That lightbulb of his
I’m halfway through the dishes from the dinner-that-couldn’t and the buffet after when I sense someone behind me. I keep running the cloth over a plate as I sneak a glance over my shoulder. It’s Matt.
I smile, even though he’s not looking at me.
Then I realize what he is looking at and quickly say, “Oh, no, not that!”
He jerks his hand away from the plate covered by foil. I’d been putting that off until last so I could dump it in the trash, clean the plate, and take the trash out right away. The meat has developed a sort of smell that no one wants lingering in the kitchen.
His eyes are wide, his arms now wrapped around his waist. The paper he has in his hand crinkles as his fist tightens on it. Shit.
“Wait, sorry. That came out wrong. I don’t mean to control what you eat.
At all. Eat whatever you want. Seriously.
I just thought I’d warn you. Those are leftovers from dinner.
” I wince. “Well, maybe calling them leftovers is overselling, considering no one ate it to begin with. Well, Bryce took one bite. But… semantics. Point is, no one ate that, and I feel extremely confident you would not want to eat it either.”
He eyes the plate before carefully lifting his hand toward his forehead. He pauses, though, suddenly looking unsure.
“Try,” I encourage, grabbing a towel and drying my hands before slinging it over my shoulder. “Go ahead. You wanted to sign something, right? I’ve been practicing. If I don’t know it, we’ll figure it out.”
He sucks in a surprised breath, something changes in his eyes. He becomes brighter. Warmer. It’s like there’s a lightbulb inside of him and it just got turned up a notch.
Slowly, he brings his bent hand up to tap the three middle fingers of his hand to the corner of his eyebrow, then slowly pulls it away while shifting his hand into the shape of the letter Y.
I smile and repeat it, probably looking stupid since I have to furrow my eyebrows for the sign. At the same time, I ask to confirm, “Are you asking why?”
That lightbulb of his gets a little brighter as he nods.
My signing book says I should sign as much as I can while I speak, to connect the words with the signs in my brain and to get my fingers used to the movements. It’s supposed to help him practice reading signs, too.
That book is also what taught me to pay attention to my expressions, since they can change the meaning of a sign-movement.
I lift my eyebrows now and make the same sign-movement as his ‘why’ to sign, “Because - uh.” I pause, not just because I don’t have the sign for the situation, but because it’s hard to explain.
“Well, I tried to cook-” I know the sign for ‘cook’, so I do that as I say it, his eyes falling to my hands to watch.
“-and it turns out I’m really really bad-” I sign ‘bad’, relying on my eyebrows again so it isn’t interpreted as the sign for ‘good’, “-at it.”
He looks at the plate again, this time with a face that looks pretty much identical to Bryce’s after he’d taken that bite. Then he looks back at me and points before signing, eat, with one eyebrow raised in question.
“Yeah.” I nod my fist. My head nods with it automatically.
“We all ate - uh.” I grimace. “Sorry, I don’t have a sign for any of this, but we ate a ton of random stuff.
Sort of just whatever we had on hand. There’s plenty of stuff left, though.
Fruit and veggies and stuff to make sandwiches.
” I perk up. “Oh, I know that one - sandwich.” I proudly do the sign, one hand moving in from the side, slotting into the gap created by the sign for ‘eat’.
“Isn’t that one so nifty? You literally make a sandwich with your hands. It’s almost as good as a pun.”
His eyebrows are raised like he’s not sure he agrees, but his lips are twitching like he might want to smile anyway.
Then he seems to think of something and I lose him. The lightbulb is turned off, his shoulders curling forward, his feet taking him a step away from me.
“You don’t have to eat a sandwich,” I say quickly, forgetting to sign along. “It was just an example. You can eat whatever you want. There’s a lot of easy stuff. The protein bars are actually pretty good. We’ve got a few flavors-”
He flinches.
All the air in my chest evaporates.
What was I saying? Protein bars. I was going to list the flavors.
He doesn’t like protein bars? Is that it? No, it has to be something more than that. He doesn’t like sandwiches - at least not today - but that reaction was just sad, not scared.
This is scared.
Matt isn’t looking at me and his body language is fucking scared.
I’ve never had this much time to study him before. I don’t know if these mood changes are normal for him. I don’t know if he scares easily. I don’t know any of it because I’ve never really looked.
Maybe me looking at him is the problem. Maybe my attention is what’s upsetting him. I remember that feeling, when I was little. That feeling like the eyes that were on me were pinpricking my skin. It didn’t matter that the people were just worried, or that they cared - I just wanted to disappear.
I just wanted to hide.
I turn my back, grabbing for a dish in the sink. “Don’t mind me, rambling again. You don’t need a list of everything in the kitchen. You know perfectly well how to find stuff. Just as long as you steer clear of that plate on the counter. Seriously.”
There’s nothing but silence for a few seconds before I hear him open a cabinet.
I keep washing, pretending that I can’t see him out of the corner of my eye.
He slips two sleeves of crackers into the front pouch of his hooded sweatshirt.
I finish washing my plate and move on to the next.
He grabs two granola bars, turning one over to read the back.
I start on a bowl. He puts one granola bar back.
The other goes into his pocket. I grab the bottle brush to start on the drinking glasses.
He carefully moves around me to the fridge.
I rinse the glass in my hand. He grabs two string cheeses, those going in the pocket too.
I have to fight the urge to fully look at him again.
Surely that pocket is nearly bursting with stuff at this point.
I start on the silverware. He grabs two sports drinks and tucks them against his chest with his arms.
I tell myself to mind my own business.
He’s almost out of the kitchen when I disobey.
“I’ll be up late tonight.”
He half-turns, looking at me. I match the movement, ignoring the sudsy water dripping onto the floor.
“I just thought - well, I wanted you to know that it’s me, in the office.
It’ll be me all night. I don’t know if you’ve seen Jake or Maison coming in and out lately.
They’ve been in there a lot now that Travis is gone.
But when I’m finished with this, I’m heading up there.
It’ll just be me after that. For the whole night.
You know.” I shrug, careful to keep my expression neutral, almost bored.
“In case you wanna come hide. Or anything.”
He looks down at the bottles he’s got pressed against his chest, one of the hands also still holding some papers. I realize the problem - he can’t sign.
Before I can figure out a way to fix it for him, he fixes it for himself. He shifts the bottles until he has one hand free and clumsily fingerspells, M-A-Y-B-E. Then he signs, Thank you.
I smile.
And he’s gone.
I notice him before he’s walking through my door this time, catching his movement on the camera. He only hesitates for a second before knocking on the door.
I hurry over to the door, paranoid he’ll second-guess himself if I let him wait too long. Unfortunately, that ends with me opening the door a little faster than strictly necessary, the action causing an awkwardly dramatic moment where we both end up staring at each other in surprise.
I make it worse - because I’m me and I’m a fucking mess - by saying, “Hey!” a little too loudly and a little too out of breath.
He doesn’t step back, but he wavers like he’s considering it, his brown eyes going a little wide.
I take a breath and force myself to go back to the calm guy that doesn’t scare him. Hopefully my smile exudes that energy instead of my I’m-so-glad-you’re-here-please-don’t-leave energy.
Not that it matters. He’s having a hard time looking at my face now, his focus turned to the blue notebook clasped in his hands.
One of the notebooks I gave him, I realize.
With one of the matching pens sticking out of the spiral binding and what looks like the packet of papers from earlier now folded and stuffed in the middle of the book.
He doesn’t come in. He doesn’t look entirely convinced he even wants to, his eyes wary as they go over my shoulder toward the office beyond.
Maybe he doesn’t want to come in?
“Just coming to visit?” I ask, trying to be casual as I back up to my chair. Maybe giving him a little space will help him relax. “Or did you need something?”
He fidgets with his notebook for a second, then starts to turn away.
I don’t have time to be disappointed before I realize he’s just turning to the doorframe.
He uses it as a makeshift table, resting his notebook against it so he can write something on one of the pages.
If I tried, I think I could see what it is.
That feels wrong, though. Until he shows me what he wrote, he hasn’t decided to say it yet.
It’s just his thoughts. Those deserve to be private just like anyone else’s would be.
I grab a pen from my desk, twirling it with my fingers so he doesn’t feel like I’m just awkwardly staring at him.
I’m a little rusty. The pen drops twice.
The second time I go to grab it off the floor, I catch him watching me.
A corner of his mouth is ticked up. I raise an eyebrow in return.
“You making fun of me? I’ll have you know, I’m a very good pen-twirler. ”
He raises his own eyebrow as if to ask, but are you?
Which is… fair.