Away From You (Back To You Book 2) (21 page)

“I can’t
believe it’s only four weeks away!” Ellie panted as she ran at a marathon pace
on the treadmill next to me.

“I know,” I
breathed smoothly, “are you getting nervous?”

She laughed.
“I’m only getting nervous about the prospect of falling flat on my face in
front of a hundred people. Not nervous about Spencer at all.”

Thankfully
Ellie was no longer shy about discussing her love for Spencer or the gooey
details of their impending wedding. She used to dance around the romantic stuff
for fear of making me cry. To her credit, during the Month of Gilmore, as I
affectionately called it, that was true. But two weeks into the Month of Muscle
and I was on my way to becoming the lean, mean, not-crying-at-everything
machine that I was today.

“Good to
hear.” I smiled at my friend. I was truly happy for her.

“I was
nervous about marrying Travis.” Catherine piped up. She was sitting on the
floor between our two treadmills, flipping through a fitness magazine.
Apparently she’d had enough working out for one day.

“You were?”
I asked, glancing down at her expression to see if she was being sarcastic. It
didn’t look like she was, but her dry humor was tricky sometimes.

“Well, yeah,
because we were so young and our dating history kind of left something to be
desired.”

“That’s
right you guys dated all through high school like Liv and Matt.” Ellie said,
immediately shooting me an apologetic face. “Oh, shit. My bad.”

I waved her
off. “It’s fine.”

“Yeah we
did, but it was really off and on. He kept putting all of this pressure on me
and I was always trying to push him away. It was a really repetitive dance that
we kept doing for like all of high school. And when he joined the Marines I was
kind of excited to date other people or whatever without him always being there
to mess it up.”

“How did he
mess it up?” Ellie asked.

Catherine
shrugged. “I don’t know, just by existing. We lived in a small town so everyone
dated everyone in high school and he would just always be there and I would
always wind up breaking up with
whoever
I was with and
getting back with him. And sometimes he would sabotage my relationships, too.
Twisted, I know. It was all very 90210 – but in the sticks.”

Ellie cocked
her head thoughtfully. “I think by definition, 90210 is the opposite of the
sticks.”

Catherine
and I laughed.

“Anyway,”
she continued, “I did date a bit while he was in boot camp but I still wrote
him letters and stuff. And then when he came back he proposed to me and I
actually didn’t think he was serious. It took me forever to answer him because
I was so shocked. He holds it over my head to this day, too. In a joking way.”

“You guys
are so funny.” I shook my head at her. Knowing them now, you would never know
that they had such a dramatic start to their relationship because they just
seemed so perfect for each other. But with Catherine’s relentless sarcasm and
attitude, they did bicker a lot. It was more of a flirting thing though, in my
opinion. Like when a little girl is mean to a boy that she likes.

My phone
buzzed in the cup holder of my treadmill and I reached for it, still trying to
keep my pace and read the screen. I almost tripped over my own feet when I saw
who
the call was from.

“Holy shit.”
I gasped. “He’s calling me.”

Catherine
stood
up,
eyes wide, and Ellie jumped onto the side
rails of the treadmill and turned it off.

“Answer it!”
Ellie waved her arms in excitement.

I lowered
the speed of my treadmill to a stop and answered the phone, taking a deep
breath. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Matt
said.

I didn’t
know what to say, so I just waited.

“How are
you?” he asked.

“I’m…” I
hesitated. Would it be weird to say that I was good? Was this one of those
times when you’re just supposed to say you’re fine and continue the
conversation, or did he actually want to know how I was?

Matt
chuckled, seeming to know what I was thinking. “Yeah, me too.”

“So, what’s
up?”

“I was
wondering if you wanted to have coffee with me.”

I shot Ellie
and Catherine a surprised look and mouthed the word ‘coffee’ to them. They both
nodded encouragingly.

“Coffee
sounds good,” I answered.

“Okay, do
you want to meet me at that coffee shop at the beach? Or I can meet you
wherever you want. It’s up to you.”

I shook my
head even though he couldn’t see me. “No, that coffee shop is perfect. When?”

“How about
now?”

I balked.
“Uh, how about in about an hour or so?”

“Oh, yeah,
that’s fine. Hey, if you’re busy, we can always do it another day.”

“No, no! I’m
just at the gym right now and I need to go home and shower.”

He paused.
“You’re at the
gym
?”

“Yeah,” I
shrugged nonchalantly, another gesture he wouldn’t see. “I work out a little.”

Catherine
and Ellie rolled their eyes and snickered quietly at me.

“Huh.
Interesting. Alright, well, I guess I’ll see you in about an hour?”

I couldn’t
help but smile. “Sounds good!”

It took all
that I had not to tell him I loved him before we disconnected. Hearing his
voice after so long was simultaneously familiar and alien. It would have been
habit to tell him I loved him, but there was just enough of that foreign
awkwardness of our time apart to keep me from saying it. He didn’t say it
either, but there was definitely an audible silence that preceded the end of
the call that told me he might have been about to.

“Holy shit.”
I said again, holding my phone to my chest and feeling my heart hammering
beneath it.

“So if
you’re planning to go home and shower and then meet him in an hour… you should
probably go.” Catherine pointed out.

“Right.” I
gathered my stuff in a hurry, feeling the tiny shaking in my hands and
butterflies in my belly. The other girls packed up their belongings, too. We
walked out together and when we got to the parking lot I was so frazzled that I
almost just got in my car and left without saying a word to them.

“Hello?” Catherine
said, dragging out the word.

I turned on
my heel and laughed in spite of myself. “Sorry! I’d hug you but I’m all sweaty.
I’ll call you both and let you know how it goes.”

“Screw that,
Facetime us while you’re there and hide your phone in a bush.” Ellie suggested.

“Okay,
sure,” I snorted.

Ellie looked
at Catherine with a raised brow. “Does she think I’m kidding?”

*

I pulled
into the parking lot of the coffee shop a little more than an hour later. My
heart skipped a beat when I saw Matt sitting at a table out front. He was doing
something on his phone so he hadn’t seen me drive up. I watched him for a
moment, not able to get the nerve to get out of my car yet. Our favorite part
about going to that particular shop was the fact that the view from the patio
was an unobstructed view of the beach out front. We used to sit there for hours
reading or talking with really good refillable coffee.

There was a
saying about how the cure for heartache was salt – tears, sweat, and the
sea. I’d spent the first month of our break in tears; the second covered in
sweat, and now all I could think about was the third type of salt – the
sea. It would make sense that this hugely important conversation would happen
here, of all places.

Matt looked
up and met my gaze through the windshield. I got out and slowly approached him,
fighting the urge to run into his arms like a scene from a movie. He looked
great, dressed in jeans, flip-flops, and a blue V-neck tee. I gestured to my
own jeans and blue tank top, laughing at the similarity in our ensembles. It
was a good icebreaker because we both chuckled and relax a bit as I came
closer.

“Hey,” I
hugged him, intending to break away quickly but smiling when he held me close.

“Hi,” he
said, his breath tickling my neck. We separated and he gestured to the table.
“I already got the usual, I hope that’s okay.”

“That’s
perfect, thanks.”

I sat down
across from him, flustered that it felt like a first date with the person who
knew me best in the whole world. I couldn’t get over how strange it was to look
at him as a stranger at the same time as seeing him as my long-time love. I
wondered if he felt the same sensation when he looked at me.

“So,” he
said, seeming to want to get right to business, “I think we should date.”

“Date? Like,
other people?”

He laughed.
“No. Don’t be ridiculous. Date
each
other.
It was actually Hawk’s idea. Remember when we told him to take Ellie
out on dates and stuff to kind of start over?”

I nodded.
“Yes, I remember. And he thinks that’s what we should do now?”

“Well, I
mean, it worked for them.” He chuckled.

Oh, yes, it
had definitely worked for them. If I remembered correctly, they went on one
properly planned date and wound up sleeping together for the first time at my
house that night. Hopefully Matt wasn’t entertaining any ideas that it would be
that easy to get me back into bed. On second thought, it probably wouldn’t be
too incredibly difficult. I’d been waiting for him to be ready to be with me
– not the other way around. But he didn’t need to know that. If he wanted
to date, we’d do it right.

“I think
that’s a good idea. I mean
,
we haven’t really ever
dated as adults since we were so young when we got together. I think that would
be fun.”

“That’s what
I was thinking, too.” He smiled, eyes twinkling.

I took a
deep breath. I didn’t want to bring down the mood, but his mental health was
forefront in my mind. “How are you doing though, Matt? How’s therapy?”

“It’s going
well. I’m still working on everything, but I wouldn’t have called otherwise. He
says I have PTSD, which I know you already figured. We’ve been working on my
symptoms and I still have a long way to go, but recently I’ve just been having
a lot of good days in a row. Last session he suggested that it might be time to
tell you about what happened to me and bring you in to my recovery.”

I raised my
brow in surprise. “Is that so?”

“We talk a
lot about you and what I think went wrong with our relationship. I want you to
know that I get that it was my fault. I pushed you away and I’m sorry. But he
told me that that’s common with PTSD because I just don’t know how to process
what happened and have a hard time managing my emotions. He said this disorder
is really hard on relationships.”

I nodded. He
sure sounded like he was absorbing his sessions. “That makes sense.”

“So, do you
want to hear about what happened?” He fidgeting with the cardboard sleeve of
his coffee cup, looking nervous for the first time since we’d sat down. “It
took a while, but I think I’m finally ready to tell you.”

“As long as
you’re ready to tell me, I’m ready to hear it.” I answered, reaching across the
table and taking his hand in mine. Part of me almost expected him to pull away,
but this warmer and more receptive version of Matt seemed glad for my touch. I
felt the pulse of the electricity between us and relished in the sense that no
matter how long we’d spent in limbo recently, the connection and love between
us was still there.

Matt took a
sip of his coffee and blew out a shaky breath. “Okay, well, it started just
like any other day. We were on the bus heading to work, and when we got there I
made a stop at the laundry room to drop off my clothes. Sometimes I wonder
where I would have been when the shooting started if I hadn’t stopped to drop
off my laundry. Maybe things would have turned out differently, and I wouldn’t
have had to do what I did. But Dr. Brann said that kind of thinking was bad for
the healing process. I can’t change what happened, and imagining different
scenarios wouldn’t help me recover.”

I pursed my
lips, suddenly nervous about where the story was going. I knew, of course, that
he had gotten shot and so had Brooks, but since neither of them died I thought
that the part that he wanted to change must be the thing that messed him up so
bad. Ever since his symptoms first started, I’d tried to get him to talk to me,
but he wasn’t ready. Thoughts of what could be haunting him were never far from
my mind, and the idea of him having to use deadly force seemed plausible. I
wanted so badly to ask him if that was what happened, but I could never bring
myself to say the words.

“Anyway,” he
continued, realizing that he’d digressed from his story, “so Brooks and I were
having a smoke outside the gate of the flight line when we heard this huge
blast. We ran in there and one of the jets was on fire. At first I thought
maybe it was some kind of freak explosion, but then realized that we were being
attacked. Everyone was shooting. It was chaos.”