Matt: Wait, you don’t *want* me to hate you, do you?
Amy blew out a long breath. No. But how much do you not hate me?
Matt: It’s really hard to put in a text. Give me a few seconds.
And then the bubble with the dots appeared at the bottom of the screen again, and stayed there for a long time. Too long. Was he composing a novel, or was he just having trouble figuring out what to say next? Amy swore she would have a heart attack waiting, and from the way Rion held her breath and Arielle squeezed her hand, it seemed like her roommates were about to, too.
And then she jumped about five feet off the ground when she heard three knocks on the door.
“Oh my God, that’s Lauren,” Arielle squeaked, shooting to her feet and practically sprinting to the door. She shot a look over her shoulder and said, “I’m so sorry. I told her we’d be in here for an hour, and even though we haven’t been meeting for that long lately, I…”
But when the door swung open, it wasn’t Lauren. Looking rumpled, and tired, with one shoe untied and a t-shirt that said “Cool Story, Bro” next to a picture of the Bible, was the most beautiful face that Amy could imagine seeing.
And she was so stunned all she could do was gape at him.
“Oh, shit,” Rion murmured, getting to her feet and leaving Amy’s side instantly cold. It was amazing how unanchored she felt without those two at her sides. Rion grabbed her coat and her bag from the floor where she had dropped them just after her last class yesterday, which was the last time she’d left the suite, knelt down, plucked her phone from Amy’s lap, smacked a kiss on the top of Amy’s head, and stood up and was out the door in a flash.
Arielle stood there looking at Matt, then Amy, over and over again, some complicated strategizing obviously going on in her head, making sense of all this and what she was about to do, which probably she didn’t even have a handle on yet. Then, like someone flipped on her talking capability, the words tumbled out. “I have a thing. Promised Lauren. Important. Hungry. I…I’ll be back.” Then she halfheartedly waved her phone at Amy, telling her in the haphazard sign language they’d established in the few short months of the Society that she could text and call if she needed to.
Then the heavy metal door shut all over again, and Amy was standing on shaky legs, not remembering the decision to get off the floor in the first place. Matt’s face was open and calm all at once, but he stayed quiet, looking at her. Endlessly patient for her, like always.
Finally, Matt whispered, “I said it was hard to say in text. I guess it’s harder to say face to face.” He laughed, but the look on his face was pure anguish.
“Why?” Amy choked out.
“Because as much as I hate to admit it, that day you left? I just felt really, really bad. I mean, just…gutted. I know we were never together,” he rushed out when Amy opened her mouth to respond, “but that almost made it worse. I don’t know. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before, and I guess I just missed you so much that seeing you kind of smacked me in the face. It’s like when the sun finally comes out after weeks of cloudy days. You didn’t know how much you would miss it, how important it is to just, like, getting through the day, until it comes back.”
“I still don’t…”
Matt sighed, dragging his fingers back through his hair. “The amount I don’t hate you is infinite. I don’t know how else to say it. I’ve tried to be mad at you, I’ve tried to hate you. I’ve tried to resent you and demonize you. I’ve tried to forget you. And all those things are just, like, precursors to hate. And I couldn’t even touch them. I’m hopeless.”
“I don’t hate you, either. I never did. Well, maybe that one minute that you made me feel like the least desirable…”
Matt’s ears had already begun to blaze red. “Yeah, I know. I know. I’m still really sorry about that.”
“Don’t. Don’t be. I’m glad you did it. Sort of. That was the moment where I decided that doing whatever I wanted would probably only work if I knew what I wanted. If I knew me.”
“Okay.”
She commanded her shaking fingers to still. No use. She bent down and picked up the list anyway, and limply handed it to him.
“What is this?” Matt asked, his mouth twitching up at the corners.
“I know most people have stuff figured out when they get to college, but I didn’t.” Amy took a deep breath. “I was used to other people figuring out my stuff for me, and leaning on them, depending on them. I ditched all that from back home, yeah, but when I got here, I met you. And you are wonderful,” she said. “But you just became my new…leader, I guess. We got along so well that I think, after a little while, I was sort of depending on you to tell me who I am. To tell me what to like, what to be interested in, how to relate to my faith. And I had to step back from that. For me, and for you, and…for us.” She said the last words in a whisper, but it was okay. He was hanging on her every word.
Matt looked down at the list again. “They’re all crossed off. Does that mean you have everything figured out?”
Amy laughed. “I think I figured out the stuff that was bothering me the most. And I’m hoping that’ll help me figure everything else out.”
Matt’s eyebrow arched up in a silent question.
“I don’t want to be a preschool teacher. I don’t want to be any kind of teacher. I want to help kids, but I want to be an urban planner and help underprivileged kids, and homeless ones. I’m good at strategy and logistics, and a classroom full of kids exhausts me.”
“Makes sense.”
“I don’t like going to movie theater church with guitars. I don’t feel spiritual there, I just feel like I’m in a movie theater.”
Matt nodded.
“I like Pearl Jam and the Spice Girls and Nickelback.”
Matt’s mouth quirked up at the edge. “Well, one out of three of those is okay.”
“I like watching political thrillers and romantic comedies and, yes, cheesy reality shows.”
“Like Naked and Afraid?”
“Well, um…no, more like The Bachelor.”
Matt rolled his eyes and chuckled. “I guess that’s okay.”
Amy stifled a laugh. “Will you shut up? I don’t care if you think it’s okay. I don’t care what anyone thinks, not anymore. I like what I like and I care about what I care about and I love what I love. Nobody tells me what’s allowed and what’s not.”
“I just noticed one thing missing from the list,” Matt said, running his finger down the dog-eared edge.
“No. There’s nothing missing. I thought of everything.”
Another raised eyebrow.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Matt. What in the world is missing?”
Matt pressed his lips together and handed the paper back to her. She was afraid to take it, for fear that he’d leave once he’d given it back. “Me. I’m missing.”
Relief flooded Amy, and her eyes watered with relieved tears. She took a deep breath and forced herself to look in Matt’s eyes. No matter what else happened, she wanted this confession to be clear as day. “You are the one thing I never had to figure out. I always knew, I just needed to see it in the context of everything else. But you, I’m one hundred percent sure about. In fact, even though you still haven’t told me how much you don’t hate me, I’m still going to say this.”
Amy pushed down every emotion swirling into a storm inside her—fear, worry, self-consciousness, and a half-dreading, half-hopeful anticipation. “I’m sorry it took me so long to catch up here. I love you.”
Matt’s eyes were big, and it was hard to tell whether the emotion behind them was happiness, shock, or maybe—from the glistening that could only have been caused by tears—sadness.
“What? What is it? Did I say something weird?” Amy fought the horrible feeling that he had already made up his mind about her, realized that someone who had his life as together as he did needed a girl who knew she wanted to be with him from the start, not this redheaded mess from
Nowhere, Indiana.
Why had she ever let her roommates go? How had she been so confident that his feelings would still be the same?
But at the exact moment that the silence between them and the quiet of his eyes punched her in the gut and forced a sob up through her throat, Matt took two quick steps forward and folded her in his arms, without asking, without any more hesitation. His hand moved up to her head, smoothing over her unruly coarse waves, and he rocked from one foot to the other so slightly that she could have been imagining it. He pulled her head to his shoulder and tucked his face into the bend of her neck and held her there, just like that, for a really long time.
Amy was at once afraid to take a breath and desperate to hear something from him, but above all, happy to just be in his arms again. She couldn’t imagine what he wanted to say, and probably neither could he. Standing there, quiet, rocking together, Amy felt the most uncertain she had felt about anything for weeks, yet there was absolutely no place she would rather be.
That was why she both hated and loved the speeding of her heart when Matt slowly pulled back from her, letting his hands run down the backs of her arms, telling her that he wasn’t ready to let her go. Amy hadn’t been able to stop her tears, and she supposed it didn’t really matter now. They wouldn’t change anything. Torturously slowly, Matt lifted his hand to her face and rested it against her jaw, making her close her eyes. The brush of his thumb against her cheekbone made her open them again.
Matt swallowed, hard. “I never left, you know.”
“I…what? You’re the one who turned me down! After that I figured a lot of things out, but…”
“I mean I never stopped waiting. I did my homework in the dining hall next door, in the computer lab in the basement, sometimes in the lobby downstairs. Just in case you called, I wanted to get to you as soon as I could.”
“That’s what you did.” Amy wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
“I’m not trying to be cheesy, but I had faith in you, Amy. I knew you were strong enough to get answers to all your own questions.”
“And to yours,” Amy said, tentatively taking the smallest of steps back toward him. He didn’t move away in response. “You asked me if I could promise you tomorrow, and the next day, and the next month. I don’t think we can really promise anything, but that’s what I want. Tomorrow, and the next day, and the one after that, being yours.”
Matt let his hand slide down to grip her waist. When Adam had done that, it had felt possessive, protective. But the soft, solid touch of Matt’s palm carried nothing but safety and peace. Amy pressed even closer against him and closed her eyes. Matt’s kiss was sweet relief and a spark of desire, so much more meaningful than that insane Christmas night, all rolled into one.
As they stood there, wrapped up together, not intending to move any time soon, Amy finally understood—belonging to a person you loved who really, really loved you back, meant freedom for your heart that wasn’t a prison, not even close. It was a safe place to fall, a home to return to no matter where you were.
Finally realizing that made all the times her heart had been so terribly broken more than worth it.
Rion
Even though she knew there was a security camera, and the possibility of seeing him there was pretty good on any given day, Rion couldn’t stop walking back through Crash’s alley.
She didn’t tell anyone, mostly because her roommates were the Queens of Figuring Things Out and Talking About Feelings. The first thing was impossible and the second was just out of the fucking question. Rion still showed up to Society meetings this semester—five of them, so far. For the third one, Arielle was miserable, and for the entire first four Amy was in tortured emotional limbo. Now her two roommates were sickeningly happy and mooning all over themselves and each other any time they happened to be in the suite.
Between that and the stir-craziness that affected every resident of Northern Indiana in late February, walking down frigid, winter-bleak Francis Street actually felt like some kind of a relief.
For the first few weeks after Crash’s arrest, the wall didn’t change. The swirling reds, oranges, and yellows Crash had added in the last four months flowed so beautifully from the bright blues and greens that had been there long before he first showed it to Rion.
Since that first time Crash showed it to her, he’d painted little moments between them here and there in different spots on the wall—pancakes, him listening to her music mix with a smile on his face, their trip to her hometown for Christmas. Each of these pictures had a thick line connecting them, and somewhere along each of those lines was a heart. They weren’t cheesy hearts, they were subtle—nestled in the corner of a border, etched into the curve of a cloud. She hadn’t seen these, hadn’t asked to see the wall, until after the whole incident.
Now, she wished she’d seen it then, wished she’d been able to tell him what she was feeling when she was feeling it, somehow. Wished she’d realized that he’d opened up his heart to her, completely, in thick paint on a cold brick wall. She had just never asked to see it.
After the whole refused-call-from-jail incident, Rion had once again arranged her schedule to avoid Crash. This time around, he hadn’t seemed to mind. She’d only seen him in passing, and made eye contact with him exactly once. In the six weeks since, there hadn’t been a single change to the wall. Rion figured that was part of the reason she loved going there so much—it was the one thing that didn’t change, that was frozen in time before it all went bad. Before she blew what would probably turn out to be her one and only chance.
Today, though, something had changed. There had been a shift inside her, something that diverged the slightest bit from the autopilot that had been getting her through the day. On her way out the door, almost without realizing what she was doing, she’d picked up a piece of sidewalk chalk Arielle kept in an organizer on their chalkboard wall—the kind she insisted on because it was softer, with bolder colors. She slipped it into her pocket.
There weren’t very many blank feet of brick left on the wall, Rion knew that much. Crash had already filled two thirds of it, at least. Even so, the solid color stood in such stark contrast to Crash’s heart and soul beside it that she felt even emptier trying to figure out what to do with it.
Rion hadn’t felt this antsy in a very long time. With every step, her legs protested a little bit more, telling her to turn back, telling her she didn’t have to do this. But she fought that feeling, just like she’d fought everything else in her life—ferociously. Nobody could keep her from doing what she wanted to do, deep down, not even herself.
She clutched the chalk like a child might, in a fist, and wrenched it out of the pocket of her motorcycle jacket. Using the cool hardness of the wall to steady her hand, she wrote, “I MISS YOU,” one letter per brick, just a few inches from the last painting.
It wasn’t a commitment, and it didn’t even come close to scratching what she felt, what she wished she was brave enough and smart enough to say. But hell if she didn’t feel every bit of it down to the bone. She blew out a hot breath that had gathered in her chest as she wrote the words, releasing anything intense that could grow toxic later. And then a soft *scritch scritch* in the gravel sent her breath silent and set her body on high alert.
“You know graffiti is illegal in the city limits.” Crash stood there, so still and his voice was so quiet that he could have been a hallucination.
Rion’s heart kicked like crazy.
“I…um…” Rion swallowed the bubble of panic that had started to form inside her, the pocket of weakness that could ruin everything all over again. “It’s just chalk.”
Crash nodded and started toward her, calm and quiet, like she had woken him out of sleep to ask him whether he had any clean towels. The only difference was that his eyes were focused on her, unfeeling. Hiding something behind them that Rion couldn’t decipher.
Is this how she had always looked to him? Unreadable, just out of reach?
He w
as so close she could touch him, then, heartbreakingly, so close she could have leaned in and kissed him. She didn’t dare move an inch, afraid if she so much as turned her head to him, she’d completely break down.
Slowly, gently, he reached his hand out to hers, nudging open the fingers that still held the chalk so tight. He pulled it from her and raised it to the wall.
Right underneath where she had written, “I MISS YOU,” he scrawled in all caps, “COME BACK.”
Rion blinked, taking in the words. It took a long time for her heart to convince her voice to work. “Do you want me to?”
“If you can,” Crash said, his voice so measured it was unbelievable. “But you have to be able to trust me. I know you said you love me, but for me, that means trusting me, too.”
Rion pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, begging the burning that cropped up there to subside. “It’s not about you. The drug stuff, my reaction…it’s not about you.”
“Except it was, because I was in the middle of it.” Crash sighed and pushed his hand back through his hair. “Look, Rion. I won’t fucking lie. I can’t make myself lie to you, no matter how much I should. I miss the hell out of you. Being with you…it was different than being with anyone else. I can’t tell you to get out of my face again, because I honestly think it would fucking destroy me.”
Rion whimpered. That was how she felt. Destroyed. Like she’d broken into more pieces than she could handle or keep track of.
“But I have to know we’re in this together. I have to know you’re not giving me the fucking side-eye every time I’m out late or have a new tattoo or a little extra cash. I have to know that you have faith in me, to put myself—and you, for fuck’s sake—first, before any stupid shit like pot.”
“Crash, you know what happened to me. I can’t just make that go away.”
“No, you can’t. And I wouldn’t want you to, because it made you who you are. But you have to go back and figure out what about your stupid ex and your mom you refuse to talk to makes you unable to trust me. The guy who so obviously loves you.”
The Broken Hearts' Society of Suite 17C Page 43
