Chapter 15 Nellie Today
He kisses me rougher now, harder, slipping his tongue into my mouth. He tastes like he drank that grape water too. His hands scrape down my chest, yanking my bikini top free. I arch against his palm, pinched and tight.
“Good thing I put my top back on,” I laugh into his mouth. “That was a waste of time.”
“Nah,” he says, all gravel. “I liked taking it off.”
His voice reverberates through me and I grind into him, feeling him go rock hard against me. Not everything from the past is smaller than you remember it.
And I don’t know if we’re making out like teenagers because that’s how it started or if it’s the frustration of twenty-plus years coming to call.
But the water is making me feel weightless, like we might just float away, intertwined.
On an X-rated lazy river. His thumb grazes my jaw, then slides down my neck, his palm cupping my breast, getting waylaid there.
I run my hands over his shoulders and down his sculpted arms, scratching at his back. I squeeze his thighs between mine.
I can’t be sure where I begin and he ends.
But it’s when I raise my hand to run it over his hair at the back of his neck that I yelp loudest—from a shock of pain.
Right. My arm is still injured.
“Are you okay?” he asks, out of breath. His brow is crinkled.
“I’m fine,” I say, catching a drop of water trailing down from his temple with my fingertip.
But something glitches in his expression.
“What now?” I ask.
He sighs. “I’m probably going to regret saying this, but… are you sure you’re good with this?”
“Have I not shown enough enthusiasm?” I laugh. “I’m literally topless on your lap.”
I lean into him, pushing my boobs against his bare chest as if to demonstrate.
He nods. Sweeps a palm across his forehead. Like he’s suddenly stressed. Why is he stressed?
“That’s true,” he says. “But you’re also under the influence of a muscle relaxer. That I prescribed to you.”
Is he fucking kidding me? I wonder. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I say.
“It’s just that, you were pretty anti this until about fifteen minutes ago—and I just want to make sure you’re not doing something you’re going to regret.”
“Didn’t you also take a muscle relaxer?”
“Yes, but…”
“Yes, but what?”
He shrugs. “Lightweight.”
“You know, you’re right,” I say, irritation rising. “You must be impervious to meds. Why else would you still be so uptight?”
I start to back up off his lap. Sink down lower into the water and cross to the opposite side of the pool, so that the froth shields me. I am shaking my head—at him? At myself?
Because I know what this is. This is an excuse. This is Noah panicking. This is second thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” he says, a pained look in his eye. I assume from the discomfort of the situation. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Do not say sorry to me,” I say to him, careful to keep my voice at the horizon line. “Like this was your bad. I’m a big girl. I make my own decisions.”
I will not give him the power to make me sad. To reject me. Not again.
“I know. Of course you do. It’s just there’s been a lot of miscommunication between us before and I don’t…”
“Just stop,” I say, holding a hand up like, if I try hard enough, I might be able to hold him back against the side of the pool using only the power of my mind. “This was dumb.”
“It wasn’t dumb, I just…” He runs a hand along his closely shorn hair again, clearly unsure of what to say.
“It was dumb,” I say. “But I’m not. If you’re not interested, you can just say that. I don’t need this bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit,” he says, his hands out of the water and facing the ceiling like I’m the one being unreasonable. “We aren’t just some random people to each other. This could mean something and I…”
… am freaking out. I finish his sentence for him in my head.
“Stop!” I say firmly now, and I know I’m getting upset, but I will not allow this man to give me some kind of easy letdown or talk. I will not hear it. Not so many years later like nothing has changed.
Ugh! Why did I do the same thing and imagine a different outcome? Why did I expect this Noah to be mature and consistent and present when that’s not his MO? Here he is, playing the same old shell games with my emotions.
This man literally spends his time with professional athletes, probably traveling from city to city and banging a nameless, faceless many. I realize in that moment that I actually know nothing about him, the Noah of today. He could have his own fiancée for all I know.
“I get it,” I say, as I reach for my towel, which slouches on the slate-tiled floor beside the pool, and begin to climb out. “It was a thrill-of-the-chase thing. You thought maybe you’d time travel for a second, but it got old.”
“What? No! I didn’t plan this, Nell,” he says, starting to rise out of the pool himself. “You were the one letting the towel drop in the sauna and I was trying to…”
The rage that rises in my chest at his words surprises even me—at teenage Noah, at today’s Noah, at Alfie. At all the deeply disappointing humans along the way. It courses through my veins like venom, transforming me into something sinister.
“Oh, so what? Now I threw myself at you?”
“No! That’s not what I meant.”
I wrap the towel around my chest fully, grab my top and my tote, and stomp toward the barn doors. “Fuck you, Noah. Good for you. You convinced your gullible high school sweetheart to make out with you. Mission accomplished. Now, you can move on. Go tell Damien or find Lydia or something.”
“Lydia?” he says. “Really, Nell?”
I swing the spa doors open and whip around to face him. “It’s Eleanor to you.”
In the afternoon, time stretches. It downward dogs. It planks. It rolls its neck.
I check work email and the clock eight hundred times, both anxious for the crew to return from their booze bus excursion and dreading having to act like everything is normal. Like nothing happened.
I sit on the deck, where the breeze is so slow and warm that you’d miss it if you blinked. The air smells of jasmine, of whatever the nearby yellow flowers are, of summer coming. Every so often, a chicken bawks. And I balk too.
I’m angry at Noah for sending mixed signals. I’m angry at myself for getting swept up. But most of all, if I’m honest, I am deeply embarrassed.
Because I thought I was in a safe place with a safe person. And when he flipped the switch, I felt like maybe I wasn’t.
I know it’s partially my fault—I should have followed my instincts and avoided this situation altogether.
Not just because Noah is changeable and only operates on his own terms. But also because, as much as I want to pretend it’s all in the past, I’m lugging enough baggage around for some socialite on a European tour.
As much as I hate to admit it, I realize now—as I inspect my coral toenail polish and relive the spa debacle again and again—that I have to be real with myself: Once upon a time, Noah hurt me. A lot. It was a million years ago and, yes, we were kids. But the sting remains.
In this situation, there is no such thing as a clean slate.
When it comes to interacting with him, I’m never starting at zero. My feelings are already at a fever pitch, my teeth already bared. I’m waiting for him to wrong me.
When my phone pings, I look down half expecting the text to be from him. Which is silly, because does he even have my number? That’s how little we’ve interacted, how little we actually know each other at this point.
Sabrina
We’re baaaaack! Come upstairs and hang out with us! It’s happy hour. Meaning we’re on the deck and we just ordered the whole room service menu—and I’m happy about it.
Oh, thank God. I smile. That sounds like a plan.
Rita and Sab are staying on the top floor, so I climb the winding bleached-wood staircase to their room. Before I can knock, the door swings open to reveal my two friends—already very drunk and with full goblets in their hands.
Sabrina’s usually immaculate bob is in disarray, her shades perched on her head as she has surely forgotten them there.
Her black tank top is haphazardly tucked into her black pleated skirt and her purple eyeliner has smudged practically down her cheek.
Rita’s free arm is slung around her wife’s shoulders, and her denim overalls are hooked on only one side, like she is the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
And if I think my hair is untamed, Rita’s curls look poised to swallow us all whole.
“Come, come!” says Rita, waving me inside. “There’s cheese! And more cheese!”
Indeed there is. I look around expecting I might find Cara too, but she is nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, Sabrina did not lie. In the time it took for me to throw on shoes and head upstairs, the room service has arrived.
The duo has already started in on a cheese plate so enormous that it takes up half a dining table on their deck.
Beside it sits some kind of tuna tartare, deviled eggs, chilled shrimp cocktail on a bed of crushed ice, and a massive order of French fries.
Now, the two women plop back down on a love seat to continue gorging their wasted asses.
It’s hard not to laugh as I settle in across from them and watch them ooh and ah over the various creamy Bries and hard goudas.
“Holy shit,” says Sabrina, her sunglasses falling crookedly onto her face. Startled, she removes the shades and casts them to the side, so she can return to scarfing, unencumbered. “Sorry, hon. But I think I might leave you for this apricot jam.”
Rita shakes her head, her mouth full. “I can’t blame you. I’ve never been big on the idea of ethical nonmonogamy, but maybe for this almond-stuffed olive.”
“I guess the booze bus was a success,” I say, thinking not for the first time about how lucky they are to have found each other—partners who share a mutual love of salumi and fried food.
“Mm. Kinda,” Sabrina says. “The first few wineries were great—one in particular, Scribe? Super-cute design. Spanish style. Great wine. You would have loved.”
“Ah. Sorry I missed it!”