Chapter 6 Noah
It had been years since I’d been to our old spot on the beach.
It was a small outcropping of rocks, a ten-minute walk from the closest parking lot.
Even though I’d grown up in King’s Bay, I hadn’t known it existed until Matt introduced it to me.
We’d been sixteen, and we’d spent the entire summer flirting over text messages while he visited his mom and repaired his boat.
He’d just gotten back to town, and we’d walked down the beach from the marina.
He’d told me there was someplace special he wanted to take me.
Going back there now felt natural. It felt like the right place to talk about everything that had happened the night before.
I’d even spent the rest of my work shift thinking about what I would say, about what I needed to say to him.
I needed to understand why he didn’t want to go upstairs.
Maybe it was just like Moira said, but there was a nagging fear in my head that it was just me.
Maybe he just wasn’t interested in going upstairs with me.
After all, he’d freaked out about the hug. But then, he’d initiated the kiss that afternoon. I just didn’t understand, and I wanted to understand. At least I could be certain about one thing: he hadn’t turned me down in an attempt to hurt me. That had never been Matt’s style.
Matt was waiting for me when I got there.
He was sitting on the rocks, his long legs extended in front of him, one knee bent.
He was leaning back, and even from a distance, I could see the way he’d filled out from the scrawny sixteen-year-old he’d once been.
His arms were thicker. It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed that particular change, but the way they were flexing under the weight of his body?
Delicious. The sleeves of his faded black tee shirt were practically straining against them.
I’d always loved arms.
“You made it,” he said softly as he turned, noticing me standing there. His voice was barely audible over the sounds of the waves crashing against the rocks.
“I told you I’d be here.” And I was a man of my word. He knew that. I didn’t say I’d do something or be somewhere and then not follow through.
He pushed himself upright and curled his long legs in toward his body, sitting cross legged on the stone.
I slid down and sat next to him. Inches separated our knees, and I swear I could feel every single one of them.
I just didn’t know if they felt close together or like a vast canyon separating us.
It felt like both simultaneously, and I didn’t like the contradiction.
I wanted it to choose one way or the other.
An awkward silence settled over us. I had spent so much time figuring out what I needed to say, but now my tongue was heavy and dry in my mouth.
I didn’t know how to start, and I wished I’d brought the list with me.
If I had, then I would at least have a jumping off point.
I would have a carefully scripted and meticulously planned strategy.
I still had all of that, I just didn’t remember a single thing that I’d written down.
“One of us should say something,” Matt said slowly, breaking through the awkward silence.
I didn’t know how long it had lasted. It had to have been minutes.
I knew it wasn’t hours, because there was no way Matt Guthrie could go for hours without talking.
Unless that was something that had changed in the years we’d been apart. I very much doubted that.
“Who goes first?” I watched as his shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. Of course it wouldn’t be that simple. If either of us knew how to start the conversation, we wouldn’t be sitting in silence now. “Rock, paper, scissors?” I suggested with a weak laugh.
He cracked up, like I’d made the world’s funniest joke. Truthfully, it was probably just the tension getting to him the same way it was getting to me. At least his laughter was soothing. I felt some of the tension drain from my shoulders.
I could do this.
I could start this conversation.
“Why didn’t you want to go upstairs last night?” I asked. That was the crux of my confusion, of the hurt I’d felt since the night before. “It really felt like it was going somewhere, and then you kind of threw ice water on the whole thing.”
I felt so stupid asking him this. All of my insecurities were on full display, and I didn’t know if he even knew it.
But when I looked at Matt, I could see insecurities behind his warm brown eyes, too.
Whatever had stopped him last night was something that made him feel the way I did now.
I almost hated myself for pushing at it, for asking, but I needed to understand what was going on in his head.
I could, at the very least, give him time to decide how he wanted to answer.
Silence settled over us again, broken only by the sound of the water. At least it didn’t feel as heavy as the earlier silence had, though this quiet still held weight. It was just… different. I didn’t know how to explain it. At least this time, it didn’t last too long.
“I’m not usually into hookups,” he finally told me in a quiet voice.
“I mean, I’ve hooked up before. When I was single, but they always leave me feeling…
” He trailed off, his brow furrowed in what I could only assume was some combination of thought and frustration.
“I don’t know how to describe it actually.
I just felt wrong after every single one of them.
Like the sex was great, sure. Physically, it was great.
I got off. My partner got off. It just didn’t feel… ”
He grunted in frustration, and I reached over and rested a hand on his knee.
His eyes moved down to my hand, like he was shocked at the comforting gesture.
I almost pulled it away, but I wanted to comfort him.
The problem was that the only way I had ever been good at giving comfort was through physical touch.
I had always just been better at the physical aspects of life, not the emotional.
It seemed like Matt had grown into the opposite.
“It’s okay,” I told him after a few seconds of him staring at my hand. “You don’t like hookups. Not everyone does.”
Matt smiled softly, and he covered my hand with his. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
“I was confused,” I confessed. “I thought we were barreling toward a destination, and then suddenly we weren’t anymore. I think it just got me in my head.”
“Wonder what that’s like,” Matt joked with a dry chuckle.
“Guess I finally got a taste of what it’s like to be you, huh?
” I teased back. “It’s exhausting. How do you do it?
” He didn’t answer beyond a shrug and a squeeze of my hand.
I closed my eyes, trying to remember the list I’d written.
We’d hit the first bullet point. I understood why he didn’t want to go upstairs, at least a little bit.
Moira had been right. Of course she’d been right.
She was going to gloat so hard, and I’d never hear the end of it. Damn it.
“So, uh… Do you still want to spend time together? If I don’t really like casual?”
It was my turn to think. When we were sixteen, the decision to date him had been easy. The decision to let what was between us grow into something more had been as natural as breathing. It felt like the natural order of things: meet someone, fall in love, plan a future.
After our breakup, I thought it’d be easy to find that again.
I’d find someone else that I loved, and I’d plan a future with them.
I had a few false starts before realizing that wasn’t in my cards.
I’d never felt even a fraction of what I’d felt for Matt, no matter how many relationships I’d had.
It had taken years to realize that the breakup hadn’t broken me beyond repair.
I was just wired differently than most people.
I just had to figure out a way to explain that to Matt in a way that he’d understand.
He clearly didn’t struggle with emotional connection the way that I did.
How could he possibly understand, even for a minute, what it was like to think that your only chance of love came when you were too young to really do anything about it?
But I had to try, didn’t I? He deserved that, if he thought that there was a chance that we could become anything more than physical.
“I’m not good at dating,” I finally started.
“I’ve tried. After we broke up, I tried to have relationships.
I dated a few guys in college, but I never felt that spark, so I started hooking up.
In New York, there was another guy. We started as hookups, but he wanted more.
” I closed my eyes as I remembered him. On paper, he’d been so perfect for me.
If I could love anyone after Matt, it should have been him, but I didn’t.
The romantic feelings just never came. I’d hurt him, over and over and over again, by letting him fall in love with someone who could never love him back as anything more than a friend.
My inability to love him the way he deserved had destroyed both of us.
I didn’t want to do the same thing to Matt.
“We dated, because it was what he needed, but I could never figure out the emotional part of being in a relationship with him. In the end, it just hurt both of us.”
“So, you’ve never loved anyone besides me?” The tenderness in his expression nearly broke my heart. He looked so sad, but not because of my confession. No, he looked sad for me. “I don’t think I could imagine that. Not experiencing love for years.”