Page 71 of Backslide
“It’s just that, you were pretty anti this until about fifteen minutes ago—and I just want to make sure you’re not doing something you’re going to regret.”
“Didn’t you also take a muscle relaxer?”
“Yes, but…”
“Yes, but what?”
He shrugs. “Lightweight.”
“You know, you’re right,” I say, irritation rising. “You must be impervious to meds. Why else would you still be so uptight?”
I start to back up off his lap. Sink down lower into the water and cross to the opposite side of the pool, so that the froth shields me. I am shaking my head—at him? At myself?
Because I know what this is. This is an excuse. This is Noah panicking. This is second thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” he says, a pained look in his eye. I assume from the discomfort of the situation. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Do not say sorry to me,” I say to him, careful to keep my voice at the horizon line. “Like this was yourbad. I’m a big girl. I make my own decisions.”
I will not give him the power to make me sad. To reject me. Not again.
“I know. Of course you do. It’s just there’s been a lot of miscommunication between us before and I don’t…”
“Just stop,” I say, holding a hand up like, if I try hard enough, I might be able to hold him back against the side of the pool using only the power of my mind. “This was dumb.”
“It wasn’t dumb, I just…” He runs a hand along his closely shorn hair again, clearly unsure of what to say.
“Itwasdumb,” I say. “But I’m not. If you’re not interested, you can just say that. I don’t need this bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit,” he says, his hands out of the water and facing the ceiling like I’m the one being unreasonable. “We aren’t just some random people to each other. This could mean something and I…”
… am freaking out. I finish his sentence for him in my head.
“Stop!” I say firmly now, and I know I’m getting upset, but I will not allow this man to give me some kind of easy letdown or talk. I will not hear it. Not so many years later like nothing has changed.
Ugh!Why did I do the same thing and imagine a different outcome? Why did I expect this Noah to be mature and consistent and present when that’s not his MO? Here he is, playing the same old shell games with my emotions.
This man literally spends his time with professional athletes, probably traveling from city to city and banging a nameless, faceless many. I realize in that moment that I actually know nothing about him, the Noah of today. He could have his own fiancée for all I know.
“I get it,” I say, as I reach for my towel, which slouches on the slate-tiled floor beside the pool, and begin to climb out. “It was a thrill-of-the-chase thing. You thought maybe you’d time travel for a second, but it got old.”
“What? No! I didn’t plan this, Nell,” he says, starting to rise out of the pool himself. “You were the one letting the towel drop in the sauna and I was trying to…”
The rage that rises in my chest at his words surprises even me—at teenage Noah, at today’s Noah, at Alfie. At all the deeply disappointing humans along the way. It courses through my veins like venom, transforming me into something sinister.
“Oh, sowhat? Now I threw myself at you?”
“No! That’s not what I meant.”
I wrap the towel around my chest fully, grab my top and my tote, and stomp toward the barn doors. “Fuck you, Noah. Good for you. You convinced your gullible high school sweetheart to make out with you. Mission accomplished. Now, you can move on. Go tell Damien or find Lydia or something.”
“Lydia?” he says. “Really, Nell?”
I swing the spa doors open and whip around to face him. “It’sEleanorto you.”
In the afternoon, time stretches. It downward dogs. It planks. It rolls its neck.
I check work email and the clock eight hundred times, both anxious for the crew to return from their booze bus excursion and dreading having to act like everything is normal. Like nothinghappened.
