That confused me, but I pointed to a drawer.
“Okay.” He started digging through the drawer. He glanced back over and raised his eyebrow at me in amusement. “Jared, I’m not going to undress you,” he said lightly.
“You’ll have to do that yourself.”
I hadn’t actually realized that’s what I was supposed to be doing. I obediently took off my shoes and socks and pants, and I sat down on the bed. I wasn’t sure what to do next.
Matt came over and looked down at me with the pseudo-smile. “Close enough.” He pulled the hospital shirt off of me. His expression darkened again, that strange look I didn’t recognize, when he saw the bruises and giant bandage on my side. Then he pushed me gently backward on the bed. I turned onto my uninjured side and snuggled down into my bed with relief. He pulled the blankets up over me. When was the last time somebody had tucked me in? My eyes were already closed, and I was drifting again. Some time later, the mattress creaked. I opened my eyes a little. The room was dark, but I could still see him, wearing a pair of my sweats, getting into the other side of the bed.
“You’re sleeping here?” I managed to ask, although I seemed to be slurring my words a little.
“I’m not leaving you alone tonight. The doctor said to call right away if you started vomiting.”
“Will you be here when I wake up?” I didn’t know why that mattered, but some part of my brain apparently wanted to know.
I felt his hand wrap tight around my wrist. “I promise.”
I WOKE up in the morning to the smell of bacon cooking. I was ravenously hungry, my whole body hurt, my mouth tasted terrible, and my head was pounding. I made it into the bathroom, emptied my bladder, brushed my teeth, and started cleaning up. Between the road rash and the superglue, a shower wasn’t even an option. The left side of my face had a massive bruise from my temple to my jaw. Yep, my mom was definitely going to freak out. I would have preferred being hit by another car to facing her.
My memory of the evening after leaving the hospital was a blur of hazy images: pain, but also a light touch on my temple, a hand wrapped around my wrist in the dark. Did he really sleep in my bed with me?
“How do you feel?” he asked as I came into the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast bar.
“Like I was hit by a Mack truck.”
“Nope.” He put a plate of bacon, eggs, and toast in front of me. “Just a Toyota Land Cruiser.” A glass of milk and a cup of coffee came next. It occurred to me that, with the exception of the coffee, none of this food had been in my house. He must have gone out early to get it.
“Holy shit, I’m hungry!”
“You had Vicodin for dinner.”
“That explains it.” I dug in.
“I called Lizzy and told her you would be late.”
I groaned as I thought about what Lizzy was going to say about the whole thing. “Did you tell her what happened?”
“No.” He sounded amused.
“You want me to get the full brunt of her freaking out when I tell her, don’t you?”
“Exactly.” His eyes were crinkled at the corners, almost laughing. “Plus, I could tell she was dying to know why I was calling from your house at seven thirty in the morning. I thought it would be fun to let her imagination run wild.” That certainly would get Lizzy’s bees buzzing, and I had to laugh. “Mind if I use the shower?” he asked.
“Help yourself.” I was already most of the way through the plate of food. He didn’t head for the shower though. He stood looking at me like he had something to say but didn’t know how. It made me self-conscious enough that I stopped eating and looked up at him.
“What?”
He walked over and stood next to me at the counter. For a minute, he didn’t move. I waited. I was expecting the lecture to start. But then he leaned toward me, put one hand under my hair on the back of my neck, pulled me toward him, and buried his face in my hair. He was shaking. He took one ragged breath, and then his lips brushed my ear when he whispered, “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
I was stunned. I knew I was his only real friend in town, but I was still surprised at how shaken up he seemed to be. Suddenly I remembered his look from the night before, that strange expression I had never seen before. I remembered the emotion in his voice when he said I could have died. I was overwhelmingly touched by how much he cared about me. It was hard to make my throat work, but I managed to say, “I’ll do my best.”
“Good.” He let go of me, grabbed my helmet off of the counter, and shoved it into my stomach, hard enough to make me wince.
“From now on,” he said. It did not sound like a request.
My first instinct was to protest, but when I looked back up, I saw that look again. The one from last night. Could I really deny him anything? The answer was simple: no. I loved him too much.
“I promise.”
CHAPTER 15
TRUE to form, my family freaked out about the accident, but once they learned that Matt had made me promise to wear my helmet, they let it go. Mom called it a “blessing in disguise.” I tried not to roll my eyes when she said it. I was also relieved to find out that my bike wasn’t badly damaged. And so within a matter of days, the incident was, for the most part, forgotten. And if I wondered a little about Matt’s strange display of affection, I said nothing.
“You look like hell!” I had just opened my front door to find Matt leaning on the doorframe. I wasn’t sure why he even bothered knocking anymore. He looked like he might have fallen asleep there if I had taken any longer getting to the door.
“I just pulled a double shift. I’m exhausted.” He came in and threw himself onto the couch. “Have you bought any food yet? I’m starving.”
“You know I haven’t. But I’m hungry too. Come on, let’s go out. My treat.”
He groaned. “Where we gonna go?”
“Mamacita’s?”
“No. Cherie might be there.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Since I quit seeing her three weeks ago.”
That surprised me, but I let it go. “Okay then. How about Tony’s?”
“No. We can’t go there either.”
“Why not?”
“That blonde girl—I forgot her name. She’s always giving me her phone number.”
“Maybe it’s her night off?”
“If it is, then that other one will be there. The one that wears too much of that stinky hippie perfume. She practically sat in my lap last time.”
I was starting to grin despite myself.
“Is there any restaurant in town that we
“No!” He groaned.
“Must be tough being the town’s most eligible bachelor.” I was having a hard time not laughing.
“I’m glad you find it so amusing.”
“And you’re not interested in any of them?”
He was looking right at me. He was so tired; all his defenses were down, and I knew he meant it when he
