Chapter 3 Matt
“You’re distracted.”
I blinked across the table at Holden. He had been talking about…
something. I’d like to say I knew what he was talking about, but he was right.
I was distracted. I was thinking about that hug with Noah in the parking lot of the restaurant.
I was thinking about the way it lingered, the way it felt comfortable and familiar.
It wasn’t just the hug that felt comfortable.
Everything about spending time with Noah that afternoon felt like slipping into an old, familiar tee shirt.
“What’s going on, Matt?” Holden’s voice sounded uncharacteristically concerned. He was usually so high energy that he didn’t notice certain things. Of course he’d choose now to become observant.
There was a part of me that wanted to tell Holden about the afternoon I’d spent with Noah.
I wanted to tell him about lunch, about spending time on the boat, and about Noah finding that rubber duck he’d made for me, sitting amongst all the other ducks that lived on my boat.
I wanted to tell him how everything came flooding back when I saw it in Noah’s hands.
I remembered the way I’d felt when he’d given me the duck: conflicted.
Conflicted because our future plans had all centered around us going to universities close to one another.
He was going to Brown, and I was going to go to MIT.
We’d be less than two hours away from one another, and that wasn’t an insurmountable distance for two eighteen-year-olds with cars.
We had plans for visiting each other, and we found a small town halfway between the two colleges to get an apartment during our sophomore year.
He’d given me the duck the same day I got my MIT acceptance letter, because he had full faith that I’d get in.
But when I’d gone to visit MIT after applying, I’d not felt any kind of connection with the campus.
It wasn’t a place where I could see myself thriving.
Everything about the campus felt cold to me.
I’d chalked it up to nerves at first, but when I decided to visit a college on the west coast, I felt the same thing that Noah had talked about when he’d visited Brown.
It felt like a place I belonged, a place I could thrive.
I’d applied secretly and therein lied the conflict of the duck.
I’d kept the duck though, even after Noah and I broke up.
It was a piece of my first love, something tangible to remind me of the way it felt.
It sat on my dorm room desk and helped me when I was stuck on a programming question for my classes.
It traveled with me when I went on my summer boat trip after graduating from college.
It was like having a piece of Noah with me during those times.
As I moved on from him, it moved further away from me.
All the way until it joined the shelf of other rubber ducks over my bed on the boat, a bed I didn’t sleep in often.
Those ducks were my reserve ducks, kept for when I worked on my boat and needed their opinions. They were rarely pulled out, rarely used, rarely thought about, but just as important as the shelves and containers of ducks I kept in my apartment.
“Matt…” Holden’s voice pulled me out of my memories.
“I’m fine. Just…” I sighed. I should tell him.
I should tell him about the hug with Noah and the beat of a moment when I thought he was going to kiss me.
I could just imagine what he’d say about it all.
And if I told him, he’d tell Eli. Eli would give me hell about the fact that I clearly wanted it to become something again, just like he had when we’d been at the Rusty Nail on Thursday.
Eli would tell Seb, and the story would make its way around the group.
Everyone would start teasing me, or they’d talk me out of even imagining what it would be like to kiss Noah again.
No, I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to do that. “I’m just tired.”
I felt guilty lying to Holden. I didn’t like to lie to my friends.
At least I could take comfort in the fact that Holden didn’t look like he believed me in the slightest, but he’d never been the friend that pushed and pried.
No, that was reserved for Eli. He let it rest, and he didn’t mention my distracted state for the rest of dinner.
I thought I caught him looking at me weirdly a few times while we finished eating, but if he didn’t say anything?
Well, I could pretend that he’d fully let it go.
I was still thinking about the hug hours later.
I couldn’t focus on the coding project I was working on.
I just kept thinking about the way Noah’s body had felt pressed against mine and the moment when I thought we were going to kiss.
While I’d ruled out the idea of talking to my friends about it while I’d been at dinner with Holden, I was having second thoughts now.
I pulled out my phone and navigated to the group chat, but I couldn’t think of how to even start. I looked at each of my friends’ contacts and tried to imagine their reactions to me calling after eleven because I was freaking out about a hug from my ex-boyfriend.
Then, I dialed the source of all these thoughts.
“I was just thinking about you,” Noah said when he answered the phone.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t elaborate, and while I thought that maybe I should ask what he meant, I didn’t. We sat in silence for a few moments, and I regretted calling. What if we just sat in awkward silence for a few minutes with nothing to say and then hung up? “I had a good time today.”
Well, at least Noah was able to break the awkward silence.
“So did I.” I smiled and put my laptop down. “What’d you do after?”
Noah told me a little about the rest of his evening.
He’d had a lazy evening at home with a simple dinner, some time in front of the television, and a little light reading.
He asked about my dinner with Holden, and I gave him an overview.
I left out the fact that I was angsting over our hug for most of it.
“So, any reason you’re calling so late?”
“No,” I lied. “Just needed a distraction. Can’t focus on my project.”
“Is that all?” There was something in the tone of his voice that told me he didn’t believe me. He’d always been good at reading between the lines and seeing through my bullshit.
I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. “No.” Okay, I could do this.
“I was thinking about you. About… uh… about the hug. Earlier.” Wow, I really was a coherent person capable of making all the sense in the world.
“It felt… God, I don’t know how it felt.
Or how I felt. I just… I keep thinking about it.
I was distracted all through dinner, and I don’t even know why, and I’m pretty sure I’m reading things that aren’t—”
“Matt, breathe,” Noah interrupted with a laugh. “I’m coming over.”
I was going to tell him it wasn’t necessary, but he hung up. Fifteen minutes later, there was a text on my phone telling me he was downstairs. I put on a pair of shoes, grabbed my keys, and went outside to meet him.
Noah was sitting in his car, parked under a streetlight near the edge of the parking lot.
I climbed into the passenger seat, and I felt it again.
That tension that had lingered while we’d sat together on the boat.
I’d thought it was one-sided, but if he was here?
Then maybe I hadn’t been reading too much into it.
Maybe it wasn’t as one-sided as I’d imagined and maybe it wasn’t all in my head.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. I didn’t know where to start.
Were we supposed to talk about the hug? Were we supposed to talk about something else and ignore the hug?
The hug had been the reason he’d come over, after all, so it made sense that we’d talk about it.
Except neither one of us were bringing it up.
I could feel Noah looking at me, and I snuck a peek at him out of the corner of my eye. He wasn’t even hiding the fact that he was staring at me, watching me. It only ramped the tension up tenfold.
Someone had to speak first, and it didn’t look like it was going to be him.
“Well, one of us has to say something,” I declared.
“I was waiting for you,” he admitted.
I angled myself toward him in my seat. Maybe this conversation would have been better inside.
I should have invited him up to my apartment.
It would’ve made more sense than sitting out in his car.
I could only imagine what my neighbors would think if they looked outside.
Oh, there’s that weird Matt guy. At least he’s found someone to talk to other than those damn ducks.
I smiled in spite of myself, imagining the old lady that lived beneath me peeking out her window thinking exactly that.
She’d had the misfortune of having a few packages of ducks delivered to her door instead of mine.
“What was that smile for?” Noah asked.
“I’m just thinking about what my neighbors would think with us sitting out here,” I told him. “The woman beneath me already thinks I’m bonkers. She’s heard me talking to the ducks one too many times.”
He laughed. “You know, I don’t really care what your neighbors are going to think about us sitting out here. That’s also not what I wanted to talk about.”
“It’s easier than talking about what we need to talk about.
” The hug. The elephant in the backseat.
The fact that I thought he was going to kiss me when we hugged, or the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about his body pressed against mine.
I didn’t have those kinds of thoughts all that often.
I certainly didn’t have them enough for them to derail me the way this had.
Noah reached across the center console and squeezed my forearm. “I’ve been thinking about it too.”
I looked down at his long fingers resting on my arm and back up at him. “You have?”