Plc? Police Matty? Please Matty? Lv u? I think that’s Love you. I can’t figure the other one out. Apparently drunk Matt doesn’t know where the vowels are. I text him back.
Me: It’s tomorrow. Do you need a shot of my insulin?
I’m surprised when a response comes right away.
Matty: No, but I do miss you. I’m still in bed.
Me: On a scale of one to ten, how drunk are you right now?
Matty: Two. I’m still burping up the shots from last night.
Me: That’s super gross. Thanks for sharing.
Matty: np
Me: Need me to come over and rub your back?
I figure he’ll be all over this since he was texting me last night, drunkenly asking me to join him at the Gas Station where he was entertaining a recruit with Ace.
Matty: No. I stink and my head aches. I could get you drunk on my leftover fumes. U never told me Ace could drink entire gallons of booze wo damage.
Me: He’s always had a hard head.
Ace could drink an entire team under the table.
Matty: I need to sleep now. I’ll call you later.
In fact, the next text I get is from Ace. I want to apologize to you. In person. Can I come over?
Does Ace deserve a chance to say I’m sorry? I suppose he does. But I feel like it’s a last time sort of thing. He doesn’t get to keep doing this over and over, no matter how long we’ve been friends.
Sure, I text back. But your apology better be good.
Ace: Buzz me up.
I make a face. His demand is presumptuous, but whatever. Might as well get this over with. He needs to acknowledge that Matty and I are dating and that we can all get along.
I swing the door open at his knock. He straightens from the doorframe, looking out at me through surprisingly clear eyes.
“I’m amazed you’re still upright. Matty texted me this morning and said he was too drunk to move.”
“Yeah, I want to talk to you about Ives, but before we go into that I want to apologize,” he says as he brushes by me. He takes a seat on the kitchen and re-arranges the other chair so that it’s uncomfortably close to him. Like right between his legs, close to him.
I take the chair and move it back about a foot and sit down. “You think?”
He has the grace to look a little ashamed. “I don’t know what came over me. I care about you a lot, and I guess I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I don’t want to get hurt either. You know how careful I am in my life and I realize that dating Matty is a risk. But…I can’t live my life as if I can’t take a blow. You’re the one who accused me of sitting in my safe little box, not taking chances.”
He winces. “Please don’t tell me that my comments pushed you into Ives’s bed.”
“No, but you’re right. I do have a tendency to be too careful. To some extent, I have to because otherwise it could be dangerous to my health, but I’m almost twenty-two. I’m graduating in a year. There’s going to be failure in my future and heartbreak, whether it’s from a job lost or a person lost. Part of being an adult is learning how to deal with that.” I reach over and take a sip of the tea I brewed for breakfast. “Matty makes me feel really wonderful.”
Ace’s expression grows sickly. I wave my hand downward. “Oh, stop with the disgusted expression. I’m not talking about physical stuff.”
Although, privately, I grin to myself, because Matty has made me feel physically more wonderful than I thought was possible. “I’m talking about the fact that he makes me laugh, that he makes me feel good inside. He’s interesting to talk to. He reads. Taking a risk on Matty makes me think I can take other risks.”
Ace’s eyes run over my face. “You’re changing.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Not for the better,” he says.
My hackles rise. “I thought you came over to apologize, not to say shitty things to me.”
“The truth isn’t a shitty thing to say to you, Luce.”
The nickname Matty uses sounds weird and strange coming out of Ace’s mouth, as if he’s trying to claim a connection that doesn’t belong to him.
“Yes, it kind of is.”
He presses his lips together. “All these years you said you wouldn’t go out with a jock. That the type didn’t interest you.”
“They didn’t,” I insist. “Matty’s different. We talk about a lot of different stuff. Books he’s read, movies, stuff that’s going on in the world.”
“We talk about stuff like that.” Ace directs those words to the floor where he’s currently staring a hole into the tile.
An uncomfortable feeling sets in.
Ace has feelings for you, I can hear Sutton’s voice in the background.
Slowly, Ace raises his eyes off the floor, and there is so much anguish, all the moisture in my mouth dries up. My hand flies to my lips. “Oh, Ace,” I say through my fingers. Oh Ace, don’t open your mouth. Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say, please, I beg silently. Our relationship will change irrevocably.
But he doesn’t heed the warning in my eyes.
“Lucy, I’ve always thought it was going to be you and me. Always,” he says hoarsely, his eyes penny-bright.
His statement makes me angry. Angry because he’s changing the dynamic of our relationship into a form I’m not prepared to deal with. I want to clap my hands over my ears and say I can’t hear him, but I just told him I was growing up. So I have to act like the adult I claim to be.