Chapter 29 Nellie Today
By the time I wake up, Noah is gone. I can tell by the way the space feels before I see the clues. The actual negative space. The holes he left.
The suite feels empty.
And so do I.
And it’s silly, but I am an easy target and even that makes my eyes well.
There’s a lump in my throat the size of Texas—or maybe it’s California. Either way, it’s obstructing my airways. I feel like I can’t breathe.
And I know this feeling. Because I have been here before. Decades ago. When I left for LA alone.
Only today, I am making the opposite journey.
I am leaving California for New York. For home.
And instead of being unsure of what to expect, of what adventures might be in store, I know exactly what awaits me—right down to the Jenni Kayne and Clare V.
catalogues waiting in my mailbox. The Con Edison bills.
The flyers for Thai and Mexican takeout and cheap movers wedged into my doorjamb.
The bodega cat has surely missed snarling at me.
I am packing up my suitcase, burying my face in my Dillon Beach T-shirt, which still smells vaguely of him, and trying not to cry, when I hear someone come up behind me. I whip around, hoping it’s Noah. But it’s someone much shorter and less complicated. Someone to whom I owe a massive apology.
“CB,” I say. “You came.”
And then I burst into tears.
She crosses the room and hugs me, hard. Lets me blow my nose on her super-soft top.
“It’s okay,” she keeps saying. “It’s going to be okay.”
And not for the first time, I think, her kids are so lucky to have her as a mom.
I finally take a wheezing breath and pull back, looking into her concerned face.
“I’m sorry!” I say. “I should be begging for your forgiveness and instead I’m weeping all over you.”
“No, don’t apologize,” Cara says. “I like it.”
“You like it?”
“Well, like might be the wrong word. But at least you’re letting me in. That’s all I really wanted.”
We settle quietly beside each other on the bed, my rattled breaths coming slower and slower until I am almost calm.
I bite my lip, toy with the seam of the T-shirt in my hands, then I dare to sneak a peek at my best friend.
She is no longer trying on the new boho vibe.
Instead, she’s wearing one of her signature French striped tees, tailored army-green shorts, her hair back.
And when I look at her, I can see the her from today, of course.
But I can also see so many versions of her—the kid I first met, the math genius, the teenager, the college student, the twentysomething, the career woman killing it, the mom.
The person who took so many shots last night and is somehow still standing.
There’s a clear path from the beginning to now. Yet, she scratches her head like she’s confused about how we landed here.
I know I am so lucky to have her. I can’t believe I ruined her party—there’s a knot in my stomach that feels like it will never loosen.
And that’s what I deserve—because what kind of lifelong friend destroys your un-wedding? That’s been in the works for months and months, maybe even longer? Because Cara has been talking about getting us all together—our Big Chill moment sans the funeral—for years now.
The self-loathing is real.
“I’m so sorry,” I say again, when I can finally will myself to speak, though it isn’t enough.
“I know I can say that a thousand times and it won’t change how last night ended.
But I’m still just going to keep saying it: I’m sorry, CB.
That’s not how I wanted anything to go. That’s not what you deserve. ”
She toggles her head and, because she’s a better woman than I, she says, “I know, Nells. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” I say, shaking my head. “But that’s how it went. And I’m still trying to unravel where I went wrong.”
“I think maybe it was when you stopped telling me… everything.”
“Yeah,” I say, bringing a hand to my shoulder and kneading where it has started to feel sore again. “That definitely didn’t help.”
She turns to face me then, propping her knee on the bed between us. And the look on her face kind of breaks me further. Because instead of angry, she looks hurt. Now her big brown eyes are welling too.
“Nellie. Why didn’t you tell me? Do you not feel close enough to me anymore? Were you worried I would judge you?”
I have to think about that for a second, consider the truth versus the narrative I have told myself for so long, as I stare at the vaulted ceiling.
“No,” I say, finally. “It was never that. I don’t feel less close to you—at least I don’t want to.
And I don’t ever feel judged by you. I mean, I’m the judgmental one. ”
We both shake our heads and mumble something similar simultaneously like, “Not counting Sab.”
We smile at each other.
“The thing is, Cara, you have so much on your plate. More than I can even understand. Two small kids and a husband and this giant job. Your time is so precious. I never want to bother you with my petty shit. You have so much going on in your life.”
“But that’s what you don’t understand,” she says, frustrated.
“I have nothing going on in my life. I mean, yes. All those things—but also nothing. Every day is the same. I wake up, I get the kids to school or day care, I get myself to work, I sit on Zoom, I sit in conference rooms, I drink the same iced latte, occasionally with oat milk. I leave work, I get home, I make dinner. Again. Some members of my family maybe eat it. Mostly they whine for dessert. And then I basically pass out from fatigue and, before it feels like I’ve even really slept, I wake up and start again.
I feel like the most boring person alive! ”
How have I missed this? This struggle she is having. How have I been so self-involved that I didn’t notice my best friend was wrestling with her own growing pains?
I have been so obsessed with feeling left behind in some way, with thinking that I didn’t have a right to her time, that I forgot that moving forward is hard too.
“You’re not the most boring person alive,” I say. “I know that for a fact. Because that’s definitely Ben’s friend Percy from college. I know because I had to talk to him at cocktails the first night about his mortgage, and I fell asleep with my eyes open.”
She giggles, despite herself. “Poor Percy.”
“Poor Percy.” I put a hand to my heart.
“The point is, I need to hear your petty shit,” Cara says.
“I live for your petty shit. And your less petty shit, too. Because it helps me feel like me.” She sighs, places her hands slightly behind her, and leans back.
“Nellie, it’s been a really hard stretch.
” She drags a hand across her forehead. “I feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore.
It’s like I’ve totally lost myself—and now I’m just a snack dispenser and a lady in waiting for two tiny lunatics—and one larger, lovable dumbass. ”
Suddenly, I can see the exhaustion in her face like it was always there. Only I hadn’t been looking. Like one of those optical illusions. An autostereogram. Where the image emerges when you stop trying to focus. “Oh, CB.”
“I used to be fun! Right? Didn’t I used to be fun?”
“You’re still fun! The most fun!”
“Meh,” she says, frowning. “I feel like a fun killer. And I’ve been dragging Ben all over the city, to Japanese whisky bars and like Peruvian hand roll restaurants and God knows what else Instagram served me, trying to recapture something.
I just wanted to feel… free or something again.
” She smiles sadly. “I’m not even sure he wanted to do this party.
But I pushed him into it. And, actually, I do think having a little time together without the kids helped. ”
I study her face for a beat, the crease between her brows. “Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling this way?”
“Maybe one thing we have in common is that we don’t like other people to know when it feels like we’re failing.”
“I hear you,” I say, placing a hand on her forearm. “But you are literally never failing. If you’re failing, the rest of us are dead in the water. The human race might as well just lie down in defeat.”
She sighs. We both do. Then she says, “I’m sorry about Alfie.”
I tilt my head, narrow one eye. “Are you, though?”
“No.” She shakes her head, definitively. “I hated him. He actually really sucks.”
Then it’s my turn to shake my head. “I mean, you guys should have told me he was the worst so long ago!”
“What were we going to say? ‘Sorry to inform you, but the guy you’re planning on marrying is the wettest blanket since we potty-trained Olivia’?”
“Yes. Something like that would have done the trick.”
“Next time.”
“Oh, God. Please don’t let there be a next time.”
She squeezes my hand, letting me off the hook too easily. “No next time.”
I gaze at the floor, a patch of sunlight falling across the rug like a tiny sliver of hope. “CB, I really do feel awful about last night.”
“Eh,” she waves me off. “Don’t. That was some real-life soap opera drama. No one is going to forget that meltdown! It just made the night all the more memorable.”
This is a very generous spin. But of course it is. Because that’s how my best friend rolls.
“Let’s both try to be better about sharing when things blow.”
“Let’s both be better at asking for help.”
We pinky swear. Because on some level, we are still eight years old.
I am absentmindedly folding and refolding the T-shirt in my hands, when she asks me, “So, are you sad? About Noah-who-must-not-be-named?”
I exhale sharply. Will my chin not to quiver.
Nod because speaking is out of the question.
I am definitely sad. But also, there is no good solution.
Not with the lack of trust and the distance and the fact that he expects me to uproot my life.
The fact that, on some level, he still thinks I have abandoned him.
She leans in and hugs me again. We rock a little back and forth. We’re quiet in the wake of it all. Everything has already been said.