11. Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Riley
M att pulled up in front of the small two-bedroom house that Emery and I shared. Emery’s car sat parked next to mine, where I’m sure it had been since she abandoned me at the school. Matt’s hands flexed on the steering wheel briefly before he moved to shift the car into park.
“We can go somewhere else, if you want,” I said.
Matt popped his door open and then twisted to reach for the pizza in the back seat. “Is there anywhere else you would feel comfortable?” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. It felt like there was a wall between us the whole time we were in my classroom and for the drive over. I wasn’t sure which one of us was putting it up, but I got the sense he was just as scared of trying to take it down as I was.
I knew we could go to his apartment, he had already offered that option, but it felt too weird to ask him to take me there only to have to bring me home. I wouldn’t have a way out if we went there. Here we may have to deal with Emery since she had shown she wouldn’t hesitate to interfere, but I could make him leave whenever I needed him to.
I shook my head. “I just don’t know what Em is going to say.”
He leaned in and squeezed my hand, his touch more cautious than it had been during the summer. The small connection sent a wave of relief through me. I missed this. I missed him. “If she is as invested in us as you’ve told me, maybe she’ll leave us alone.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled as I unfastened my seat belt. Taking that as a sign, Matt came to my side of the car to open the door. He scooped up my teaching tote bag from where I had it tucked against my legs on the floor and swung it over his shoulder.
“I can carry my bag,” I told him.
He smiled and took my hand urging me out of the car. “Come on, beautiful, I want a tour.” Just like that, it felt like we were closer to being the two people we were on vacation, not the two nervous people that had been tip-toeing around each other all evening. Maybe we could get back to who we had been that day.
I led him to the front door. Emery slung the door open, hopping on one foot as she struggled to slide on her sneakers. Her crossbody bag hung from her neck like she had thrown it there. “I just remembered an errand I forgot to run,” she said out of breath as she rushed past us. She was in her car and backing out of the driveway in a flash.
Matt and I locked eyes. We both burst out laughing, the remaining tension between us melting away. “One problem taken care of,” I said.
Matt followed me in. I gave him a quick tour with a few points of my hand in each direction. The house was mostly the living room and kitchen with an arched doorway separating the two. To the left of the front door was a short hallway that led to the bathroom and our bedrooms. Emery had the master bedroom since she lived here first, while mine was the smaller one she had originally been using for storage. The TV stand in the living room held all of Emery’s cookbooks and binders of recipes. Emery had opted for all black furniture and minimal décor for most of the year. In a couple of weeks the place would be overflowing with fall décor.
He placed the pizza on the coffee table as I retrieved plates from the kitchen. “I hope you’re okay with paper plates,” I yelled over my shoulder. Emery would kill me if we used real plates for something that contained two of her big food allergies. I should have corrected Matt when he picked pizza. In the moment I had been too nervous to do anything other than be relieved he was making the decision so I didn’t have to. We took cross contamination risks seriously enough that we opted to keep the house completely free of dairy, tomatoes, and avocados. He came up behind me and took them from my hand. I grabbed two bottles of water from the refrigerator and held them up to Matt silently asking if he was okay with the option.
Back in the living room we spread everything across the coffee table and sat on opposite ends of the couch. “Are you ready to talk?” he asked. He rubbed his hands against his thighs.
“I don’t want the world,” I said, my thoughts going back to what he had said in the classroom.
He nodded. “What do you want?” He shoved his hands in his pockets only to pull them right back out. I was tired of people asking me that question today.
I leaned forward placing my elbows on my knees. I remembered our first rule from our date. The stakes were higher now than they were then making the rule feel somehow even more important to stick too, though more difficult. “I don’t know what I want. All I know is that when I met you things felt different than they ever did with anyone else. I feel so comfortable with you, like I’ve always known you. I’m so scared that you’re going to turn out like everyone else.” My eyes burned with tears that threatened to spill over. I didn’t even know why I felt like crying.
Matt shifted from the couch to kneeling on the floor in front of me and ducked his head so his eyes could find mine. His hands rested on his thighs, fingers flexing like he didn’t know what to do with them. “Let me show you that I’m not them. I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart. I meant what I said that night at the overlook.” Sweetheart. The term brought me back to that day, the familiarity pulling me back to the safety I had felt with him.
This was different, I reminded myself. He was still a stranger. The safety I had felt that day was the product of the perfect situation we had created. We didn’t have any of that now. Anything we did now would have real repercussions.
“You mean it now but what about in a few months? Or a few years? I meant what I said too.” I sniffled and tried to hold back the tears. Why did I have to be such a crier? Happy, sad, angry, nervous, it didn’t matter what the emotion was, they all made me cry. “I can’t handle having my heart broken by you.”
His fingers brushed through my hair pushing it away from my face, familiar sparks pricked my skin at his touch. “I know you’re not going to believe anything I say. I could sit here trying to talk you into trusting me but there’s nothing I can say that you probably haven’t heard before. I want you to be comfortable. We don’t have to be serious right now. Just tell me what you need and let me meet you there.”
“I want to trust you, I’m just scared.” I covered my face with my hands as the tears spilled over. I knew I was making everything more complicated than it was. I liked him and he liked me. It didn’t get any more straightforward than that. It felt too easy, which is why it was all too much. “I don’t want to be another person that drags you along making you wait so I can sort myself out.”
“I’m scared too.” The cushion next to me sank under his weight as he sat next to me. He pulled me against his chest and my body relaxed into him. “You needing time to figure things out isn’t dragging me along. Just make sure you tell me when you figure things out, even if you think it’s going to hurt me.”
“Why are you scared?” I asked.
“Because talking to you, being around you, holding you feels so right. It feels like all it’ll take is one wrong move and you’ll slip through my fingers.” He kept one arm wrapped tight around my back holding me against him and moved the other to stroke his hand through my hair. It did feel right, like his arms were meant to keep me safe. Things had never felt this easy before.
“I’m sorry I’m making it so complicated. None of it is your fault.” I pressed my face into his shirt, trying to ignore the wet smudges of tears and mascara I would be leaving behind. His arms relaxed around me, feeling less like he was scared I would push him away.
“Please don’t ever apologize for how you feel,” he said against the top of my head. His voice was so soft, so gentle.
“But I’m making something that’s not your problem into your problem.”
“How you’re feeling is not a problem. It’s just a little something we need to work through.”
I relaxed into him more, wrapping my arms around him, and let a silence settle over us.
“Riley, rule number one,” he said after a few minutes.
“Are we still playing by the rules? I’m pretty sure we already broke the others,” I joked.
He kissed the top of my head and stilled the hand in my hair. “All other rules are subject to change except for rule number one.”
“I want to give this a chance, but it can’t be serious yet. I think we should slow down a little bit. Everything before moved so fast,” I said into his shirt.
He pulled back and lifted my chin, so I was looking up at him. His eyes were bright again, filled with the sunshine from before. “Whatever you need. Tell me what slowing down looks like.” He brushed his thumbs over my face, wiping away the tears. “Does it look like just going back to phone communication only?”
I nodded a little and then switched to shaking my head instead. “Mostly, maybe. I really missed talking to you. We can still see each other in person but maybe no more marathon dates.”
“I missed talking to you too. I think that sounds like a good plan.”
“No talking about the future or anything like that. I just want to focus on the now.”
He shifted again and took one of my hands in his. He shook it and then gave it a squeeze. “I agree to your terms.”
I laughed and nuzzled my face back into his chest. “Do you have any terms I need to know about?”
His hands skated up and down my back and his face pressed back into the top of my head. “No running. If you get scared, you stay and talk about it. I’ll give you space if you need it, and we’ll come back together to talk about it later.”
I leaned back again so I could look up at him. “Agreed. I feel so bad about how I left before.”
“Don’t feel bad. I knew you were skittish, and I pushed you too far that night.” He pressed another kiss into my forehead. I felt like I was going to melt. “It’s in the past. We’re going to make the now better.”
“Any other rules?” I asked him.
“No kissing or touching more than what we’re doing right now until we’re both sure of where this is going.” His eyes studied mine. “It feels like it would cloud things.”
I chewed on my bottom lip and weighed this against all my past experiences. Even while we were in the purgatory stage of me trying to decide how I felt things had always moved so fast physically. Sometimes faster than I had wanted but I had always been too scared to put the brakes on. “If I can’t handle talking about the future, avoiding anything that could cloud things sounds like a good idea.” As much as I wanted to kiss him, to know if everything would feel as magical as his simple touches did, it did make me feel safer knowing it was off the table.
A soft smile lifted his mouth. I touched a finger to one corner. Touching him felt so natural, like a language I was born knowing how to speak. He turned his face to kiss the tip of my finger. I let my fingers brush over the stubble on his face just like I had thought about doing during our date. “You’re going to make it a really hard rule to keep,” he muttered.
I blushed while clearing my throat. I leaned forward and opened the pizza. “So, how about that getting to know each other you mentioned?” I asked as I transferred a piece to a plate. I shifted away from Matt to fold my legs up on the couch placing some space between the two of us.
He returned to the other end of the couch giving me the space I needed without me having to ask. “What do you want to know?”
I picked the sausage off my slice trying to think through everything we hadn’t covered during our marathon date over the summer. “On your profile you said your favorite hobby was learning new things. Why is that your favorite?”
His eyes watched my hands as I continued to pick at my slice. He shrugged and finally reached for the pizza box. “Whenever I start trying to learn how to do new things I always suck at it, I’ve never really been a natural at anything. When I get good at things I feel really accomplished. Or when there’s something I don’t know a lot about, it feels really satisfying to learn everything I can about it.”
“What’s your favorite thing you’ve ever learned?”
He lit up and tilted his head down to hide his face a little. “Playing instruments,” he shrugged. “Probably just music in general.” It was the first time he had ever looked shy with me. His eyes stayed focused on our food rather than lifting to look at me.
I tapped his leg with my foot. “You look cute when you get like that,” I told him.
“Like what?”
“Excited.” I wanted to touch his smile again, trace it with my fingers until the memory of it was imprinted in my skin. I wanted this look to be the one I saw when I closed my eyes, and needed it to erase the memory of him on the mountain watching me drive away.
“Why did we get the supreme pizza if you were going to pick the sausage off it? We could have gotten something else.” He gestured to the small pile of sausage on my plate.
I laughed, struggling to cover my mouth full of pizza. “Because I like all the other topping on it. I do it so often I don’t even think about it anymore.” I pressed my foot against his leg again and left it there. “Don’t change the subject. I want to hear more about music. You never told me what instruments you play.”
He angled his body toward me more, pulling one leg up onto the couch hooking his foot under my ankle. One hand ghosted over my ankle and calf over top of my jeans, up and then down over and over again. He still touched me the same way I did him, like it was something we had been doing our whole lives. It was as natural as breathing. Again I wondered if kissing him would feel the same. I tried to focus on my pizza instead of his touch.
“I started with the trumpet in sixth grade. It was okay but I always wanted to learn everything else. I was always driving the teacher crazy asking if we could learn multiple instruments. In eighth grade he let me take on the French horn. During the summer I was able to talk my parents into hiring a tutor to teach me the saxophone.” He paused to eat his pizza, his fingers gently tapping in patterns as his hand continued to skate over my leg. I had noticed how he did that during our date, sometimes he would hum under his breath while he did it.
I wondered if he even knew he did it.
"It's my favorite," he added in a whispered after thought.
“How many can you play now?” I picked up another slice of pizza and began picking off the sausage, keeping my eyes on him.
“All of the marching band instruments, some better than others. I had to learn them all so I could teach them.” He paused the motion of his hand and squeezed my ankle before finally looking up at me.
“Why do you love it so much?”
His face lit up even more for a moment, then he dropped it again. “Music is just so powerful. Most instruments just use a few buttons or keys in all these different combinations paired with different mouth movements to create all these notes. Then those notes can be put together in so many combinations to create something so beautiful, something that is a universal language. It’s crazy to think about.” His whole face was so alive despite how cautious his voice was, and the tips of his ears turned red. The way he dipped his head to conceal his smile made me wonder if anyone had ever made him feel bad about the passion he had for music, for his job. His hand started moving over my leg again.
I reached for my phone and snapped a picture, needing to be able to remember this moment.
“What are you doing?” He asked it so gently, like he was genuinely curious, not upset.
“Need a contact picture for you,” I mumbled. I saved it to his contact and turned my phone toward him as proof.
I took another bite of my pizza and he snapped a picture of me. He presented his phone to me to show that he had made it my contact photo. My hair formed a frizzy halo, most of it falling out of my clip and there was pizza sauce smeared on my chin, my mouth was wide open with pizza hovering right in front of it. My eyes looked tired, a little puffy from crying earlier, but bright from happiness. My skin was oily and red, almost all my makeup faded away.
I laughed. “Did you have to take such an unflattering picture?” I grabbed a napkin from the coffee table to take care of the sauce on my chin.
“You look beautiful.”
I tossed the wadded-up napkin at his face. “I look like I’ve had a really long day.”
“Still beautiful,” he said leaning forward. How had we moved so close together again? His hand cupped my face.
The butterflies in my stomach bounced around. “Keep doing that and I’m not going to be able to stick to the rules,” I warned him. I gulped as he moved his hand away. My fingers fluttered at my side wanting to grab his hand and bring it back.
“Do you play any instruments?” he asked me.
“No, I thought about it, but I could never focus enough to read music. All the lines blurred together.”
“What were you like in school?” He asked.
“A teacher’s pet. I was always hyper focused on my grades. I tutored a lot during the year and volunteered at a lot of after school activities for younger kids when I was in high school.” I smiled remembering my first time sitting in the public library helping a second grader that was struggling with reading. She’d been so excited that I let her pick out her own books. She told me at the end of our time that day that I made her feel like she wasn’t stupid for struggling so much. That was the day I knew I wanted to teach.
“What made you want to teach younger kids?”
“They’re just so innocent. They have so much life ahead of them and it’s so much fun getting to see the world through their eyes. I love how even the simplest things are magical to them.” I could feel myself smiling and wondering if I looked as cute talking about this as Matt did when he talked about music.
“You really like kids,” he said. He beamed at me. The butterflies in my stomach crashed into each other as a memory from the festival flashed into my mind. I didn’t know if he remembered the way he had casually mentioned how he thought he would have kids by now.
“I know we said we weren’t going to talk about the future, but there’s something I need to ask you.” I moved my plate to the coffee table and pulled my knees up to my chest trying to think of the best way to say this. Acting like I didn’t remember him saying it felt like a safe approach, even if I hadn’t forgotten a single second of that day. “Do you want kids? I kind of feel like that’s something that more people should talk about early on.” I stared at a worn spot on my jeans and rubbed my thumb against it while I waited for his answer.
It was probably too early to bring this up. I tried not to imagine what he was thinking about me bringing up a question like that. It wasn’t a conversation I’d had to have with my exes, since it wasn’t something I knew we needed to be concerned about. Now it was something I knew better about. A potential ticking time bomb that would be better disarmed now rather than waiting for it to blow up in our faces later.
“I do. I want a house full.” He paused before adding, “I always really liked the idea of fostering and adopting more along with having biological kids,” he said.
His answer started the butterflies up again. I took a deep breath and bit my lip. My thumb nail dug into the spot on my jeans. I tossed words around in my head, not knowing how to explain my concerns to him.
I had always known something was off about my body but didn’t have a doctor listen to me until I was with my best friend’s brother. He went through the journey of the diagnosis with me. My best friend had been there for it too. This was the first time I was ever in a situation where I had to tell someone.
“Me too,” I said. “At least the fostering and adopting part. I, um,” I paused to take another deep breath. “Biologicalkidsmightnothappenforme,” I blurted out as quickly as I could.
His brows drew together, and his mouth turned down. He squeezed my lower legs. “I’m sorry, Riley, I didn’t catch that.”
“I don’t know if I can have biological kids, at least not easily. I have this thing called PCOS. It’s a chronic health condition that affects a lot of things about my body but the symptoms can make it really hard to get pregnant. Most people with it need some form of fertility treatment. It can be a really hard process and, to be honest, it’s not something I want to go through. I would rather foster kids.” There were a lot of factors that went into the reasons why it would be hard, but it was all more than I was willing to share with him right now. It was all hypothetical until the time came. So many things were still unknown, questions I wouldn’t have answers for until I was at the point of trying. For now, my doctor had only been focused on getting my hormones and insulin resistance back to healthy levels. It was possible that fertility wouldn’t be a struggle for me, that I was worried about it for nothing, but it felt better to be prepared for the worst.
His hands moved up my legs and tugged on my arms to pull me to him. He shifted so my legs were over his lap and my body was tucked into his side. His hand brushed over my shoulder. I watched his jaw work as he tried to think of what to say. It was too soon. I shouldn’t have told him any of that. Now I had him worrying about something that might not be an issue.
“I’m okay. Most of the symptoms are just annoying and embarrassing most of the time but sometimes they interfere more with my day to day.” I lifted my hand to my chin and wonder if he could feel the rough stubble that I was sure had to be starting by now when he touched my face earlier. I was lucky enough that I only had sparse hair on my chin and jawline, but it was still enough that I had to remove it every morning. “I have a really good doctor now and she’s helped a lot with getting everything to the point of being more manageable but it’s not something that has a cure.”
It took a while to find a doctor that would take the time to listen to all my concerns instead of just blaming them on my weight. Emery and I had tried every crash diet out there over the course of our life, but the weight just kept packing on instead of melting off like all the ads promised. It turned out to be insulin resistance and imbalanced hormones caused by PCOS. Excessive workouts and restricting my food couldn’t fix those. There was a lot of trial and error with medications to help my body get to a more balanced state. After a while I was able to come off all of them and transition to holistic methods instead, which I preferred.
Even with everything under control and some weight loss, I still carried extra weight, especially around my stomach, ass, and thighs. My stomach stuck out further than my boobs just enough to have people always asking if I was pregnant, which crushed my soul every time. The little bit of weight I had lost left behind loose skin covered in stretch marks.
“I’m sorry, Riley.” He pulled me against him tighter and kissed the top of my head. Being held by this man was quickly becoming my favorite thing.
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s just a thing that I have to deal with,” I said.
“I’m glad you felt safe enough to tell me. I’m here if you want to talk about it, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” He took it as me feeling safe with him, not as me looking for any reason I could that this wouldn’t work. Guilt settled in the pit of my stomach knowing that it had been just another possible excuse for me why we wouldn’t work out.
I leaned my head into his shoulder and worked my thumb against the spot in my jeans again. “Like I said, some of it is…well it’s a lot. I don’t know if I want to talk about it anymore than that right now.”
His hand moved to cup my face, and I ducked away from it, becoming more and more paranoid about my facial hair. I wondered if I should make a trip to the bathroom to touch things up. With my makeup being rubbed off the shadow of hair would be visible if it was there.
“There’s not a lot of research about it, but there’s some if you want to look into it.” I winced as I thought about some of the things I saw when I first started learning about PCOS. Emery had been the one to mention it to me because she had also started the process of seeking her own diagnosis. We were so much alike, of course we would have the same chronic condition. “I don’t think I’m ready to answer questions about it, so maybe –”
“Wait for you to be ready to bring it up?” He asked. He brushed his fingers through my hair. “You know I only want you to feel comfortable. I won’t ask you to talk about anything you don’t want to.”
“And don’t tell anyone? It’s not something that I want a lot of people knowing.”
I let him lift my chin until our eyes met. “Riley, you never have to worry about me telling anyone anything you trust me with.”
I bit my lip and tried to look anywhere but at his face. It was so close. Every cell in my body was focused on how close he was. “Thank you,” I said.
“I have ADHD,” he blurted out. My brows knitted together, my brain jolting to follow the conversation. His ears turned red. “You shared something big about yourself, I just thought I should share something too.” His whole body tensed, and he rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Sorry, I probably made things weird.”
I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, pulling his hand away from his face as it inched toward covering his eyes. “You don’t get to take credit for making things weird, that was all me.” I threaded my fingers with his and pulled our hands to my lap. “Thank you for sharing something too.”