Chapter Seventeen

Now

Matt found me browsing the picture board and came up beside me to take a look for himself. “What’s got your attention?” he asked.

“Meghan, actually,” I confessed.

“Wow, where did that come from?”

I tapped the barely visible photo of her electric blue eye.

“Oh.” He leaned closer and inspected it. “Sure enough.”

Something unpleasant pinched in my stomach. Some blend of my lingering negativity toward Meghan and an ugly trace of jealousy that he still kept her photo around. There was so much of my past swirling through my head tonight. I had to change the subject.

“So, is dinner ready or what?” I asked, poking him in the ribs.

Matt inhaled, his eyes seeming to snap back to the present. “Yeah, just about. Do you want something to drink?”

“What are you offering?”

“I think I have the bottle of wine you opened last time you were here …” He looked thoughtful.

I raised my eyebrow at him. “Did you put the cork back in?”

“Yes.” He rolled his eyes.

“Then, yes, I’d be delighted to have some.” I gave him a winning smile and batted my eyes.

“Come and get it, then.”

I trailed him to the kitchen and accepted the glass of wine that he poured.

“What happened, Matty? I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you needed me.”

“Oh. I guess I did. Right.”

“And …?” I asked.

“Gimme a minute,” he said, gathering plates to serve our dinner. I kept my peace as he spooned out pasta and sauce, then handed me the plates. “Can you take these to the table?”

I carried them to his small dining table and returned for my glass of wine. Matt carried out bread and the rest of the bottle of wine and we settled into the chairs.

“So, now are you going to tell me?” I asked.

He twirled a forkful of spaghetti while he thought. “Can I just tell you after we eat?”

This was torture. “Oh. I guess.”

He smiled and went back to his food, but didn’t eat much more. Neither did I. Silence, usually comfortable and short with Matt and me, felt strange. I had to get out of my own head. Sifting through topics, quickly, I seized on something neutral.

“Hey, you going to Jessie’s wedding?” I asked.

“I don’t see why not.”

“Wanna ride down together?” I asked with a nod to show him the right answer.

He laughed. “Doesn’t sound like you’re giving me a choice.”

“I mean, unless you’re bringing a date or something.”

“Not planning to.”

These short answers were killing me. Everything about this night was too damn strange. I had to confront him.

“Matty, what’s up with you?” I asked. “You’re so quiet.”

He pushed his plate to the side and took a moment to arrange his fork before looking at me. “I’ve been thinking more about leaving school.”

“Oh. And?”

“And …” He shrugged. “I think I should.”

“What are you going to do?” I propped both elbows on the table, lowered one hand to the table as if to touch him, but brought it back up to my chin. I didn’t know what he was feeling—I didn’t know what to do for him.

He shrugged again. “I’ve been really thinking a lot about … things … everything, I guess. I feel like I should start doing what I want to do with my life, instead of what I should do. I need to stop just … marking time.”

“So, what does that mean?”

“It means I need to make some changes.” He pressed a fingertip against one tine of his fork, making it seesaw off the table. “My lease is up in June. I think maybe I should try somewhere else for a while.”

Butterflies took wing in my chest. “Like?”

“Somewhere different. San Diego … North Carolina … Portland … I don’t know yet.”

“But …” I wanted to say “what about me?” but I didn’t. “You don’t know anyone in any of those places, do you?”

“Nope.”

Dinner, which had been difficult to get down in the first place, made a determined effort to ascend my throat. I pressed my teeth together and focused on the reflection on the outside of his glass.

“I don’t even want to be a lawyer. Why am I wasting my time?” He picked up the glass I’d been staring at and took a drink. “How much would it suck if I got in a car accident or something and the last thing I’d done was go to a class on real estate law?”

I flinched at the thought, not of the class, but the accident. “So what do you want to do?”

He hesitated, then looked over his shoulder toward the living room. “Come on, let’s go sit down where it’s comfortable.” Without waiting for an answer, he led the way to the couch. I followed, a little slower, and tucked myself into the opposite corner of the couch, feet extended toward him.

“Okay.” He stretched one arm along the back of the couch, looked at me for a second, but ultimately refocused across the room when he started speaking. “So … there’s a girl—a woman, I guess, when the hell do I have to stop calling them girls?”

“When they’re old enough to be somebody’s mother?” I suggested, and he laughed a little. This was familiar territory, and my nerves untangled a bit.

“Anyway, her name is Tara, and she’s in my class,” he continued.

“A lawyer? I thought you didn’t date lawyers.”

He smiled weakly. “Right. Well …” He shifted and hooked the fingers of one hand on the back of his neck. He was nervous, I realized. Why? “You know I haven’t really been seeing anyone since my dad’s funeral. And I wasn’t really seeing anyone before it either …”

I was trying to be patient, but I couldn’t see where he was going with all of this. “Okay, so you met Tara. What happened?”

“I’ve been thinking about how we’ve sort of been … less rigid with the whole Sorbet thing. Since … well, I’m not sure, exactly. But, the stuff after my dad died … that wasn’t what we started out doing.”

“That wasn’t exactly normal circumstances.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “I don’t know if I would have made it through that week without you.”

My heart hurt, remembering the way he’d been. We’d stretched Sorbet to the limits back then, and although I wouldn’t have changed a single thing I’d done for him, it had been rough. On both of us.

I put on a smile for him, though it felt a little out of place. “You know I’d do it again.”

“I know.” The squint he angled at me was unreadable. “Anyway. So the Sorbet thing has been getting kind of gray. Since …” His eyes rolled up in thought. “Since … God, Alex? Maybe that was when.”

“Blech,” I said automatically. “But that was so long ago. And Meghan was a clear-cut case.”

“But what about junior year when you went out with all those random guys? The duck decoy guy?”

I crossed my arms. “How about The Squad? And you almost deflowering Kelly?”

“But I didn’t,” he said instantly. “And that’s exactly my point. None of those were even breakups and we still had an awful lot of Sorbet Sex that summer.”

For all intents and purposes, it had been a series of booty calls, and I knew it. “Okay, so maybe that was a stretch.”

“Which time?” He smirked, and I was so happy to see some reaction out of him I almost didn’t mind the smugness.

“That was some of our best work.” The flush in my cheeks gave away my complete lack of cool.

He sucked air through clenched teeth. “Yeah, it really was.”

“But, I digress …” I made a rolling gesture. “You were saying?”

“Well, my point is, that was the first time that we really just threw the rules away.”

“Actually, I’d say it was with Alex. The second time.”

He nodded. “Yeah, okay. The point is that we’ve been pretty lax about the whole thing since then.”

“I don’t know, the whole T.J. thing was pretty straightforward.”

He made a whatever-you-say face. “T.J. was just a mistake, and you know it.”

“That’s my point,” I protested. “He was a mistake and I totally needed you afterward.”

“It’s not like you were all distraught over him,” Matt reasoned.

“Well, no. It was just the ick factor.” I shuddered.

“Still …”

“That’s what Sorbet is all about. Getting rid of the bad mojo, right?”

“How long ago was that?” he wondered.

“A few years, I guess.”

“Jesus.” He dropped his head onto the back of the couch and focused on the ceiling for a moment. “When did time start going so quickly?”

I snickered. “You sound like an old man.”

“Sorry.” He lifted his head and looked at me. “I’m just … thinking.”

“So wait a minute, you were gonna tell me about Tara.”

“No, it’s fine. T.J. is relevant to this whole thing.”

“T.J. isn’t relevant to anything,” I said, shuddering again.

Matt grinned. “You’re never gonna let that go, are you?”