Page 104 of Your Fault

Noah. NoFrecklesanymore, I guessed.

I felt so far from him in that instant that my heart ached.

“What are you doing with her?”

I hadn’t intended to ask that; it slipped out.

“I work with her.”

Taking a deep breath, I tried to find a way to connect with him, but after four days apart, with silence on both ends—something that had never happened before—I was lost. I didn’t know what was going on.

The tattoo.

I had talked about it with Michael. I was going to his office almost every day, and we talked about anything and everything. I had never felt able to open up to a stranger like that, but he had helped me, and it had been his idea for me to wait and see how things turned out with Nick. He told me it was never good to pressure people, that I should wait for the anger to subside instead of letting it speak for me.

Well, there we were: talking. But it wasn’t exactly the conversation, the reception, that I’d hoped for.

“Nick…”

“Noah…”

We were both talking at the same time, and we both stopped to hear what the other had to say. It would have been funny on another occasion, but not then, not when he felt a million miles away.

“I want to see you,” I said, seeing he wouldn’t take the initiative.

I could hear him on the other line walking away from the noise around him. I guessed he was shutting himself up in some empty office.

“Sorry I haven’t called,” he said. “The company anniversary is coming up, and I’ve been busy with that…”

“I’m going to a psychologist,” I blurted out. I don’t know why I didn’t lay the groundwork before saying that. Maybe I needed to tell him that despite my attitude, I was willing to change, to improve, for him.

“What? Since when? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now.”

“You can’t just go to any psychologist, Noah. What was the point of all that looking around, making those lists, if you were just going to up and do it without me…?”

“Nicholas, what does it matter? He’s helping me. He’s young, he’s on the university staff, I feel more like I’m talking to a friend than to a doctor.”

“A friend?” His tone froze in a matter of seconds.

“His name’s Michael O’Neil, he’s the brother of one of my classmates, and he says—”

“The school psychologists are just a bunch of underpaid chumps, and they have no idea what they’re doing. How old is this guy?”

Incredible.

“What does it matter how old he is?”

“It does matter, believe me. What the hell does a guy who just graduated know about what’s going on with you?”

“He’s twenty-seven. Anyway, he’s helping me… That should be the only thing that matters to you.”

“You’re what matters to me, and being sure that you get what’s best for you, and I promise you, a staff psychologist won’t even know where to start when you tell him what’s going on with you.”

“What are you trying to insinuate?”

“I’m insinuating that I want you to stop seeing that dumbass and—”

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