He sat on the scooter but he didn’t put the helmet on.
“How can you forget that?” I said. “You can’t forget that. You have to deal with it.”
“Listen,” said Noel. “I came back and I wanted to be with you. It was you who kept being unhappy all the time. You were always complaining that things weren’t right.”
“Because things were obviously not right!” I cried. “How could you not trust me enough to tell me what happened?”
“I didn’t tell anyone, okay, Ruby? I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t even talk about it with my parents. Like I said, I wanted to forget.”
“But I’m not a forgetting person,” I said. “I’m not an ignoring person. You should have known it wouldn’t work.”
“What?”
“I can’t forget things, or ignore them—bad things that happen,” I said. “I’m a lay-it-all-out person, a dwell-on-it person, an obsess-about-it person. If I hold things in and try to forget or pretend, I become a madman and have panic attacks. I have to talk.”
“Okay. That’s you,” said Noel, tapping his helmet with his fingers. “That’s not me.”
“Well, if you wanted some forget-about-it girlfriend, you should have stuck with Ariel Olivieri, or found some freshman who would think it was cool you were so emo and would never ask you anything about anything,” I said heatedly. “But you picked me, and I have to understand things. It was like torture to me that you had this huge secret, even though I didn’t
“I didn’t mean to torture you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I went out on the lake with Gideon, I’m sorry I didn’t know how to be there for you—”
Noel interrupted. “I didn’t want anybody there for me.”
“I know it’s so stupid,” I went on, the words gushing out. “But when I saw what you wrote on the peer questionnaire just now, I thought maybe you could love me again. I mean, not love, maybe not love, because we never said
My throat closed up and I felt so, so stupid I could barely talk. I rubbed my sleeve across my face and tried to get my breathing under control.
Then, as we stood in silence for just that quick moment, I realized I didn’t have to be there anymore. I didn’t have to humiliate myself this way, begging for Noel to want me again.
I could just end this horrible situation right now.
“I have to go,” I said, and spun around.
“Bye.”
I walked on shaky legs to the trail that led from the parking lot back to the main campus of Tate. My pack felt heavy on my shoulder.
It was only as I started down the path that I heard Noel’s Vespa pull up behind me.
“Ruby,” he called.
“What?” I turned. He had his helmet under his arm still, and his face was extremely pale in the cold November light. We were about six feet apart.
“
I stared at him.
“It was definitely the right word,” he said. “For what we used to have.”
Then he drove away.
“It sounds to me as if he’s immature,” said Doctor Z, chewing a piece of Nicorette. “And possibly limited.”
“What do you mean?”
“Has he had a girlfriend before?”
I shook my head. “Not a serious one, anyway.”
“He’s inexperienced.”
“We’re seventeen. Of course we’re inexperienced.”
“Well,” said Doctor Z. “You have more history than a lot of teenagers do in terms of having a romantic relationship that lasts more than a couple weeks.”
Oh. “What do you mean, Noel is limited?”
“It sounds like there are limits to what he’s willing to risk. To where he’s willing to go, emotionally,” said Doctor Z.
“The whole parking lot debacle was completely humiliating,” I told her. “When we started talking, I meant to be sympathetic about Booth and thank him for the nice things he wrote in the peer questionnaire. But as soon as I got near him and we were talking, all these feelings started spilling out uncontrollably.”
