by Jessi Kirby
He nods. I take the flowers and he plunges his hands into his pockets, his shoulders rising into a shrug that makes him look even more unsure than he did a moment ago. “How are you?” he asks, his eyes meeting mine. “You look . . . you look better. I mean, like you feel better. I mean—”
He shakes his head, bites his lip for a second. “Lemme just start over.” He looks me in the eye. “You look really pretty.”
“Thank you,” I say, feeling self-conscious all over again about this version of me.
“That’s my favorite dress.”
“I know.”
“You do?” His brows lift, the tiniest bit hopeful.
“Paige told me.”
“Oh,” he says. They fall.
It’s quiet a moment. I try to think of something to say.
“You look nice too. Better than you did last time.”
He laughs.
I cringe. “Wow, sorry. I just meant that it looks like you’re healing too.” I motion at his arm, which is no longer in a sling. “We’re both terrible at this, aren’t we?”
“Apparently,” he says.
This seems to relax something in us both, at least a little bit.
“So,” he says, “what do you want to do?”
His tone and the tentative look on his face make me think that he’s not just talking about what we’re going to do right now, today, but what we’re going to do about us.
I don’t know what to say, so I give what I hope is an encouraging answer any way you look at it. I step forward and reach out my hand.
He smiles in relief as he reaches his own hand out to take it.
And this is how we begin again.
It’s a big step up to get into Matt’s truck, so he helps me up and in, then closes the door gently before walking around to his side. When he gets in, he looks over at me. “You okay?”
I nod. “Yeah, I’m fine. Good.” I smile and reach back to pull the seat belt around me, but it sticks. I try again, and it sticks again.
I’m about to try again when Matt scoots closer. “That thing’s tricky, remember?” A look of horror crosses his face before he even finishes saying the word. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—here.” He leans across me and reaches for the seat belt, and I freeze at the closeness of him.
He feels it too, I think, because he also freezes, and we’re face-to-face, eye to eye, and it might be romantic if the situation were different. All it would take to close the space between us would be one little shift, a giving in to the tiny pull of the other’s gravity to bring us together. For a moment, he looks like he might be the one to lean in, and I stop breathing because I don’t know what I’ll do if he does.
But then he blinks. Swallows hard. “It’s like this,” he says softly. And then ever so slowly, he pulls the seat belt out until it can reach around me and leans back to click it into place.
“Thanks,” I say. “I um . . . I guess I forgot about that too.” Now it’s my turn to cringe. “Oh my God, I didn’t mean—I’m sorry, I don’t . . . this is . . .”
“Awkward?” Matt finishes for me.
“Yes,” I say without thinking.
“I know. It is for me too.” He takes a deep breath, then shakes his head. “I don’t really know how to do this, Liv. I don’t know what’s okay, or how to act, or what to say.”
“I don’t either.”
“But I want to try.”
“I do too,” I say.
He nods, and he looks at me for a moment with an expression that’s both hopeful and sad, like he’s searching for the girl he used to know and love, but isn’t sure he’ll be able to find her again.
I’m not sure either, but in this moment, I want to be that girl. I want to find her just as much as he does, so I reach out my hand and take his in mine. “So let’s try. Take me somewhere we like to go.”
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
“Yes,” I lie.
“Okay,” he says, and he puts the truck in drive. “That makes it easy.”
A few minutes later we walk through the door of the Good Life, a café on the water that Matt says is my favorite.
The hostess gasps when she sees us and comes around from behind the podium. Hugs us both. “You two . . .” She shakes her head like she doesn’t know what to say. “I’m just so glad you’re okay.”
Behind her, a few people turn and look at us. Some lean into each other and whisper.
I try to pretend like I don’t notice.
“Thanks,” Matt says, shifting uncomfortably.
When I don’t say anything, it gets a little awkward.
“Well,” she says with a smile. “Let’s find you a table.” She starts to lead us back to the empty one near the window, but when people look up and watch us, she stops. “You know, it’s really nice on the patio. Would you rather sit out there today?”
I nod, wondering if I should know any of the people who all seem to be staring at us.
“That’d be great,” Matt says. “Thank you.”
Once we’re seated outside, on the empty patio, in the sun and salty fresh air, I feel like I can breathe a little easier. Across the table, Matt still looks a little tense, and I don’t know if it’s because of the people in the restaurant, or if it’s being here, alone with me.
I try to put him at ease. “So, is this what our first first date was like?”
He laughs. “A little, I guess.”
“How?”
“I was nervous. I’m pretty sure you were too.”
I nod. “How did it go?” I don’t say that Paige told me the story already. I want to hear how he remembers it.
Matt takes a drink of the water the busboy brought when we were seated. “Um, let’s see,” he says, leaning back in his chair a little. “I picked you up at your house. Before you came downstairs, your dad gave me the world’s scariest pre-date ‘talk,’ in his uniform, with his hand resting on his gun.” He laughs softly.
“I was nervous, so I didn’t eat anything. You ate a whole plate of lasagna while I talked and tried not to fidget.” He laughs at this. “I mean, it was a lot of lasagna. I’d never seen a girl eat that much. That sealed the deal right there, really.”
I try not to laugh. “Nervous eating, maybe?”
He shakes his head. “No. You just eat a lot. Always have.”
Now I can’t help but laugh. I know this is true. It’s a running joke in my family. “Fair enough. What else . . . ?”
“After that, we went for a walk on the pier, and I tried to impress you by telling you all the stories I could remember about the constellations.” He smiles. “Pretty sure I had them all mixed up, but you didn’t seem to notice.”
“And then?” I ask.
“And then I took you home.”
“Did we kiss?” I ask, even though I know the answer.
He shakes his head. Looks down at the table.
“Why not?”
He brings his eyes back up to meet mine. “I liked you too much to try that night. I didn’t want to rush anything.”
He looks out over the water, and in the tiny moment before he looks back at me, I feel something besides just nervous, and I hope Paige was right. Maybe it’s a spark. Maybe whatever we had is still here, hidden in all that emptiness.
“What else do you wanna know?” he asks when he looks back at me. “Ask me anything.”
I nod, and try to feel braver than I do. “When was our first kiss?” My cheeks feel hot almost instantaneously. I try not to look at his lips. Lips that I’ve kissed who knows how many times.
“I was hoping you’d ask me that,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because it’s one of my favorite stories.”
“Why?” I feel like a kid asking over and over, but now I’m even more curious to hear it from him. Maybe there’s something Paige left out that he remembers.
A slow smile spreads over his face. “Because you kissed me.”
He puts a hand up, like I might ar
gue.
“And you always say it was the other way around, but it’s true. You kissed me the first time. At Paige’s house. We were all working on a project, and the power went out, and you asked me to go outside with you to see if it was the whole neighborhood.” He pauses, and looks right at me with those blue eyes of his, and smiles. “The entire town was dark, and it was freezing out, but you asked me to tell you about Cassiopeia again. And I started to, but then you got a little closer, and you turned and stood on your tiptoes, and you kissed me right there, on her front porch.”
“That’s not how Paige told it,” I say.
“That’s not how you tell it either, but that’s how it happened.” He smiles. “It was a bold move.”
I want to look away, but I keep my eyes on him, trying to picture it. Trying to picture myself doing something like that. “Did you . . . kiss me back at least?”
He laughs, looks down at the straw wrapper he’s twirling between his fingers. “Yeah. I did.” His eyes focus on something in the space between us, like he can see us standing there in his memory, and I wish, more than anything, that I could too.
“You were shivering,” he says, looking up. “But your lips were warm.” He pauses. Remembers something else. “They tasted like cinnamon gum and that vanilla lip gloss you used to always wear.”
As soon as he says it, I can see the little round tin of lip gloss with the vanilla ice cream cone on the lid. I gasp.
Matt raises hopeful eyebrows. “Liv? Did you—do you . . . ?”
He doesn’t say the word remember, but I know that’s what he’s hoping. I wish I could tell him that I do.
I shake my head. “No, I . . . I mean I remember it from before. I’ve used that lip gloss ever since middle school. It’s my favorite.”
“Mine too,” he says.
He looks at me now, and his smile fades the tiniest bit, and neither one of us knows what comes next. The quiet between us is so full with the things we don’t know how to say—that this is sad, and strange, and uncomfortable all at the same time.
“So,” I say, trying to get us back on track. “Apparently I have a summer job I’m going back to in a couple of days. Working at the Fuel Dock, with Sam?”
Matt smiles. “Yep. You actually really like that place—the boats, and all the different vacation people.”
“Do you work too?”
“Yeah. At the pool. I lifeguard and teach swim lessons.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“After summer,” I say. “Are you going away somewhere to school?”
Matt looks taken aback. “Um . . .” He shifts in his chair, clears his throat. “We are—or were—going together.” He looks at me now. “To Cal Poly?”
Before I can answer, the waitress appears to take our orders.
“I heard you two sweeties were here,” she says, her voice warm and familiar, like she knows us. She puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. “It’s so good to see you’re okay—we were all so worried about you, I mean—that was such an ordeal you went through. It must’ve been just terrifying.”
I don’t tell her that I don’t remember it. Or her.
She brings her other hand to her chest and looks at Matt. “And to have it captured on video like that. Absolutely horrifying.”
“I . . .” I have no idea how to respond to this.
Matt clears his throat and shifts in his seat again, and she glances at him. “I’m sorry, hon. Anyway. What can I getcha today? The usual?”
He orders a burger without looking at the menu.
She looks at me. “Vegwich and a side of fries with ranch?”
“Yeah. Sure.” I try to smile.
“You got it,” she says, then grabs our menus and goes back inside like she didn’t just make things hugely uncomfortable.
We both exhale and look at each other, but neither one of us says anything for a long moment. Then Matt does.
“So,” he says, “fast-forward to the accident, I guess.”
“I—we don’t have to talk about that right now.” I want to go back to hearing happy stories of us.
He looks at me, his mouth tight. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you? The video.”
I nod, and the images unfold in my mind. Matt, being pulled onto the boat. Matt, yelling and panicking while Walker pulled me in and then started CPR. Matt, trying to pull him off me. And the two of them—fighting.
“I panicked,” Matt says, like he can read my mind. “I panicked when I couldn’t get you out, and then when he did.” He looks down at his hands again. “And I panicked when he started pumping on your chest.” He swallows hard. “I could hear your ribs breaking, Liv. It was the worst thing I’ve ever heard, and I . . . I freaked out. I tried to make him stop because I thought he was hurting you. That’s why I went after him like that.” He pauses, and we’re both quiet. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I just need you to know what happened, because I hate the way it looks—like I . . .”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Like I could’ve done more. Or like I tried to stop him from helping you.”
He looks at me with sad eyes, and I can see the guilt everywhere in him—from his eyes, to the way his mouth is set, to the slump of his shoulders and the twisting of his hands. And what I feel for him in this moment is empathy.
I reach both of my hands across the table and take his, which are tense, almost fists. “It’s okay. You don’t have anything to be sorry about. You told him I was still down there. You helped him pull me onto the boat.”
His hands are still tense in mine, and he shakes his head, avoiding my eyes.
“Hey,” I say, more forcefully now. “You did everything you could. And I’m okay. I’m here, and I’m okay, and we’ll figure this out together.” Even as I say the words, I feel distant from them. Like I’m playing the part of myself. But I really do want to help him, and it seems to be what he needs to hear, because his hands relax the tiniest bit.
He looks down at the table for a moment, and when he brings his eyes back to mine, it’s hard to tell what I see there.
“There’s . . . there’s something I need to ask you,” he says finally.
“Okay,” I say. Tentative, because his tone is so serious.
“And you can say no. I’ll understand.” He runs a nervous hand through his hair and looks at me. “There’s this reporter who’s been calling me. She keeps asking for an interview, and . . .” He pauses, takes a deep breath. “She says it’d be good for everyone to see us together—to let them know that we’re both okay.”
I think of the huge bouquet and the card that’s now buried deep in my desk drawer, and I’m sure it’s from the same reporter, because she mentioned talking to him and Walker.
“And,” he says, his hands still holding mine, “she thinks it’d be a good chance for me to set things straight about what happened on that video, and . . .” He pauses. “I think she might be right.”
I don’t say anything—not at first, because I’m turning the possibility over in my mind. I wouldn’t be able to answer any questions about the accident—or the last few years leading up to it. And I’m not sure I’m ready for anyone watching to know that.
“I’m sorry,” Matt says quickly. “I shouldn’t have asked. Forget I did, okay?”
“No, it’s just . . . I don’t know.” Another thought occurs to me. “Would Walker James be there too?” I ask. I can’t keep the hopeful note out of my voice, and it makes me feel immediately guilty.
Matt doesn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know,” he says. “She was trying to get him too, but I kinda doubt it. I heard he left town.”
I think about what she did say in her note. That she’d talked to them both and they’d been open to it. Maybe Matt just doesn’t know that. Maybe he’s just assuming Walker wouldn’t agree to an interview. But if there’s a chance that he could be there, I wouldn’t have to just hope to run into him. I could see him, face-to-face, and thank him for wha
t he did. This possibility makes me want to say yes, but the thought of going on the news in front of the cameras as an amnesiac accident victim makes me feel a little queasy.
“I . . .” I look at Matt. “Can I think about it?”
“Of course. Yeah. I don’t want to make you feel like you have to, or force you into anything you don’t want to do.”
“You’re not,” I say. “It’s just, I don’t know if I want to talk about this in an interview. I mean, about me, how I can’t remember anything. I don’t know if I want everybody to know that.”
Matt starts to answer, but the waitress shows up at our table just then, carrying a plate in each hand. She sets Matt’s burger in front of him and then turns to me and smiles.
“Here you go, sweetheart. Veggie burger, extra lettuce, no sauce, add avo. Just like you like it.”
“Thank you,” I say, looking at what is apparently my usual. It strikes me then that maybe nobody would have to know. She was none the wiser, just like Chloe, and the kids on the dock. None of them had any idea how much of me is missing, and what they don’t see they just fill in with their own assumptions.
“I’m sorry,” Matt says, as soon as the waitress walks away. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, it’s okay.” I look at him now. “I think I actually would like to do it. She left me her number in a card. I can call when I get home.”
“Really?” He reaches across the table and takes my hands. “You would do that for me?”
“Of course,” I say. And though I feel a twinge of guilt, I let him assume his own reasons why.
FIFTEEN
THROUGHOUT THE REST of our dinner, I get to hear Matt’s version of us, which is sweet and funny. He answers all my questions but doesn’t overwhelm me with stories I don’t know to ask about. He pokes fun at himself, but is kind about me. By the time we finish, I can see what drew me to him, even if I don’t entirely feel it yet. Sparks are probably too much to expect at this point, anyway.
We step out onto the boardwalk, the crowd thinning in the warm evening light, and Matt looks at me. “Where to next? Dessert? It’s still early.”
This jogs something in my mind. “What time is it?”