Chapter 20 Nellie Today #3
“Hey! Humbug loves me, okay?”
He shrugs. “Who can blame him?”
I look across the table at Noah, at the angles of his face in the dim light. It would be helpful if he wasn’t so damn good to look at.
“What were you really thinking about?” I ask, if only to keep talking and distract myself.
“Honestly?”
“Preferably.”
“The first time I saw you.”
“Oh.” I’m surprised, by both that fact and his frankness. “Outside my drawing class?”
He shakes his head.
“Um, excuse me,” I laugh, leaning in, loosey goosey. “Are you saying you don’t remember meeting me that day?”
He shoots me a look, rubs a hand over his stubble. “Of course I remember. I remember your V-neck sweater and your attitude. I remember coming back to introduce myself, properly. I remember it all.”
“Okay, but?”
“Okay, but that wasn’t the first time I saw you.”
I am stunned. In the narrative that is my relationship with Noah, that run-in on the sidewalk was, for sure, the first time he knew I existed. I realize it’s so cemented in my head—our story—that it feels earth-shattering for it to change.
What else have I taken for granted as the truth? What else from our history needs a fact-check?
“When then?” I ask.
“A couple weeks or maybe a month before,” he says. “I was at a club…”
My mouth drops open. Mind blown. I even lift out of my seat, which is no small feat, as I have melded to it. And before he can even continue, I say, “No. Wait—seriously?”
“Yes?” He looks at me like I’ve lost it. “Why?”
“Because!” I say. “I saw you for the first time that night too.”
“Wait, really? But how do you even know it was the same night? We went to a lot of parties.”
But I know. And so does he. Because something magnetic happened in that moment between two strangers that left an indelible mark.
We never discussed it, all those years ago, each letting the other believe that our first meeting was on the sidewalk (at least after Noah confessed to recognizing me in Ben’s kitchen). I never wanted to admit that I’d seen him first from afar and pined. It sounded crazy.
We gape at each other now, not unlike we did on that first night. I examine his changeable eyes, the faint scar on his cheek, the pout of his lower lip. Only now, instead of our view being obscured by bodies, what’s in our way is something harder to name.
“I saw you,” he says.
“I saw you first,” I say.
And it’s maybe true if only by a few minutes.
“It’s weird though,” he says. “There were so many of those parties. I met so many people, so many girls.”
“Yes, yes,” I say, rolling my hand. “I know. You were very popular.”
“No. What I’m saying is, I remember you so well. Even though we didn’t speak. I saw you. I didn’t know you. But I couldn’t look away.”
The impact of his words thunders through me. We really did feel inevitable in that moment and even in the period afterward, when I lay in bed at night, imagining him.
With this irrational sense of knowing him.
Neither of us knows what to say.
“The magazine I work for is folding,” I confess. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud to anyone and it feels like heaving a gigantic weight off my chest.
Noah’s brow furrows like he actually cares. “Shit. I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks.” I drop my head back, my hair falling away from my face. “I’m starting to think it might be a good thing.”
“I get that.”
That’s all I really want to say for now, and he seems to sense this.
He lets it go.
The rain is coming down now. In sheets. In pillowcases. In winter-weight duvets. The once muddy farm beyond is now streaming with water, rushing past in newly formed creeks.
I guess it’s cold, but I don’t feel it.
“What else is on that list?” Noah asks me, nodding his chin toward where my phone lies between us on the table.
Right. Reality. Cara and her errand list.
I grab my phone and scroll through to her email. “The flower farm. A chocolatier. And then a dinner reservation at some place called Nick’s Cove where, apparently, we have to try the deep-fried saltines.” I look out toward where our car is parked a distance away.
“I don’t want to leave here like… ever,” I say. “But maybe we should get going.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Noah nods, that crease popping between his brows. “This looks kind of intense. Maybe we should try to escape before dark.”
As we start to rise, stretch, a blueness comes over me. I guess I’m sad that this is ending. Likely seeing movement, Maggie pops back out through the door. “How was everything, folks?”
“Incredible,” I say. And I mean it.
“We figure we should probably grab the cheese and get on the road,” Noah adds. “We’ve got to get back to the Healdsburg area tonight.”
Maggie’s eyes go wide. “Well, I’m afraid that’s not in the cards,” she says, sighing like she’s often the bearer of bad news and is sick of it. “There was flooding on the pass. It looks like it should subside by tomorrow morning. But there’s no getting off the coast tonight.”
“What?” Noah and I exclaim in unison. And it would be comical if it wasn’t real.
Suddenly, I flash to a yellow sign we passed on the road in: FLOODED DURING STORM.
Welp. They tried to tell us.
Noah scratches at the back of his neck, visions of sleeping in his rental car no doubt dancing in his head. “Is there anywhere nearby to stay?”
“There’s Dillon Beach Resort just a few minutes from here. I can’t guarantee they’ll have a room, but it’s not quite high season, so maybe? I’d offer you a bed here, but I’ve got family in town and we’re all filled up. Unless you want to sleep with the goats.”
A bed. As in one. Singular.
I guess Maggie has assumed we’re a couple. And why not? But still, even the suggestion has me avoiding Noah’s eyes.
Regardless, this is not an option. And I do not want to sleep with the goats. I picture myself curled up in hay under the red incubation lights. Suddenly, Humbug and his friends seem slightly less cute.
“Okay,” Noah says. “We’ll try Dillon Beach.”
“But what about the cheese?” I ask, trying not to think about the reality of what is essentially a night away with him—to keep the panic out of my voice. “What about the oysters? There’s really no way to get back?”
“It’s not too hot,” Maggie says, an understatement. Suddenly, it is bone-chilling. “I think the oysters and cheese will be fine. I’ll pack the coolers with extra ice. As for whether you’re really stuck… I’m afraid so.”
I push the thought of a night with Noah out of my mind. I can keep it together, keep my hands to myself for one night. Not subject myself to more potential disappointment. I got this. Do I got this?
The truth is, I have to keep it together.
Because, while Noah has been teasing a bit, I know he would flirt with a cement pole if it stopped in front of him.
He’s always been that way, just charming and radiating warmth.
(Well, when he’s not being a pain in the ass.) He put a stop to what was happening in the hot tub.
Out of wisdom, I now believe. So, if he has self-control—if he’s maybe not even super tempted anyway—then I can surely handle this, too.
I mean, how sex-deprived am I? Mental note: If I ever make it home, I need to get out more.
We thank Maggie and ready to get on our way. While she adds extra ice to the coolers, Noah tries calling the hotel up the coast, but there’s no answer. We will have to roll the dice.
Consummate hosts, Maggie and one of her farmhands walk us to our car. The umbrellas have gone from helpful to a nice gesture, purely symbolic. The rain is blowing sideways. My feet are sloshing in my sandals. I am a drowned rat.
Thanking them, we climb inside the Jeep’s warm embrace and then, at the last minute, I roll down my window a fraction. “Maggie!” I shout over the drumming of the rain against the windshield. “What’s the black baby goat’s name?”
“Mike,” she shouts back and keeps on walking.
Despite our current predicament, I cannot stop laughing.
Maybe it’s the wine. Maybe it’s nerves. Maybe it’s the way Noah’s right eyebrow dips when he’s surly.
But I cannot stop pushing that button.
“Maybe it’s a sign,” I say, grinning. “That Mike and I are meant to be.”
“Meant to be what?”
“Meant to live out a quiet life of oyster farming and oyster shucking and oyster eating in West Marin, of course.”
“There might actually be worse things,” he concedes. “Minus the Mike part.”
“But Mike is the whole game!”
Noah frowns. “Mike isn’t the whole anything.”
“Hmm. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re jealous.”
“I am,” he says. “Of Mike’s attention. Why didn’t he teach me to shuck too?” He smirks at me and then glues his eyes back on the road.
It is truly torrential. And I should stop needling Noah since we’re driving down perilous roads during a perilous storm.
The trees are drooping with the weight of the water, swaying with fatigue.
The tall grass is getting a beatdown, the wooden fence posts teetering. But I figure I’m keeping it light.
I am airy. Breezy. Not freaking the fuck out.
I don’t love the feeling of being trapped in general, and it doesn’t help that I’m alone with Noah, carrying this slightly punchy energy—somewhere on the spectrum between goofy and breakdown.
I have had more than one vision of us slipping down a mountainside to our sure death in some disaster-movie-style mudslide.
But it’s been such a relaxing and delightful day, such a pressure-free break from all the things (despite the fact that I brought a major source of my stress along), that I’m almost game for whatever comes next.
What comes next—after we drive through what is more a single intersection with a cute café, antique store, and post office than a town—is the hotel, though we pass it twice before we spot and pull into the small parking lot.
Whatever I pictured, this is a thousand times better!