Page 44 of Never Forever

“She doesn’t treat me the same,” Annie said, and it was baffling but it was true. “I’m so excited for you,” Annie said, changing the subject to happier things.

“I’m so excited too,” I said.

Matt was going to be waiting at the dock. Patrick wasn’t running the ferry tonight which made me sad because I wouldn’t have a chance to say goodbye to him.

He hadn’t been on ferry duty when I got back from LA either.

But it’s not like Matt and I were leaving for good. We’d be home for the holidays and would see everybody then.

“I’ll call you once we get to Boston,” I told my sister.

“You’ll be too busy figuring things out with Matt,” Annie said. “What if he is a slob? Or worse, a neat freak? What if he has to sleep with the lights on? Or wants to get a dog?”

I laughed. Honestly, all the stuff would be easy after the last few weeks. It had been busy with the commercial and his graduating. Mom’s drama. We hadn’t had time to really talk, so it felt like there was all this distance between us.

I was looking forward to the train ride, nothing but time to talk.

“You have an open invitation to visit us anytime.”

“We’ll see how Mom feels about that,” Annie said.

“She’ll get over it,” I said confidently. Eventually, she was going to have to accept us. I got off the ferry with my two suitcases and made my way toward the end of the dock. The plan was for Matt to pick me up, and together we were going to the train station so he could leave the truck at the station’s parking lot for his dad to pick up later.

When I asked him why his dad wouldn’t just drive us to the train station, he changed the subject.

Thinking about it these past few weeks, he’d been doing that a lot. I had texts that went unanswered when I was out in LA thatI blamed on the time difference, but even since coming home, he hadn’t made any time to see me.

I might have been worried, but I knew Matt. He was just finishing packing and making sure his dad had everything he needed, before leaving town.

Matt: Meet me at the end of the dock.

That was what his last text said. If there was something wrong, he would have said so.

He wasn’t waiting for me at the dock like I expected, so I sat down on a bench next to a trash can and waited. Annie waited with me until it was time for the ferry to head back to the island.

“This is weird,” she said. “Where is he?”

“He’s coming,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. Because it was weird.

Annie left and I kept waiting.

There was a hard stone of dread in my stomach. Like when a pebble got accidentally put in the wash. It was just spinning around in there, thunking against the metal.

I pulled out my phone.

Me: Where are you?

No response. Because he was driving, I told myself. If he was driving here to get me, he couldn’t text back. We argued about that all the time.

I stood up and thought I’d just walk in the general direction of where he would be coming from, but that seemed crazy to do in the dark.

Finally, I saw the headlights. Matt’s truck.

Weirdly, my heart didn’t lift. Like it knew something I didn’t and got real quiet. Like the birds on the island before a storm.

The lights turned off and I heard his car door slam shut and the crunch of his boots over the gravel. His long shadow crossed the grass. He walked up to me with his hands in his pockets.

We’d had a weird month. I’d been gone. He’d been busy.