Chapter 30
30
MATT
It’s obvious to me that Eric isn’t watching the movie. He’s thinking through something. As a kid, it was one of my favorite things to watch. His mind is a thrilling place where he can make connections between things in minutes that would take most people ages to figure out. I’ve often wished my brain could take the same shortcuts his does, but today is not one of those days. He looks tormented.
“Cutie? Are you alright?” I ask, pausing the movie. I give his hair a little tug to make him look at me. His eyes are haunted. Leaning down, I place a kiss on his forehead. I’m sure we brought up some not so good memories for him today, but I want to make sure going forward that we are actually moving forward. We can’t get trapped in the past.
“I love you, Mattie,” he says as he snuggles back down on my lap. “Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of… the event … I haven’t really faced it before today, not really.”
Pulling the blanket off the back of the futon, I tuck it in around him and continue to stroke his hair. I only found out about what happened to him this morning. He’s been living with it for five years. I know only general statements. He has vivid and explicit details. It’s tearing me apart inside, so what is it doing to him?
“What can I do to help?” I ask him softly. I need to do something to make this right for him. I can’t change the past, but I have to try to make his future brighter.
“Just be here, Mattie. Let me be your unicorn boy again,” he tells me with a sad smile. Turning back toward the television, he grabs the remote from my hand to press play on the movie. I barely hear the whisper. “Don’t let me go, Super Mattie.”
Somehow I manage to keep my silent tears from falling on my boy as he drifts off to sleep with his head in my lap. Despite the fact that I have a class to teach at ten tomorrow morning, I refuse to move from where I am until I absolutely need to. This precious man still thinks I’m his hero.
“Super Mattie and Sparkles to the rescue!”
I can’t stop my lips from quirking up at the call to arms from the seven year old at my side. I was teaching him how to play catch when the baseball ended up rolling into the rose bushes, his mother’s prize winning rose bushes.
“Easy there, Sparkles,” I tell him, restraining him by grabbing the back of his shirt when he tries to dive after the ball. “We can’t damage your mother’s flowers”
Turning to me, his bottom lip quivers. “B-but what about the b-b-ball? I don’t want to be done playing base-m-ball with you.”
An athlete he is not, but I love that he tries so hard just for me. Seeing the tears start to form in his eyes, I know what I have to do. Ruffling his curls, I get down in the mulch and slowly army crawl between the bushes and the wall of the garage.
Mom is going to be pissed with how filthy I’m getting, but it’s better for the kid of the cook to be dirty than their precious showpiece. Thorns from the rose bushes tear at my clothes and exposed skin, but I can see the ball just ahead. Snatching it up, I decide it’s safer to keep going forward instead of trying to move backward or turning around.
“Mattie?” Eric’s worried voice calls out from behind me, but I don’t stop moving. His sniffles make me move even faster.
When I reach the end of the wall, I crawl out of the mulch and jump to my feet. I raise the hand holding the baseball in triumph as my little buddy sprints around the bushes to wrap his arms around my middle. The warmth I feel from his hug makes it easy to ignore the small pains and itches from the scratches on my left side.
“Super Mattie…”
Happy memories from our joint childhood run through my mind until I drift off into my own slumber. My dreams are all the good times we shared while we both grew up. I was his superhero, saving his toys from the perils of the vacuum while Eliza cleaned the third floor of the house. I was his chaperone on his “adventures” while I would run errands for my mom. I was his comfort when his father decided he was too old for what he called baby toys and threw out all of his stuffed animals.
My alarm going off in the bedroom jolts me awake before my dreams have the chance to take a darker turn. The first thing I notice is the stabbing pain in my neck from falling asleep sitting upright on the futon. Thirty two is well beyond the “I can sleep in any position” phase of my life. As I try to massage the crick out of my neck, I look around and realize Eric isn’t in the room. Before I can panic, I hear whispered expletives coming from the hallway.
“Will you shut the fuck up, you stupid machine?!” he hisses as I head down the hallway toward my bedroom. “Where is the fucking off button?”
My cock definitely takes notice of the nearly naked man standing in front of my dresser, dripping water on my carpet. I’m a little disappointed he decided to take a shower without me, but we have only been together for about a day.
“You have to hold two buttons at the same time for at least ten seconds, otherwise it’s just a snooze for ten minutes,” I tell him, making him scream and drop the towel he had loosely wrapped around his waist. I chuckle at his reaction. “Good morning to you, too.”
I walk up to my dresser to turn off the alarm. It’s a struggle to not smirk at the glare being leveled at me from the naked turquoise haired drowned rat before he turns to pick up his towel. I might have stopped the smirk, but nothing could’ve stopped the groan that escapes when I catch a glimpse of his pucker as he bends over.
The little minx shakes his ass before standing back up to look at me. I love the sultry smirk that blooms on his face as he tosses the towel over his shoulder and sashays his way out of my bedroom. Giving me a wink at the door, he disappears into my bathroom, and I hear the shower start back up. Shaking my head, I pull out a fresh pair of underwear and t-shirt for an undershirt.
When I reach my closet, I see that I have limited options for what to wear today. Most of the time, I grab a random button down and pair of slacks. I don’t even know if I match half the time. Will Eric care if I look like a bum? Probably, but I’m sure he will find a way to be my stylist going forward, just like he did for me when I started high school. He took over picking out my outfits every day for my entire freshman year before he deemed me proficient enough to be left unsupervised.
Turning away from my closet, I figure I can at least get coffee started. I’ve never worried about fashion for work before, but then again I’ve never had anyone to worry about what they think about how I look before.
As I scoop the grounds into the filter, I pause.
I’ve never had anyone to look good for? Didn’t I care about how I looked for Sylvia?
Putting the carafe under the spout, I hit the button to start the brew. The realization hits me like a freight train. I never actually cared about what Sylvia thought. We basically just coexisted for our entire relationship. I mean, we talked and went on dates, but it was all perfunctory. Even the sex was merely mediocre.
Cocking my head, I listen for the shower. Estimating that I have at least ten minutes based on the number of skin care products I saw on my dresser top, I grab my phone to call Syl. I feel like I owe her an apology for wasting so many years of her life.