Dead To You

43. three years ago

If I thought I might have wanted to die before, then I definitely wanted to as I tried to slide out from the booth, the vinyl awkwardly creaking beneath my hands and my hips as I scooted gracelessly across the seat, which was made all the more difficult by the damp fabric of my dress dragging behind me while it caught on the curled edge of a strip of duct tape beginning to unfurl around the side. 

This was all so dumb of me, to sit in a booth when I already knew how cumbersome it looked to get in and out of one, especially in soaking wet formalwear and with Noel Preston of all people, someone I never really knew how to talk to, never mind convince to eat a sandwich like I somehow knew what he needed anyway. 

I shouldn't have brought him here. I shouldn't have driven his car just to get out of walking home. I shouldn't have fought with Dylan at the repast earlier tonight, or with Bridgette after the party that night. I shouldn't have—

"She filmed all day, you know," Noel murmured quietly, interrupting all the thoughts bombarding me with reminders of what I should've done differently just before I exited the booth with another prolonged dull screech noise from my dress against the vinyl. It sounded almost as bad as what he said, shrugging one shoulder as he adjusted a piece of lettuce sticking out from his club. 

"She filmed herself getting ready, and arriving to the cathedral, which she chose not because she's catholic—she's not, she's actually a Mormon—but because she thought it looked the nicest out of all the local places of worship. She filmed the dinner preparations like she didn't have a catering team but didn't say she did it herself so no one could call her out. She knows how distasteful it would look to film the actual dinner, but she has plenty of footage of what it all looked like before everyone got there. Then, later tonight, we were supposed to film an outro for her vlog, thanking everyone for their love and support, blah, blah, blah..."

I swallowed, shifting around in the booth so I faced him once again, and I wasn't exactly sure what to do or how I should respond to what he had just told me, my mind becoming a total blank as it occurred to me that Noel Preston was actually opening up to me, and I had no idea how to do this, or apparently anything else tonight, right. 

After a few seconds had stretched into almost a minute of silence, I panicked and picked up one of the chips from off my plate and extended it to him before realizing how patronizing that might have looked, like I was rewarding him with a treat for being emotionally vulnerable. 

But if that was how Noel interpreted it, he didn't say anything as he gave a small snort and accepted the chip from me, surprisingly popping it in his mouth. It emboldened me enough to hesitantly ask, "If you don't want to answer this, you don't have to but, like...why do you stay there? Why don't you just go live with your mom?"

He paused, and I wondered if the unprompted bite of his sandwich a moment later was his attempt to discreetly dodge answering the question. He busied himself with wiping his hands with a napkin before he took in a breath and finally said, "My mom got remarried a few years ago. I used to see her a lot before then, flew back and forth from California twice a month after the divorce because it was the furthest my mother could get away from my father—her words—and listened to them argue about where I should go to school, spend every summer, who got me for the holidays, but I don't think it was ever really about me. 

"I was just one more thing they could use to get back at each other, because then whoever got their way would just complain the whole time or try to prod me for information about the other. Tell me about every terrible little thing they did or said...all the things they said about me. And then that all came to an end after my mom met Will, her current husband. Suddenly, it was fine that I didn't visit for Christmas or that my dad already made plans for spring break. I guess she decided that she wanted Will more than she wanted to get back at my dad.