’s real. People live here.
I think about the mean cat at my crummy corner bodega and my faltering career and have some real questions about my life choices.
When we exit the van, I am feeling somewhat calmer, the view from the window a balm.
“How’s it going?” John asks quietly, out of the side of his mouth, as I exit onto the charming street.
“Eh,” I say, letting my face fall. I can’t lie. Not to John.
“I’m here if you need anything,” he says, patting me on the shoulder. “You’re okay, kid.”
It’s work not to well up.
Before I can pull it together or fall apart, Cara runs up beside me, squeals, and grabs both my hands. At some point during the ride, someone put a tiara on her head to remind us that she is the un-bride.
“Isn’t this the best?!” she cries.