“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t get f**king moony on me, Nick. Because if you do, I am out of here faster than Norah. Get it?”
I nod. Try not to look at her skin.
“Good.” Tris lets loose a smoke signal. “I don’t want to talk about us.”
You never did, I think.
When someone breaks up with you, their beauty—which you took such satisfaction in—suddenly becomes unfair. It’s like that with Tris right now. She’s even managed to arrange herself in the lamplight so the shadows hit in just the right way. It feels like a rebuke.
We sit in silence for a second. She takes a drag. She’s cinematic and I’m a f**king sitcom. The silence doesn’t bother her at all, but it freaks the hell out of me. So I do what I always vowed not to do, and always found myself doing anyway. I throw “I miss you” into the breach. It even feels empty to me. Like I’m not saying it to the right person.
“Don’t start that again,” Tris says, but without the edge I was expecting. “It doesn’t prove anything except that I don’t feel the same way.” Another drag of the cigarette, and an ear turned toward the club. “They sound kick-ass tonight, don’t they? I thought the big time would ruin them, but maybe I was wrong. I should’ve slept with Owen O. while I had the chance. Then I would’ve been only one degree of spreaderation from whatever teen-movie starlet gets to him first. I just hope they don’t name their daughter after a f**king fruit.”
“April,” I say.
“What?”
“April. You said you wanted to name our daughter April.”
Tris shoots me a curious look. “Did I? I don’t know if it’s sweet or scary that you remember that.”
I find the courage to ask, “Aren’t sweet and scary the same thing to you?”
She grins a little at my insight and nods. “Maybe. Sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
She draws more of the embers toward her, stares not at me but at the punks walking across the street from us.
“Tris, I—”
“Do you like her?”
“What?”
“Norah. Do you like her?”
“Can you like someone who confuses the hell out of you?”
“All the f**king time.”
“Did I confuse the hell out you?”
It’s really just a question, but this time Tris is annoyed, flicking her cigarette at me so ashes scatter on my shirt.
“Shut up, okay?” she says. “Enough already. ENOUGH. Yes, you confuse the hell out of me. Because not only can you not let go, but you don’t even f**king realize that the thing you’re holding on to isn’t even there. You think I hurt you? Well, I could have hurt you so much more.”
“How?” I have to ask.
“By telling the truth, Nick. I thought you’d see it. I thought you’d figure it out. I had no idea how completely blind you could make yourself. And yes, I could have just come right out and said it. But you were just so f**king vulnerable that I could never do it. And then I hurt you anyway. But f**k, Nick—you needed to be hurt. You needed to have the truth kicked into you.”
“It’s more like a stabbing than a kicking,” I tell her, just so she’ll know.
“For me it’s a kicking,” Tris replies. “But whatever. The subject of us is through. The subject of you and Norah is not. Let me give you some free advice. She’s a runner for sure—she’ll run away every time without saying a word. But here’s the thing—you are not a runner. And deep down, I don’t think Norah wants to run, either. She just feels like she has to. Partly because she’s a tiresome spoiled-brat smartass with no fashion sense. And partly because she’s a f**king human being.”
She’s making sense, and that’s like a rebuke, too. Why couldn’t we have had these conversations when we were together? I think. And then I realize what I’ve done—I’ve made when we were together a separate, almost distant place. I still feel the hurt, but I feel much less desire to undo it.
“I’m through with you for tonight,” Tris says, standing up. “Find that other f**k-up and have f**ked-up children together. Don’t name them after fruits or months. Be original and just name them like children.”
“But she’s gone,” I say.
Tris snorts. “Nick, Norah’s not gone. She’s clearly someplace. All you have to do is find out where that is.”
“Any ideas?” I ask.
“Nope,” Tris answers, walking out of my life once again. “You’re on your own.”
I let her leave. I watch her walk into the blast of music blaring from the open door of the club.
Then I look back to the sidewalk and try to map the possibilities.
12. NORAH
I am still hungry.
I am also still tired, and still vaguely interested in my future life of sainthood, but still. I gnaw. The stale Oreo I am munching in the cab, with the cookie part soggy instead of crisp, the white center near-gelatinous—like a room temperature ice cream sandwich—is brilliant, but not coming close to quelling this hunger. I’m not sure whether the gnawing is coming from my stomach or the Arctic vicinities around that area that, earlier, eerily melted under the greenhouse effect of Nick’s touch.
“Are we going or not?” the taxi driver asks me. We’ve sat through five rotations of the light at Houston and West Broadway while I decide where I want to go. The driver is putting up with my uncertainty because he’s hopeful I won’t follow through on my threat to either be driven to Jersey or file a formal complaint if he gives me any more shit about leaving the city.