In your arms

As I went down the stairs that lead into Romina’s basement, I thought to myself, “What am I doing?”

I closed the door behind me and all I could see was the darkness immediately engulfing me.

“Man, if someone catches me down here...”

Her parents were out of town for the week and asked me to house-sit for them. They didn’t know Romina and I didn’t share the deep bond of our childhood anymore. How could we, after what Romina did to me?

She was never close to them, but they must know. I wonder if this is their weird way to express some kind of support for me, even though they never said anything about anything. Or maybe they’re just too cheap to actually pay someone to come here. Either way, Romina’s not in town and I am, and they needed someone trustworthy. Nobody better than the kid a couple houses down who they watched grow up, who would never hurt a fly, and would absolutely never do something behind their backs, in their own home, right?

Gentling gliding my fingers along the wall, I finally find the light switch. I turn the light on, and a messy basement reveals itself to me. In every direction, I see old furniture, dusty magazines and books, even a forgotten treadmill. Plenty of boxes, labeled with all kinds of tags, from cleaning apparatus to old toys, to boxes that say “HANDLE WITH CARE”, which makes me think of that old song... I shake my head and turn to focus on what I’m here to do.

I know it must be somewhere around here, this room where we hide away the things we don’t want in plain sight anymore but that we’re not ready to let go of just yet.

I study some of the boxes, trying to decide which one to go for first. I pick one that looks old and beat up, unassuming. My heart starts racing, hoping this is the one and that this can all be over right now... nope, no luck, just old beat-up Christmas decorations.

I move to the next box, only to find old gym clothes. Next box, old doctors exams. Next box, teddy bears.

I start going through drawers, looking under the old couch, digging into more boxes, anxious and nearly losing hope. “Jeez, where could it...”

Then I see it. I see a tiny, shiny black something poking out from inside a folded T-shirt in one of the last drawers in the dresser in the corner. The pink t-shirt has a unicorn on it, and I know it’s Romina’s because I was the one who picked this t-shirt out for my gift to her for her 7th birthday. It has holes and the color is very much faded, the print is all cracked, but anyone could tell this was well-loved back in its prime.

My hands tremble as I open the t-shirt, and I finally find the little black book I came here for. I open the first page and recognize his handwriting.

It’s not elegant, and it’s barely above what a not-so-careful 8th grader would manage to create, but it’s *his*. Or *was*, anyway.

‘In your arms

It’s where I find my peace,

In your smile,

My reason to exist,

And in your heart,

I long to find

The exit out of this abyss.’

My eyes well up in tears remembering when I saw him pen that down that fall evening. We were parked in his car under the willow tree in that old part of town, and that was when he first told me of his love for poetry, how he felt he couldn’t share it with anyone because he would be mocked, and how he told me he had all these ideas in his head that he struggled to put to paper.

We were just friends then, but I felt like holding his hand and saying, ‘I believe in whatever your heart has to say’. That was when the fire that seemed like a shooting star flickered across his eyes, and he leaned over to kiss me, and my heart lept in my chest. People say you can’t know when exactly you fell in love, that it sort of just happens and you just realize you’re in it... but I do.

As I flick through the next pages, I see our brief love story reflected in his words. Hopeful, lustful, loving... also sprinkles of darkness and struggle. He had a deep loneliness inside of him that no one or nothing could touch, and I was very aware of that. I had hope it would melt away as our love grew.

But something else grew too. Romina’s jealousy. She was the most beautiful girl in any room and could have any man or woman she desired, but she set her eyes on Noah. My Noah. My first love, the first one that saw me for who I was. She knew what he meant to me. And she didn’t care.

When she came back from the city to spend the summer with us, I was excited for them to meet and for all of us to hang out together. I still loved her and missed her back then. I felt like nothing in the world could ever shake our friendship and our bond.

My parents let us spend one weekend at their lake house with some other friends so we could enjoy some time by ourselves, and it would be my first night away with Noah. You can imagine how excited I was.

I watched Romina try to seduce him in every way, in every gesture, right in front of my eyes, but I didn’t want to believe it. Noah didn’t seem bothered by any of it so I thought maybe I was seeing things.

At one point, I got really sick and wouldn’t stop throwing up - at the time, I thought I might have gotten food poisoning, although I was the only one who got sick that night. I went to bed early.

I woke up the next morning and Noah wasn’t by my side. I went downstairs and he was already up, packing our things so we could leave; I realized he had spent the night on the couch. ‘Not to disturb you,’ he said, ‘you seemed really sick so I just wanted to give you your space’.

I went outside to see the lake one last time, and ran into Romina. Before I could say ‘good morning’ to her, she smiled at me and said, “You were right, he *really* is good in bed!” I was so confused and still nauseous from the night before, I wasn’t sure I had heard what I heard. “Yeah, Noah, Allie! Noah is really good in bed. It was fun last night.”

I threw up right on her feet.

“What the hell, Allie!”

“‘What the hell, Allie!’??? How could you do this to me, Romina!!!!!”

She laughed as she said, “Oh, come on, don’t be such a prude. It would be rude of you to keep such a hot guy all to yourself, don’t you think?”

I could not recognize her in those words at first, although later I realized she had done exactly the same thing to other friends of ours. I guess I just never thought it could happen to *me*.

I went back inside to confront Noah.

“So, you’re lying to me about sleeping on the couch, so it’s true you spent the night with Romina??”

He laughed his nervous, anxious laugh when he doesn’t know what’s going on and thinks something is absurd.

“Allie, of course not. I slept here not to wake you up.”

“That’s not what she just told me!!!”

“Whatever she said, that’s not the truth. I wouldn’t even dare imagine doing that to you.”

Lost in the waterfalls of my tears, I went upstairs, grabbed my bags, and left without any explanation to all our friends watching all the drama unfold, got in my car, and left. About ten minutes later, already on the highway, I see Noah a few cars behind me.

He keeps trying to call me but I refuse to pick up. I could not imagine anyone would refuse to spend the night with Romina, when I grew up being plagued by the stories of all the boys in our town begging to take her on a date, and from what she told me, the same was happening now that she was going to school in the city.

I’m playing my music really loud and singing at the top of my lungs, trying to distract myself from the pain. Suddenly, I hear a loud crash.

I look in my rearview mirror, and I see Noah’s car upside down in the ditch. He never made it out of the car alive.

This happened two years ago. Many months later, I found out through friends Romina had lied. She *had* tried to sleep with him, but he flat out called her out on her behavior and told her to stay away from him and from me for the rest of the trip.

Why she acted that way, I could never figure out.

At the funeral, Noah’s parents asked me if there was anything of his I wanted to keep as a memory. I asked for the little black book he carried everywhere with him, so he could pen down his poems immediately when they came to him. But they could never find it. We assumed it was in the car with him and it somehow got destroyed in the crash.

But I still had a feeling in my gut that that part of Noah wasn’t gone. It was still somewhere to be found, and I knew I would find it.

I was right. I think Romina’s final act of revenge was stealing the little black book from Noah’s things, before we all left the lake house that day. She knew about it and she knew how much it meant to him. I guess it was her way of getting back at him for rejecting her in the way he did.

But now I had finally found it. It was mine. A little piece of Noah would always be with me, even though I couldn’t run my fingers through his hair smelling of Indian lilac anymore, or watch his eyes wrinkle when he smiled upon seeing me in the mornings, or the other thousand little gestures through which he endeared himself to me every day we shared together...

As I put the little black book in my purse, I bent down to push the drawer back in... and it jammed.

I pushed it back in a few more times, and it wouldn’t go. I knew I could not leave it like that, because then Romina’s parents would know I was looking through their stuff and that’s the last thing I wanted. I decided to pull the drawer completely out and then insert it back in.

When I did that, the bottom of the drawer fell on the floor and hit my feet, and the loud thud ricocheted across the basement. Lots and lots of bills gushed out of the drawer as in a green tsunami. I could count at least twenty thousand dollars, and I saw even more in foreign currency that I couldn’t identify.

“Allie??? Is that you???”, I hear a familiar female voice from my childhood calling me upstairs.

I turn and see the basement door is open, and Romina’s mom is standing there. She’s home early