Page 9 of Backslide
Why do people keep saying that to me?
I glare at him. “If only that were true.”
He stares down at my face for a beat, long enough for me to shift uncomfortably as warmth shimmies up my spine, then he shakes his head in disbelief. “Well, I can see you haven’t changed.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He fixes me with a look. But I will not be deterred. “Why are you even here?” I ask, motioning toward the baggage carousel. “Aren’t you flying in from somewhere else? Like Newark? Or Hades?”
He glares back at me. And it’s a look filled with ire, but just this side of smoldering. I can too easily recall a different version of thatfierce focus on me, in a very different scenario. I am blindsided by a flash in my mind to skin against skin.
I try to blink it away, but it persists.
There’s a burst of heat at the back of my neck.
Damn. It would be helpful if he didn’t look so good. But Noah’s skin is tan and smooth except for some perfect stubble, his hair is short like I always liked it, and, in the intervening years, some of his boyishness has transformed into something more rugged and chiseled.
“I was just cutting through to exit,” he says. “I flew here private—with the team.”Private. With the team. Like it’s no big deal.
Is there no justice in the world? No wonder even his white T-shirt looks crisp. And hugs his biceps when he…ugh.
I change course: Why is he flying with a team? This is confusing to me since I know he isn’t playing sports, though he had all that promise. Because wasn’t that where all the problems began?
“What team?” I sneer.Why does he just assume I know about his life?
“Oh. The Dodgers. For the last few years, I’ve been working for them and living in…” He hesitates, then mumbles, “LA.”
“In LA?!” I say with alarm. More than I’d like. The last thing I want him to think is that I care.
But LA? Of all the fucking places? My insides twist, ringing out a slow drip of bile.
What is he—some stupid sports marketing bro?
I have done my best to avoid keeping tabs on Noah. And, let me just say, that is a feat in this day and age. Last I heard, when I ran into a girl I knew from high school who didn’t know enough not to tell me, he was living in Cleveland. And I liked thinking of him there, getting fat, bald, and pasty under gray skies. Meanwhile, he was busy jogging up canyons and getting Hollywood tune-ups—inmyonetime city!
He bites his lip as we eye each other, like he at least has the sense to feel a little ashamed.
My gaze catches on his mouth. And, when I finally meet his eyes, I watch them drop down to my mouth too.
Ugh!I’ve got to get away from this man!
This is not how I wanted things to go. It’s all wrong. I had plans, dammit! I was going to float out onto the estate’s veranda under the gauzy light of dusk in one of my new dresses, the embodiment of effervescent hate-glam. I wanted to look past him,throughhim—like the ghost he is—as he stared at me longingly from the other side of the reclaimed wood deck, all night long. Under a canopy of majestic redwoods, I wanted to toast with Prosecco and laugh with my girls and ignore him into desperate submission until he skulked home early and got a jump on that coma.
Instead, I am staring at his handsome hateful face, feeling the vestiges of our past burn through me, fresh and raw. Like a brand-new smack to the face. And I am doing it in a sweatsuit with a red kiss appliqué on the upper left-hand side.
“We’ve got to go,” I mumble as much to myself as to him.
“We?” he repeats, like maybe I mean him. I can’t read his expression. Surprise? Disdain? Hope?
Maybe it’s just confusion.
“I’vegot to go,” I say. “Me. And the Jolly Green Giant.”
2NOAHTODAY
“Sorry—the Jolly Green what?”
“Sorry. From you? Hilarious!”
Neither of us laugh.
