by Angel Marks
“Noelle, from the moment I met you I’ve been happy to make our relationship permanent, but the more time I spend with you I know it would be a mistake to hold you back from your dreams. If you don’t pursue them, and you stay in Brighton waiting for me to finish school, start a career, etc., someday you may regret it.”
When Noelle didn’t respond, he continued.
“I love you. That’s why I won’t trap you.”
“But, maybe I want to be trapped.”
“No. You don’t. You may feel that way right now, but a few hours from now, a few days from now, months, years, whatever, you will wish you had taken the opportunities you had when you had them.”
“What are you talking about?”
“New York. Remember? I can’t believe I’m reminding you of your dream, when I wish you never had it. I hate the city. I never want to live there, but you’re different from me and I don’t want to hold you back … even if it means I could lose you.”
“Will Martin, are you dumping me, right now during our romantic Maine getaway together, after I finally gave you anal sex? After you took my virginity there? Really? Seriously?” Fortunately, they were alone on the trail.
“No. I’d like to be proposing, again, but over these past three months I’ve realized how selfish that would be, to lock you up, take you away from everything you told me that you wanted out of life. If we’re meant to be, and I believe we are, because you’re my girl, Noelle, you’ll still want me when I’m twenty-three and just graduated with my bachelor’s degree.”
“This is really sounding like a breakup speech, Will. Are you okay? I don’t get it. You have me on a financial plan, and it’s working. Why would I give it up to move to the most expensive city in the country where I have few connections and no job?”
“Because you’re young and youth is fleeting. Money comes and goes, but you can never buy back your youth, Noelle, and risks sometimes lead to great rewards, but you’ll never know until you try.”
“Oh my god, you really are ending what we have going, aren’t you? So when should I be moving to the city, tomorrow? Next week? Tell me because I really don’t have a plan at all, Will.”
“Noelle, I’m not dumping you. I love you and we are a couple, obviously. We would not have done what we did last night if I was dumping you. I love you. You’re my girl. That’s it, but I am saying that if you really want to try to make it in New York, you have to go for it, and I’ll support you in your dream, when you’re ready to pursue it.”
“But what about you? You just said you hate the city. So if I move there, will you follow me and be miserable?”
“If I’m with you, the misery won’t be so bad. Richard probably won’t like it though.” They looked up at the little black miniature Schnauzer-Poodle racing ahead of them on the trail as though it were flat land and not a steep mountain.
Will and Noelle, holding hands, began hiking up after the dog. Noelle looked through the trees, trying to get a glimpse of the sea.
When they were almost to the summit, she said, “Well, maybe I’ll get there and I won’t like it. Maybe it would just be temporary. I could try it out and if it fits then we could talk more about how we’ll manage as a forever couple with me in New York.”
Will was silent for a moment before he replied with no other tells, “That’s fine, babe. I want you to pursue your dream.”
“All right, well, I need to get my finances more in order, and then maybe I’ll consider applying for some positions in New York, so long as you promise you’re okay with it.”
Will was crestfallen but masked his feelings by calling back his dog. “I want this for you,” he said as he tucked the small box he had been carrying with him on their journey deeper into his pants’ pocket, where it would stay for the remainder of their trip.
Chapter Twenty-Two
New York
Five months later, Noelle was packing her bags. Will had completed his first full semester at the community college and again had straight As. He spent the winter break working at Harness, and Christmas, their first Christmas together, was bittersweet, more bitter than sweet, as Noelle had taken Will up on his proposal and applied for other jobs in the city.
She had excellent references from Harness and used a head hunting agency in New York as well as her alumni network to land an assistant position for a highly reputed literary agency. The step up and away was exciting and scary and everything she had dreamed it would be, except for the leaving part.
Saying good-bye to Will was turning into a nightmare. She stood in their bedroom looking down at the bed they had shared for eight months of constant sex and love making. Maybe that was all it was she thought to herself. Maybe Will was pushing her out when he proposed she look for a job in New York, because it was just sex, and she had been his whore, and he knew it. Young love comes on strong and then moves on. Maybe, but deep inside she knew better than that. Youth was fleeting, and it meant she had to be moving or it would pass her by and she’d be old and forgetting what she had wanted to do with her life before it had even gotten started.
She grabbed her suitcase and rolled it to the door. Will was driving her to the bus station and that was it. She would be on her own from there. Free. An independent woman of twenty-three, she was pursuing her dream of being a literary spectacular in the most amazing city in the world, New York. And then she saw him. He looked like a little boy who was trying to be brave at a funeral. Will stood at the door and took her suitcase from her, carrying it down the long flight of stairs and dropping it into his trunk.
“I’ll drive you to the city, Noelle. I don’t want you to take the bus.”
“Will, I can’t let you do that. You have two tests on Monday. I know you need to spend the weekend studying. If you were to do poorly it would be my fault. I promise I’ll be fine. I know exactly where I’m going and I’ll call you as soon as I’m safely in my new room.” She felt like she was talking to a parent, and not her boyfriend. His care for her as his child was tender and suffocating. Right now she needed to breathe. So this was how it was going to be. They would live three hours apart and wait and see how it went. He loved her too much to hold her back from her dream, and somehow he was wise enough to realize they both needed to grow as individuals and take risks that would keep them apart for a while.
Through her network she had managed to find a bedroom with its own bath to rent on the upper West Side of Manhattan. No easy feat, considering it was for $500 a month and came with a doorman, and privileges for the rest of the large apartment where the occupant, a middle aged divorcée, was more often out of town than in and when in, threw elaborate dinner parties that Noelle was always welcome to attend.
Three weeks into her new job and she was finding her groove in the city, doing her best to stay on top of everything new and stay on budget, an astronomical feat when faced with constant temptation to spend, and invitations to go out with coworkers she hoped to befriend and add to her network. For that selfish reason, she did go out on Thursdays, which apparently was the big going out night for the whole city, that and every other night, that is. To make up for the expenditure, whether it be a cover charge and a drink she would nurse for the entire night, or a dinner where she would order the cheapest thing on the menu, she pulled out her snow boots, as it was the middle of winter, and started leaving extra early for her office, trekking it in while stashing her now passable shoes she had picked up at a sample sale the first weekend after her job began.
The fashion code in New York was brutal and she needed some fine tuning to feel comfortable in a city full of models and other beautiful people everywhere she went. Career advancement and sample sales became her dirty little way of justifying every purchase she made that was really not necessary, and soon she found herself making smaller payments on her student loan.
Then came yoga. She passed Yoga Body twice every day and started fantasizing about what it might be like to take a class there. By mid-March the fantasy became a reali
ty after her one guilty class led to a full membership to Yoga Body. After being in New York for three months, she found herself yoga-sizing seven days a week and was quickly building up her skill level to become a certified instructor, which was her way of justifying the enormous expenditure. Along with her new love came the need to have new yoga pants, yoga tops, and, of course, a yoga cover up for after yoga. Yoga became her substitute for Will, who she had stopped talking to a month after arriving in New York.
The break had come rather quickly, and while she wasn’t interested in dating anyone else, she still needed a significant distraction outside of her working life, as she did pretty much work around the clock reading query letters and sending out rejections, all the while in a constant search for what would sell.
It happened when he had called to ask how her day was and she just didn’t feel like explaining it all to him. Life in New York was incredibly different from their life together in Brighton City, and it was wonderful in its own ways. Even going to bed alone and having to resort to masturbation was A-OK with her at the moment as she recalled her gross misjudgment that had almost cost her this opportunity. She knew if she had gotten pregnant she would have kept the baby and that would have been it: a baby. The thought of babies at twenty-three years old sent waves of psychosomatic nausea to her stomach and real fear in her heart, and she had come so close to having one. Yet as soon as she got off the bus in New York, she stopped taking her pill.
Sex was not on her list of things to do in this city, though the men were incredibly handsome, finely dressed, and many were also incredibly well-mannered, like her sweet Will who she fell asleep thinking about every night. New York men were also outnumbered by the sheer number of beautiful career women, giving even the uglier men, especially the ones with big bank accounts, free range to date haphazardly, making New York a playboy paradise.
Then summer came in New York. This is when the rich New Yorkers flee for long weekends or more at the shore and garbage day becomes more than a nuisance to walk around. Noelle walked by garbage piled up higher than northern New York’s Tug Hill snow banks, filling the sidewalks on a sweltering hundred degree July day. She knew better than to take the subway though. It was marinating in a hot stew of piss. It was time to get away.
Her boss at the agency, a woman Noelle both respected and feared, encouraged her to take a break. She had been working nonstop for the agency since she had arrived six months ago, minus her new found yoga craze, and that had ended up paying off. She was now a certified yoga instructor and taught five nights a week for Yoga Body, from seven to nine. Part of her pay was membership to the club and the rest was making up for the splurge it took to get there. With the additional income she recouped her splurges, and was now on schedule to pay off her entire student loan in less than a year.
Will would be so proud of me. She only allowed herself to think about Will once a day, and that was always right before she fell asleep, otherwise she was too distracted to get anything done. Usually she managed to distract herself enough with everything NYC so much that she didn’t think about home. Home, she would need to work on that thought.
NYC was now her home, but she didn’t stop thinking about Will while eating blueberries at her desk. They had cost a fortune even though they were in season and they weren’t even organic. She thought about the organic blueberry farm on top of a country hill marked off by hundred-and-fifty-year-old stone walls that Will had visited with her last summer, seven times. He didn’t even like blueberries. He did it for her.
Then her phone went off. Her boss wanted to see her about a recently acquired manuscript and she pushed Will away for later, when she could savor him without interruption.
That night she broke down and called his cell. Ironically, he had bought a cell phone after she left for New York so they could stay in touch, but she hadn’t. It was too hard for her to adjust to the new way of life and hold onto her old. She did her best to become independent, and so far she was successful, but she worried that hearing Will’s voice would cause her to regress, and then a girl answered his phone.
“Hello?”
What the fuck? All her jealous urges kicked in and she became heady with irrationality. Why was she not there with him? What the fuck had she done? Did she really think that she could just go live her life and keep Will in a box for later, when she was ready for a life outside of New York City? Did she think they had something so great, so special that she could break off communication with him for months and he wouldn’t find someone else?
Fortunately, her six months in New York had prepared her for such a situation. She composed herself and in her most professional voice said, “With whom am I speaking to?”
This caught the girl off guard and she replied, “Jessica.”
Jessica, such a trampy name, Noelle thought. Bitchiness was filling her heart. Jessica Draminthal had been her childhood best friend before she became a born again and they went their separate ways. She had always thought it was the prettiest name, up until this moment.
“Isn’t this Will Martin’s phone?”
“Yeah,” replied Jessica. Apparently, she wasn’t going to give out any more information willingly. “And you’re Noelle.” She deadpanned, pausing for evil girl effect. “I don’t think you should call this number anymore. Will doesn’t want to speak to you. Leave us alone.” And she hung up.
Noelle sat on her bed shocked, staring at the dead phone. She really needed to think now. There was no way she was going to sleep tonight after that phone call. What to do? Who was Jessica? Will’s girlfriend? Did he know she had his phone? Did he not want to talk to her? How did Jessica know who she was? The small space of her bedroom, a former maid’s quarters, suffocated her now. She threw on her sports bra, a T-shirt, a pair of yoga pants, and her sneakers and took off. Running would give her some perspective, even if it was night and she had to work in the morning.
Despite being after nine p.m. there were plenty of pedestrians out enjoying the now-bearable weather. She headed out on the sidewalk and ran south under the street lights for a couple miles before turning around and heading home. By the time she was back to her street she had logged four miles.
She stopped at her corner grocer, bought a chocolate gelato, and walked over to a park bench in a lit up area. The run had cleared her head and saved her from what could have been a total Ben and Jerry’s indulgence. It had been feeling like a double pint night. She savored the creamy chocolate gelato as she sorted out her mess.
Of course Will had moved on, why wouldn’t he? He was obviously a beautiful man with many positive attributes. Any girl would feel lucky to have his attention and he had a very high sex drive. Could she really have expected him to go six months without sex? The high quickly melted away as the reality of what she had done hit her. She had taken him for granted.
She had stopped taking his calls months ago, after telling him it was too hard to adjust to life in the city and maintain a long distance relationship. Talking to him made her want to board the next bus and head back. He had asked if there was someone else and she had said no, which was true, and still was. Not that there hadn’t been opportunities for her to date other men. There had been plenty. She just had no interest in other men, and somewhere in the back of her brain she had considered herself taken. Now she had to figure out what had happened. Somewhere in her heart she had truly believed that they were just apart for the time being and they would be back together when the timing was better. She said he had been right to encourage her to pursue her dream, and that she would be back if he was willing to wait for her. He had said he would.
He had said he would wait for her. She had put him on hold. What a fucked up thing to do. Across the park she watched a young couple holding hands and walking into the darkness. She supposed they imagined they were alone as they were becoming quite intimate. The memory of Luke watching Will make love to her shot back to her mind. Maybe they were as freaky as she was and wanted to be watched. Judging by
how young they looked, she imagined they just didn’t have privacy at home. She left her bench and headed back to the high rise.
The way she saw it she had two options, to pursue Will until she spoke to him, or to give up and let him go. She had to call him again. This was a mess she had made, and now she needed to fix it or at least know the truth.
She dialed and his phone went right to voice mail. Instead of leaving a message, she hung up.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The tip of Long Island was Noelle’s Disney World, if she were five-years old and in love with Mickey Mouse. Noelle took her friend Anna up on her invitation to her family’s Hamptons beach house for a week in August. Every morning she rose at five for a sunrise yoga class on the beach, followed by a run, and the days were spent boogie boarding in the surf and baking in the sun while catching up on some missed personal reading, a huge accomplishment for the workaholic she had become. Evenings were filled with cookouts and invitations to neighbors’ for drinks and more cookouts and dancing on the beach.
“What’s your deal, man?” Anna asked as they left the Bartholomew’s party two doors down, tipsy and tan, in cotton sundresses and sandals.
“What do you mean?”
“Mark. He’s handsome, successful, single, rich, and funny. He invited you to the Bob Dylan concert, and you said you weren’t available.”
“Oh, yeah. What does he do again?”
“He’s a banker.”
“Hmmm.”
“I’m sure he has plenty of girls who will be happy to go to Bob Dylan with him.”
“Yeah, but why not you, Noelle? Who are you waiting for? You’re not gay, are you?”
“Would you like me any less or more if I said yes?”
Anna laughed, “I think you know my position on that.”
