Chapter 31 Nellie Today #2
“I asked you first. You choose.”
“Fine,” he says. “I choose the Brooklyn Lager. And you.”
I freeze, unsure of what to say next. I part my lips, close them. In a fugue state, I hand Noah the beer. Our hands graze each other. And it’s like an electric shock when we make contact, lightning scorching its way through me.
Decades, years, eons—and this boy still does that to me.
“Thanks,” he says, all cool. Like this is all just the most normal thing. Like he hasn’t just said what he said. And he sits down on the couch. “Hey,” he says. “Mind if I turn on the game?”
What is happening?
“The… okay? But you’re going to need to be more specific because I don’t know what ‘the game’ means?”
“The Yankees game,” he says. “If you hand me the remote, I’ll turn it on.”
I feel like I’m in an alternate universe. As I hand him the remote and he starts scrolling through to some sports channel I’ve never turned on like it’s completely regular, I am out of my body.
Did he fly from LA to sit on my couch and watch sports?
Suddenly, I can’t play along anymore. I can’t pretend this is normal and wait patiently to see what comes next. The shock and thrill of seeing his face is morphing into disorientation to the point where I remember that this isn’t good for us. This isn’t good for me.
What is he doing here?
“Noah,” I say. “What’s going on?”
“Well,” he says, “we’re having a drink and watching a baseball game ’cause I have something I want to show you.”
I am still hovering over him.
“Right. I know literally what we’re doing. But why? What are you doing here? I haven’t seen or heard from you in weeks. We said goodbye in California and that was supposed to be it.”
“Right,” he says like we’re discussing the weather. “I know. But I don’t want that to be it. I don’t think that should be it.”
I narrow my eyes at him, prop a hand on my hip. “Well, maybe you don’t get to decide.”
He toggles his head. “Yeah, okay, fine. But I’ve solved the problem. So, the decision kind of makes itself.”
“You’ve solved the problem?”
“Yup.”
“Because you’re going to bribe me with cereal to uproot my entire life for you?”
“No,” he says, like I’m being ridiculous. “Because I’m going to uproot my life for you.”
I take this in. At least I try.
What. Is. He. Saying?
Like a zombie, I sit down on the couch too because I’m not sure I can trust my legs to hold me up.
I open my cider with a hiss. Chug half of it.
Let it fizz, tart and sweet, on my tongue.
Place it on a hexagonal coaster on my coffee table.
The hexagonal coaster I bought at the MoMA store while I was living my regular adult life—and hating him.
“Sorry—what?” I say, finally.
“I’m moving back to New York. To be with you.”
He says this like, I’m going to order the burger. Like it’s that basic.
I choke. Belatedly. Like my body just realized it swallowed something. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I thought about it,” he shrugs, “and the way I see it, it’s my turn… to choose you. To show you I’m a different person than I used to be.”
“Noah… what is going on?!”
He finally gives me his full attention. Slides over beside me so we are close, our thighs touching, so I can feel him next to me.
And then he faces me full on, his expression taking on a new seriousness.
It takes everything in my power not to trace the scar on his cheek with my thumb, his faint laugh lines.
Not to lean in and kiss his parted lips, then and there.
I can feel his presence like a hum beneath my surface.
Like mini earthquakes that won’t stop rolling.
Today, his eyes are a color I can barely describe—something earthy and green and brown and yellow all at the same time. Something grounded.
They hold it all. And they are zeroed in on me.
“I didn’t realize until I saw you in California that you’re what’s missing from my life.”
I open my mouth to interject, but he holds up his hand.
“Just let me get this out. I know you’ll have thoughts—trust me. I know you.”
Fine, I allow. I will listen.
“Before Sonoma, I had convinced myself—deluded myself—into believing that what we had was just a kid thing. Just a first-love thing. That there wasn’t a chance in hell it would become something again.
I mean… I figured we might still be attracted to each other.
I figured there was a small chance we might bone or something, but—”
“Noah…” I motion for him to continue.
“Sorry.” He slides a palm over his hair.
“Anyway, then I saw you at baggage claim and you were, well, let’s be honest, kind of mean.
But also really hot. And most of all, you were you.
Sharp and stubborn and funny and impossible—my person.
And, from that moment on, as much as I tried to convince myself otherwise, rationalize what I was feeling in a million different ways, I’ve known that I can’t live without you. That I don’t want to live without you.”
“But…”
“I know,” he says, a hand coming to rest on my leg, to steady me.
“We have history. We have baggage—exponentially bigger than the Jolly Green Hulk. I get that. I do. And no amount of cereal is going to erase that. But we’re adults now.
That’s the beauty of it. We can figure out how to get past it.
Because it’s worth it. And because, honestly, it’s going to take a lot more energy trying to get over you than it is trying to get…
well, not under you. But you know what I mean. Under you is part of it.”
I exhale a wobbly breath. Try to pull my mind out of the gutter as I flash to me under him—which is frankly where I’d like to live.
I want to buy what he’s selling, but it feels too good to be true. And him uprooting his life… for me? It seems like so much.
“But what about your work?”
“I can work here. The good—and I guess bad—news is that everyone needs doctors.”
“But you love your job.”
He nods. Looks the tiniest bit glum for just an instant before he wipes any trace of negativity off his face. “And I’ll be sad to leave. But I’ll find work I love here, too. I have no doubt. Because the thing is, Nell—I love you more.”
I am struck silent. Mind blown. Head reeling. Tornadoes spin through me, picking up my expectations and tossing them victoriously aside. Finally, I manage to make my lips form words: “You… love me?”
Noah grins at me, takes my hand in his strong own. I realize I’m obsessed with his hands. “Nell. Of course I love you. I’ve always loved you. I was just too young and stupid to know what to do about it.”
How is this happening? Minutes before, I was walking into my apartment ready to spend the night wallowing in the loss of this man. And now he’s sitting next to me, in the flesh, looking at me like the world begins and ends at my say-so.
“But… what changed?”
He looks down at my fingers, thinks about this for a beat.
“For years I’ve been telling myself that you didn’t choose me.
I think I was so used to people catering to my every whim that I expected things to work that way forever.
And, after the injury, I suddenly felt like all my power was gone—like I was nothing without baseball.
And I retreated inside myself and pushed you away and then, when you actually left, I think it felt like proof that you also didn’t think I was good enough.
And so I spent all these years villainizing you in my head, telling myself that you gave up on me, that you didn’t choose us.
That all your talk about how I was more than sports was just bullshit.
That even your family didn’t like me. But it never occurred to me that I had never chosen you.
I was so angry at you for going to college as we planned despite the fact that my world had imploded, maybe even angry at you for not dragging me with you, that it never even occurred to me that I was the one abandoning you and our plan—forcing you to go live our dream, our life, without me.
Because I couldn’t see why you’d want me anymore.
I kept asking you to choose me. I kept testing you. But I never chose you.”
What is rising in my chest is something I can barely describe. I am overcome. I am shocked. I am still processing.
And I am, it seems, in love.
For the first time in decades, I let myself admit it. And it steals my breath.
Fuck. I love him.
“So, you just came here.”
“So, I just came here.”
“Ready to stay.”
He shrugs. “Basically.”
I tilt my head. “That’s pretty brazen. What if I don’t want to try? What if I don’t want to bone?”
He raises his eyebrows and gives me a look like, please. Then he jumps to standing. “Oh!” he says, gesturing toward the TV. “There it is!”
Noah pauses the game, then walks over, pointing to an LED screen behind home plate.
It’s an ad on a digital monitor. For something called Humbug Medical.
It has a black goat logo.
I look at him. I look at it. I look at him again.
“What…?”
“For my New York practice. I figured Humbug might be a pretty good name after all.”
“You took out an ad at Yankee Stadium for your new East Coast medical practice?”
“Well, sort of,” he says. “I called in a favor. It’s just a mockup. To show you how serious I am. I’m a ways away from actually getting it off the ground.”
And that’s it. I am ended.
Maybe it’s that adorable black goat. Or the crooked smile on Noah’s face. Or the fact that he has finally seen us from a different perspective.
Maybe it’s the weirdness of that name. Or how good he looks, with those broad shoulders, taking up space in my apartment.
But if I have more questions, I can’t think of what they are. They’ve been subsumed into a swell of something much more powerful.
So, I launch myself at him. Or at least I think I do. All I know is that one minute I’m on the couch and the next I’m on him—my mouth on his mouth, my arms around his neck, my body pressed up against his. And there is heat pooling inside me.
He doesn’t hesitate. He kisses me right back. There’s no doubt here now. There are no questions.
He tastes like beer and something fruity, and I don’t ever plan to let go.