Crazy in Love (Matt & Anna Book 1)

by Annabelle Costa

  “How about some breakfast, Matt-Matt?” she asks in an overly peppy voice.

  Shit.

  “I’ve got sort of a….” I rub my eyes, trying to think of a way to get the hell out of here. Nothing is coming to me. I’m too tired to think straight.

  I watch Sue roll out of bed, naked. Actually, maybe I shouldn’t make a quick getaway. I find Sue annoying, but on the other hand, it’s been a long time since I’ve been out with a woman. I wouldn’t mind a date with Sue. Actually, I’d love it.

  Maybe Sue is girlfriend material. She’s not so gorgeous that she’d reject me outright. Maybe I could break the MS thing to her slowly and she’d be okay with it. That would be nice—to have someone to confide in about all this shit that’s been happening to me lately. I haven’t talked to a soul about it aside from medical professionals. Even my parents don’t know.

  “Yeah, okay,” I finally say.

  “I’ll make you eggs,” Sue says with a sleepy smile. She grabs a pink frilly housecoat off the wall and sits next to me.

  So here’s the annoying part. Sue isn’t leaving. She’s just sitting there, waiting for me to get dressed to go out of her room.

  “Breakfast in bed?” I ask hopefully.

  Sue laughs and tugs at my arm. “Get up, you lazy bum.”

  I remind myself she isn’t actually doing anything wrong. Most guys—the overwhelming majority of guys—would be able to get up and follow her to the living room. Except I can’t just “get up.” I need my goddamn ankle braces. And she doesn’t get it. But I realize that if I don’t do something quick, I’ll be on my ass on the floor.

  “Okay,” I say, “just hang on. Let me get dressed. You can go ahead.”

  But she doesn’t go ahead. She just shrugs and sits there while I get my pants on, which I do by leaning against the bed while I pull them up. That part is easy. But now I’ve got to get my AFOs on.

  I grab one of my shoes, which has the brace sticking out of it. I mean, it isn’t the worst thing in the world. The original black one I had wasn’t bad at all—you could barely see it—but the ones I have now are not nearly as inconspicuous. They are made of translucent white plastic that run up nearly to my knees and wrap around my entire calf muscle. And there are Velcro straps to hold them in place.

  Sue watches me put on my AFOs and shoes, and when I look up at her, her eyes are really wide. I mean, ridiculously wide, considering I’m not bludgeoning someone to death on her bed. I mean, Christ. They’re just ankle braces.

  In any case, the fantasy of going out on a date with her tonight or at any point in the future flies right out the window.

  “Sorry,” she says when she notices I’m staring. “I just… I didn’t realize you were crippled.” Her face colors. “Sorry, I meant… what do you guys like to be called? Handi-capable?”

  I glare up at her. “I’m not crippled.”

  “It’s okay,” Sue says quickly, although she won’t meet my eyes. “I’m not judging you.”

  “I just tore my Achilles, that’s all.”

  Ah, the old Achilles lie. It doesn’t work though. Sue narrows her eyes at me. “I told you, it’s okay. You don’t have to lie.”

  “I’m not fucking lying!” I shoot back at her.

  And right now, I don’t even care about ever dating her or fucking her or any of that shit. I never want to fuck her again. I never want to see this girl again.

  “Shit, calm down,” she mutters.

  “I’m leaving,” I say. I stand up from her bed, and there’s a scary moment when I nearly lose my balance, and Sue actually has to grab me to keep me from falling. So much for making a great exit.

  I have to make my way back out through Sue’s treacherous living room as she follows close behind. Somehow it’s gotten even more cluttered during the night, as if all the junk in her house decided to hold a wild party while we slept and didn’t clean up after itself. I have to hold onto the couch again, but I make it to the front door. And then of course, I’ve got to get down those three goddamn stairs again. Down is even worse than up, in case you were wondering.

  “Do you need help?” Sue asks as I start contemplating the first stair.

  I glance back at her. She doesn’t seem angry at me, even though I cursed at her. Then I glance back at the stairs. I think about how emasculating it will be to have her help me down these stairs, but then think about how badly I might get hurt if I fell down the stairs onto the hard pavement below.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”

  Sue supports me as I make my way carefully down the stairs. And then she walks next to me to my car. If I were any sort of gentleman, I’d offer to drive her back to the bar to retrieve her car, but I never was a gentleman, and I’m sure not now.

  “Thanks,” I say to her as I unlock the car. I’m not sure what I’m thanking her for exactly. For helping me down the stairs? For fucking me?

  “No problem,” Sue says in an overly formal voice.

  For reasons I still can’t comprehend, I actually lean in to kiss her. It’s just a reflex. But Sue ducks me very neatly. Yeah, no kiss for the guy with ankle braces.

  Well, at least nobody will call me Matt-Matt ever again.

  I try not to think about the whole thing as I drive myself home. I just want to get back to my apartment and take a shower. And forget I ever met Sue. It was a good release in the moment, but now that it’s over, I feel even worse about myself than I did before.

  When I pull up in front of the house where I’m renting the downstairs apartment, my landlady and upstairs neighbor Rosemary is making her way out to the mailbox in her pink silk housecoat that falls roughly to knee level. Rosie is what Calvin would call a “MILF,” although I’m not actually sure if she’s a mother at all. She’s maybe in her late forties or early fifties with a sexy, throaty voice, and she’s single as far as I can tell. Based on her last name Conti and her olive skin and black hair, I’m guessing she’s Italian.

  “Hi, Matt.” Rosie waves at me as I get out of my car. “Late night last night?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I mumble.

  Since I moved in here a few months ago, I’ve gotten the distinct impression that Rosie is interested in hooking up with me. Okay, I’m almost positive she is. And she’s hot—no doubt about that. But considering this apartment is the perfect living situation for me and I don’t have the energy to move again right now, I don’t want to mess around with her. I have a feeling that Rosie is all about the drama, based on the fact that I can sometimes hear her shouting through the vents of my apartment.

  Rosie winks at me. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

  I scratch at my hair, which I notice now is sticking straight up. Also, I suddenly realize I desperately need to pee. I’m sure I very much look like a guy coming back from a booty call. “Uh, nobody… much.”

  Rosie laughs and lets her housecoat fall open slightly to reveal a teeny tiny tank top underneath. If I hadn’t just gotten laid last night, the sight of it probably would have made me crazy, but now I’m okay. That’s one good to come out of this.

  I carefully make my way the short distance from my car to the door to the apartment. I feel Rosie watching me, but I need to focus all my energy on walking. She, of course, is not aware that I have anything wrong with me, but she’s seen me ambling back and forth from my car enough times that it’s possible she might suspect something. It’s possible that everyone I know has been whispering behind my back about how badly I walk. And that’s yet another thing I don’t want to think about.

  Chapter 18: Anna

  Usually when I hear the doorbell ring, I get very anxious. I don’t have visitors over often (or at all), so there’s no reason that anyone should be at my door. Most of the time, my first thought is that it’s the police at the door, coming to arrest me for a pedestrian I struck with my car. On several occasions, a ringing doorbell has sent me up to my bedroom, where I hid until whoever was at the door gave up and left.

  I suppose it was never the police. I’m
sure if it had been, I would have learned about it by now.

  Today the doorbell ringing doesn’t frighten me because I’m expecting my brother-in-law Jake to arrive to fix my leaking pipe in the upstairs bedroom. He was supposed to arrive three minutes and twenty-four seconds ago, but Jake isn’t known for being prompt. He’s a mechanic and generally very handy at fixing things, so he comes over when there’s something in need of repair. I don’t trust outside repairmen or plumbers to come into my home.

  I walk over to the door and crack it open with the chain in place just to verify that it’s actually Jake. He’s standing there in a worn T-shirt and jeans, his dark hair buzzed just millimeters from his skull, a crooked grin on his broad face. I pull the door open, and too late, realize that my sister Lisa is standing beside him. Not that I wouldn’t have allowed him in if I saw Lisa—I need this pipe fixed.

  “Hey, Anna,” Jake says, raising his hand in greeting. He has dirt permanently ground into the cracks in the skin of his hands, which is something that bothered me immensely when I first met him. The first time he came here, I made him wash his hands repeatedly until I realized the dirt would not come out. “What’s up?”

  “You’re three minutes and twenty-four seconds late,” I feel compelled to point out.

  Jake laughs while Lisa rolls her eyes.

  “Nice to see you too, Anna,” Jake says. “Where’s that leaky pipe?”

  “It’s upstairs,” I tell him. I look down at Jake’s dirty work boots on my welcome mat. “Your shoes…”

  “Taking them off,” Jake says before I can complete my thought.

  Lisa shoots him a grateful look, which she thinks I don’t notice. I’m not a complete idiot. I am cognizant of the fact that most people are able to disregard basic hygiene practices without enduring the sort of stress that I do.

  Jake removes his boots, but to my horror, he has a large hole in the big toe of his sock. You can nearly see the entirety of his largest toe. While shoes in my home are upsetting to me, bare feet are a close second. How could Lisa allow her husband to walk around this way?

  Well, I suppose there isn’t a lot I can do about it.

  As Jake stomps up the stairs, his large frame causing every single step to creak under his weight, Lisa turns to me. She is four years older than I am, but we are unmistakably sisters. When we were children, I appeared like a shrunken version of Lisa, with the same wispy blond hair, blue eyes, and narrow frames. Back then, I used to follow Lisa around like she was my hero. My most vivid memory from my childhood with Lisa is of building a snowman with her on a winter morning, spending hours rolling together balls to make up the body of our man of snow. When it was over, both Lisa and I caught dreadful colds, but our snowman stood out on our lawn for weeks, long past when my runny nose dried up.

  When Lisa got to middle school, she lost interest in her dorky younger sister, and I became entrenched in my studies, even at a young age. Lisa’s world of boys and makeup no longer interested me. I remember her complaining to our mother that I was “weird.” By the time I graduated from high school at the top of my class and Lisa had already dropped out of college, we barely knew each other.

  The physical differences have magnified as well—Lisa’s figure filled out in her twenties, while I regretfully still have the body of a prepubescent boy. She has her hair cut into the latest style most flattering to a woman in her early thirties, whereas I trim my own hair into a straight line every three months in the bathroom, keeping it just above shoulder length so that I can easily tuck it behind my ears.

  “Who’s watching Jayden?” As a dutiful aunt, I always inquire after their chronically misbehaved son.

  “He’s with a sitter,” Lisa says. “We’re going out to dinner after this.”

  How could Jake go out to dinner dressed in jeans and a T-shirt? And with a hole in his sock! My skin starts to crawl at the reminder of Jake walking around my house with a hole in his sock. His bare toe is all over my floor. What if he has fungus on his toe?

  “We’re having a party this weekend,” Lisa says to me. “Do you want to come?”

  And Jake is exactly the sort of person who would have toe fungus. He works all day with those heavy boots on his feet. And God knows how often he showers. It’s the perfect breeding ground for fungus.

  “Anna?” Lisa prompts me. “Party? This weekend? Interested?”

  A party? “Did Mom tell you to invite me?” I ask her.

  A smile crawls across Lisa’s face. “Yes. But I still think you should come.”

  I shake my head. “No. I don’t think so.”

  There’s probably fungus all over the floor of my bathroom now. I’ll have to spend hours cleaning it after this. Why didn’t I have some socks available for Jake in case this happened? I should have known that he’s the sort of person who would end up with a hole in his sock. I’ll need to purchase several packages of socks for his future visits.

  “Come on, Anna, maybe you’ll meet a guy,” she says, then she laughs at what is to her, clearly a preposterous thought. Well, I suppose it isn’t terribly likely.

  Although for one fleeting moment, I imagine inviting Matt to that party. Matt surely does not have foot fungus. If I asked him, would he laugh in my face? No, he certainly wouldn’t. But he’d find a way to decline. A nice way.

  “No, thank you,” I say.

  I glance up the stairs. Thinking about Matt calmed me for an instant, but Jake’s foot fungus has emerged back in the forefront of my mind.

  “God,” Lisa says. “You sure have a lot of cans stacked up in the living room. How can you even walk through the room without knocking them over?”

  I’m sure the fungus won’t only be in the bathroom. It will probably be all over the second floor of my house by the time he’s done up there. I’ll have to sterilize the entire second floor.

  A sweat breaks out on the back of my neck and I feel slightly dizzy.

  “Excuse me,” I say to Lisa. Before she can say another word, I race up the steps to the bathroom. I find Jake hunched down under my sink, his dirty box of tools open beside him. The whole scene turns my stomach.

  “Jake,” I say tentatively.

  My brother-in-law straightens so that he can look over at me. I can already see that his hands are filthy. “Not quite done yet, Anna.”

  “Listen,” I say to him. “I need…” I glance down at his big toe, still poking out from within his sock. “You have to cover all your toes.”

  Jake frowns at me. “What?”

  I take a deep breath. “Your sock is ripped. That’s not… I mean, it’s contaminated.”

  He looks down at the big toe of his foot then back up at me. Jake has always been very nice to me, more so than Lisa, but for a moment, I wonder if he’s contemplating telling me to go fuck myself. I’ve certainly been told that enough times to know when it’s coming.

  “What do you want me to do?” Jake finally asks.

  That’s a good question.

  I end up finding a pillow case in my linen closet and an old silk scarf. We put the pillow case on Jake’s foot and then I make him hold out his ankle so that I can tie the scarf around it to hold it in place. I’m tying a bow around his ankle when Lisa comes upstairs.

  “Anna!” she snaps at me. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I look up at Lisa. She’s got her hands planted on her hips and she’s glowering down at me.

  “I don’t want to have fungus spread all over my floor,” I explain.

  “Fungus!” Lisa shrieks. “Jake doesn’t have fungus!”

  “Actually,” I say, “seventy percent of the population has been infected with tinea pedis at one time or another.”

  “My husband does not have foot fungus!” Lisa reaches over and yanks the scarf right out of my hand. “This is out of control, Anna. I mean it. You’ve got serious mental problems.”

  I feel my cheeks grow warm. I know that I’m not perfect, that I obsess over things that I shouldn’t, but to hear my own s
ister accusing me of having “serious mental problems” feels like a slap in the face. I don’t have serious mental problems. What does she even mean by that? Does she think I need to be institutionalized?

  Does my sister think I ought to be locked up?

  “Don’t get upset, babe,” Jake says in his calm, even voice as he continues to fiddle with my pipes, “it’s not that big a deal. I don’t mind.”

  “I mind,” Lisa snaps. “Don’t you see, Jake? You’re just enabling her.”

  Enabling me? That doesn’t sound like a term Lisa would come up with on her own. I wonder who she’s been talking with about me.

  Lisa glares at me. “If you can’t get your shit under control, then Jake isn’t going to come here and help you anymore. I mean it. You can go hire a repairman.”

  The thought of having a sweaty, greasy stranger coming into my house makes my skin crawl. I’m sure Lisa knows it.

  “You need to see a shrink, Anna,” Lisa says to me. Her voice has lowered a notch, but it’s still got that edge to it. “You need to, I don’t know, be on medications or something. Seriously. You need it really badly.”

  I close my eyes, trying to block out my sister’s words. From within the depths of my brain, I retrieve a memory back from when I was a teenager and my parents sent me to see a psychiatrist. I remember passing another girl my age, who was leaving the doctor while I was coming in. I remember the glazed look in her eyes.

  Distant. Stoned. Drugged.

  If Lisa thinks I’m doing that to myself, she’s the one who’s out of her mind.

  “I think I got it fixed,” Jake announces as he straightens up. He looks at Lisa and smiles. “Lisa, why don’t you go downstairs while I make sure it’s working. I should just be another minute.”

  Lisa looks between the two of us before she throws up her hands and goes back downstairs. I feel a rush of relief once she’s gone, but the sting of her words remains.

  “Don’t worry.” Jake’s voice is low so that my sister can’t hear him. “I’ll keep coming over when you need me. Just call me directly, okay, Anna?”