Matt: I’m outside. Can you come down?
The text pops up on my phone after ten o’clock. The house is quiet, Mom and Dad already asleep.
I climb out of bed and creep across the room to the window to see Matt’s car parked in front of the house. A dark figure leans against it.
I should probably ignore the text, pretend to be asleep. But I still desperately want to confront him, and I didn’t get a chance to in the middle of the replacement-wife drama.
I text back, I’ll be down in a minute, pull on a pair of shorts, tie my hair up, and head downstairs. I slip on a pair of flip-flops and walk out into the humid air.
He straightens when he sees me coming, sliding his hands out of his pockets. Behind him, the streetlight shines on the pavement, providing enough light to see him clearly. The knuckles on his right hand are bruised, and I wonder whether it’s from a face or a wall.
“I met your wife,” I say.
“I know, she told me.”
“Seems nice.” I lift an eyebrow. “Nicer than me.”
His jaw works, and he looks past me at nothing. I hope she told him over the phone, and not in person, because I can feel the fury coming off him in waves.
“You ignored my texts,” I say.
He pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Things are so fucked up.”
“You just noticed?”
He laughs, shortly at first, and then again, a bigger laugh that makes a smile linger on his face. “God, I miss you.”
“Poison would be less messy, but also less satisfying, in my opinion,” Savvy whispers.
“Yes, your wife did make it sound that way on the podcast.” I lean against the car next to him.
“She was always too nice for me.”
What a load of shit.
“I should have known I would mess her up. I just thought that a nice girl like that…”
“Could save you?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t deserve to be saved, Matt.”
He frowns, but doesn’t argue. “I heard that you didn’t say the same. About me. About…” He clears his throat. “You said things were different for you.”
“You heard?”
“Yeah.”
I wonder whether he heard directly from Mom, or if she’s just told so many people that it got back to him.
“I said my experience was different than Julia’s, which is true. I’m not really eager to rehash the past.”
He turns to me, genuine gratitude on his face. “Thank you.”
“Trust me when I say that it wasn’t even a little bit for you.”
“You can’t tell people about us, Lucy.” Matt’s face from five years ago appears in front of me. The day he kicked me out of the house and told me to go to my parents’.
“Savvy is dead, Matt,” I’d choked out. “Our shit doesn’t matter right now.”
“It will matter to the police. Don’t make me tell them about what we did to each other, okay? Don’t make me tell them.”
I’d realized what he was saying—that if the police were looking for evidence that I’d been violent before, Matt could certainly give that to them. I could try to refute it, try to explain that he was the abusive one, but it was muddled now.
People don’t believe women who fight back. When a man lashes out, people say he’s lost control of his temper or made a terrible mistake. When a woman does it, she’s a psychopath.
Matt steps forward suddenly, drawing me back to the present. He pushes me up against the car. The length of his body presses against mine, and then his mouth is on mine too.
He tastes like mint, not alcohol, and it reminds me of our early years. Toward the end, he always tasted like booze. Or smelled like it. It was seeping from his pores, eventually.
But this Matt is the one I liked, at first.
“I think I’m going to miss him,” I’d said to Savvy. “That’s fucked up, right? That I’m going to miss him?”
I tense and want to recoil, but I’m kissing him back instead. It’s partly habit. Partly instinct. Always just easier to go along with it and not piss him off.
“He doesn’t deserve you.”
I bite his lip, hard.
He pulls away, amusement in his eyes, like he thinks that was meant to be sexy instead of a failed attempt to draw blood. “Sorry. It’s hard not to kiss you sometimes, you know?”
“Try.”
“Come home with me.”
“No.”
I have one tiny shred of common sense, and I’m proud of it.
He sighs, but doesn’t argue.
“Is Julia right?” I ask. “Were you there when Savvy died?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“After?”
“No.” He turns to me. “I’m sorry I abandoned you after. That’s what I meant when I said that to Julia. I should have stuck by you. Not sent you to your fucking parents, who just let Ivy interrogate you.”
I don’t know whether he’s lying. Matt’s a great liar.
“Who was the woman you were arguing with in our driveway that night?”
“I really don’t think it’s fair to drag her into this.”
“Why not?”
“Listen.” He puts both hands out, like he needs me to calm down. I consider jumping in my car and mowing him down. Then backing up over the body just to make sure he’s dead. “She’s not involved in Savvy’s death, okay? I promise that she never hurt Savvy.”
“How nice that you have so much faith in her,” I say dryly.
“I deserved that.”
Sweat is starting to trickle down my back. I let the silence stretch out for a long time before speaking again. “You know everyone is starting to think it’s you.”
He nods, eyes downcast.
“Maybe they have a point.”
His head snaps up, genuine bafflement on his face. “You think I killed Savvy?”
“How’s it feel, asshole?”
“That’s…” He closes his eyes for a moment. “That’s fair. But I…” He closes his eyes briefly. “Lucy, please just drop it.”
“Just drop it? You lied and—”
“Please.” He grabs my hands. I try to pull them free, but he holds firm, his eyes pleading. “Go back to L.A., Lucy. Stop helping that podcaster. Trust me, okay?”
“Trust you?” I repeat incredulously.
“I know that it doesn’t seem like it, but I’ve always just wanted to protect you. I’m still protecting you.” He squeezes my hands. His eyes have gone shiny.
My heart dives to my feet. I yank my hands away and stumble as I step back. The world is swaying.
“Matt, did we see each other after Savvy dropped you off that night?”
“No.” He says it again, immediately, like an automatic response he practiced. I don’t believe him.
I push down the panic rising in my chest. “Just tell me who it was, okay? Who came over to see you that night? At one in the morning?”
“Lucy, just … don’t, okay?”
“Just tell me, Matt. You owe it to me.”
He sighs, running a hand down his face. “It was Nina. Nina Garcia.”