Bound Together (19 page)

Pete giggled behind his hand.

“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. He set me on my feet and continued walking like nothing had happened. I flipped my foot up behind me and kicked his butt, whistling as I walked a
long inconspicuously.
Pete giggle
d
again
.

I looked back behind me.
They had stopped walking. “I’m Matt,” he was saying, bent down
on one knee
. They shook hands. “Pete,” I heard my brother say. I felt something pull inside me, something I didn’t recognize. “Come on, I was promised Chick
-
Fil
-
A.”
I continued walking towards town.

When we got to the restaurant, true to his word, Matt paid for our order
. We slid into a booth with
Pete and I on one side, which left Matt sitting across from me, watching me try to eat
a
chicken sandwich.

“What?” I asked, wiping my mouth with the back of my head.

Matt’s mouth turned up in a crooked smile. “Nothing.” He pulled a fry from the carton and thought about dunking it in ketchup.
“So, Pete, do you like football?”

Pete nodded wildly, half a chicken strip hanging from his mouth.

Matt laughed. “We’ve got to get your sister to bring you to one of my games sometime.”

And that was all it took. Pete was a convert to the
‘
Matt’s a
home
town hero
fan
club
’
. The adoration in his eyes for Matt was
obvious
.
“Yeah,
Zoe
. Can we go?” Pete asked.

“I’ve got a game this Friday,” Matt encouraged.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see.” I tried to think of a reason why we couldn’t
—
but there wasn’t an actual reason I could come up with.

We ate in silence for a few minutes.
Matt held up a limp French fry, curled over and soggy with grease. “If you knew you were going to have your last meal
—
what would you want it to be?” he asked, studying the fry.

I wasn’t sure if the question was directed at me or Pete or just rhetorical, but it was kind dark. Pete surprised me by answering. “Mine would be a peanut
butter, banana and chocolate
syrup
sandwich that
Zoey
makes me.” He smiled.

“What about you?” Matt nodded to me.

“Uh, I gue
ss something really impractical
—
nothing you’d
never
have at home.” I thought about it for a second, taking another bite of my sandwich. “There was this Death by Chocolate
cake I had at a restaurant once
—
maybe that.”

Matt considered it, then tossed the fry aside.

“What about you, Matt?” Pete asked. My eight
-
year
-
old brother was not known for his conversationalist skills, so this should tell you how smitten with Matt he was.

“My mom’s steak and potatoes,” he said without even thinking.

“Our mom doesn’t cook,” Pete said.

“No?” Matt asked.

“Okay Pete, finish up
—
we’ve
gotta
get going,” I interrupted. Enough of the family
-
sharing time.

We gathered up the paper wrappers and used napkins and Matt took the trays to dump in the trash can on our way out.
We stood awkwardly in front of the glass door to the restaurant.

“Well
—
thanks for dinner. You didn’t have to do that.”

“It was no problem,” Matt said.

“Say thank you
, Pete,” I prompted.

Pete
mumbled his
thanks and Matt returned a
fist bump. “N
o problem buddy.
”

I pulled Pete by the hand and
started down the sidewalk.

“Wait,
Zoey
—
I’ll walk with you.”

“That’s okay, we’re going to take the bus. We’ve got to pick up my sister from swimming.”

Matt jogged to keep up with us. “I’ll drive you. You guys don’t have to take the bus.” His eyes were soft, pleading, only I couldn’t understand his motives.

“It’s fine. Thanks though.”
He’d already done enough.

He stepped in front of me, blocking our path. “It’s just
—
we need to work on our paper.”

I stood staring at him, unable to answer, to think of a reasonable way to turn him
down
. “Yeah, tonight’s no good.” I thought about how my mom
hadn’t even gotten out of bed when we were home earlier.

“Tomorrow then. I’ll come over.”

“Sorry, I promised Cora that we’d have a tea party
and color
.”

“That sounds good to me.” He smiled.

Shit
. Did he just invite himself over? And why couldn’t I find the words to turn him down?

“See
ya
, Pete.” He ruffled Pete’s hair and turned to walk back to his truck without waiting for me to
answer.

“Seven o’clock,” I called after him.

Oh, hell
no
.
What had I done?

*****

After dinner
the next night
, I tore through the house, picking up stray articles of clothes, abandon
ed
toys and various cups and bowls left behind in the
oddest
places. Everyone was home tonight, making the place feel like a zoo and even my mom decided she was going to be up and about
. She
was in the kitchen,
trying to organize the
junk
drawers.

I still had no idea what had possessed me to tell Matt it was okay to come over. I mean, yes we needed to work on our paper, but wasn’t that what coffee shops, or libraries were for? Did I really want Matt
Parker
to see my home life? No. S
o why was I taking the chance? I wondered why I was finding it difficult to give him up.
Maybe it was the memories we shared of
Paris
, or
the desire to go back to a week where the most difficult decisions we made were picking
which
pastry
we wanted
for breakfast, or it could have been his abs
. B
ut whatever it was
,
that boy was
like
my own personal crack and I
was addicted
, though I knew this could only be headed for disaster.

I tidied up around the house, but upstairs, my room seemed off limits, so I just straightened it quickly by throwing my dirty
clothes
in my closet and cleared off my desk of old papers. My college application for State sat there, completely filled out but forgotten. I knew I should be excited about college in the fall, but every time I imagined leaving here my stomached clenched. It was more than just the kids. The thought of my mom getting worse and no one left to hold things together scared me.

I stuffed the college application into the trash can under my desk and jogged down the stairs.

“Mom, can you just stop!” I grabbed a fistful of pens from her and stuffed them back into the drawer she was hunched over.

“What’s the problem, now,
Zoey
?” she asked, looking bored.

“I
—
nothing.” I took the envelopes, expired coupons and junk mail she’d collected from the counter and shoved it in the
overflowing
trashcan beside the counter. “I have a friend coming over to study.”

“T
hat’s nice.” She closed the drawer, and moved to another, rummaging around inside.

“Mom, what are you looking for?” I stood in front of her. It’d be quicker and easier if she just told me.

“Oh, nothing. I just haven’t gone through these drawers in a while. Thought I might clean them out.”

She had to pick now to try and do something productive? I bit my tongue to avoid suggesting that she get back in bed. I knew the kids liked when she was up.
I ran a soggy dishcloth across the cracked countertops one last time, ensuring all the remnants of our meatloaf dinner were gone. Mom wandered away, leaving the drawer pulled open and bursting with random papers. I tapped it shut with my hip and went to double check
that
the living room was
still in order
.

I heard a car door close, and knew he was here before he even made it to the door. My stomach fluttered with nervousness and I
busied my
hands straightening the afghan thrown across the back of the couch.

“You’re still going to color with me, right
Zoey
?” Cora looked up from where she sat on the floor.

“Yeah.” His knock at the door captured both our attention. “My friend from school’s here and he’s going to color too,” I explained,
weaving my way through
the living room to answer the
door. We didn’t have any type of foyer or entryway, so as soon as the front door swung open, Matt was in our living room, face to face with
my crazy family and messy house. This was a bad idea.

“Hi,” he said, waiti
ng patiently on the front step with an amused grin.

“Hi.” I stood in front of him,
blocking the doorway
.

“Can I…come in?”

“Yeah.” I dropped my arm from the door
frame
and he stepped inside, taking in the room around us. Suddenly I was seeing the house through his eyes, the worn gray carpeting,
and our
olive green couch that sagged in the middle. Why hadn’t I refolded that afghan so it at least looked neater? Or better yet, why hadn’t I thrown it into the hall closet? The corners weren’t matched up at all, and it hung sloppily, nearly touching the ground on one side. The walls and baseboards by the front door were no longer
white,
marked
with brown smudge marks from shoe
s kicked of
f one too many times
. Why hadn’t I ever thought to wash those
off
?
Or repaint?

Matt scanned the room around us, then walked over and knelt down next to Cora.

“Hi. I’m Matt.” He offered her his hand.

She looked up at him curiously, then over at me. I tried a smile, but wasn’t sure if I succeeded.

“I’m Cora,” she said
suspiciously, then
placed her tiny hand in his. He gave it
a
shake, then dropped it and sat down beside her. He looked completely out of place here, too big, too clean cut
, smelling like cologne
. What was he doing here?

“You
wanna
color?” she asked.

“That’s the idea,” he said, looking up at me.

Cora handed him a box of crayons. “You can have blue or brown. Those are boy colors.”

“Sounds good to me.” He graciously accepted a dark blue crayon and leaned down on his elbow to help Cora color in the princess picture she was working on.

“Come on,
Zoey
,” Cora said, reminding me I was just standing there, starring at them. I was completely out of practice with having someone over. I wasn’t sure if I should offer him something to drink, but then thought
better of it
….we had milk or tap water.
I shut my mouth and
went and sat next to them on the floor and began flipping throu
gh a coloring book, hoping for the
perfect picture to distract me.

I settled for
a
mermaid
and a seahorse. First I colored in all the spots on the seahorse
’s stomach
, watching Matt out of the corner of my eye. He was doing the same thing, and when our eyes met, he chuckled and looked down, co
ntinuing to help Cora color in the
castle.

Matt didn’t seem to notice the dust bunnies in the corner, or the slamming noises coming from above us as my brothers wrestled upstairs or
even that we were hunched over o
n the floor
. He acted like all this
was the most normal thing in the world. M
y heart rate was ju
st starting to return to normal, a
nd then my mom decided to make an appearance in her
pink used
-
to
-
be
-
fluffy
-
but
-
was
-
now
-
matted
bathrobe.