CHAPTER FOUR
“What was that all about last night?” Krista practically barked into the phone. “Did you end up sleeping with Matty?” Krista had begun texting me at six o’clock in the morning after the reunion, but I had just ignored the notification sounds; of course, always glancing at the screen to make sure it wasn’t Matty. I would have gladly woken up to talk to him. Krista, however, I was not in a rush to speak to, especially after she had embarrassed me so badly the night before. But, at eight, she stopped trying to message me and started calling every few minutes; I finally couldn’t stand listening to the constant ringing of my phone and clicked on the “answer” icon.
“What? No! Krista, for crying out loud!” I replied sternly into the phone. “I took him for a drive around town, we stopped for coffee, and then I dropped him off at his hotel. Of course I didn’t sleep with him! Geez!” I paused a moment before adding, “We are, however, meeting up later for lunch. Molly left, but Matty is here through Friday.”
“Ohhhh…. you two all alone together all week!” Krista said, with an almost evil cackle in her voice. “I can’t wait to see what happens!”
“We’re not going to be together all week,” I replied, as I pulled a sleeveless button front dress from my closet; it was navy blue with tiny white flowers printed on it and it fell to just above my knees. “He has work over in Lincoln. And I have work, too, you know. And stuff to do. And besides, you aren’t going to see anything here, are you, since you are heading out on vacation, right?”
“Crap, you’re right. The flights to Hawaii are non-refundable; I really need to get on the road to the airport, to be honest. But as much as I am looking forward to a week at the beach, I’d love to be here to witness the reunion of Leah and Matty in person!”
“You’ve already seen the reunion AT the reunion,” I reminded her. “He’s here to work, I’m working. We will probably only spend a few hours together, tops. There’s nothing to witness here.” I tried to make the tone of my voice sound as casual as possible, but inside I was bursting with excitement over the prospect of spending more time alone with Matty. However, I wasn’t going to let Krista know how I was really feeling. I was determined to keep my feelings about Matty to myself least Krista share them with anyone else.
“Sure,” Krista said smugly. “Work for him, work for you, blah, blah, blah. You two were always so secretive. I know for a fact that you haven’t told me all of what you two used to get up to together. Like what you were doing those nights he crawled into your bedroom window. Or when you took those long walks together.
“Um, I did so tell you; we talked and we walked. Sometimes we walked and we talked. Matty and I were friends. That’s it, you know it all,” but I was lying, of course; and I knew that Krista knew it, too. As much as she truly wanted to respect my privacy, I also knew that she was dying to find out everything that Matty and I had done in private when we were younger. If I ever did decide to spill the beans, she would be more than willing to listen.
And there were definitely beans to spill. Yes, Matty and I had been, above all, friends. But at times we had pushed the bounds of our friendship into another dimension entirely. We started out as enemies in the sixth grade, but after that day in the hallway when I had moved my seat away from his in history class, something changed. Eventually I would go from avoiding Matty at all costs to spending more time with him than without him.
But of course, it took a while for us to actually have private time together, at least, real private time. Sixth graders of the opposite sex didn’t spend a lot of time alone together. I wasn’t even allowed to go to the movies with friends and without a chaperone until seventh grade; and even then, a parent or older sibling of course drove us to and from the theatre.
Matty’s teasing went on for the first half of our sixth-grade year; and while I was outwardly frustrated with him, I secretly started to like the attention. Changing my seat in history class really seemed get to him, and his jabs went from mean to more enduring. And the notes he slipped in my locker were nicer. “Just saying ‘hi’ to you, Leah!” and “Admit it, you miss sitting next to me in history class!” replaced the semi-insults he had heaped on me before.
I was especially happy when Matty would stop his friends from joining in on poking fun at me. “I’m the only one who gets to tease Leah; you guys need to back off,” he would say, giving the other boys dirty looks, which not only confused them but ticked some of them off. A few of the guys in Matty’s group were just plain jerks and did not like me at all, despite the fact that I had never done anything to them. Thankfully, they eventually fell out of our circle of friends and formed cliques with other kids, which was a huge relief to me. The friends who eventually became
