Chapter 17 Noah Today
Dinner is a subdued event, mostly because the crew is already halfway to hungover.
Anticipating the group’s exhaustion after a long day of wine tasting, Cara has arranged tonight’s festivities at the farm-to-table restaurant on property.
Everything has been sourced within mere miles.
There are gem lettuces, squash blossoms, red wine reductions, and slices of steak so tender they melt on the tongue.
Nell huddles at one end of the long wooden table with Sabrina and Rita, who both look a bit worse for the wear. At least Sab seems to have returned to her usual warm self instead of ignoring me. She waved when she walked in and now she keeps sneaking peeks at me and winking.
Maybe she’s still drunk.
Nell, looking relaxed in an oversized jean jacket and another floral dress, is avoiding me altogether.
Eye contact. Physical contact. Contact sports.
You name it. She’s avoiding it.
Despite all her thoughtful planning, Cara herself didn’t even make it to dinner, apparently having majorly overdone it on the winery tour. I can only imagine how much so if she’s skipping her own event. Ben is tight-lipped about her state, but it is clearly no bueno.
She has tomorrow to recuperate and then it’s un-wedding day.
So, mostly I get to hang out with Ben, which is actually what the doctor ordered for me.
It’s the most chill. We ate some pretty outstanding radishes with butter and sea salt and braised short ribs as he ribs me about working for the Dodgers (he’s a diehard Yankees fan).
He asks me how I can show my face as a New Yorker, but then—as always—has a million questions about the players I’ve met and worked with.
As the others start to disappear back to their rooms, Nell included, giving us more cover, I ask Ben how things are at home.
“Good!” he says. But then he frowns. “Okay.”
Ben is always the most positive, so I take his frown seriously. “What’s up?”
He runs a hand through his hair and rests his forehead in one palm. I realize he looks pretty stressed out.
“I’m really tired,” he says.
“I’m sure.”
“No, but really tired.”
He and Cara have two kids under five, so I guess that’s to be expected. But he looks beat, even for that.
“Don’t get me wrong, the kids are great—except when they’re not. But it’s a lot. And lately…”
He hesitates, so that I start to imagine he’s going to confess something truly bad. Lately he’s been thinking he can’t take it anymore? Lately he’s been thinking about other women? Lately he’s joined a pickleball league?
None of that would be in character, but I am loyal to my best friend for life. We are ride or die. So, whatever it is, I’m here for it.
“Lately, what? You can say it.”
He sighs, tracing the grooves in the table with his finger. “I feel like an asshole saying this out loud. It feels so disloyal.”
“Okay… no judgment. Promise.”
He exhales. “Lately, Cara is kind of struggling, I think. And it’s challenging.”
This surprises me. Cara has always had her shit together.
Maybe more so than anyone else in our friend group.
Even since we were kids, she was the one who organized every gathering, every night out.
As far as I know, she works her ass off rising through the tech ranks by day, then manages to make it home to cook some elaborate nutritious dinner at night.
“Struggling how?”
“Well, at first, she was sad a lot of the time and kept talking about how she didn’t know who she was anymore.”
“Right. I get that,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “I mean, it’s easy to lose sight of yourself when you’ve got so much shit to do for other people.”
“Right. So, like, I tried to be more helpful, pitch in. But she wants things done the way she wants and I can’t always do it the ‘right’ way, so… she does it herself. But then she’s overwhelmed.”
He fiddles with the blue cloth napkin and unused butter knife lying askew in front of him, like he’s going to use the components to build a fort.
And it’s hard for me not to see Ben as his eight-year-old self, creating scenarios for his action figures.
I always wanted to play sports and he always made me play He-Man.
“Have you talked about it? How you want to help, but don’t know how?”
“Yeah—and maybe it sort of helped for a minute. But then things took a turn.”
“A turn?” My heart rate elevates ever so slightly. ’Cause if there’s a real problem, if Ben and Cara can’t make it work, then there’s no hope for any of us.
“Yeah, she said she realized she needed to, like, blow off steam. And now suddenly she wants to go out all the time, try every new restaurant and bar, get wasted, do drugs again—and she planned this whole thing,” he says, gesturing around like he doesn’t know how it all materialized.
“And like, she wants to have sex all the time, which—at first—I admit seemed like a good thing. But now, man. It’s like she’s out for revenge.
And I can’t keep up! I am just fucking exhausted.
And honestly, I think she is too, if I could get her to admit it.
She doesn’t seem happy! I mean, right now, she’s literally lying on the bathroom floor of our suite, groaning.
I don’t know what she’s trying to recapture, but I am an old man—and I like it that way.
I want maybe a little scotch with dinner and bed by ten p.m., so I can be up at six with the kids and do it all over again. I want our old boring life back.”
He rubs his eyes with his fists. Yawns. Like he’s the toddler.
“Oh, man,” I say, ’cause I’m not sure what else I have to offer. “That’s tough.”
“We have these few days off of parenting,” he says, his hair now standing on end from all the messing with it. “I just want to chill, you know? Just for a sec.”
It’s hard to age gracefully. Hard to accept new versions of yourself, when that also means saying goodbye to the old versions, the formative ones, the ones that made you you.
I know that firsthand even from way back after my injury. When you feel like you’ve lost your identity, where do you look? Where do you go?
I understand Cara’s dilemma. But also Ben’s.
“What’s up with tomorrow?” I ask, because I know it’s the one day without any real itinerary.
He groans. “Cara has this idea that we’re going to drive to the coast and pick up all this shit for the big party on Saturday.
Some flower farm and oyster farm and I don’t fucking know.
Things we could have paid someone else to do—we’re already spending a billion dollars on this whole thing. It wouldn’t have mattered.”
I took for granted that Ben and Cara both wanted this days-long debauched celebration. It never occurred to me that he might have wanted off the roller coaster.
“I know people have much bigger, way more legit problems,” he continues, “but I just want to do nothing—lie by the pool, play Connections, and read the latest Erik Larson for one damn day.”
“No problem,” I shrug. “Done.”
“No problem?” He scrunches his nose.
“I’ll do it for you,” I say. “Cara will probably feel like shit tomorrow, anyway. I bet you can convince her. Let me pick up all the stuff on the coast. I have a car. I’ve got nothing scheduled. I’m not going home to two toddlers in a few days. Let me go and give you your free Friday.”
Ben gazes at me like I’m an archangel descended from heaven. “Really?”
“Really. I’ve never even been to the Sonoma coast. Seeing it sounds nice.”
The relief on Ben’s face is palpable—like he’s just been awarded a stay of execution instead of been released from a day of errands. “Thanks, man,” he says, resting a hand on my upper arm. “You’re the fucking best. I mean, for a Dodgers fan.”
I feel a small pang of guilt. Because of course I would have done this for him anyway.
But it’s also self-serving. I need to escape this place for a day, solo.
Get my head on straight. Try to shake off this shit with Nell.
Because it’s all I can think about. And judging by the massive implosion at the spa, something between us is probably not workable.
She can’t get over her distrust—and maybe vice versa too.
She can’t see that I’ve changed. And, the truth is, I get it.
Somehow, some way, I need to stop feeling whatever I’m feeling for her. I need to move on, for real.
But how do you move on from something that’s been haunting you since some night under strobe lights when you were seventeen?
“How are things with you?” Ben asks, now, like he’s read my mind. And maybe he has. We’ve been friends for that long. “How’s seeing Nellie?”
I rub at my shoulder absently. Adjust in my chair. Open my mouth to speak and then close it.
Ben’s eyes go wide. “That bad, huh?”
“It’s just—” I start.
“Yo! Whattup, losers?” Damien booms, collapsing into a chair beside us, condensation dripping from his pint of beer.
And that’s enough for me to clam up.
I realize looking at him now that I haven’t had as much fun hanging out with him on this trip as I expected. He’s always had a shitty side, but he also had this endearing, thoughtful core.
A crunchy outer shell, but a chewy center.
But it’s been all crunch and no give on this trip. It’s a lot. I wonder now if growing up for him has meant releasing that chiller side of himself instead of expanding it. Hardening against any vulnerability.
“Man, this is a crew of lightweights,” he says. “Am I right?”
Ben nods, agreeably. “We’re old, dude.”
“You’re old,” Damien says, leaning back in his chair like he owns the place. “I’m just getting started. I’m gonna be like Al Pacino, having babies with babies even when my balls are as wrinkled as your face.”
“That’s a visual I didn’t need,” I say.
Damien turns on me, his ice-blue eyes narrowing. He gestures toward me with his chin. “Where were you today? Speaking of lightweights. How come you bailed?”
“I just had shit to do,” I shrug. “Emails to catch up on, patient notes. That kind of thing.”
“Gotta pay the bills,” he nods, taking off his baseball cap, then settling it back on his head. “For a minute, I thought maybe you stayed back with Nellie.”
Whatever disparaging things you might say about Damien, and there are a lot, his EQ is scary high. He is not to be underestimated. Not much gets past him. Now, his assessing gaze is homed in on me.
I’m careful not to shift in my seat or avoid his eyes as I say, as casually as I can, “Nah. I didn’t even know she was staying back too.”
“Yeah?” he says, his head tilted. “So, you didn’t hang out?”
I shake my head. “I ran into her at one point for a sec, but that’s it.”
He nods, studying me. Why do I feel like I’m being interrogated?
The air has thickened with caveman tension, and I honestly don’t know why. It’s like I’m being sized up by one of my oldest friends.
I don’t care what he thinks, but no way I’m betraying Nell by revealing what happened. Damien has never been the most trustworthy and my antenna is definitely up now.
“I had a good talk with her alone in town yesterday,” he says, taking a swig of his beer as if it’s no big thing. Like they hang out all the time. “She was saying she felt like we always connected.”
Now it’s my turn to narrow my eyes. “Connected?”
“Yeah, that we always got each other. She was asking if we could hang out more in New York.” He shrugs like it’s whatever—like he could take it or leave it. “I guess I could give that a shot. Give her what she wants.”
The idea of Damien and Nell hanging out in New York and what that implies—the idea of her saying she’d want to spend time with him—makes me want to break something massive over his head. But I just let the corner of my mouth tug upward in a half-smile.
“That’s cool,” I say, gritting my teeth. “I never remember you guys hanging out back in the day.”
“Well, that was then,” he says. “Now is now.”