Bound Together (16 page)

He glanced over at me. “It’s cool. I didn’t come here to be entertained.”
 
He wasn’t getting the hint. I guess it was really time to make things a little more clear. We would be back in Ohio tomorrow and I felt the need to set some boundaries. Matt had gotten comfortable pretty quickly (exhibit A was how he was curled up in my bed right now) and this wasn’t going to fly at home.

“Come over here.” He patted the bed next to him. It was a compliment that he thought I’d fit in the six inches of space in between him and the edge of the bed, but it was not happening.

“I’m good over here.” I leaned back against the headboard and stretched my legs out.

He rolled his eyes and got up. He sat down next to me and brought his hand to my jaw and looked into my eyes briefly before leaning in to kiss me. I turned my head and his lips landed on my cheek. “Matt.” I put my hand against his chest, pushing him back a bit so I could breathe air free from his cologne. He studied me while the TV flashed in the background.

“Relax, will you? Why are you so tense?”
He
squeezed
my shoulders.
“Tell me what’s up.”

“
We’re not going to talk about our feelings, are we?
”
I wiggled away. “
The thing is, this week was fun, but you didn’t honestly think…”

“No, of course not
,
”
he interrupted.
He scooted away from me.
“I mean, can you imagine
?
Us
together in the halls at South Lake?
”

I laughed, maybe a little too hard.
“Never
gonna
happen.”

Matt
smiled, but it didn’t reach his blue eyes. He rubbed his hand across his hair.

“Help me with
Amanda
before you go?”

He nodded and followed me to the bathroom.

I tried to
maneu
ver Amanda
to standing, but she was floppy and uncoordinated. Matt stepped
around
me and picked
her
up. He carried her to her bed
while her head bounced like it was disconnected from her neck.
He laid her on the bed, then
leaned
back
against the dresser and watched
me straighten her bare legs that stuck out from her mini skirt.
“Is she going to sleep in that?”

“I’ll help her change after you go.”
I didn’t mean it like that, but I knew it sounded like I was waiting for him to leave.

“All right then,
I
guess I’m off.”

“Guess so,” I said.

“Bye,
Zoey
.”

“Bye.” I shut the door behind him.
After he left, I grabbed the hair tie from my wrist and put my hair up for the first time in days.
I helped Amanda into her pajamas and then got myself ready for bed. The croissants sat uneaten on top of
the
dresser.

*****

The flights home were depressing, but also exciting in some ways. I couldn’t wait to see the kids, to ruffle Charlie’s hair, and breathe in Pete’s little boy smell and
to
play Barbie’s with Cora.  My seats weren’t next to Matt on our flight back, so I’d given him a fist bump and told him it was fun before boarding the plane. He’d stared blankly after me.

We landed to a sunny, cool fall afternoon, jetlagged and homesick. I powered on my cell and called my dad while we waited at the baggage carrousel. 

“
You’re back?”

“Yeah, Dad. Can you come get me?”

“Wish I could. We’ve missed you ‘round here. I’ve
gotta
get to work though. Takes forty minutes to get to the airport. I don’t have time before work.”

“Oh, yeah
—
okay. I’ll just….figure something else out.” I glanced around me at the happy reunions my classmates were having with their parents. I flipped the phone closed and lugged my big, black suitcase off the merry
-
go
-
round.

I rolled it towards the doors, and sat on a bench outside. I tried Morgan next
, but i
t went
straight to
voicemail.
I closed the phone and looked at the time, and
realized that school wasn’t even out yet.
I guess I would
just
have to
wait.

“Hey,” I heard Matt say behind me. I turned and he was standing there, his suitcase at his hip. “You need a ride or something?”

While I’d hoped for a clean break and not to confuse things once we were home, I didn’t have many choices. I nodded.

“Come on.” He motioned for me to follow him.

“Didn’t your parents drop you off?” I asked, remembering the morning we left for our trip.

“Yeah, but they couldn’t pick me up today, so they dropped my truck off.”

“Oh.”
How thoughtful of them.

We wandered around the lot for a while before we found his navy blue SUV. He put both of our suitcases in the back, then we climbed inside. It was meticulously neat inside and smelled like his cologne inside. It reminded me of being close to him and made me a little dizzy.

We drove in silence and when we got closer to town, I directed him to my house. I was embarrassed when he pulled up to my shabby light blue house with its peeling paint
, muddy gravel driveway
and crooked mailbox out front. “This is it.”

He parked in the street and got out, pulling my suitcase from the back. “I can help you get it inside.”

Like that was happening. “I’m good,” I said, pulling my bag from his hands. “Thanks for the ride.”

He nodded and tucked his hands down low in his pockets. I heard footsteps pounding the pavement –and turned to see the kids running towards us. They must have just gotten out of school.

“
Zoey
’s
back!”

I dropped down my knees and pulled them in.

Matt
watched me get assaulted by
Pete and Cora
on the sidewalk,
while Ty and Charlie eyed him suspiciously. He
got back in his truck.
I glanced back at him and
saw that
he was laughing as he pulled away.

*****

By Sunday night, I was
desperately missing
Paris
, or at least ready to get back to
school.
I
’d forgotten how
exhausting it was being at home. N
othing had
really
changed
–m
y mom barely acknowledged
I was back,
and
when Dad wasn’t working
he was laid out on the couch, remote in one hand, a can of beer in the other
.
My little bit of solitude came when I spent Saturday afternoon at the Laundromat and then
roaming
the aisles of
the grocery store.

Morgan
had
joined me for a little bit while I did the laundry and though I wanted to tell her about Matt, for some reason I held that back
.
.

It was ten
o’clock on Sunday
before
I got the house back in order. There were endless
piles of pajamas and abandoned socks, a mountain of Legos under the dining room table
to clean up,
and
a
dead fish floating in Pete’s fish tank
that needed a fishy funeral before being flushed down the toilet.
I headed to my room
, exhausted and unappreciated
and sat down at my computer to check my email. There was nothing but junk. I logged into Facebook and saw I had a new friend request. I c
licked on it. It was from Ma
t
t. I leaned in to look at the tiny picture of him, standing so proud with the football tucked under his arm. H
e’d typed a message.

I need to see you
, he’d written. He’d left his phone number too. He’d sent it an hour ago. I closed the
computer
without accepting his friend request, but grabbed my phone and sent him a text. And even though it was after ten, I’d written:
K
. Come get me. 
After I sent it, I had a mini panic attack. He probably meant that he needed to talk to me at s
chool tomorrow or something – about our assignment.

But my panic was short
-
lived, because a few minutes later he texted me back, saying he was on his way. And then a whole new wave of feeling flooded me. I rushed to the bathroom and
brushed my teeth. Everyone was tucked into bed, so I made my way quietly down the stairs and waited by the front door un
til I saw his headlights, sprinted across the lawn to m
eet him.

I ho
p
ped in. “Drive,” I commanded. He obeyed and pulled away, his headlights illuminating the pot
-
hole riddled street I lived
o
n.

“Where to?” he asked when he reached the end of the road.

“Make a right
—
we’ll go down to the beach.”

He sped up on the main road, heading in the direction I’d told him.
He felt like my get-a-way driver from a crime s
cene.

My rush from sneaking out
began to
subside and I noticed things for the first time. There was a Coldplay song playing softly in the background and Matt was looking scrumptious as ever, in a faded
long
-
sleeved
T-shirt
and jeans.
Part of me wanted to ask what was wrong, why he so badly needed to see me tonight, but I thought it might be crossing some type of invisible line. I didn’t want to get too personal with him. I knew that would have consequences.

He
parked down at the public boat launch on South Lake,
at the edge of town. I looked to the backseat, and noticed he’d folded the seats down and laid a neatly folded blanket on the floor
with a single tea light candle on top
.
Mystery solved. He needed to get some. But wait, was h
e w
as trying to make this romantic?
I blinked away the thought, and climbed into the backseat.
I desperately needed to keep my perspective that Matt was not my boyfriend.

He crawled back after me and we sat facing each other on the floor.
He
was s
hy at first, like it was weird to be doing this back on our home soil. And it was.
Especially since he was trying to make it into something it wasn’t.
We were completely alone in the dark and there was no one to interrupt us.
He grabbed my hand and laced his fingers between mine. I noticed he still had my black elastic hair tie around his wrist.

“
Are you done with your…
”
he started
.

“
Period?
”

He nodded.

“
Wouldn’t you like to know.
”

“Tell me.”

“Why are you
so
interested in my lady business?
”

He freed my hair from the pony tail, then nuzzled into my neck
, but didn’t answer
.

“
This is it, you know. We can’t keep meeti
ng up. After this
—
we’re done.”

He didn’t answer, but instead became fascinated by kissing the back of my neck, lifting my hair out of the way.

“I mean, back at school tomorrow, we’re back to not knowing each other, right?”  

“Whatever you say,
Zoey
.”
He chuckled and pulled me down on top of him.

Chapter Twenty
-two

Matt

After dropping
Zoey
off, I’d slept
so
soundly so when my alarm went off on
Monday
morning,
it blared for ten minutes before my mom came in and yanked it from the wall.
I was surprisingly well recovered from the time difference and jet lag.