Statistically

Chapter Fourteen

I drove Lee's car to the hospital and I am already outside before I remember that Elle has the keys. I think about going back inside to get them, but only for a second. I need some time to clear my head, the last thing I want to do right now is see her. Or anyone.

I need time to figure out where I am going. Not just in this particular moment but in life. And right now, I have no idea.

I'm standing there, lost in my thoughts, when I hear someone walk up beside me. I expect them to move on, to keep walking towards their car, get in and drive off to whatever life they are leading - one I am sure is better than mine. I turn to glance at them as I am stepping away, taking claim over my own personal space.

But it's my dad.

For a second he doesn't say anything. Just stares at me in that way that makes me feel like my entire soul has been laid bare, like every thought, every feeling I have ever felt is on display.

"Let's go for a ride, Noah."

And because I feel like I really have no choice, I follow him to his car.

*

I'm not sure if he knows where he is going, or if we are driving without a destination in mind. He doesn't say. We drive in silence without even the radio to distract me from the constant stream of thoughts running through my mind. It's a little tortuous, to be honest, and reminds me of those days so long ago, when he would catch me coming home drunk and stretch out the conversation as long as he could just to keep me from doing what I really wanted to do - pass out.

This is a lesson he has chosen to teach in the opposite way, I guess. With his silence. Maybe because he knows that whatever is going on in my head is worse than anything he can say.

I lean my head against the window and watch the world pass by. People walk down the streets, alone or in pairs, some chasing kids. I envy almost every one of them because no matter who they are, no matter what their life is like - they are not me.

Just as I am starting to feel guilty for feeling sorry for myself, which is pretty much just feeling sorry for myself because I feel sorry for myself, the car stops. I look out of the window and we are at a random stretch of beach that I am ninety-nine percent sure I have never been to in my life. I look at him for some kind of explanation but he is already getting out of the car. So I follow him.

We walk across the small parking lot, down an uneven flight of wooden, weathered stairs that are set down into a stretch of moss covered rocks. When we get to the bottom he stops and doesn't say anything as he unties his shoes. He takes them off, followed by his socks, rolls up his pants legs. I do the same.

He still doesn't say anything as he starts to walk across the sand, towards the ocean. The sun is beginning to sink into the horizon but the sand is still warm between my toes when I start to follow him. We stop just when the water begins to cover our feet and he stands with his arms at his sides, just staring ahead at the sunset.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" He says after a while.

I nod my head, the smell of the sea filling my nose, because of course it's beautiful.

He looks over at me, and for a second he doesn't look my dad at all. "Is it so beautiful that you would be okay if you never saw another one again?"

Of course, I've never thought of it that way. Never thought of it in a way that makes it all seem so obvious, so simple. But Elle is not a sunset and it isn't that easy, so I tell him so.

"Noah, do you think the only woman I have ever loved is your mother?"

I haven't spent much time thinking of my parent's love life, before or after they found each other. But when I look over at my dad, it is like I am seeing him for the first time. That instead of my dad, he is some guy I don't even know. Who had a whole life before I was even a thought spoken into existence. Who maybe found himself at some time in the past hopelessly in love - with the wrong girl.

I feel like the expression on his face is one that I have worn myself a few times.

"Who was she?"

He shakes his head and looks back at the waves. "Just a girl I knew, a long time ago. Probably wouldn't recognize her now if I passed her on the street."

But I can see in his eyes that that just isn't true. That he would be able to pick her out of a crowd right now, even all of these years later. That he probably still has her face memorized, the way it looks when she laughs or when the sun hits it in a certain type of way. That maybe the whole I wouldn't recognize her if I passed her on the street is really more of a I still look for her, incase I pass her on the street type of thing.

"I used to come here," he waves his hand out in front of him. "When I was trying to get over her. Would just stand here and stare at the ocean, wait for the waves to take my problems out to sea with them."

I give it a try, I stand beside him and together we watch the waves as they roll in and then out again. I will them to take away some of this pain. Pain about Elle and a new and almost equally awful pain that I have only recently become aquired with - pain about Lee. About all of the ways I have failed him again and again.

"Did it work?" I ask.

This time he doesn't lie. "No."

When I look over at him he is already looking at me.  "Then what do I do?"

He doesn't say anything for a while and I can see him searching for the right words in his mind.

"Elle is not the one for you."

And even though I know it is true, even though I've told myself those exact words a million times, I still feel tears welling up in my eyes. 

"You have to make things right with Lee."  He looks at me like there is more he wants to say about that, but he doesn't.  "And then you have to put your version of Elle where she belongs."

"But where is that?"

I am not sure if he is even aware that his hand goes to his heart when he says, "In the past."

*

It feels a lot different flying out of LA than it did flying in.

So much has happened, so many new things weigh down on me that I am surprised the plane is even able to make it off of the ground.  But it does and I find myself watching the lights of the city fade away into the dark until I can't see them at all.

I replay my conversation with my dad in my mind.  How we stood on the beach and talked until the sun was down.  How he tried to convey that losing his first love ended up being the best thing that ever happened to him, because it led him to my mom which eventually led him to his children.  To what ended up becoming his whole life.

So I try to do what he said.  I try to put Elle into the past, where she belongs.

I put her on the back of my motorcycle, screaming and laughing on some hot, long forgotten summer day.  I put her walking down the beach beside me, eating an ice cream cone, her hair blowing out behind her in the wind.  I put her back in the kissing booth, knowing I will never forget the look on her face when she took off her blind fold and saw me standing in front of her.  I put her lying in the strands of moonlight shining in my bedroom window.  I put her in an old song on the radio that makes me think of her and in an inside joke only understood by the two of us.  I put her places where she will always be mine and we will always be us, and I tuck my memories in around the edges and tell myself I will leave her there.

And tomorrow, I guess I'll try again.

*

I get a cab from the airport and it takes me to my house.  My old house or my current house - I haven't decided.  When we arrive I pay the driver and stand on the sidewalk as he dissappears into the night.  I suppose I am prolonging the inevitable, but it really didn't hit me how much I didn't want to go into my house until I was standing in front of it.

But, it's cold in New York, so I go inside.  There is no one there to greet me, not even in pictures on the walls.  No one to ask me how my trip was or to tell me they missed me.  I'm not sure how I managed to live here before without being entirely consumed by how alone I am here.  Or maybe I was consumed, I was just too far gone to realize it.

It doesn't take long before I am looking up a realtor and I guess that is the first step.  I know now, whatever new life lays ahead of me, it is in California.  And I find myself counting the minutes until I can wrap things up here and go back.