“Yeah…. but we are both here now, and we can catch up all we want. Who needs the internet; I would rather see you in person, anyway. Cheers!” Matthew said raising his beer bottle. I clinked my wine glass with his bottle and smiled.
“Yes, we can definitely catch up now,” I replied. “We have sixteen years to make up for.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Hey, Leah, let me in!” Per usual, Matthew had climbed up to my second story window and was rapping at the glass, which nearly caused me to wet my pants. Seriously, could he never call first? Or just use the front door? As he did whenever he rode home with my family? But no, the window it always was. Not that I minded, really. It always gave me a thrill when he showed up unannounced. Even though it always took me a moment to calm down from being startled.
I rushed to the window and pushed it open; I had stopped locking it long ago when it became clear that these late-night visits were going to be happening regularly, but it was still only able to be opened from the inside. I told myself that I didn’t wait anxiously every night to see if he would come, but that was a lie. I thought about him coming over every night, always happy when he did and sad when he didn’t; and if I was away from home, I worried I would miss him. Because, you know, he never called first.
Matthew climbed inside to my bedroom effortlessly and was not the least bit winded, the benefit of being a member of pretty much every single sport our high school offered. Football in the fall, basketball and swimming in the winter, baseball and tennis in the summer. It was exhausting just thinking about it. My only workout was cheerleading, and that was before cheering became the sport it is now. Back when I was a cheerleader, we just yelled and jumped around a bit. Only one girl on our squad even knew how to do a backflip; and half the time she missed and landed on her hands.
“What are you doing? Homework two weeks ahead of time?” Matthew kicked his sneakers off before plopping down to sit on my bed. He knew my parents and sisters weren’t home, so he could make as much noise as he wanted. Not that it would have mattered as my folks adored him; and looking back now, they had to have known about him climbing through my window to my bedroom. I feel like, as an adult, I would catch on if a boy was consistently climbing into my teenage daughter’s second story bedroom window. Which showed just how much they trusted Matty and me together.
“Well, some of us aren’t geniuses disguised as dumb jocks who can do our homework five minutes before class; I have to work ahead just to get by, and finals are coming up,” I responded with a fake look of defeat on my face before tossing a highlighter in his general direction. Our sophomore year was nearly over, and I had a lot of work to do to prepare for the end-of-semester exams.
“Ha!” Matthew said, laughing and reaching out to effortlessly grab the marker before it hit my bedroom wall. “You’re a genius; you just won’t admit it.”
“We both know that is a lie,” I responded before pretending to ignore him to refocus on my work, knowing full well that he would draw my attention back with talk of the day.
However, while Matthew usually started jabbering straight away, on this evening he was quiet. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye to see him staring down at the floor silently. I brought my head up to look at him, waiting for him to speak. “Matty?” I finally asked quietly. “What’s going on?”
“So, my dad got that promotion and is being transferred. We’re moving before the start of next school year,” Matthew replied quietly without bringing his eyes up to meet mine.
And with that, my heart sank. No, it broke. I had known that Matthew’s dad was up for a big promotion at his job that would require their family to relocate to the company’s main headquarters in California, but I had never actually thought he would get it. Or take it if he did. Matthew hadn’t, either.
“I don’t know what to say,” I responded as I looked down at my open textbook. “I can’t believe it.” I felt a lump rising in my throat and tears coming to my eyes, blurring the words on the pages of my biology book.
“Yeah, neither can I,” Matthew said, still not looking up for the same spot he had been staring at since he sat down.
And with that, for the first time in five years, we both sat in complete silent, no jokes or petty arguing, no teasing or tossing things at one another. My secretly held hopes and dreams of a future with Matthew, which I had held inside for so long, seemed to shatter inside of me. I had never let Matthew see my intense feelings for him, but I could not hold back any longer. As the tears started to fall from my eyes, I pushed my chair back, stood up, threw open my bedroom door, and ran downstairs to the kitchen. I turned on the water faucet with the intent to wash my hands in order to drown out the sound of my crying; but instead I just stared as the liquid poured out into the stainless-steel basin and swirled down the drain.
Suddenly, Matthew was behind me, leaning down to rest his chin resting on my shoulder, his arms wrapping around my middle. “This won’t change anything between us. We will still be
