I clutch my pillow. My armor. “Nomi, you shouldn’t be drinking.”
She jumps on the couch and I get off the couch and she is the Centipede, on her side now, legs for days and who knew she had legs and what is she doing? She’s sipping her spiked soda—spikes on a dark road at night, spikes that flatten tires—and she’s propping her head on a red pillow. “Whatever,” she says. “These things have like no alcohol. Don’t worry. I won’t be drunk or anything.”
I hold my Red Bed red pillow and the Centipede isn’t moving with her body but she is moving in other ways. Running her hand over her collarbone and the collarbone isn’t yours but it is. It came from inside your body. “Joe,” she says. “Relax. She’s gone.”
She takes a sip and fuck you, Woody Allen. You did this. You. She’s a virgin—isn’t she?—she isn’t old enough to know what she wants but she says that I know what she wants and she licks her lips. “Seriously. She and Erin… they live for stuff like this, shopping for curtains.” She sighs.
“Nomi, you shouldn’t be drinking.”
“And you shouldn’t be getting married. Jesus, Joe. We were set.”
The Centipede broadsides me from afar and I lose a life and stutter. “There is no we.”
She laughs and did she always laugh that way? “I get it,” she says. “You do things the hard way. We were so close…” Close as in the Centipede is winning. “Mom was all set to be a brother-fucker and go off with Ivan…” No you were not. “But you go and bring him down…” No I didn’t. “And then you go hunting with my ex-boyfriend… He told me he was gonna ‘teach you a lesson’ for trying to steal me away, like it’s not my choice. Such a jerk.”
The game table flies into the air and I duck for cover. She said ex-boyfriend and it was her in the woods with Seamus. Not you.
Nomi.
He wasn’t pining for you and he was a pedophile and he thought I was a pedophile same way RIP Melanda thought I was a pedophile and I AM NOT A PEDOPHILE. The Centipede isn’t alone anymore. There are bombs falling from the top of the screen and my control panel is stuck—does she know about the bunnies and the buckets of fucking blood?—and I want to punch the console and scream. “You… and Seamus…？”
She shakes like her body is covered in ants and she screeches. “Don’t remind me. I know. He wasn’t exactly smart. He barely read. But don’t be a dick about it. I was young.”
“You are young.”
She blinks and I wish she still wore those unflattering little round glasses. “He could be sweet, though, like driving to Seattle to pick me up from Peggy and Don’s to take me to his cabin. I don’t think I would have gotten through high school without those weekends.”
The cabin. The girls weren’t twenty-fucking-two like you said, Mary Kay. The girls were Nomi and I beg her to stop and she sighs. “Don’t be that way, Joe. Don’t be jealous. The cabin was freaking boring and it’s not like I was ever in love with him.”
“Nomi, please. Stop it.”
“But kids here… they’re like kids everywhere. They suck. Seamus was just, I mean one day I was bored hanging out by the creek near my old middle school and… there he was.”
CrossFit is across the street from that fucking middle school and I snap. “He’s a rapist.”
Now she sits up. “You stop it. Nobody raped me, Joe.”
“It’s called statutory rape. And it’s wrong.”
She crosses her arms. All one hundred of them. “Oh really, Mr. Morals? Mr. Hiding in the woods watching me…”
“I was not watching you.”
“Right,” she says. “You just happened to be there with all the time in the world to take this long, leisurely walk to the grocery store with me…”
The screen turns from orange to green and I am dying. I did that. But I didn’t. “Nomi, please, that’s not what that was about.”
“Now you’re gonna tell me that you didn’t push me to watch your favorite movie…”
I hate that this is true—I did that, I pushed a teenage girl on Woody Fucking Allen—and I am one soldier and she is a reptile on fire.
“Come on, you were worried that I was one of Melanda’s little pawns, so freaking cute, you actually believed that I never saw a Woody Allen movie. I mean, I live on a rock, but I don’t live under a rock. And I know when someone is watching me.”
“I was not watching you.”
“Right,” she says. “Same way you didn’t literally go to my house in the middle of the day when I was cutting school.”
“I was dropping off a book.”
It is true and it isn’t and the Centipede moves swiftly. “Nope,” she says. “You were waiting for me. And you didn’t rat me out to my mom, which is how I really knew we were in this for the long haul.”
“Nomi, I am sorry that you misinterpreted things but you are dead wrong.”
“One word,” she says. “Budussy.”
Budussy: the only word worse than Centipede, and I shoot her down. “No.”
“That whole time you helped me at the library you were making eyes at me all nervous about getting caught and you keep looking to see if my mom noticed. You were so cute, Joe. So cute.”
“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.