You Love Me(You #3)(129)

“Nomi, I wasn’t making eyes at you. I was making eye contact, and there is a difference.”

“Aw, come on. You can be real with me now. Don’t fight it.”

“Nomi, I’m not fighting anything. You misread things.”

“Ooh, I thought of another one of our little ‘moments,’ that day you almost ran away… I saw that box in your car, Joe. I knew you were gonna leave… But then you saw me.” No. “And you were so cute, worried that I thought of you as one of those old people in the library.” No. “I had no idea that you were so self-conscious about your age and I promised to be more sensitive…” No. That is not how that went down. “And you stayed.” She clutches her heart. “The absolute sweetest.”

The bomb almost hit me that time and the game is rigged. “Nomi, this is all a big misunderstanding and you’ve been through a lot and I’m really… sorry isn’t the word… I’m horrified by what Seamus did to you but I am not like that.”

She shrugs. “He didn’t ‘do’ anything to me. I like older guys. You and Seamus like younger girls. Almost all guys like younger girls. There’s nothing wrong with that. That girl in New York you went out with… the dead one…”

This time the bomb hits me. The game is over. How the hell does she know about that? I put another quarter in the machine in my mind and I will fucking win. I tell Nomi that she has PTSD. She lost her father. She isn’t thinking clearly. I remind her that I know where she’s coming from. I had a rough childhood. I know how hard it is when your parents are fighting and you don’t know who you can count on and I tell her that we can get her someone to talk to, someone who can help her sort through this mess.

But she just smiles. A centipede with eyes. “You remind me of him, you know.” Don’t say Woody Allen. “Dylan,” she says. “Dylan Klebold.” Dylan Klebold is a mass murderer and I am your common-law husband—why didn’t we go to the courthouse today? “You don’t just say things. You actually do things. I mean the way you gave me that Bukowski…”

“Your mom gave you that.”

She smiles. “I know. Well done there.”

“Nomi, I am not Seamus.”

She looks at me and laughs. “Oh come on, Joe. The way you both hung around my house after my dad died… I mean it was unbelievable. He wouldn’t let me go and you wouldn’t just freaking go for it… and my mom…ugh…” You resented your mother and she resents you and a nipple appears under her shirt. “You don’t have to be jealous, Joe. I didn’t break it off the day I met you but I mean… he’s gone. We’re here. Plus, honestly, when I started up with him, I was a whole other person. I was young so it doesn’t even count.”

“Nomi, you are young,” I say again.

She grins. “I know.”

I missed it. The man was abusing your daughter and I hear Oliver in my head. There is such a thing as too soft, my friend. Cedar Cove rotted my brain and broke my radar and the Meerkat was never a fucking Meerkat and kids grow up faster—fucking Instagram—and they know how to be four different people at once and I took her little round glasses at face value. I thought she was innocent and she was just playing innocent but she is innocent because HE WAS A FUCKING PEDOPHILE. I said the word out loud—someone has to make this right—and she throws a pillow at me. “Don’t use that word.”

“Nomi, that’s the only word there is right now.”

She’s quoting RIP Melanda—It’s not history. It’s HERstory—and she talks about Seamus like he was her equal—He did the salmon egg thing too when he was a kid and he could be sweet—and I tell her that’s impossible. “He was a grown man, Nomi. He had all the power and what he did was wrong. He should be in fucking jail.”

She snaps her fingers. “That’s why Melanda hated you. I thought she was just jealous as usual but you’re better than this. You can’t tell me how I feel. I know you know that.”

I tell her she needs to stop and she balks as if we are lovers at war. “Don’t tell me what I need, Mr. Woody Allen’s number one fan. Even Seamus knew better than to talk down to me like that.”

Seamus was a pervert who tried to kill me and I am the adult. The stepfather. “Nomi, what he did was wrong.”

She tells me that in a lot of cultures, girls her age have babies and that I don’t get to sit here and take it all back when I’ve been leading her on since the day we met. “It sucked when you disappeared. But I get it. I know it was too painful for you with me so close but so far away…” No. “And it doesn’t matter because you came back. You waited for me in the parking lot of the library and once again, I told you to stay. I told you not to give up.” She looks at me and the Centipede burns me alive. “And you didn’t give up,” she says. “Yeah, the wedding was a little icky, but we both know that you’re not going through with my mom’s little eight-eight plan. You’re not even really married.”

I am down to one life now and she laughs. “Stop being so freaked out. It’s me, Joe. It’s me.” But then she stops laughing, like the Centipede she’s become. “I almost forgot,” she says. “You should have seen your face when I told you Melanda texted me. Another classic.”