Hearing his name actually hurts, as if someone’s grabbed my heart and squeezed it. “He’s fine, I guess.”
“You guess?”
I shrug.
Matty tilts his head. “O-kay,” he says slowly. “Talk.”
I exhale heavily. I wish someone had warned me that breakups were like this. It isn’t something that happens to you once. It’s something that happens over and over again every time you have to explain it, and it’s just as painful every time. “There’s nothing to say. It didn’t work out, that’s all.”
“Didn’t work out,” Matty repeats. “For fuck’s sake, Keeping. I told you to call me if anything happened.”
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Matty watches me for a long moment. “How long were you two dating?”
I shoot him a flat stare, which he ignores. “A year,” I say grudgingly.
“Were you having problems? Before the crash, I mean.”
“No.” My frustration spills out into the word. It’s something I’ve been thinking about constantly. All the signs I might’ve missed, the warnings I might not have picked up on. “We were fine.”
Matty raises a doubtful eyebrow. “A dangerous word, fine. Every time my girlfriend says something’s fine, I know I’m in real trouble.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say. “Everything was great.”
Except he wouldn’t tell his parents about you, a nasty voice pipes up.He wouldn’t tell his friends.
“Hm.” Matty pulls a dubious face. Then he stands, holding a hand out to help pull me to my feet. “Tell you what, my parents are in town for the race, and my mom’s going to make dinner tonight. Why don’t you join us?”
“I really don’t—”
“Seven thirty, sounds great,” Matty interrupts. “I’ll text you the address later.”
“I don’t think—” My feeble protest dies as Matty scowls at me. “Yeah, alright,” I mutter.
He grins and thumps me on the arm. “Attaboy. Now hurry your ass up, practice is starting soon.”
17
All Yours
Things hadn’t always been great between Jacob and me. Or at least, there were times early on when I’d been uncertain. But then one weekend everything had changed, and I’d stopped worrying altogether.
It had been two months since our time together in Scotland. Two months of stolen weekends and intermittent texting and the occasional brief phone call. Then one weekend, the F2 and F1 schedules overlapped in Montreal, and Jacob showed up at my hotel room late Thursday night. It had been two weeks since we’d seen each other, and I barely had time to say hello before he was in my arms, kissing me hard enough to bruise. Eight hours later, I woke up to the smell of coffee and the sight of Jacob getting dressed at the foot of the bed. He grinned when he saw me.
“I didn’t want to wake you up. I’ve got an early practice.”
I rose up on my elbows. “Are you around tonight?”
“Nah, I’ve got a date,” he said, tying his shoe on the edge of the bed. “But I’ll be around tomorrow.”
His words took a second to register. When they did, something cold fluttered in my chest. “You’ve got a date?”
My tone must not have betrayed my feelings, because Jacob’s expression didn’t change. “Yeah,” he said easily. “This girl I knew in high school lives here now. We’re going to hit up some fancy restaurant.”
“Oh.”
He finished tying his other shoe and straightened. “I’ll text you tomorrow, yeah?”
