Chapter 30 Noah Today
She wasn’t wrong. Nell.
Well, she was. But not about this.
I’m a surgeon. Better not to hurt my hands. Not over some asshole I outgrew decades ago.
Maybe at some point I would have seen something worth saving in my friendship with Damien. Some relic of a boyhood brother who deserved a chance, simply because of our shared history.
But I’ve learned a lot about history this week. A lot about the past. There are things worth saving. And there are things it’s wiser to let go.
Now I realize he was never who I wanted him to be, who I told myself he was despite all evidence to the contrary, because it was convenient. Because he presented a certain version of himself to me—one that flattered my weakest parts. Made me feel secure.
He was always two people. At least two. And I don’t like any of them.
So, when I see him seated near the Japanese stall at SFO’s food court, eating ramen out of a red plastic to-go bowl, I just keep walking. And later, when he rolls into the Hudson News as I’m leaving and puts a hand out for a pound, I keep walking too. No fuss, no foul. Just like I don’t know him.
Because I don’t.
“C’mon, Noah!” he calls after me.
But I’ve got nothing to say.
“Stupid fuck,” he mumbles, loud enough for me to hear.
I shake my head and keep on moving.
And, honestly, it doesn’t haunt me. It’s like it’s something I’ve known for a long time that I have finally looked at in the light.
Anyway, I have more important parts of the past to ruminate over. Parts that are harder to leave behind. Parts that I revisited and proved even more valuable than I could ever have imagined, not less.
I board the plane. I wait patiently while people try to force their enormous bags—the ones we all know are too big—into small overhead compartments.
I stand up twice to let others into the middle and window seats.
I try to work. I fail to work. I watch a third of a Spider-Man movie I’ve seen twice before.
I put my seat back in the upright position.
And all the time all I can think about is her.
And it doesn’t stop after we taxi and I deplane.
Or after I grab my car from the airport parking lot, settling back into something that at least feels familiar, and pay the obscene long-term parking bill via the person in the booth.
Or when I drive up La Cienega toward the green hills in stop-and-go traffic, past billboards for movies that will come and go.
It doesn’t stop back at my house, up in the hills.
Where I gaze out my picture windows at the canyon below—and it feels empty instead of full like it did before.
Or even the next day, when I go to the office and leave a box of Sonoma County lemon cookies in the shared kitchen as a peace offering for having temporarily abandoned my staff.
Or when my administrators, Peggy and Marco, tell me the gossip that I missed—how Carl at the radiology practice down the hall mixed up the charts again.
Nell is everywhere and she is nowhere. And I can’t escape this feeling, like somehow I failed. Like, for a second, I had something precious in my grasp but I let it drop. Wasn’t quick enough to save it.
I think about the baggage claim area and that stupid green suitcase and her crazy hair.
I think about making iced coffee and walking in on her in the sauna and shucking oysters—or not shucking oysters.
I think about arguing and getting soaked and making terrible pasta.
I think about her citrus perfume lingering on my clothes.
I think about her body in the dim light, how she groaned when she bit into that Charleston Chew.
The way eventually she fell asleep on her side, her forehead almost touching mine.
I think about her. And it’s eating me alive.
I am a fucking wreck.
Because she could have tried! And this is the same problem as before.
Years and years ago when she opted to leave without me.
Not to find a new plan for our new life, together.
I fucked up, sure. But she could have tried; we could have tried.
To find a solution, an answer, at least some attempt at seeing if this thing could withstand our respective stubbornness this time.
And, sometimes, if I’m honest, I’m even confused about who I’m angry at—is it the Nell from now or the Nell from before?
Who is the most frustrating Nell?
What is the statute of limitations on mistakes? On being flawed?
We were just children.
That’s what she said. But either that’s true and she should forgive me, or it’s a lie and she should acknowledge that we were—and are—so much more.
Cara posts two photos on Instagram, one after the other.
How it started, how it’s going.
The first picture is of the group of us as teenagers in the Meadow.
And I know right away, it’s the day when Nell and I first went to the Met.
Nell was almost always the photographer in our crew, but, this time, someone else clearly took the photo.
Because there she is. It’s grainy and it’s from far away, but, when I zoom in, I see how she is just barely sneaking a glance up at me with a small smile, though we’re not touching.
How I am mugging for the camera, my boys at my sides, so fucking clueless about what I had and what I’d lose.
The second picture is from the un-wedding party, after we went to fetch the wine but before the terrible shit went down.
This one is new. I have less baggy pants.
And the image offers much more clarity. In this one, she is stealing a glance at me too, but at least then I had the sense to glance back.
I look at the photo eight hundred times a day. It twists the knife every single time.
But I don’t text her. I don’t call her. I don’t send an email, a DM, or a carrier pigeon.
I can’t yell at her. Or make my strong arguments. Or even plead with her to consult a doctor about her stupid shoulder—make sure she doesn’t need surgery.
Because I am respecting her space. And I’m trying to move on.
Which is why I call Ben, daily, and yell at him instead.
“I know,” he says, as I rant.
“I know,” he says again.
But we are getting nowhere. And, at this point today, I’m not even sure he’s listening. Because, though I am on my way to Dodgers Stadium to work with the team, this is the third time I’ve called him this week on my commute to rail about the same thing.
He has replaced all my podcasts. All my music. All my other calls. Although really it’s not him, it’s me.
I groan. For the umpteenth time.
“Dude, I’ve never heard you like this,” he says, as he has earlier this week. “You sound… bad.”
I stop at a red light. Glance over at the overly injected blonde in the Audi beside me, who shoots me a wink. I run a hand over my eyes. “I feel bad.”
“That’s… bad.”
Well, we agree on one thing.
Everything is bad.
“I need to let it go,” I say, resolute. “I need to drop it.”
“Yeah, I mean, maybe you do just need to let it go.” He is sick of trying to convince me otherwise. And I don’t blame him. I’m sick of myself.
I hear murmuring in the background. A distinctly female voice at a stage whisper.
“What?” Ben whispers, then he returns to his full voice. “No, sorry, actually—I don’t think you should let it go.”
I shake my head. “Tell Cara I say hi.”
“No, Cara’s not… it’s just me. Okay, yeah, Cara is next to me, and she doesn’t think you should let it go.”
“But Nell asked me not to call,” I say, as traffic starts to move ever so slowly. Like everything in my life, it is stop-and-start. It’s like moving through molasses. Yet I have no control. No way to pick up speed.
I don’t see an alternate route.
“And so you’re just going to listen? Not even try to convince her?”
“I don’t have a choice!”
“Don’t you, though?”
I go silent. What’s the point of trying to convince Nell to give us a chance? She’s already made up her mind. And she’s not wrong—shit is complicated. Emotionally. Logistically.
Who cares what my heart wants?
“Dude, listen,” Ben says. “I was with you when you broke up the first time and I’m with you now. I’ve been listening to you struggle with this shit for weeks. You’re better together. Both of you.”
“Both of us?”
“You think she’s not a fucking wreck too?”
I honestly don’t know.
“You say you don’t have a choice,” Ben says. “That you have to let her be. I think you don’t have a choice… you have to go get her.”
My knee is starting to bump up and down. Even if my mind isn’t there yet, my body is starting to wrap itself around the idea.
“What’s the worst thing that happens?” he asks.
She slams the door in my face. She says no again. We spend an amazing few days together, so I’m in even deeper, and then she sends me packing.
She doesn’t choose me… again.
My heart combusts into a billion pieces. Again.
“There’s nothing I can do if she still doesn’t think I’m good enough, that I’m even worth a try.”
“Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t think you’re good enough,” Ben says. “Maybe that’s on you.”
And that’s when it hits me like a giant wave that I don’t have time to dive under: Since we were kids, I’ve been asking her to choose me.
I’ve told myself over and over again that she didn’t choose me.
But maybe it’s time I chose her.