Chapter 7 Matt
Matt
I have news.
Seb
Did the ducks start talking back?
Matt
No.
Holden
Is it sexy news?
Eli
From Matt?
Matt
Rude!
Holden
I threw a pillow at him.
Jonas
What’s your news?
Matt
I got back together with Noah.
Eli
We’re coming over.
Eli’s statement that they were coming over was followed immediately by a group of thumbs up emojis.
I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Were my friends going to come over and start piling into me about revisiting my past?
What if they didn’t support things with me and Noah?
I couldn’t imagine being with someone my friends didn’t like.
They’d liked him when we were all younger, back in high school, when I was the only one of my friends to have a boyfriend.
They’d accepted Noah into the inner circle, even inviting him along for a few of our Thursday nights.
But they’d also been there to witness the heartbreak.
They’d found a way to support me through the breakup from across the country, to pick up the pieces over video chats and even a few long-distance Glee marathons, despite none of them liking the show.
They’d put my broken pieces back together.
What if the only thing they could remember was the bad times?
My anxiety was sky high as I waited for them to show up.
I kept playing through the different scenarios, and each one just got worse and worse.
Was this what it felt like to be Jonas? Except, no, I knew that wasn’t the case.
His anxiety led to panic attacks. Mine just led me down a spiral of racing thoughts and had me talking to rubber ducks.
Rubber ducks who were not being at all helpful in this instance.
If anything, the duck I’d chosen to talk to was just judging me with his beady, painted little eyes.
I was about to find a different duck, one that was less judgmental, when the first person knocked at my door.
It was now or never.
I opened the door and found Jonas behind it.
Seb followed a few minutes later, and finally, Holden and Eli piled into my apartment.
They took seats around my living room, leaving me a spot on the small couch.
I was wedged in between the arm of the sofa and Seb, with Jonas on his other side.
Eli and Holden had managed to squeeze themselves into my armchair.
Half of Holden’s ass was on one of Eli’s thighs.
Small talk filled the room for the first few minutes, and while one might think that would help with the anxious thoughts bouncing around my brain, one would be wrong. The small talk felt like nails on a chalkboard. Why were they dragging this out?
Strangely enough, it was Eli who had instigated this and he wasn’t saying anything.
He was just listening to Jonas talk about something Silas had done while studying me with those sharp amber eyes of his.
I shifted on the couch, which made me bump against Seb.
Seb looked over and caught the way Eli was looking at me.
I watched as he nudged Jonas, who stopped talking.
Holden looked around the room, confusion etched into all of his features.
Eli noticed the silence and shrugged his shoulders. “Guess small talk time is over?” He looked around at our collected friends. When no one said anything, he focused all of his attention on me. For a moment, I thought that maybe I preferred the small talk. “How did you two get back together?”
His words were free of judgment. If anything, the tone reminded me of every other time he’d been fishing for gossip. Maybe I’d been getting anxious over nothing.
I started telling my friends everything.
It wasn’t like there was a lot to tell, but I still told them in excruciating detail.
I told them about our non-date and the way his hug lingered.
I told them about kissing him in the car, and then about rejecting his advances.
Eli started to interject there, but Holden clapped a hand over his mouth and shot him a warning look.
I told them a little about our talk on the beach the day before, though I left out everything about Noah’s personal dating history.
If Noah wanted them to know, then Noah would tell them.
I didn’t want to start my new relationship with my ex-boyfriend off with a betrayal of his confidences.
My friends asked a few questions, but only about things from the past few days.
Nothing about our past relationship or heartbreak came up.
By the end of the conversation, I felt better.
They hadn’t come over to rip into me for taking an emotional time machine.
They were treating it like any other time I’d gotten a new relationship.
I sucked in a deep breath. “Would you guys mind if I invited him to a Thursday hang?”
“Maybe this Thursday?” Seb suggested. “We can go to Goliath. Dance.”
“I can invite Silas. And Seb, you invite Chris. Put a bit less pressure on Noah, maybe?” Jonas suggested. I knew that a part of the suggestion wasn’t entirely altruistic. Jonas’s anxiety didn’t always mix well with the local dance club, but his boyfriend’s presence helped him cope.
Everyone agreed, and we went back to talking about anything and everything. It seemed my anxiety had been in vain.
By the time Thursday night came back around, my nerves were ramped back up.
Maybe they hadn’t brought up the past because they planned to interrogate him over drinks.
Logically, I knew that wasn’t the case. If they wanted to interrogate him, they would’ve chosen the Rusty Nail.
It was a lot easier to talk there. The music was quieter, and there weren’t as many people around.
The drinks were also cheaper, which meant that it was easier to ply someone with drinks and loosen their tongue.
I kept trying to talk myself down, only to find a new worry rear its ugly head.
The entire time I got ready, I played through a thousand worst case scenarios.
When I’d choose a shirt, I found myself worrying that it wouldn’t appeal to Noah’s aesthetic sensibilities, and then he’d make a comment and my friends would hop on that.
When I tried to tame my hair, I started to worry that they’d judge the idea of him being handsy with me, worry that I couldn’t handle myself.
Every little thing sent me down a potential spiral, and it was getting ridiculous.
By the time Noah arrived to pick me up, I’d catastrophized about every possible thing I could think of and a few bonus things that never would’ve occurred to me under normal circumstances.
Noah gave me a kiss when I climbed into his car, and then he looked at me quizzically. “You’re nervous, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I confessed.
He reached across the center console and squeezed my thigh. “Shouldn’t I be the nervous one?” he questioned. “After all, I’m the one going into the lion’s den.” He shifted the car into drive and started toward Goliath.
“My friends aren’t that scary.”
“Eli can be,” he muttered. “I still remember when we started dating in high school. He pulled me aside one day in the hallway, and he gave me the shovel talk.”
“The shovel talk?”
“You know the one,” he started, stealing a glance at me as we reached the stop sign at the end of my street. “You hurt him, I’ll bury you. You make him cry, I’ll end your life. That kind of stuff.”
I didn’t know Eli had done that. It had never been mentioned to me, and now I wondered if he’d given the same talk to anyone else I’d dated. I wondered if Silas and Chris had been subject to Eli’s unique attempts at intimidation. “Did he really?”
“He did,” Noah confirmed, “and then he made me swear that I’d never tell you. So, you know, maybe don’t tell him that I told you. I’m not sure the shovel talk had a statute of limitations.”
I covered his hand with mine. “I’ll protect you. Promise.”
We made small talk the rest of the way to Goliath.
He told me about a late-night conversation he’d had with Moira the night before.
She’d woken up from a weird dream and called him immediately, because she had to make sure that he hadn’t gotten into a car accident.
He told me that she’d had weird dreams like that before, and every time, she had to call and confirm that whatever her brain had dreamed up wasn’t real.
So far, none of her dreams had held any truth, but she still checked every time.
It appeared that their friendship was just as weird as mine with the boys. I loved that for him. I firmly believed that everyone should have friends like that.
Thanks to Noah driving, I was actually on time to meet my friends.
“You must be a miracle worker,” Seb teased as he stood up to shake Noah’s hand. “I can’t remember the last time Matt wasn’t the last to arrive.”
“Eli’s going to lose his shit when he figures out that whatever excuse he has for not being on time made him and Holden the last ones here,” Jonas joked with a loud laugh. “Can’t wait to see his face.”
Noah grinned at both of the boys and took one of the bar stools around the table.
He pulled me onto the seat next to him. We were sitting so close to one another that our knees were pressed together.
We all talked over the music, and I was in awe at how easily Noah fit in with everyone.
When Holden and Eli joined us ten minutes later, Noah offered to buy the first round of drinks.
Eli hopped off his bar stool to help him, and I wondered if there was another shovel talk on the horizon.
I watched them weave through the crowd to the bar and then turned my attention to Silas and Chris.
“Did Eli say anything to you two when you started dating Jonas and Seb?” I asked.
“No?” Chris commented, his voice rising at the end like he was asking a question.
“I mean, he made some rude comments, but you were there. You already know that.”