Statistically

Chapter Two

Back when we were first together, if you'd have told me that Elle and I wouldn't last, I would've punched you right in the nose.  If you'd taken it a little further and said she would end up with Lee, I probably would've put you in the hospital.  I look back and I know I should have saw it coming but at the time it wasn't in my mental realm of possibilities.

I was never one to plan out my entire future but after I admitted to myself that I had been in love with Elle since before I even knew what the word meant, I had a vague idea of how things would go.  I would go to Harvard, she would get accepted into a college somewhere near me.  We would make it through those years and graduate.  We would get jobs.  We would get a place of our own.  Buy a dog, and not a little dog, a real dog.  I would think up some grand scheme to propose.  We would get married.  We would be together because after Elle, the only statistic or equation that I cared about was Elle + Noah = true love forever.

I can't look back and figure out the exact moment our relationship derailed.  There was no big fight, no one thing that pushed us over the edge.  We just ended.  Burnt out, like a candle when it runs out of wax.

I remember laying in my bed with her, on spring break during my freshman year.  It was night time and the house was quiet.  The light from the moon was shining in the window, putting that blue haze on things the way it does in a dark room.  It had been months since we had been able to see each other and I couldn't take my eyes off of her.  I was counting down the days until she graduated, so ready to start some type of life together as almost-adults out in the world.

She traced in between my fingers with her own, leaned up on one elbow, her eyes downcast.  I had been so caught up in the rush of being with her again that I guess I hadn't noticed she didn't seem like her usual self until that moment.

I asked her what was wrong, and after a while when she had waited so long to speak that I didn't even think she was going to answer, she finally looked up at me.  "I got in to college, Noah."

I remember being so excited I almost jumped out of the bed.  Instead, I pulled her into my arms, my mind already racing with all of the things I had been wanting to show her, all of the places I wanted to take her, now that she was finally going to be closer to me.

"Noah, I'm going to Berkeley."

It was one of those moments, when my lungs couldn't quite remember how to work.  In my head, I heard her voice, from a thousand different times over the years - when I get older, I'm going to Berkeley, just like my mom! I saw her at a dozen different ages, from the days when she was an annoying little kid kicking me in the shins to the day at the kissing booth when our eyes met after I finally kissed her, to now.  I only hesitated for a few seconds, but it was a few seconds too long - her dream was coming true and that was all that mattered.

When I told her I was happy for her - I meant it.

When I look back now and remember the way she held my face close to hers after I kissed her, I think it was because she didn't want me to see the look in her eyes.  If I would have, I think I would've saw that she already knew what I would spend the next few months trying so hard to deny.  It wasn't going to work.

This beautiful girl, the only one who could keep my on my toes, the only one who had ever made me feel like I really could be more than a statistic, the one I loved so hard and with my no part of myself held back - she was my first love.  And in that moment, laying in my bed in the glow of the moon, she already knew that this first love would not be her last.

*

I did finish college, I did graduate.  I did get a house, though it isn't quite like the one I pictured all of those years ago.  I got a job.  I didn't get a dog.

I decided to set up my base in New York City and at the time I had all kinds of reasons, all kinds of excuses, but everyone knew.  They knew I picked a place where I was guaranteed to never run in to her.  Where I would never be surprised to see her walking down the street, with my brother on her arm.  I stayed away from home because I didn't want to face them but after a while I just didn't want to face anyone.  I didn't want to see the pity in their eyes when they looked at me.  So I stayed gone.

I never meant for it to become a permanent thing.  I didn't know at the time that the longer I stayed gone, the harder it would be to go home.  But that's what happened.  I have thought of a million excuses over the years to not take that flight.  I went back for their wedding and it was hard.  It only became harder after that.  In ten years I have made it to one Thanksgiving and that was only because I knew Elle and Lee wouldn't be there.

But I'm okay.  I live my life.  I go to work, I come home.  I watch sports on TV and I leave my socks on the living room floor and there is no one to complain about it.  I take vacations to everywhere but California.  I tell myself that maybe I am not happy, but I am content.  That I'm not angry anymore, that I'm not hurt anymore.  That it was a long time ago and Lee and Elle make more sense than Elle and I ever did.  Most of the time, I even believe it.

He calls me on a Tuesday.  I am just pulling my car into the garage when my phone starts ringing.  The number isn't programmed in my phone but as soon as I see the area code, I think of him.  I hold the phone in my hand and just stare at it.  I think of any reason he could be calling me and I answer, saying a brief prayer that my parents are okay and then feeling like a real ass.  It's been years since I have visited them.  Sometimes, I forget that.

"Lee?"

"Noah."

An awkward moment of silence follows, I wait for him to fill it, my lungs having one of their fits.

"Are mom and dad okay?" I ask.

He clears his throat.  When he speaks his voice sounds funny, like he has been screaming or crying.  I don't want to know which. "Yeah.  Yeah, they're okay."

It isn't like we have had zero contact in the last ten years, but it has been close.  There have been emails, a couple of phone calls around the holidays.  But this is not a holiday.  Lee has never called me on a random Tuesday, just to shoot the breeze.

I feel like I am in one of those moments where you forever remember your life before and after that particular moment.  Like for whatever reason, answering this phone call is going to change the course of my life.  I want him to say that he dialed me by accident, that he didn't mean to call me at all.  But instead he talks again, in that voice like he's just recovering from a sore throat, and when he does I wish I hadn't answered the phone at all.

"I need you to come home, Noah."