The day after that, Amy called Dad. Arielle had wanted to hold her hand, coach her through, but Amy knew that that conversation would basically be Arielle talking to her dad, and she wanted to be herself. More than that, she wanted her dad to well and truly know she was herself. So when she told Dad that she loved him very much, but that she wasn’t sorry for freaking out at Mom about Christmas, and that by the way, her major had changed and she no longer aspired to be a pastor’s wife and move back home, she was terrified, but she was one hundred percent sure about every word. Including telling him that she’d switched churches.
Amy knew darn well that “Biblical interpretation” was a dirty phrase in her hometown Southern Baptist church, which insisted on reading the Bible literally, and when she told Dad that she was participating in a Bible study class with that same title at the local Episcopal church, she could practically hear the steam shooting from his ears. But she used a calm voice, and reminded him how much she loved him, and heard him breathing deeply instead of yelling.
When Dad told her he expected her home to visit for Easter, she told him she would let him know whether she’d be there, or whether she’d stay on campus. Best of all, she did all of it with a steady, calm voice, staring at the list and promising herself that she’d be able to cross “Dad” off the “big stuff” column very, very soon.
“Music” was the only thing that was left. That conversation with Matt stuck with her—the one where he asked her what kind of music she liked, and she couldn’t name anything specific other than “nothing with curse words.” Hundreds of songs and dozens of playlists later, many of them built with Rion’s help as she mixed her way through her second audio engineering class, and Amy finally had favorites. She could name artists she knew would make her want to dance, and she had an entire playlist for when she wanted to call forth the deepest aching of her heart and sit with it, really feel it. She had discovered artists whose chord progressions and lyrics carried her away to a happy place in a way she never knew music could. Entire genres made her feel swoony and hopeful and in love with nothing in particular, besides the moment she was listening to it.
So, today, as she listened to a smooth male voice crooning old tunes, she grinned at her list and spun around. No matter what happened, or who she had in her life, Amy knew she would be just fine.
Amy got the pizza for that night’s society meeting—she secretly loved when it was her turn to do it. She grinned as she ordered an individual pizza for each of the girls with their favorite toppings, so she didn’t have to listen to Arielle’s complaints about having to pick off the pepperoni, or Rion comparing the sliced onions to worms again. She threw in breadsticks with extra sauce and a cookie ‘pizza’ too. And then totally went crazy with a 2-liter of Diet Coke.
The Society meeting was both better and worse than Amy had anticipated. For the past three meetings, at Amy’s request, she hadn’t talked about relationships, she’d just talked about herself. Which was about relationships, ultimately, she supposed. But Arielle had been happy to include Amy and her dedication to the list in the minutes as “self love,” and Rion had been happy because she had something to roll her eyes at and an excuse to swear in Amy’s presence, under the excuse of “exposing her to the wider world.”
Arielle was over-the-moon happy, even if she was exhausted. She and Lauren were back together, and even though her new sorority was taking up a whole lot of time, she was oddly—even sometimes freakily—chipper. Maybe the lack of sleep would get to her eventually, but for now, she didn’t have much to contribute to Society meetings despite how she was getting ready to present something to the PHA on heteronormative Greek culture on campus. Amy even sort of understood what that meant, which she couldn’t have said six months ago.
Rion, in contrast, had moved from being sullen and belligerent the previous week to staring blankly into space. When Arielle was done bouncing and grinning and giving her update in between, both girls stared at Amy. “I have something but I want to go last,” she said, trying to hold back a smile when she looked at Rion. “Do you have anything?”
Rion sighed. “If being fucking miserable and tortured to hell and back and fucking hating myself for it every time I see him at work, which is EVERY FUCKING TIME, then yes, I have something.”
Arielle put on her somber face, so well that Amy almost forgot she’d been joyful a few minutes earlier. “What are you going to do, Ri?”
“Die of sorrow and self-hatred? Or I don’t know, maybe become a motherfucking drama queen full time, since I can’t focus on anything anyway?”
“Maybe, I don’t know, try to talk to him again?” Arielle said, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. “I know, it’s crazy.”
Rion shot dagger eyes at Arielle, and Arielle’s mouth twisted into a half-frown. Ari gave a half-hearted “hmph” before she sat back on her heels, shoved another piece of pizza in her mouth, and gazed broodingly at Rion. Amy knew that she was coming up with some strategy to drag Rion out of her self-professed misery, which was getting more intense and sweary by the day. After Ari finished chewing, she turned her attention to Amy.
“Okay, sweet Amy,” Arielle said. She swept her hand, still clutching her half-eaten piece of vegetarian pizza, over the spread. “What did we do to deserve all this?”
“Nothing.”
Rion glared again.
“I mean, not what did you guys do. It’s something I did.” She whipped the folded piece of notebook paper with all the stuff crossed off and unfolded it, holding it out in two hands for both girls to see, like a royal proclamation.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Rion whispered, apparently distracted for a moment. “You crossed everything off? I thought that would take you, like, the semester, at least.”
“Thank you for your confidence,” Amy said with a wry smile. “And thank you for helping me deal with the ‘foul language’ item in the ‘big stuff’ category so thoroughly and frequently.”
“Have to be fucking good at something,” Rion muttered, twisting a blond-streaked lock of hair around her fingers, which just called attention to her badly chipped midnight-blue polish.
“Whoa, Ames. Are you sure? You really are okay with all this stuff?” Arielle grabbed at the list, scanning it.
Amy pulled out a folder, organized by tab, and shoved it toward Arielle, who leafed through it with a grin. The leaflets for her new church home, class plan for the next three semesters, selfie on ice skates, and smudged receipt from the cafe where she now ate alone with ease provided plenty of evidence. “Major, check. Church, check. Ice skating, eating alone, illicit literature, Sexy movies…damn, Amy. You really have tackled it. What about Dad?”
Both Arielle and Rion listened to her update them on her conversation with her father, their jaws dropping a little bit with each sentence.
“Well, I think our little small town girl is all grown up,” Arielle said, wiping a fake tear.
Rion pitched half a breadstick at her and Arielle squealed. “Shut the fuck up, you’re not her fucking mother. She’s not a goddamn baby.”
“I appreciate your sweary sentiment, Rion, but it’s okay. I think it’s sweet.” Amy air-kissed Arielle.
“So…have you told him?”
Amy blew out a shuddering breath. “I don’t know what I would tell him, even if I could. Or how, or why.”
“What do you mean?” Ari asked.
“Rion is still policing his phone number and I haven’t been brave enough to steal her phone to get it.”
Rion grinned, doing a half-bow.
“And I haven’t thought about stalking him as an option. Not really.” Amy stared at the ground as she said it. She didn’t want to seem pathetic. She wasn’t pathetic anymore. She could take care of herself, and if Rion didn’t give her Matt’s number, she would figure out how to get back in touch with him. If she could talk to Dad, if she could change her life plans, if she could hear a swear-word filled sentence as sweet, she could swallow her pride and find Matt.
If she decided that was a good idea. If she could be brave enough to tell him that she still wanted him, even though it was highly likely that he didn’t want her anymore.
“Do you want to tell him? I’m not trying to push you into anything.” Arielle, as always, was patient, listening.
“I don’t even know anymore.”
Arielle’s face grew concerned, but Rion scoffed. “What?” Amy protested.
“Of course you want to. You’re even more in love with him than you were before, which I wasn’t actually sure was possible, by the way.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean, are you being serious?” It was a valid question, considering the deep sticky pit of self-loathing Rion had obviously fallen into headlong.
“I mean, she’s right. She hasn’t talked to him,” Arielle said, reaching out to rub Amy’s back. “She has no way to know what he’s thinking.”
“And obviously you haven’t talked to her,” Rion said. “I guess there is some benefit to my wallowing…I listen to her talk about the damn list every damn day.”
“Of course. That’s what I’ve been doing. And not worrying about Matt,” Amy nodded, trying to reassure herself.
Rion snorted. “Not worrying about him, no. But you went to the church he told you about when you did that volunteer thingy. I know because you told me when you were searching for it, and when you said his name your voice went all moony. That one time we ordered Thai, you got the one thing you’d had when you went home with Matt for Christmas. You listen to the bands he recommended, and you read all the books he left here. Consciously or not, it’s pretty much like he never left.”
Amy glanced down so she wouldn’t have to look at Rion and noticed she was wearing a shirt that she’d picked up at one of those movie theater churches Matt had taken her to, featuring a bust of Jesus and text reading “I had followers before Twitter.” She’d felt a pang of memory when she’d put it on, but her life had been so insane for the past six weeks that she hadn’t had time to do laundry. And this shirt was comfortable. And, okay, it made her think of Matt. Even the pain of missing him was better than forgetting about him altogether.
She felt Rion and Arielle both staring at her. “Okay,” Amy sighed, looking at them. “You’re right.”
“So you might as well make it official.” Rion lobbed her phone across the pizza boxes where Amy caught it. She swiped the screen on with shaking fingers.
“I don’t even know what to say to him,” she said. “I mean, what if he doesn’t even want to talk to me? What if he changed his mind?” Her next thought made her gasp and clap a hand over her mouth. “What if he’s with another girl?”
“Okay, now you’re really being ridiculous,” Arielle said, sitting up straight and staring down her nose at Amy. “Obviously you don’t trust us at all.”
“What do you…?”
“If your heart gets broken, it’s our fault. Rion and I have eyes all over this campus. Even though there are twenty thousand kids here, word gets around fast. Especially since most of us are from Podunk Indiana. Someone would have told someone who would have told Lauren or me or Rion if they had seen Matt with anyone but you, Amy. Everyone knows there’s something between you two.”
“If I ever left my room,” Rion mumbled.
“You go to class,” Arielle said gently.
“Sometimes,” Rion smiled.
“He’s not with another girl, and considering how hard he loved—loves—you, there was no way that was going to change any time soon.”
That word—love—opened a floodgate inside Amy. All the hopes and fears she’d been shoring up for the past six weeks came bursting through the tiny crack in the fortifications around her heart, and she gasped with the beginning of a sob. The tears came trickling down her cheeks, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. Her head shook back and forth. She didn’t know if she wanted to believe that, or not.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rion said, flicking her bangs out of her eyes for the millionth time as she reached for another slice of cookie pizza, “You have nothing to worry about. You shouldn’t waste your energy crying until he actually turns you down.”
“Rion…” Arielle’s tone was all warning.
“I mean, even though Arielle is dishing out some seriously convincing bullshit right now, and I mean straight from her curvy little ass, I’m sure she’s right. Gingerbread man was seriously devoted to you. No way that’s changed.” Something shifted in her tone at the end of her words, and she went back to sad staring into space again.
Amy sniffled and forced herself to sit up straight, commanding her tears to stop. But her hands shook even harder. Her emotions swung back and forth to being sure Matt was seriously done with her to believing her roommates—if he’d felt for her what she felt for him, there had to be something left there. Right?
Amy’s stomach twisted and doubled over on itself as she scrolled down the contacts. Nothing there under ‘Englin,’ and nothing there for ‘Matt.’ Then a particularly long entry flashed down the screen—‘Flaming Cheeto Pubes.’
Amy turned to screen to Rion. “Do I have to ask?”
Rion smirked. “Obviously not.”
Amy pulled up the number, then reached for her phone. The heel of her hand must have brushed the screen of Rion’s fancy new smartphone when she turned, though, because all of a sudden she heard a dial tone—the weird beeping one that always preceded a video call.
And sweet, trusting Matt, damn him, picked it up, even though he didn’t know—couldn’t know—whose number it was.
But then he was there, and seeing his face—the familiar curve of his freckled cheekbone, hair that had begun to flop over his eyebrows again—was such a shock and a relief at the same time that tears started to roll down Amy’s cheeks all over again. Who cared if they were rational or not? Amy had spent the past six weeks learning that the most joyful things in life lacked rhyme or reason.
“Hey, Rion, what’s up?” He wasn’t looking at the phone, but obviously he knew it was her. Amy’s eyes went wide and she flung an arm out, staring at Rion.
“I told him I had his number. Just in case.”
“Just in case WHAT?” Amy managed.
“I don’t know. In case you needed him. Or he needed you. Or something.”
Apparently, even Rion, the greatest romance buzzkill of all time, had been assuming Amy and Matt’s separation would be temporary. Amy must have been the blindest person on the planet to not have seen it herself.
“Rion?” This time, those deep brown-green eyes of Matt’s, their color clear even through the phone connection, met hers.
“Amy? AMY. Oh geez. Are you okay? What’s going on?”
Even though she still felt a trembling underneath every inch of her skin, Amy smiled, gave a short laugh, swiped a tear from her eye. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to call you.”
“But are you okay? Why are you crying? And why are you calling me from Rion’s phone?”
“I just…I mean…It was…I was just going to text you.”
A brief flash of confusion crossed Matt’s eyes, but then she saw him get it. She was going to text him. After six weeks.
“Would that work better for you? I mean, do you just want to go ahead and text me?”
“I…maybe?”
Matt nodded and the screen immediately went blank.
Amy quickly added his number back into her phone, and then texted, Hi. Her tears had already started up again, and she held her breath when the little dots indicating that Matt was typing showed up on her screen. They stayed there for a long time, several seconds, and he must have been going through his whole “Are you okay?” panic. She’d wait.
But then when his text came back, all it said was Hi.
Then, a few seconds later, It’s nice to see your name on my phone again.
She could barely contain her grin.
I just wanted to text you without seeing ‘Cheeto Pubes’ at the top of the screen.
Amy Bauer, did you just type a semi-almost-dirty word?
Amy laughed out loud, swiping the lingering tears away with the back of her hand.
“What? What did he say?” Arielle moved behind her, staring at the phone from over her shoulder. Rion sighed, like it was some big burden, but quickly did the same thing.
Amy: Texting about body hair in close proximity to sexual organs is not dirty. It’s anatomy.
Matt: Did you just type ‘sexual?’ And—oh my God—ANATOMY?
Rion snorted. “This guy. I knew there was a reason I liked him enough to come up with all those nicknames.”
Arielle frowned. “What are you going to say to him now? You have to have a real conversation eventually.”
“Yeah, and right after ‘pubes’ is a perfect place to start it,” Rion said, feigning a serious face.
Are you okay? Matt texted again.
Amy: You already asked me that. I’m fine.
Matt: You’re not saying much.
Amy: I don’t know what to say.
Matt: It was probably stupid to think we could just pick up where we left off.
That wasn’t stupid. Not at all. It was actually probably the most perfect thing he could have possibly said. More perfect than she had dared to hope for.
This was her chance to start over with Matt. The right way.
Now Amy’s hands were noticeably shaking, so she clutched her phone until her knuckles practically glowed white. She had to make sure.
Amy: Are you saying *you* think that’s stupid?
Amy: I mean…do you hate me?
Matt: Amy Bauer, I don’t know what planet you went to for the last six weeks, but there is no way in heaven or on earth I could ever hate you.
Amy bit her lip and smiled a sad smile. It was so wonderful that he didn’t hate her. That didn’t change what she’d been hoping, deep down, he’d say—that he still loved her.
The Broken Hearts' Society of Suite 17C Page 42