‘What the fuck is wrong with me?’ Noah wondered aloud frustrated.
He’d been staring at the screen for the last forty minutes or so. The blank page stared back, silent and empty, mocking his lack of inspiration. The small rays of sun that had showered over his furniture an hour ago, were now gone, replaced by a grayish light that announced more rain was coming.
Noah got up and walked to his balcony. Windows open, he let the wind blow through him, wishing it’d take this depression away. Life was happening down in the street. Cars passed by, bicycles strolled up and down the street, and people walked by his building with such direction that Noah wondered where his certainty had gone. Not that he always knew exactly what to do, but at least he’d always known where he wanted to go and what he had to do to get there. He had never felt this stuck before; Lucas & Harris had been sold and the new owners had other opinions about ancient buildings. Noah was being forced to work with metal and concrete and was hating every second of it.
Architecture had been the logical answer for his yearns of creating and building things. Moving to New York to work with ancient buildings had been the next step in his career in remodeling. At 27, he’d met the perfect woman; beautiful, smart and talented. After three years together, he’d started to consider marriage and kids. He caught himself wondering a lot if he wanted to spend the rest of his life, the ups and downs, with a woman like Brie. She still was beautiful and smart, but somehow along the way they had grown apart. They met, had dinner, made love, watched a movie, a play, caught a concert, enjoyed a bottle of wine, but they never discussed things. They never talked. And when he tried, they always ended in awkward silences. That’s when it all stopped making sense to him. His friends were dumbfounded when he’d confessed this. And after she got the job as a reporter for Chanel 8, everybody knew her. Jenna, a militant feminist from the office, was convinced he had lost interest in her because she had become famous. Because now she had some sort of position of power. To him, it hardly mattered where she worked and if Bob from the grocery store knew her. In fact, he’d wanted so badly to make it work, more than just enjoy good company in the Manhattan nightlife, that he had tried hard to find common ground with her.
Two weeks before Christmas, he’d decided to decorate his tree and asked her to go along and help him choose. Thirty minutes after they had arrived at the store, she was still arguing that he must order a decorated tree instead of buying each ornament and piece.
‘Seriously, why go to all this trouble?’ Brie said with her arms crossed bitterly.
‘Because it’s part of the fun. Choosing and then decorating it together.’
‘You and I have different opinions of what fun means. Make it fast, I have stuff to do,’ she said while she typed in her phone.
Noah, that was crouched rummaging a stack for a second grumpy Santa he’d liked, looked up. Brie was standing with a scowl next to him, avoiding other shoppers as if she could catch some disease from them. All this while holding her phone and furiously typing, oblivious to all the joy he’d wanted to see and feel. Well, he wasn’t feeling joy anymore. Suddenly, feeling tired, he ditched the Santas and stood up. Brie was a top notch red head with all the right curves, smart as a whip, Noah thought, and colder than the winter outside. And with that, he was done.
‘We definitely do.’
‘Do what? Have stuff to do? You can’t believe where Doug asked me to do yester…’
‘No. Different opinions. Why are you with me, Brie?’
‘What? Why are you asking me that? Here of all places. If you’re done, then let’s go home.’
‘I am done,’ Noah said as a matter of fact. He considered going back home and talking this through, but what was the point really? There was nothing else to talk about. ‘Until you find a place, you can stay at the apartment. I’ll go to Cameron’s,’ he said calmly and watched as his words sunk in her. She went from shocked to hurt to angry in less than 5 seconds.
After that, she walked away furiously and he only heard from her hours later in the 15 voice messages she had sent him, basically saying she was happier not to be dragged down by some hick, had run home, packed everything and had already left, good riddance.
Noah breathed in the smell of rain and shook off the images of Brie from his brain. Interesting, while he had sat at his desk he’d tried not to think about something else, and that had made him think of Brie. The something else that had sent an e-mail that morning with news that she’d be coming back to Europe. France, the something else had said. Only a couple of hours in the train and they could meet for some coffee some time.
