Unspoken Memories (Unspoken Series)

by Gabbie S. Duran

  “Abigail,” I hear Matt say, breaking me from my thoughts.

  Remembering that he asked me a question, I have to concentrate to remember what he asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I was a runner in the past. It’s really hard to say what I did or didn’t do before the accident. The little information I know about myself is what is posted on the Internet, and we both know how accurate that can be,” I say sarcastically.

  Matt cocks his head to the side, focusing on me intensely. “It’s just strange that you were able to keep up with me pretty well towards the end. At first I was thinking that I might have to take it easy on you, but you kept pace, so I decided to speed up. Maybe it’s those long legs of yours,” he says smiling, looking down the length of my legs.

  The heat of his stare as his eyes run down my legs sends a chill through my body, making me shiver.

  “Is that good or bad?” I finally say with a chuckle. I find it amusing we’re both sitting here obviously checking each other out, but trying to ignore it just the same.

  The smile he returns makes my heart skip and makes my body turn to mush. “It’s good. Which means I don’t have to take it easy on you anymore, and we can get in some good runs.”

  I’m sitting there, staring at him and my eyes are now focused on his tattoo. It’s intriguing and I’m unable to take my eyes off it. “Matt, what made you get an angel’s wing?” I ask, still focused on the intricate design on his arm.

  He looks down at it, focusing on it for a couple of seconds, then looks up at me. His eyes look glazed and by the way his lashes are rapidly blinking, I know he’s now fighting back tears.

  “I got it in honor of my sister after she died. I like to think that she’s my angel looking down at me and the tattoo is a way of me keeping a piece of her close to me,” he says, his voice raspy and almost a whisper.

  I feel my chest tighten up and a lump starts to form in my throat as I fight back tears that are threating to flow down my eyes. Matt looks back down to it, he looks just as affected as I feel as he focuses on his bicep.

  He takes one last deep breath, and then shakes his head before he stands up, slapping my feet with his hand as he does. “Come on. With a run like that you deserve some pancakes.” That distracts me from my solemn thoughts.

  “You know, with the way you guys are feeding me, I’m going to blow up like a balloon. I don’t think I got this body from eating the way I have the last couple of days.”

  Walking in the direction of the parked car he looks back at me, with a grin. “Then you’ll just have to run more now, won’t you?” he states as he keeps walking, leaving me to follow him.

  I could think of another activity that would accelerate my heart rate and make me sweat….

  I’m relieved when we make it back to the car, since my stomach is starting to growl. As he starts it, I swear every time I get in, I get excited all over again. Just sitting in it while it’s running drives me insane. The power of the engine vibrating beneath my body is enough to push me to come right there in the seat.

  I don’t know whose ride I crave more each day, the owner or the car? It’s a tough toss up sometimes. Being that I’ve ridden in the car already, I would have to say the owner is next in line.

  I’m so lost in my fantasy that I almost don’t hear Matt when he asks why I had to transfer the money into his account. So I explain the whole story of Bill and the contracts, including what I heard while I was in my coma. As I’m explaining, at first I even think it sounds insane.

  “So you simply have to keep from making any money that includes anything to do with your career?”

  “I guess so?” I respond, staring at the traffic ahead of me.

  Keeping his eyes on the road ahead, he says, “Okay. Three months isn’t too long of a wait for you to stay low on your career. With all the shit that’s happened to you in the last couple of days, you could look at it as a vacation.”

  Yeah, one where I might go bored out of my mind unless I can find another form of distraction, quick.

  As we’re driving, his phone begins to ring. He lifts it up to look at who is calling, then pushes the ignore button just as fast. I was able to get a glance at who was on the screen and there was a picture of a girl.

  Crazy as it might sound, I actually feel a little bit jealous. Why? I have no clue. I obviously have no claim on him and I don’t know anything when it comes to his personal life. As good looking as he is, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a girl in his life. Knowing it’s a possibility drives me insane in my seat. I already want to claw the girl’s eyes out.

  A minute goes by and the phone rings again. He lifts the phone without looking at it this time, and pushes a button on the top, silencing it. It immediately begins to ring again and this must have pissed Matt off because he jerks the car to the side of the road, throwing my body against the door as it comes to a stop.

  He quickly answers the call and barks into it, “What do you want? I’m busy right now.”

  Damn, remind me never to call him repeatedly if he’s ignored the first call. Whoever is on the other end of the call obviously doesn’t get the clue, and they’re lucky they can’t see the look on his face. He’s scowling at the road ahead of him like he’s shooting daggers with his eyes at an imaginary person.

  He sits there, listening to whoever is speaking on the other end of the line before saying irritably, “No, not this week, I have a lot going on. I don’t have any free time. I’ll call you later if I feel like it.” He stays quiet a couple of seconds, probably listening to the reply. Then he ends the call. Without bothering to look in my direction, he begins to slowly pull the car back onto the road and I sit there wondering whether to keep to my mouth shut or ask.

  Curiosity gets the better of me. “So who was that? Your girlfriend?”

  Still staring ahead onto the road, he says, “I don’t have a girlfriend, and I definitely don’t do relationships. Did that once and learned my lesson for life.”

  I know I was recently screwed over, which taught me a lesson for life, but not enough to throw dating completely out of the window. Grimacing, I realize I do know exactly how he feels, but that still doesn’t explain the phone call, which is the answer I was looking for.

  “So if the girl wasn’t your girlfriend, then she must be a friend. Why were you so rude to her? Didn’t your sister raise you to respect girls?” I throw at him as he focuses on driving.

  Sighing deeply, like he’s trying to calm himself, he keeps his eyes on the road.

  The car pulls up to a red light and when he finally brings the car to a complete stop he turns his body to face me. “My sister did raise me to treat a girl with respect, but being that this one spreads her legs easily, I feel I don’t have much respect for her nowadays,” he says.

  My eyes go wide in shock over what he’s said. Whether she spreads her legs easily or not, he doesn’t have any right to say it. “That’s a fucked up thing to say about a girl. What she chooses to do with her body doesn’t define who she is,” I irritably say, because only ten minutes ago I was willing to give him my body if he would’ve asked. So would that have labeled me a slut in his eyes?

  Apparently, it would have.

  “Look, you’re right, I shouldn’t judge her, but she can be really annoying sometimes. She gets really needy and it pisses me off,” he quietly says, trying to justify his answer.

  I roll my eyes for him to see. Is he expecting his response to make the earlier one any better?

  The light turns green and he turns to focus on the road once again as he drives the car forward. I’m beginning to discover that I like details, and I want lots of them. So of course, I push the subject, pressing for an answer.

  “So if you don’t do relationships, how many friends do you have?” I ask, wondering whether I want the real truth to that answer.

  A cocky grin spreads on his face. “I have one for every day of the week.”

  “Who’s the slut now?” I respond d
ryly.

  “I wasn’t always this way you know,” he says in his defense, trying to make his lifestyle seem normal. “I dated a girl all throughout high school. You can actually say we were high school sweethearts. We made plans to go to college together and then get married. You know the whole painted picture of a love story, but life had other plans for us.”

  As I’m about to ask what the plan was he continues.

  “I got a scholarship for here in Portland and hers was to Berkley. It’s the college her parents went to, so she was destined to go no matter what. I thought of the pros and cons of the situation and I couldn’t refuse a paid scholarship, so we chose to try to have a long distance relationship. It worked for a bit, but eventually party life got to the both of us. We tried really hard to be faithful, but it didn’t happen. We both made mistakes, which eventually led to us having a touch and go relationship,” he says as he’s still focusing on driving through the traffic.

  “I don’t get it. How would this one relationship screw it up for you, forever?”

  He stays quiet for a moment, and then answers, “I guess I thought it would be easier to have friends with benefits than to tie myself down to one girl. In case my ex changed her mind and decided she wanted to get back together.”

  It occurs to me that he’s still in love with her. I can tell by the saddened expression on his face and it’s also showing how much it’s hurting him to talk about it. She was probably his first love, his first everything, which most high school sweethearts are. Those kinds of girls are always hard to let go.

  “Do you still love her?” I bravely ask, almost at a whisper.

  He takes a moment to quickly glance at me and answers my question. “Of course.”

  And there you have it. The answer I desperately didn’t want to hear, but have to take because it’s reality. It’s his reality. The one that I’m going to have to live with if I plan to keep my promise. No wonder why he refuses to date anyone. He’s still holding out for the happily ever after with Ms. Berkley.

  Well, I’ve learned one lesson from all this. Sometimes the truth really sucks.

  THE NEXT COUPLE of days go by normally, with the exception of Trey not being at the house. He was scheduled to go home back south for the next several weeks, so it was just Matt and I. At first, I had thought it would be very awkward with the two us alone since I had started to develop an attraction for him, but things didn’t change. He never made any advances on me. After the whole friends with benefits conversation in the car, I had learned my lesson and forced my sexual attraction to take a vacation along with Trey.

  Somehow, Matt got the memo about the vacation my sexual libido was taking, because he had grown comfortable with the roommate situation. He’d begun walking around in his boxer briefs when it was convenient for him, torturing the crap out of me.

  I had brought up the lack of clothing to him, telling him it made me a little uncomfortable when he did that. He only laughed at me and claimed that according to the photos on the Internet, I should be used to being naked most of the time. So therefore, his boxer briefs shouldn’t be offensive to me at all. I was so irritated with his response; I ended up throwing the remote at him.

  It had made him laugh harder as he caught it.

  He might be intolerable with his boxer briefs, but I guess I could let it slide since he was so good looking in them. It did give me a distraction sometimes.

  Another change that took place was the living arrangements. Matt had taken permanent residence in the third bedroom, insisting that I take his old bedroom. When I had refused, demanding that I take the third bedroom, since technically I was the crash roommate, he ignored my request.

  He pointed out that a girl needed a bathroom of her own and since the master bedroom already had one, I was to keep the room. I didn’t feel too bad when I noticed how disgusting the hallway bathroom looked. How in the world did guys live like that?

  Matt had also taken it upon himself to buy me a new phone. I needed one after what happened to my original one. The second night in the house I had sat down with Matt and Trey in the living room to turn on my phone and listen to the voicemails that Bill had placed after I left. They were pretty vulgar. He even went as far as threatening to kill me because of what I did to him. By Matt’s reaction he wasn’t too happy with Bill’s messages and words. He had grabbed the phone from my hand, throwing it against the wall, cracking it to pieces. Which resulted in me needing a new phone.

  At first, I was hesitant to take it, claiming that Bill might be able to track me through it. But when Matt informed me the phone was under his name, making it difficult for Bill to find me, I felt a lot more comfortable using it.

  It was a shiny new white iPhone that Matt had loaded with a bunch of cool apps and songs. I was in love with it the minute he handed it to me. I rarely put it down, unless necessary. It had come to the point that it was now a permanent part of my body.

  During this time I also discovered how good of a cook Matt was. I was very surprised when he practically whipped up a full course dinner, but he didn’t stop there. He also knew how to make an awesome breakfast and lunch if needed.

  The first night we ate his full course dinner, he wasn’t expecting me to insist we eat at the dining room table. When we were about to walk into the living room to eat as usual I asked, “Why don’t you guys ever use the dining table?” Looking over at the table leaning against the wall, I wondered why it looks more like a standing counter top where everything ended up.

  He looks over at it, shrugging one shoulder. “I don’t know. We’ve never thought of using it for eating purposes. It gets more usage for beer pong than anything else,” he said as he walked completely past it.

  Not happy with his answer, I stop and place my plate on the island, then head over to the table and begin clearing the things off. Matt notices and heads back in my direction helping me and within minutes the table is cleared. After a quick wipe down, we are finally able to sit down and have a normal dinner, like normal people.

  I would have said like a normal couple, but that was pushing it a little too far when it came to Matt. Knowing that he was willing to change one thing about himself to make me happy gave me some hope. Now if I could only work on changing the one thing I really wanted to change about him, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath trying.

  ONCE I KNEW I had the power to make some changes, I took full advantage. The first thing I did was order new couches; the old ones stank like sweat, and had stains. I don’t even want to know what they consisted of. With them being guys, I was happy being kept in the dark.

  When I told Matt his only response was a raised eyebrow, but he didn’t argue. I had to keep in mind that men still lived in the house. So I went with dark brown leather, hoping that it would prevent a reoccurrence of the stains.

  I did plan to keep Matt’s notorious leather recliner in the equation. Even if it was huge and took up a great deal of space in the room, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it. Especially since it was the one thing that reminded me of the first day I’d met Matt.

  What was hilarious though, was how Matt began to insist that the recliner wasn’t going anywhere when the delivery guys showed up the next day with the new sofas. He had thought that I intended on getting rid of the recliner as well.

  Knowing how much he loved that thing, I had put up a light argument for the fun of it. Matt was just as hot when angry, as he was any other time. It made me want to laugh. It was hard to stand there staring at him and not tell him the truth, but after a couple of minutes I couldn’t hold in my laughter any longer.

  Realizing that I was only playing with him the whole time, Matt smiled at me shaking his head and I had thought I’d gotten him good since he didn’t really say or do anything to lecture me.

  Oh, but I was wrong. What I didn’t expect was what happened after Matt had walked the delivery guys out the door.

  “Ms. Abigail Adams. That little prank of yours wasn’t very nice,” he says,
stalking towards me from the doorway with the look of a predator on the hunt. The look worried me a bit. I had no idea what he was planning on doing to me, but by the smirk on his face, it was going to be good.

  I shrugged my shoulders at him. “You’re the one who made assumptions, so I just went along with it,” I tell him with the same smirk on my lips.

  He starts to come around the large couch that is now in the middle of the living room, and I slowly walk back around in the opposite direction. I know it’s not helping my situation to give him a chase, but hell if I am going to give in so easily.

  As I come behind the couch with him facing me from the front, he grabs for my wrist, yanking me down over the couch, and making me land right on top of him. I instantly try to pry myself off his body, but he proves how strong he is by wrapping his legs and arms around me. I’m completely trapped against him.

  I can feel his lean muscles beneath me and I inhale deeply, taking in the special scent that I now equate with Matt. I can’t exactly pinpoint what it is, but every time I breathe it in, it takes me to another world completely. I can’t get enough of it.

  “Now what do you think your punishment should be, Ms. Adams?” he growls into my ear, sending a shiver to course down to the depths of my toes.

  As I take in his question and my imagination gets the better of me, I’m quickly yanked from my impromptu fantasy of my enjoyable punishment when Matt starts tickling me.

  My body starts convulsing in laughter with his fingers quickly moving against my ribs. I didn’t know how ticklish I was until now and I don’t like it one bit. He keeps it up as my body keeps convulsing with laughter against his body, making me scream, and yell as well. This was not the kind of screaming and shouting I had in mind a second ago.

  He’s still holding me in a firm grip against his body, using only the tips of his fingers to continue to dig lightly into my rib cage. It’s pissing me off at this point, making me yell at him in anger in between my bursts of laughter. Matt doesn’t give up, but keeps at it, laughing along with me from the enjoyment it’s giving him.