by Jessica Park
“I was awful,” he continued. “Your relationship with your father is none of my business. Of course you love him, and you have every right to. What I said was unforgivable.” Matt was sincerely upset. She could hear it. “You’re the best thing to happen to Celeste. She was lost before you got here. Like she didn’t belong anywhere. You’re saving her. I never should have said what I did.”
“No, I pushed her too much,” Julie said quietly. “And you. It won’t happen again.”
“You’ve been perfect. I wish I could tell you everything, but I can’t. Not yet.”
“I know. That’s all right.” She kept her tight hold around him, as if letting go might break his absolution, and he would again let loose with more cruel blame.
The rush and tension from their earlier scene had started to wane, and she was feeling drowsy, settled into a post-fight haze. Like she’d been drugged with relief.
The air felt chilly, and his touch was giving her goose bumps. Julie shivered again.
“Cold?” he asked.
“Yeah. A little.”
As Matt moved his legs over in the bed, she eased in next to him, sliding under the blanket, onto her side and into the crook of his arm. His hand was still on her back, his fingertips starting to trace the curve of her shoulder blade, moving up to brush the nape of her neck, then traveling up and down her arm. She took his free hand in hers, intertwining their fingers, and squeezed.
He squeezed back.
“So we’re still friends?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “We’re still friends.”
He didn’t hate her. They were fine. Celeste would be fine. This would all work out, and there was no irrevocable damage. Nothing else mattered.
Now fatigue took over and Julie yawned. She was so completely tired and so emotionally spent. The night had drained her of any ability to reason, but she felt peaceful for the moment, grounded. Eventually, Matt’s touch against her skin slowed, and his breathing changed, and she knew that he’d fallen asleep. It was impossible to fight the heaviness that was drawing at her now, so she let the sound of his slumber pull her into her own.
Later—still in his arms, her hand still in his—she stirred.
She felt him lightly kiss the top of her head and say something. He was so quiet that she could barely hear him.
Julie sleepily tilted her head up.
“God, I’m so sorry, Julie,” he said.
“Me, too.”
And then without realizing it, without thinking, she inched up just a little until her mouth was close to his. She had no idea what she was doing, as though she were following some instinct that she couldn’t control. Maybe she was still asleep. Maybe this wasn’t happening. She moved a tiny bit closer, barely touching her lips to his. His mouth was warm and tempting, luring her in. Neither of them moved.
Then his hand was firmly on her side, guiding her body up higher and bringing her mouth closer to his. Matt pressed his lips against hers and he kissed her.
His mouth was soft and unhurried. Teasing, even. His tongue just brushing hers and making her tremble. She kissed back, tasting him, breathing him in. Julie was dizzy, and shaky, and inundated with his heat. He made her temporarily lost, not able to see beyond the way this kiss felt. In the moonlit light, it was smooth, easy, instinctive. She moved her leg over his, bringing them closer together.
She couldn’t possibly be awake.
Her chest was pressed against his, his hand on her lower back, his fingers digging into her skin. She didn’t want this to stop. She moved one hand to the back of his neck, kissing him harder.
But then Matt tightened his hand around hers before gently resting his head back onto the pillow. He pushed the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. Julie didn’t move for a second. This was nuts. She lowered her body and nestled back into his chest. As bleary-eyed, stunned, and out-of-it as she was, part of her knew that she should get up and go back to her room. Even though that was the last thing that she wanted to do. And part of her knew that what had just happened was unexplainable. It must be a dream.
It had to be.
But she didn’t care too much, at least for right now, because the horrible rift between them was healed. That was the most important thing.
I should go, she told herself. I’m supposed to leave. Julie shut her eyes. Why don’t I want to leave? Why don’t I want to leave?
But she simply couldn’t stay awake long enough to convince herself to get out of his bed. Julie surrendered to sleep, letting her body shape against Matt’s as he held her closely.
Chapter 27
Matthew Watkins took the "Which random number are you?" quiz and the result was: 3. Which is lame, because 3 is, like, the least random number there is.
Finn is God So much for Earth Day. I totally screwed things up and started celebrating the wrong planet. Now I have to collect all these stupid trademarked dog figurines that I distributed all over the yard. At least it's better last year’s mistake when I had butt statues everywhere.
Julie Seagle I like the gritty intensity of Jaws 4. There is a simple honesty to the storytelling that is utterly compelling. Plus, the shark roars.
Julie rolled over and opened her eyes, squinting against the sunlight that blasted her in the face.
Holy…
She was in Matt’s bed. Alone, thank God. At least there was no tragic wake-up-in-each-others’-arms moment. She yanked the sheet up over her head and ran over what had happened last night.
This didn’t have to be a big deal. They had both been emotional, and so things and taken an unexpected turn. Nothing major. People hook up all the time, right? And not that she and Matt had even really hooked up. A tiny little kiss between friends.
Shit.
“Julie?”
She pulled the sheet down and peeked out. Matt was leaning into his room and quite obviously avoiding making eye contact.
“Celeste is cooking breakfast.” He cleared his throat. “You went for a run, and you just got back. That’s why you weren’t in your room when she went to wake you up.”
“When exactly did I take up running? I never knew this about myself.”
“Next time you can come up with something better.” He paused. “Not that there’s going to be a next time. I just meant… Maybe you should… you know…”
“Got it. Getting up now. I was never here.” Julie rubbed her hands over her face. “Tell Celeste that I’m in the shower, and I’ll be right down.”
“OK.”
“Wait a minute.” She sat up. “Celeste is making breakfast? She’s feeling all right?”
“Apparently.”
Matt disappeared, and she scrambled to her room. Julie made a face at her unruly reflection in the mirror, grabbed some clothes, and hit the shower. Hopefully Celeste had made a giant pot of coffee, too, because four hours of sleep were not going to cut it.
By the time she took a seat next to Flat Finn and Matt at the kitchen table, the smell of a full breakfast had filled the house. She eyed the bowl of cut-up strawberries, the tray of scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage, and the butter, syrup, and carafe of coffee suspiciously. The table had been set with the good dishes and cloth napkins. Why was Celeste in such a good mood?
“Good morning,” Celeste chirped as she ladled pancake batter onto a skillet.
“Good morning,” Julie answered hesitantly. “This is very nice of you to cook all this.”
“I wanted to. Let me finish with the pancakes, and then we can discuss things.”
“Looking forward to it,” she lied.
Julie kept her head down and pretended to be captivated by garage sales listings in the newspaper.
“Go ahead and start eating. The pancakes will be ready in a second.”
Julie and Matt both reached for the eggs at the same time, causing a flurry of apologies and “go aheads.”
Ta da! This is why you don’t kiss platonic friends that you live with. Or sleep in their bed
s. Or let them run their hands all over your arms and shoulders and make you tingle inappropriately…
Julie stuffed her mouth with food so that she wouldn’t have to talk and continued not reading the paper. There was a way to make sense of what had happened last night: After months of being all fired up about Finn, she had transferred her pent-up physical frustrations to Matt. And Matt had probably been in the mood because of his date with Dana the night before. Of course it was sort of disgusting and tacky that she’d kissed the same guy her friend had been making out with the night before. What was wrong with her? And what the hell had Matt been thinking? Perhaps Matt was just a big old slut who ran around Boston kissing every girl he met, and he’d been waiting for the right time to add Julie to his list. At least that way the kiss would be as meaningless to him as it was to her.
She glanced up for a second and caught him looking at her.
This was all understandable, she reasoned. They did have a certain comfort level with each other, so it was not completely freakish that they had blurred the lines for a moment after an emotionally trying evening.
And Julie had probably done the typical girl thing, which is to try and make things better by giving a guy what he wants: physical contact. That’s what guys understand, right? It wasn’t like they’d gotten naked or anything, but she was probably responsible for the kiss. She’d been desperate for him to forgive her and in her weak, drained state, she’d tried to patch things up with something sexual. Well, not sexual, meaning that they had almost had sex. Not even close. And not that either of them had been thinking about it. Ridiculous. She was certainly not attracted to him that way, and Matt was probably more turned on by megabytes and firewalls and bit torrents than he was by her.
Of course, he had been the one trailing his fingers across…
Whatever.
Matt had to be just as regretful as she was.
Besides, he’d said that everything he had yelled at her wasn’t true, therefore that meant she was, in fact, like family. Making him a brother figure, the way she’d always thought. Except that you don’t kiss you brother on the mouth. Especially with tongue. And you don’t press your body into his and get all momentarily hot and dreamy. At least you’re not supposed to.
Again, shit.
But it’s not like he’d tried to do anything else. His hands hadn’t moved anywhere good. Well, not good. She didn’t mean that. Improper. Indecent. Lewd. Vulgar. Naughty. Christ, now was not the time to turn into a thesaurus. The point was that it wasn’t as though he’d been grinding against her and whispering dirty things into her ear. Although now that she thought about it, maybe she should be offended that he hadn’t. Not that she would have let him.
Wait a minute. She had moved her leg over his, and he had stopped kissing her first.
Oh. Matt thought she was a terrible kisser. Bastard. She was so not going to look over at him now.
Julie slugged down half a cup of coffee. Finn. That’s really what this had been about, she was sure. Finn and his steamy messages had her in a perpetually needy state. Plus, it had been a while since she and Seth had broken up, and she was just some horny college student using whatever guy she’d crawled into bed with.
No, that wasn’t right either. Julie wasn’t like that. She was just talking in circles.
Celeste set a plate piled with pancakes on the table and sat down. “Wow. You are both quite hungry today, I see. You didn’t leave me any eggs, and there is only one piece of sausage left.”
Apparently the mutual method of stuffing face to avoid talking that she and Matt had been employing had gone too far.
“Sorry,” Matt said with a full mouth.
“It’s okay. I can make more. I wanted to talk to you both.”
“Sure. That’s a good idea,” Julie said.
“We need to discuss what happened between you two last night.”
Matt started to choke on his food, and Julie knew her face blanched. It seemed that Celeste hadn’t bought Matt’s dumb story about Julie going running.
Ugh. Julie didn’t want anybody to know about this, least of all Celeste. And Finn, of course. Matt wouldn’t tell Finn would he? Was she supposed to tell Finn? Dear Finn, I accidentally sucked face with your brother. Apologies! How are the Venezuelan orphans? She touched her hand to the stone that rested on her chest. The necklace was usually a near-constant reminder of him. Apparently she hadn’t paid any attention to that last night.
Flat Finn seemed to chastise her from his position at the table. Julie stabbed her eggs and glared at the arrogant cutout. Shut up.
Celeste casually drizzled syrup over her plate. “I’m extremely upset with you two.”
“It’s really not a big deal,” Matt mumbled.
“Totally not,” Julie agreed and busied herself selecting strawberries from the bowl.
“It is indeed a big deal. Everything has changed between you two, and I don’t like it one bit. I heard everything, and I’m extremely displeased.”
Julie and Matt both stayed silent. What exactly did Celeste hear? Had there been slurpy kissing sounds? Inadvertent moans of ecstasy? Oh my God, Julie had not been that out of it, had she? It was one silly, insignificant kiss. There had been no lusty heaving. Definitely not.
Matt rubbed his eyes. “Celeste, what are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?” She looked at them curiously. Annoyingly hopeful, even. “Did something else happen?”
“Nothing. Um… nothing,” Julie muttered. “Go ahead.”
“I heard that entire terrible argument you two had.”
“The argument. Yes, that,” Matt said.
In the wake of the sleep-in-Matt’s-bed incident, she had almost forgotten.
“I’m furious with both of you. But mostly with you, Matt.” Celeste jabbed her fork in his direction. “I have never known you to be so malicious. Julie has been nothing but a saint, so don’t you ever scream at her like that again. And, Julie, you were frankly not all that nice either. Matt is doing the best that he can with me, and I have not made things easy for him. I love you both, but there will be no more disputes regarding me and Flat Finn. While I am infinitely grateful for all that you have done for me, I’m going to take a more active role in managing myself. It’s time. Understand? There will be no more talking behind my back. I may be in junior high school. You two aren’t. Act like it.” Celeste looked back and forth between them and raised her eyebrows. “Are you still mad at each other? Do you need to kiss and make up?”
Julie shook her head violently. “No. I don’t think that’s necessary. Matt and I are fine.” She looked across the table, finally looking Matt in the eyes. “Right, Matt?”
“Yes. We are.” He looked truthful enough.
“Don’t ever fight like that again. Ever,” Celeste instructed. “The unexpected good news is that I had a remarkably good time at Rachel’s. Well, until the end, of course.”
“You… You did?” Matt asked.
“Yes. I really did.” She helped herself to more pancakes. “Rachel is a very nice girl. She and I actually have some things in common. It’s true that she is not the most popular girl at school, and I guess I like that about her. She’s in almost all of my classes and scored better on our last history exam than I did. I think I did a nice job of blending in last night. I was even asked to recap one of the first episodes of Pretty Little Liars, which I did to perfection, I might add. Anyway, the night was quite enjoyable until it was time to sleep. The dark does funny things to me, and my head gets besieged with unsettled thoughts. Rachel’s mother found me in the bathroom crying, and she was nice enough to offer to tell the other girls that I’d come down with a stomach bug and that’s why I left. Anyhow, I have a few things to tell you.”
“Go ahead,” a stunned Matt said.
“First of all, I would like to start walking to and from school by myself. So Julie, that means that you won’t need to drive me. I’m ready. Flat Finn won’t need to come with me. I still
need him, just not all the time.”
“Oh. Sure.” Julie did her best to look supportive, despite being unnerved somehow.
“The second piece of news is not necessarily information one would typically present at the breakfast table, but now is as good a time as any to say that I got my period yesterday morning.”
Matt groaned loudly and covered his ears. “Celeste! Really? You need to tell me about this… development?”
Celeste shot him an annoyed look. “Matthew, it’s not a big deal. I simply thought I should let everyone know. And, no, I do not need any information on what it means to be a woman. It’s a biological change that has occurred, and I thought it important to inform you.”
“Do you, er, think that’s why you were so, you know…?” Matt fumbled for words pathetically.
“No,” Celeste said. “Nobody gets their period for the first time and has a nervous breakdown next to a Kohler toilet. Men have such stupid ideas about menstruation, don’t they, Julie? But it is an indicator that I am maturing, and it brought up other issues for me. Thus the dramatic crying and Flat Finn freak-out. Also, speaking of growing up, I really need a bra. Even though I am not exactly billowing out of my clothes, there is finally something happening there. The silly sports bras Mom bought for me are ugly. Unless you feel like taking me shopping, Matt, I would like to go to the mall with another girl.”
“Um… Absolutely. Yes. I mean, if that’s what you think should… er, happen. If there is a rush on this… purchase necessity.” Poor Matt was really struggling with what to say. “Julie could, I assume, assist in the buying of…”
“We can go to the mall. Sure.” Julie tried to shake herself out of her state of shock following Celeste’s slew of revelations. She looked cautiously at Matt. “You don’t mind my taking her?” Considering that last night she had promised to stay out of things, she was hesitant to help Celeste in any new endeavors.
