“I’m sorry, Noah. I didn’t mean to trash your dad.”
“It’s fine. It’s not exactly hard.”
“My mom pretends like she’s fine, but every time I mention you she clams up and doesn’t really want to talk.”
He glanced at me. “You mention me, huh?”
I rolled my eyes. “You mentioned me to your dad, remember.”
“Only out of professional curiosity. I’m in the film business, remember.”
“I’m pretty sure having a trust fund from a film producer doesn’t qualify you as being ‘in the business,’ actually.”
“Sure it does. I’ve been in the tabloids. I’m practically a celebrity.”
I laughed. “Oh my god, you’re the worst.”
“Not according to all my fans.”
“If you weren’t driving, I’d smack you right now.”
“I’d love to see you try.”
I laughed and looked back out over the water. We were drawing closer to the city. I didn’t want the day to end, didn’t want to go back to moving through life as a student. I wanted to stay in that car with Noah forever, driving in perfect weather along a slow moving river, watching people walk along the path and learning about Noah’s life.
We cruised through a light and made a left onto Fairmount, heading back toward Broad Street. We lapsed into another comfortable silence as I went over our conversation. Noah was not exactly the guy I had imagined he was. At least, he may have been, but there was so much more to him. I studied his face as he concentrated on driving through the narrow city streets. We stopped at a light, and he turned his head toward me, smiling.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing, just trying to figure you out.”
“There’s nothing to figure, dots.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. You’re just a nice dick in good clothes.”
He laughed. “Best compliment I’ve ever received.”
The light changed, and we started moving again. I could feel whatever spell had dropped over us from the night before beginning to soften. Not lifting, exactly, but changing. I had no idea which Noah I’d see the next time we hung out together.
Either way, I was willing to find out.
Intermission: Noah
I was not a good guy. I didn’t know what Linda thought I was, I didn’t know what everyone at the theater thought I was, but I was not a good guy.
That was the refrain in my head as I drove north toward my dad’s house, winding along Kelly Drive, sunlight in my eyes, the wind whipping along my suit. Maybe I helped people when I could, but that didn’t make me good.
It just made me human.
That’s what people did for each other, they helped. Chelsea needed a math tutor, and I was decent at math. Ellie was a bulimic drug addict that would only listen to me, for whatever insane reason, and so I helped. That’s just the sort of shit you did for other people. But that didn’t make me nice or kind or decent or whatever.
That didn’t erase the past.
I was on fucking edge, naturally, and a mess of conflicting emotions. I could practically picture Linda’s smile in the seat next to me, the sun reflecting off her hair, and the memory of the way she laughed at my jokes like they were actually funny or something made me smile. I imagined the sexy fucking face she made when I slipped my hands down her pants, or told her exactly how badly I wanted to lick her perfect little pussy. I wanted to reach across the car and grab her hand and squeeze it.
Instead, I was alone in the car, barely a day after I had last seen her, heading toward my grandfather’s funeral.
He had been the only fucking person in my life who ever gave a shit about me. And I had to bury him, like I had to bury everything else decent eventually.
I was poison and I knew it.
I took a curve too fast, my heart racing, as I pictured those last few months. He was wasting away from the cancer that eventually killed him, and he was in a lot of pain. I did my best to visit him as often as I could, since my asshole dad was never going to. It was the least I could do for him, since he had always been there, even at the worst of it, when I was drunk and high more often than not, fucking my way through my horrible private high school, trying to forget about my dad’s constant need to control what I did and the idiot sluts that he kept bringing home. My grandfather was always there, a phone call away, patiently listening to me.
And when the chance came to move out to the east coast to be closer to him, I jumped at it.
It helped that it pissed daddy dearest off to no end when his son decided to leave his precious California.
I swung out wide and clipped the curb as I pulled into the funeral home’s parking lot. I wasn’t the first person there, but I wasn’t the last, either. I pulled into a spot and killed the engine, sitting still and breathing deep.