Page 17 of Your Fault

To say I wasn’t happy was the understatement of the year, but I let her go on talking.

Raffaella’s eyes were damp. Her face made me sick to my stomach.

“I’ll go with you, Mom.”

What?

“But next time, either we all go, or none of us do,” Noah added, unaware of how those words were echoing in my brain or how all at once, I’d started to see red.

Her mother smiled, but I felt feverish and had to stand. Despite my father’s look of admonishment, I announced that I was leaving. I tried to control my voice, but my hands were clenched into fists, and what I wanted most was to hit someone. I didn’t even know if I wanted Noah to leave with me. I was every bit as pissed at her as I was at her mother.

“Nicholas, sit down,” my father ordered, not wanting to draw attention to us. Always worried about appearances, always with that disappointed expression. I took off toward the door, not even stopping to wait for Noah. I needed to get outside and take a breath of fresh air.

I headed for the car, but I realized I didn’t have the keys—why in the hell hadn’t I taken my own car? I turned around and leaned on the driver’s side door and saw Noah walking toward me. She couldn’t keep up with me in high heels. I took out a cigarette and lit it. She’d probably bitch about it. I didn’t care.

When she reached me, her cheeks red, trying to meet my eyes, I looked away toward the people entering and exiting the restaurant.

“Nicholas…”

I didn’t answer. I just listened to her breathing, and after a moment, I looked down.

“What did you want me to do?” she asked.

I grunted. A month, a whole month without Noah: all my plans, all the stuff I’d wanted to do with her, all that was in the trash can. I was going to take a trip with her; we were going to see the sights; I’d thought I’d make love with her every single day that summer, enjoy her company, but no, she hadn’t even hesitated to accept her mother’s gift. It hurt because I thought I would come first for her, and I’d been wrong.

“Give me the keys. I’ll take you to your party.”

I knew she wanted to talk, but the thought of her being gone, the thought of her being taken from me, even if it was just a month, was eating away at me, and of course, there was nothing I could do about it.

After standing there in silence, she reached into her purse, handed me the keys, and walked around to the passenger side.

It was for the best. If she’d decided to argue with me, I wasn’t going to be responsible for what I said.

7

Noah

The tension in the car was unbearable. He was enraged. I could tell. I could see it in his eyes.

I understood why he didn’t like the idea of me leaving for a month, but what was I supposed to do? My mother had organized the trip, she’d even paid for it, and I couldn’t turn her down. She was my mother, after all. We’d always talked about me graduating, about college, about how we’d go shopping together for furniture for my dorm room. We’d even joked about going backpacking through Europe to share a last summer together while I was still her little girl, as she liked to say. A part of me wanted to take that trip; I didn’t want to lose the chance to be alone with the woman who had given me life along with everything I had… I couldn’t just reject her outright.

But my body also ached when I thought about how I wouldn’t see Nicholas for four whole weeks. I had plans with him; I, too, had wanted to spend every second of every day in his apartment, even more now that I knew his work was piling up and that his trips to San Francisco would last longer than the two weeks the last one had.

I looked over at him. His eyes were fixed on the road, his hands clutching the steering wheel with fury. I was scared of whatever might be happening in his head, but I didn’t know what to do or say to keep him from getting angry with me.

“Are you not even going to talk to me?” I asked, gathering my courage. In lieu of looking at me, he ground his teeth, and the veins tensed in his neck.

“I’m trying not to ruin your night, Noah,” he said a second later.

Trying?

“Nicholas, you can’t blame me for all this. You can’t make me not go. This is my mother we’re talking about!”

“And I’m your boyfriend!” he screamed. There it was—we were going to end up arguing, and that was the very last thing I’d wanted that night. As my nerves frayed further, I wondered what more there was he wanted to say.

“Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me choose between my mother and you,” I begged him, trying not to whine or shout.

Nicholas sped up so fast, I had to grip the door handle. I caught a glimpse of the Four Seasons. A long line of cars waited in front of the valet stand, and lots of people I knew were there with their boyfriends and girlfriends. I envied the smiles on their faces. Mine was gone, for a change.

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