I see him walking up to the coffeeshop. The way he slouches, his back settling into the second half of a parentheses, so familiar that it doesn’t trigger a memory. Rather, it’s a feeling, a feeling of comfort that comes only from knowing someone, of noticing physical patterns and storing that information away, encoding it into your database so that it becomes the very idea of that person. The bucket hat, the tan bomber jacket – these too are the same. I smile because there is something so nice about a person who can imprint themselves on you so strongly that it is like ten years had never gone by.

He comes in. I wave. I beam. An awkward hug – not awkward in its occurrence, only awkward in its mechanics. He’d always been so much taller than me and today, there is also the length of a table between us.  

He smiles and I am so distracted by the size of his teeth, the size of little pieces of gum, the kind that need to be popped out from a sheet, hard candy shells, but also their crookedness. This strikes me as a CHANGE, but perhaps my memory is just faulty and I am guilty of airbrushing the past. 

I am eager to make him feel comfortable and safe, a reasonable desire given our (short) history. He’d always been skittish and I must still feel that energy in our present interaction because I chatter and laugh and chatter and laugh. 

He speaks slowly at first, sluggish against my animation. Scattered, mind distracted by thirst and discomfort in the setting. My heart sinks a bit. It’s true, this is a different Noah than I remembered. The years had not been kind to him. Still, I must have courage. I must rally. I must push past this to get what I am seeking. 

What I am seeking: closure, confirmation that the root cause of my emotions had been worthy, an explanation for the foundational, directionally opposed, startling shifts in his personality and life path. 

Then proceeds a very strange sequence of events. Noah tells me what has happened to him in the time that has elapsed between us. There are some pieces, particularly those earlier on in the chronology, that make sense, feel true. He tells me how much he’s read, how much weed he’s smoked, how many girls he’s had over (although this is a weird detail to include – I forgive him considering our brief romantic entanglement), how terribly stifling he found his life, how he struggled in his search for essential truth, authenticity, meaning. Though these pieces line up with my memory of Noah, there is a part of me that feels sad, wistful. This adventurous spirit, inquisitive nature, questioning mind – it is clear that something went wrong. What a shame, what a travesty, that the world had failed him, this exceptionally rare human.

Then I feel bad. Despite the evidence of a rough existence, he does seem content. And what was I? In fact, I suspected that he had succeeded, not I. Despite the world, he had succeeded. How dare I pity that? What more is there in life than finding that truth? Perhaps I was simply jealous.

But then, the conversation takes a turn. He speaks of dabbling in witchcraft, alchemy, searching for the truth in the occult. And I find myself thinking that although I ideologically believe in the validity of such practices, I am unsettled. It strikes me as too dangerous to go down that road, that the temptation to slide into a mindset and sphere utterly disconnected from the reality of the world could be too strong for untrained minds to resist, that seeking out answers in the darkness of humanity would necessarily alter one’s mind, that there was much too much power for the effort to ever result in a net positive. 

And so, this begins to color the rest of the conversation. And Noah continues on until his voice becomes a drone. I notice how focused I am on him, how the rest of the coffeeshop has faded away, how time has lost meaning. I think, how strange. At this point, he mentions practicing a type of questioning used in Scientology.

“I ask people questions and they answer from deep within.”

Oh, I realize, he came here for a very different reason than me. I had never taken kindly to people who approached with motives well below board. The nostalgic affection I held for Noah receded to the background. I was on guard. 

He asks me a probing question, posed as an example – what is your favorite insect? But I am alert now. I assay his attempts. I sidestep. I demur. But he is persistent. He is practiced. He is good at this. He corners me into an answer. 

“A butterfly,” I finally say. It’s not an untruth but I say it because I know it is a common answer. The insect that had rose to mind had been a a ladybug. 

He can tell that the answer is not quite right, but his attempts to push me into vulnerability lead him nowhere. 

He switches gears. 

“How do you like your eggs?”

I am relieved to have a comedic response to counter with. I’d just read an article about the intimacy of this question so instead of answering the question, I deflected and parroted the sentiment. But he is persistent. I lean back, look at him, this boy I loved back in high school, and shake my head, laugh. What had happened to him? What had happened to my darling Noah?

“You want to know?” I said, putting down my arms. “I like my eggs all sorts of ways: scrambled, poached, soft-boiled, sunny-side-up…”

He interrupts. 

“I love sunny-side-up people. They’re so pleasant.”

I smile and ask if he finds me to be pleasant as well. He’s abashed by the directness of the question. He looks up through his eyelashes and shyly says: yes, you’re definitely pleasant. 

I grin unashamedly at this, feeling I’d won a much more important battle. 

He moves on from this, asking me another two questions, before he finally throws in the towel. He has realized he is going to get nowhere with me. A truce. 

I end the conversation shortly after. I am tired, uneasy with the turn we had made. We stand and I give him a proper hug. Holding him to me, I wish for his health and happiness. Something had gone wrong for Noah and this knowledge brings me great, great sorrow. But as I pulled back, I smiled. 

“You know,” I said, “I always was unsure how you really felt about me back in high school. I never really knew if you liked me.”

But the words don’t register in his mind. I can see the blankness in his eyes. 

“Did we talk a lot back in high school?” he asks. “I don’t remember.”

I lose my balance for a second.

“Yeah,” I said, “we used to talk a lot. You used to make me laugh so hard. No one made me laugh like you did. I asked you out. You said yes, but a couple of days later, you broke up with me. Are you telling me you don’t remember that?”

“Huh,” he says, zipping up his jacket. “That’s weird. Anyways, let me know if you want to hang out again soon.”

I feel powerless. Noah, he needs someone. He needs someone to help him, but I know that that person isn’t me. Instead, I must say goodbye. 

I jump at him, pull him into another hug. Oh, be well, Noah, be well. I feel him straining against me. I step back. 

“Listen, Noah,” I say, “I hope life is kind to you. I’ll be thinking of you, okay?”

He squints his eyes at me, a small smile at the corners of his lips, just the way he used to across the cafeteria table. It takes my breath away. 

“You’re funny,” he says.

“No, you’re funny,” I laugh.

And I watch him turn and walk away.