held hands with guys before. There have been stolen dances at homecoming (where I of course attended stag). Harmless flirtations at parties. But the connection has never felt quite this warm. I feel like he’s touching not just my hand but also my heart.
I slide down a step. I’m still sitting above him, but our heads are now more or less level. Our eyes—and our lips—line up.
He swallows, his thumb moving in light circles against my skin. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just stick with the facts,” he says. “Fact: my mother didn’t go to Thailand to take care of her sick mother. Fact: my a-ma is pushing ninety, but she still walks in the garden every morning. Fact: my mother abandoned us. She met a man online and moved to Oklahoma to live with him and his kids. Fact: the divorce became final last year. Fact: I haven’t spoken to her since my birthday ten months ago.”
My mouth drops. “Oh, Mat. I’m sorry.” The words are hopelessly inadequate, but I don’t know how else to offer comfort. “Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?”
“My dad asked me to lie. At the time, he was hurting so much. We were both reeling, and he just couldn’t deal with the dishonor on top of everything else.” His eyes tilt down. “You know as well as I do what a big scandal the truth would’ve been in our community. It was much easier to say she went home to take care of her mother, since it’s a common enough scenario.”
He stops talking. His thumb ceases to move. I count ten whole heartbeats before he speaks again.
“I can understand why Dad wanted to hide the truth. But I don’t think he understood what he was asking of me at that moment. What it cost me to lie. What I lost.”
“You were a kid,” I protest. “You did what your father asked. Your sins, as it were, are plenty forgivable.”
He fixes his eyes on our hands. “But I did much more than just lie. I also pushed you away.”
I blink. And blink again. I then pull my fingers out of his grasp. Not because I’m angry, but because I need to think, and I can’t do that while he’s touching me. “Are you saying that this is the reason our friendship ended?”
He nods miserably. “I didn’t plan it. If I had known our friendship would fall apart, I would never have agreed to lie. But I didn’t know that being around you would be so damn hard. Every day, at lunch, you would chatter about how much you missed my mom’s cooking. How she would be back before I knew it. When I finally stormed off, you followed me and apologized. You said you should’ve known that talking about her would make me miss her more. And I couldn’t look you in the eyes any longer. I just couldn’t.”
He takes a shaky breath. “I only wanted some distance. I didn’t mean for our break to be permanent. I thought maybe we’d go our separate ways for a couple of weeks. But you were so angry. So hurt. Our resentment of each other spiraled out of control, and I didn’t know how to stop it.”
I stare. Part of me feels so much for the little boy who lost his mother. That part wants to wrap him up tightly and hold him close, so that he can never be hurt again.
But I can’t forget the tears I cried. The countless nights I didn’t sleep. The loss of his friendship was the single most devastating event of my childhood. And he could’ve prevented it all with a few honest words.
“You didn’t know how to stop it,” I repeat. My voice is so brittle that it might shatter. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m sorry would’ve done the trick. Or let’s be friends again. Or even: scoot over, that’s my seat.”
“I did try,” he says. “After a few months, I was desperate to make things right. I had a speech all prepared, but when I came up to you, I panicked. Instead of apologizing, I pointed out the hole in your pants. Which was nothing out of the ordinary, because you always had a hole at your knees, from all that running and tripping you did. But you got really mad, and everything else I said just made it worse. We fell into this awful pattern, and, well…you know the rest of it.”