Capture the World (7 page)

She turns the volume up on the television. “Jet lag, my jewel,” she replies.

Ignoring Matthew, I climb onto the bed with her, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Goodnight, Mama.”

We sneak out of the bedroom.

In the hallway, Matthew leans against the wall opposite me and exhales. “Okay, well, that was—”

“Strange,” I supply.

“Incredible,” he finishes.

My gaze flies to his face, to the rough angles accentuated by the dim light. His jaw is covered in light stubble, his eyes tired but bright. I wonder how much trouble he got in for hitting Kagen.

Astounded, he shakes his head. “How does your mom know all of that?”

Bracing my back against the wall, I shrug. “Books, documentaries, and brochures. Anything that has something in it about the world.”

“A walking atlas.”

I’d never thought of it that way.

“My jewel? Is that a nickname?” he asks.

My stomach plummets. If only he knew. “Yeah.”

“I like it.” He flashes me a grin. “I haven’t done anything like that since I was a kid. You know, pretending that way? Unless you count sipping fake tea with my niece, and trust me, you never want to do that.”

“Why?”

“Last time we had tea, the cup wasn’t empty,” he grimaces, “and I honestly never want to find out what was in it.”

“That bad?”

“The next twenty-four hours was hell.”

“Ew!” My laughter fills the heated hall.

Silence. Time stretches.

Matthew waits. Stares. Studies me.

The hallway is too intimate a space. The narrow walls keep us close, my white sock-covered feet resting against his tennis shoes on the carpet. The relics of dinner—pot roast and chocolate cake—hover in the air. Aunt Trish helps Uncle Bobby with his paperwork—she with her tea and he with his coffee—and their chatter filters up the stairs, soft and comfortable. Occasionally, especially during the winter, the house pops, settling. Our roof rattles when the wind blows too hard, the air lifting a loose piece of tin over the living room. One day we’ll fix it.

The noises all mean something to me.

 
“What’s it like,” I gesture at my ears, “without the hearing aids?”

Matthew eyes me, surprised, a soft sound slipping from his lips. “I think you’re the first person outside of my family who’s ever asked me that.” Glancing up, he studies the ceiling. It’s low and covered in spackle, the white yellowed with age. “I have moderate hearing loss. If the world was a television, it would be like listening to it on the lowest volume. Everything is muffled.”

Out of nowhere, he leans forward, covering my ears with his hands.

I jump, my hands flying to clutch his, heat filling my face. His palms are calloused, rough from basketball and life, and I like the way they feel against my skin, abrasive and real.

He’s talking, his lips moving, but his words are barely audible, like he’s speaking to me from another room, a wall between us.

“This is what you hear?” My words are too loud, competing with the sudden thundering beat of my heart.

Chuckling, he drops his hands. “That’s the hardest part. Learning to talk without yelling. As a kid, I spent a good deal of time embarrassing my mother in public. Not because I couldn’t hear, but because I’d shout things most people wouldn’t say out loud.”

His distant gaze fills with memories. “My mother was getting groceries once. I was around seven, I think, and we hadn’t had a good meal in a while. It was before my dad’s restaurant really took off, and we had to get government assistance for a few years. Mom had a lot of mouths to feed. Halfway through shopping, I got really excited by all of the food and yelled, loud as I could, ‘Ma, having food stamps is like being rich!’”

The story shocks a choking snort out of me, and I gasp, “You didn’t!”

He laughs with me. “Ma loves telling that story. But hey,” he shrugs, “we’d been low on food for a while. I was only being honest.
Deafeningly
honest.”
 

Pure, unadulterated laughter rolls off of me because I can see him—lanky, innocent, and excited—yelling at the top of his lungs, his mother’s cheeks turned pink at the cry. I double over, happy tears blurring my eyes. It feels good to laugh this big, unfiltered and no-holds-barred.

“What about you?” Matthew asks, dimples on full display. “Come on, give it to me, your funniest childhood story.”

“Oh no,” I gasp, still chuckling. “No way! You’re not getting one of those out of me.”

He ducks his head, eyes twinkling. “I told you one of mine.”

“You offered it,” I point out.

“Fair enough.” His megawatt smile robs me of words, ties up my tongue, and leaves me mute.

My aunt appears on the stairs, her intrusion throwing us into silence. “Would you like something to eat?” she asks Matthew, her curious gaze studying the two of us. “I could warm something up.”

He pushes away from the wall; the intimate spell we’d been caught in shattered. “No, thank you. I’ve got to get going anyway. Ma will have something waiting.”

Aunt Trish is a younger version of my mother, her shoulder-length brown hair bobbed and layered to frame her face. A red pullover sweater rests over a pair of worn jeans, her feet bare.

“If you’re sure,” she replies, shooting me a sidelong glance.

“Trish,” Uncle Bobby calls, his warning tone helpful but too late to save the moment.

She leaves, and it’s like someone has pressed stop in the middle of a movie—before the best part—and rewound it back to the beginning. We’re strangers who live on the same street and go to the same school. Two people who’ve swapped a few stories and shared a moment.

The night is over.
 

Matthew is headed out the front door, the chilly night air blasting into the house, when he stops, pierces me with his gaze, and says, “I want you to try something with me.”

I’ve swallowed a ball, or it feels like it anyway.

Shrugging inside his jacket, he drops his gaze. “Spend some time with me outside the house. Maybe around town. Just friends.”

His breath crystallizes in the air between us, and I catch myself reaching for the tiny cloud puffs.

My fingers curl, nails biting into my palms. “Let’s not.” Reality crashes down on me, and I glance down at myself, at the dark blue skinny jeans and black and gold Saints sweatshirt I have on. “Thank you for what you did up there, for coming over and being okay around my mother, but,” I inhale, “I can’t.”

It felt good to laugh, to have someone experience the world my mother belongs to with me, but in the end, it also feels manipulated.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “It just—”

“Do this with me,” he insists. “No ulterior motives, I promise.” The porch light ages him. He’s a giant looming over me, long lashes shading eyes like warm hot chocolate in winter.

“Because you feel sorry for me,” I whisper, chin rising so he can see my lips.

Behind him, the earth is dark. A canvas of stars hangs over us, and I wonder what it would look like if they fell all at once, glitter or fireworks. The wind smells like frost and pine needles.

“Did you know your mother’s window faces our house?” Rubbing his hands together, Matthew blows into them. “I’ve seen the way you stand in it sometimes, hugging yourself, and it just seemed right.”

My heart trips over itself, trying to get away from me, stunned and confused. “What seemed right?”

“Me saving you.”

I laugh, the sound short, my breath exploding white and wild in the dark. “So you have white knight syndrome, is that it? Whatever. I’m good, thanks.”

“No, I don’t,” he argues, eyes blazing. “My nonna may have pushed me a little, and before tonight—seeing you with your mom—I may have second guessed this whole thing, but …” He stares at me, eyes narrowing. “You have no idea, do you? I mean, no idea at all.”

I go blank. “No idea about what?”

He laughs, short and incredulous. “How beautiful you are.”

Oh … what?

A lifetime of silence settles between us. I am dreaming. This is a dream. I’ve fallen asleep in my room, and I’m going to wake up any moment and realize this was never real. Me? Reagan Lawson—pale-faced, petite, and exceptionally less curvy than most girls—beautiful?

And they call me crazy.

I have an out of body experience that makes me want to do things completely un-Reagan like … like maybe kiss the school’s star basketball player because he just called me beautiful. Or pinch him … you know, to make sure he’s real.

Having him so near is suddenly too much and not enough. I want to grab him, hold onto him, and never let go. Not because I like him—
whatever, Reagan
—but because this is the first night since the decision about Mom was made that I don’t feel empty, like I’m falling down a dark hole I can’t climb out of only to wake up tangled in white sheets, the fabric too cold against my skin.

Does stress make a completely sane person think about wrapping herself like a pretzel around a guy she just started talking to? Do I want to be sane?

“There’s gotta be something else, right? About me?” I ask.

I’m not fishing for compliments. It’s just all so surreal.

His rough fingers brush my face, frigid against my warm cheeks. “You’re mysterious.”

And just like that the moment is gone. I’m not dreaming, and I’m no longer tempted to pinch him. Because, if I was having a delusion, he wouldn’t have called me that.

I don’t want to be mysterious. Most girls would, but not me. “And when the mystery is gone? When you figure everything out, and you realize it’s not as intriguing as you think it is?”

He doesn’t stop to think. “I don’t know.”

His honesty does it for me. It just does.

Grinning, he quirks a brow. “You’re caving, aren’t you?”

“What about today? Everything with Kagen?” I gather my hair in a ponytail, bunching it up at the back of my head, and then free it. “You don’t want to be friends with me, Moretti.”

He touches me again, gentle and sweet, a friendly touch, as if he’s coaxing a skittish horse into letting him ride it. It sends a flurry of sensations racing through me. “You didn’t hear the entire argument, the part where he …” He glances away, then finds my face again. “Kagen is jealous. It’s easier to call you crazy than it is to approach you. He’s jealous because my family gave me an excuse to do just that. They gave me an excuse to talk to you. Say yes, Reagan. Let me be your friend.
Really
be your friend. It’ll be painless, I promise.”