Chapter Nineteen Nomi #2
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Eve waves a hand at me. “See you tomorrow.”
JULIAN
Is there anything scarier than spending the weekend with new friends?
I honestly don’t know; it’s never happened to me before. This being included is a whole new world to me, and I’m oscillating between giddy joy and abject dread that I’m going to screw it all up.
I consult the to-do list on my notes app, even though every item’s been checked off.
My car has been washed and vacuumed, my bag packed with the least country-club-adjacent clothes I own, and three iced coffee drinks and one chai latte are sitting snug in their cupholders, sweating lightly in the August morning air.
All I need now is to pick up my friends.
My friends.
I sweat all the way to Nomi’s house, the pick-up point.
I volunteered to drive because I’m never quite sure when Eve and Graham are sober, and if I had nothing to do for the hour drive to the shore, I would stare at Nomi the entire time.
Also, if I didn’t offer to drive, what if they went without me?
They’d already be having so much fun by the time I got there, I’d be on the outside looking in all weekend, too far behind to catch up.
No, this way I can control the situation with the right coffee drinks, a comfortable luxury car, and the perfect playlist, with me, squarely included, from the outset.
Things with Nomi are… I don’t know. Approaching a precipice.
And for better or worse, this weekend has started to feel like another test. If I fail, I’ll be demoted back to the obnoxious doctor serving out his probation next door, and when they talk about me, it’ll be reminiscing about that time they strapped a shock collar on me and tried to train me to be good.
A failed experiment, a person they knew in the past tense.
But if I succeed, if I show them I can be fun and not a complete dickhead for a whole weekend, I… don’t know. Maybe this could be my life? Having friends, going on trips, and… Nomi?
Nomi.
I’ve never wanted an A-plus more.
When I pull up to the curb, so excited it’s bordering on panic, nobody’s waiting outside as we’d discussed.
JULIAN
I’m here!
NOMI
Great! Come on in.
I frown briefly, glancing at the clock. It’s exactly eight a.m., which we agreed was the best time to depart to beat the worst of the weekend traffic. I cut the engine. Maybe they’re doing last-minute bathroom trips so we won’t have to stop.
Respectable. Honorable. Lawful good.
I jog up to the door. “Hello?” I call, pushing it tentatively open.
Eve bustles past me wearing bikini bottoms, flip-flops, and a Bruce Springsteen muscle tank tied at her waist. In her arms are three stacked trays of plastic-wrapped desserts, which she thrusts at me.
“Finally!” She scurries off without further instruction.
Graham, who’s shirtless, visibly confused, and wearing one sneaker, hobbles by. “Hey, man.”
“This is a wildly irresponsible amount of dessert.” I stare at the heavy trays. Where am I supposed to put these? My trunk is not temperature-controlled to safely contain cream-based desserts. I close my eyes, willing myself not to be myself about this. “Where’s Nomi?”
“Here!” Nomi walks out of her bedroom, fully dressed in black denim cut-offs, sandals, and today, a Joan Baez T-shirt with its sleeves removed.
She looks gorgeous. Her brown hair hangs in loose, shower-damp waves down her back, her bangs long and parted to reveal her big, brown eyes and the cluster of freckles that dapple her nose and round, apple-pink cheeks.
She has a duffel on one shoulder and her giant leather bag on the other, wearing a big, bright smile in between.
“Watch it!” Eve yells, and I snap back to attention as the trays list to the side. I correct just in time but not without pinching a finger in the process. I hiss out a curse as Eve glares at me.
“If you can’t be trusted with desserts, you can’t be trusted at all.” Eve hoists shorts up and over her hips, zipping them without breaking eye contact.
It’s the most intimidating thing I’ve ever witnessed.
“Come on, Julian.” Nomi scoots past me in the hallway. “We don’t want to be late!”
I grunt, then follow her out to the car.
It’s a little easier to breathe outside, away from the chaos of Graham’s bumbling efforts to pack and Eve’s gremlin baker energy.
It’s also 8:14 a.m. I lower the trays into the trunk first, scooting them as close to the air-conditioned interior as I can.
If people experience dairy spoliation–related diarrhea due to the proliferation of food-borne bacterial pathogens after eating these, well. I know how to write a prescription.
“I see the short shorts are back,” Nomi says as I straighten to standing. The little smirk she’s wearing brings down my blood pressure by a full ten points, more or less. Hard to say without the cuff.
I lean against the trunk, subtly flexing my forearms across my chest. “Well, someone once told me a muscular thigh, and I quote, ‘never hurt nothing.’”
“Who said that?” Nomi pulls her sunglasses down and over her eyes, her crooked smile creating heat in my chest. “Sounds pretty smart.”
My throat bobs involuntarily as I smile for the first time all morning. “Smartest person I’ve ever met.”
Her own gaze lingers on my face, a pleased flush pinking her pretty cheeks, and I feel the heart-soaring joy that I might be able to pass this test after all.
“Quit standing there flirting and help Grahamuel find his shoe!” Eve bellows from the front door, then slams it shut again.
“Mornings stress her out,” Nomi explains. “And sobriety.”
By the time we find Graham’s shoe (it was in the trash can), Eve smokes up, and Nomi turns off the lights and locks all the doors, it’s after nine a.m., and my eye’s begun to twitch.
“Ugh, what is this!” Eve complains as we enter a long line of backed-up cars for our first turn, all headed to the same place.
“Well, we were supposed to leave at eight,” I say, unable to resist. “So, this is traffic.”
“Sorry, DAD,” Eve says belligerently from the backseat. Then, “Ooh, coffee! Thanks, Dad!” A beat later. “Is this supposed to be iced?”
“It was iced. An hour ago.” I breathe deeply through my nose. “When we were supposed to leave.”
“Oh, honey.” Nomi looks at me over the rim of her sunglasses and places her hand lightly on my thigh.
“Did you really think a car full of stoners would leave on time?” Her palm is warm and soft, and my muscle tics upward, jumping to meet it.
She’s so foxy right now, I’m regretting the length of my shorts.
I don’t think there could be a jailbreak incident?
But I didn’t try these on aroused, either.
“I—guess that was naive, wasn’t it.” I smile tightly. Be cool, be cool, she’s gorgeous and for some reason likes you, so for God’s sake, BE COOL, JULIAN. “But we’re on the road now, and I love going—” I check the speedometer, “twenty-three miles per hour on highly congested highways.”
“Good.” Nomi withdraws her hand as she stretches back in her seat, content as a kitten in a patch of sunlight, and yawns. Meanwhile, my forgotten thigh enters a state of mourning. “Because this one-hour drive’s gonna take two and a half hours now.”
Even though the iced drinks have gone watery, and Graham seizes my phone because “NPR podcasts are not a playlist,” the morning skies are a seamless bolt of blue, and Nomi’s sitting in my front seat, drumming her fingers happily to music I didn’t know existed.
The dual feeling of euphoric!/terrified!
takes turns letting me float away then snatching me back down again, like a bored kid playing God with a balloon. I’m the balloon.
I almost lose it though when, twenty minutes before we arrive, Eve announces we have to stop at the Bruce Willis Service Area.
“You seriously can’t hold it a little longer?” I plead with the backseat tyrant.
“Of course I can hold it, I have a bladder of vast and epic proportions! Rubbery, tough, discerning.” She punches her fist into her palm with each emphatic word. “I’ve been training it since I was a kid.”
“What?” My eyes widen in alarm.
“It’s tradition, bro,” Graham pipes up.
“A traditional pee,” I say, fully scornful as I make eye contact with each of them in the rearview mirror. “Twenty minutes before we arrive.”
“It’s Bruce Willis’s Service Area, man!” Eve points at the standard rest area. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Are you even from New Jersey?” Graham tuts.
“Just pull over,” Nomi says.
Groaning, I do. Eve launches out of the car first, then greets everyone she sees with a tip of her imaginary hat and “Yippee-ki-yay, fellow truckers.” Graham promptly holds up an imaginary mic to each of their faces and asks them what their favorite Bruce Willis movie is.
I blink slowly. “This is why we stopped?”
“Whichever movie gets the most votes is what we’ll watch tonight,” Nomi explains. “Tradition.”
I cover my face with both hands.
“Hey. Breathe deep. You’re going to be fine.”
“I don’t get it.” I shake my head. “My whole life, people have complained that I’m obnoxious. But this—” I jab a finger at Eve and Graham’s impromptu interview corner where a small crowd is engaging in friendly debate over the Die Hard franchise. “—is objectively the most obnoxious thing ever.”
Nomi tilts her head. “Not objectively, no. It comes down to priorities.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, your priority is to get to where you’re going as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
“Exactly!”
Nomi shrugs. “Their priority is to have fun. Maybe your normal priorities are what’s putting you at odds with this situation. Maybe if you consciously shift your priorities to align with ours, and you try prioritizing fun, too, it’ll get your head in the right space.”
I stare at her. How does Nomi do this? How does she know exactly how to help me understand?
I’ve spent this whole drive fighting my own frustration and worse, feeling defective for feeling it.
But she just transformed the cacophony of unnamable feelings inside my chest to an explanation as clear as a bell.
“What if I don’t know how to prioritize fun?” I swallow, feeling oddly vulnerable admitting this, though it’s pointless. Nomi already understands me better than almost anyone I’ve ever met. “Even though I want to?”
Nomi’s smile is slow and sweet, like honey dripping from a spoon.
“I’ll show you how.”