Chapter 25
25
ERIC
Sipping on my Sprite, I watch as Mattie locks the door. After going through the details of my name change and the fact that my father is going to be on the warpath, we all came up with the plan that extra security cameras will be set up at McKinley’s, the bar at the bottom of the hill, so that we can track all the vehicles coming up to our neighborhood. Clarence has already arranged for Theo to be at Mister Drag full time until this all blows over, letting someone else take over at the Devil for the next month for the front desk and security.
“I’m so sorry this happened on your birthday, Cutie.”
I snuggle into his side when he sits down next to me on the futon. “It’s not the worst thing to happen. Hell, it feels nice to be happy and loved on my birthday for a change. I haven’t really had that since you left.”
Matt stops his soft caress of the back of my neck and I can feel him tense. “Why did you leave like that?” I ask him tentatively. I’ve always been afraid of this answer. “Didn’t you miss m… your mom?”
I barely manage to hold back the selfish question. Of course, he didn’t miss the annoying brat who kept popping up. He was a teenager headed to college. What kid in college is thinking about the twelve year old son of his mother’s boss?
“I missed you and your tablecloth dresses every day, my unicorn boy,” he says as he kisses the top of my head. “I regretted the deal I made with your father almost immediately, but I didn’t realize the ramifications and the fine print until that last day we saw each other.”
I had to think back to the last time I saw him. I remember the day he left for college like it was yesterday. That was the worst day of my life, outside of the event . He wasn’t at my graduation party, even though Spencer swears he saw him.
“The fountain?” I ask and he nods. That whole day was a blur. It was my sixteenth birthday and I had a bit of a concussion from flipping my brand new convertible. Father was so angry that day. That was when he took me to his doctors and I got put on so many mood stabilizers that I became a zombie.
“Father said you were disgusted with me and I had to stop being a child if I wanted to be respected as a man. I thought I dreamed you up that day as a manifestation of my happier past. You leaving was like the proof I needed to accept that my life was going to be shit and I needed to grow up ”
I hear a sniffle from above me and see tears streaking down Matt’s cheeks.
“Why did you leave me, Mattie?” I need to know the answer before we move further into this relationship. I didn’t think of it before, but the conversation earlier made me realize that he could just walk away from me again. I can’t do this with him if there’s a chance of that happening again.
“I didn’t know exactly why your father brought it up, but he offered to pay for my undergraduate degree at NYU as long as I didn’t come home at all during those four years. I was seventeen and facing a mountain of debt to even go to community college, and he offered to pay for it all at my dream school: tuition, room and board, books, even an allowance.”
As a kid, I would have never understood how this would be enough to get him to leave me. I worshipped the ground my Mattie walked on and would do anything to stay by his side. If he had explained back then, I wouldn’t have understood. Hell, I probably would have found a way to stow away in his car like I did that Christmas.
But as an adult looking back, I get it. My parents paid their staff the bare minimum that they could get away with. Ms. Sara would have never been able to afford to help Mattie with college expenses. This deal with my father was a once in a lifetime opportunity for him.
“I can understand why you’d take that deal,” I tell him honestly. “And I understand why you didn’t try to explain when you left. I wouldn’t have understood it back then. But why did you stay away?”