Bound Together (10 page)

“Or not.” He took a bite and smiled at me.

“I think my roommate Amanda brought some games. I could go up and get a deck of cards or something.”

He nodded. “I’ll come with you.”

When we reached my room, I left him in the open doorway holding both cups of gelato while I rummaged around in the room. I flung my black lace bra from the back of a chair to the other side of my bed
, hoping he hadn’t seen it
. “Cards?” I asked, holding up the deck.

“Or I could teach you how my brother and I used to play this.” He picked up a game of Scrabble.

“Scrabble?” My grandparents play
ed
Scrabble.

“Come on, you’ll like it.”

I shrugged and
shoved the game under my arm and followed him into the hall.

We set the game up on a small pedestal table in the street outside our hotel, lit only by strings of white Christmas lights that crisscrossed above us. We flipped over all the tiles.

“So you said you play this with your brother?” I asked.

“I used to
.”
He smiled like he was remembering something good. “If you’re up for it, the way we used to play was to each take nine tiles, rather than seven like the rules say and you can only spell perverted words.” He looked up for my re
action. “We were
kinda
immature
—
we don’t have to…”

“Are you kidding me?
Dirty Scrabble sounds way better than the regular way. Why nine tiles?” I asked.

“John said it made it easier to make better words.”

“John’s your brother?” I asked.

He nodded, but looked down, suddenly becoming fascinated by his tiles.

“So it’s just the two of you, then? No other siblings?”

His fingers stopped rearranging the tiles, but his eyes stayed cast down.
“Actually it’s just me now. John passed away last year.”

“Oh, I’m sorry
—
I didn’t know.” My hands felt clumsy on the table, I wanted to reach out and grab his hand, but I was bad at this stuff. I couldn’t even imagine
losing
one
of my siblings. They were my whole life.

We just sat in silence for a few seconds, Matt looking down at the table. When he looked up at me, his eyes were watery.

“Let’s make some dirty words in John
’s honor,” I
said.

He smiled.
“Let’s.”

I picked out nine tiles. They barely fit across the little tray. It was obviously designed to hold seven. After studying his tiles for a minute, Matt went first, laying the word MILF horizontally across the center of the board.

“Can you do that?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, slang, acronyms, anything goes. As long as it’s perverted.”

“John’s rules?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

He smiled and nodded.

I thought only using dirty words would be harder, but it turns out they came to me more naturally than regular words. I laid down GROIN next.

“Nice. John would be proud.” He reached over to refill the tiles on his tray. “So you have a sister, right?”

I remembered that he’d seen Cora and I at the Laundromat. “Yeah. And three little brothers.”

“Wow. Big family.”

“Yep.”
My thought exactly
—
who the hell had five kids nowadays?

He put down CUM next, then I laid down LOAD.

“
Good
one.” He gave me a fist bump across the table.

“So why didn’t you want to hang out with those guys tonight?”

He grew quiet and rearranged his tiles. “I don’t know, I guess I just feel like I have to pretend to be someone I’m not around a lot of people.
They expect me to be happy all the time and I’m just tired of faking it.”

I nodded. I understood. I didn’t fit most of the time. I knew he was paying me a compliment even without saying it. He didn’t have to be fake around me.

“Pussy has two s’s, right?
” he asked, a look of concentration on his face.

“Last time I checked.”

“Can we go with one?” he asked.

“
Pu
-
sy
,” I tried it out loud
. W
e cracked up laughing. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“Here.” He turned his letter towards me. “Help me.”
I
studied the tiles on his tray, then
rearranged the
m
and spelled the word NUDE.
“Y
ou’re good at this.” He grinned, and took the tiles to arrange on the board.

“Yeah, I don’t know what that says about me,” I said, but
soaked in his
compliment.

Chapter Twelve

Matt

By our second morning, I anticipated that Zoey wouldn’t be fully functioning until she had her coffee. I got us a table in the small breakfast nook off the hotel lobby, and carried saucers with one of everything over to our table. Chocolate croissants, pastries with sticky orange jam in the center, pale, thin yogurt topped with raisins, and soft cheeses with hunks of baguette. Zoey slid into the seat across from me, her eyes scanning the table. I flipped her coffee cup over just as the waitress came by with a pot of coffee. “Café?” she asked.

“
Oui
.”
I held up
Zoey’s
cup. When it was filled with steaming, creamy-frothed coffee, I sat it back down in front of her. She remained speechless as she eyed the coffee.

“Uh, thanks,” she recovered, fumbling for the mug.

After breakfast, our group set off on the twenty-minute walk toward Notre Dame. The streets were steep and winding and dotted with stone buildings and shops adorned with awning-covered windows. Bobby and Carson ran ahead of the group, practicing French swear words and cracking up laughing at the combinations they could put together.
Like cheese dick.
It made me miss the time I spent with just me and Zoey. She was low key, and there was a certain degree of sadness inside her that felt familiar, reliable to me.

Before long, Zoey and I found ourselves several paces behind the group. We walked in silence toward the river and then Notre Dame came into view – its two towers standing tall against the brilliant blue sky.

After rounds of class photos on the stone steps outside, Mr. Rhinehart finally ushered us inside. As soon as we stepped into the dimly lit,
soaring
cathedral my head tipped back in appreciation. It had an old, magical feel to it. A hushed silence fell over our group. Mr. Rhinehart
stepped in line to buy the group rate tickets and secure our audio guides for an English-speaking tour. Although it seemed more like a historic monument than an actual church,

We walked the twenty-minutes to get there, and when we crossed the river and saw its two towers standing against the blue sky, it was way better seeing it in person than in a history book photo.

After
Notre Dame
,
Zoey
and I grabbed a quick lunch,
eating pizza on a park bench.
Apparently here
you ordered one pizza per person.
Zoey
and I each got a
tomato basil pizza
. She didn’t want to take any chances ordering on her own,
so she just repeated my order. The pizza
was light and thin with a rich to
mato sauce and not much chees, and
weren’t shaped in a perfect circle like back at home,
but
I appreciated their imperfections.
It was delicious.

“Zoey, I just wanted to tell you, last night was cool—it felt really good talking about John like he was still real. I asked Chelsey to play perverted Scrabble with me once before and she wouldn’t, she told me to grow up.”

“I guess I just like dirty words more than most girls.”

“Well thanks anyways.”

“Anytime,” she said and stuffed the last of the pizza crust into her mouth. As small as she was, the girl could eat.

“So Zoey, tell me something most people don’t know about you.”

“Why?” she asked around the bite of pizza.

“I don’t know, just so we can get to know each other better. I mean we’ve been going to school together our whole lives, but I don’t really know anything about you.”

She swallowed down the pizza and stared at me blankly.

“Okay…I’ll start.” I wiped my mouth. “What do you want to know about me?” I asked.

She studied me and I suddenly felt self-conscious under her gaze. Did I have tomato sauce on my chin? “What did you mean on the plane when you said you wished there wasn’t more to your life than football?”

I ran my hand across my hair. “Ah, next question.”

She rolled her eyes. “How did your brother die?”

Man, she didn’t hold back. “I’d rather talk about him than his death.”

She nodded. “Okay, then tell me something about him.”

“He was three years older than me and I basically worshipped him growing up. I was like his shadow, but he never got annoyed with it somehow. He was a Marine, and when he came back from basic training he was built. That’s when I started working out. I always wanted to be like him, and now that he’s not here—it’s like I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Since it’s been a year everyone expects me to be moved on, and my parents don’t even talk about him anymore. Sorry, I don’t even know why I’m talking about this—I don’t mean to be such a downer.”

“I’m not really one for sunshine and rainbows if you haven’t noticed.”

“You’re alright, Zoey Marshall.”

“And you’re not as bad as I would’ve guessed.” She slugged my shoulder.

“Thanks?”

“Come on, we
gotta
get back,” she said, standing up, brushing crumbs from her lap.

“Hey—you didn’t tell me anything about you.”

“Just ask me something. What do you want to know?” she asked.

I thought for a second, trying to come up with something that would make her laugh. “Were you really wearing a bikini when I saw you at the Laundromat?”

She glared at me like I was a
perv
. “That’s what you want to know?”

I held up my hands in surrender. “What? I am a guy. I was just curious.”

“Well for your information, yes. Bathing suit bottoms can double for underwear in a pinch. I figured it was better than wearing nothing.”

I considered it and nodded. I hoped she couldn’t tell my neck was turning pink under the collar of my polo.

*****

After the group trip, where I would’ve appreciated the Zoey method—skipping ahead to see the good stuff,  and then another long dinner—where Zoey had me order for her—we were hanging out in the hotel lobby trying to think of what to do with our remaining hours of freedom before the curfew Mr. Rhinehart imposed.

Bobby was trying to convince a group to go down the street to a dance club he was sure would let us in.

“You’ll come right?” Bobby asked, looking at me.

I didn’t really care, but didn’t want people to think I was lame after skipping their group outing last night. “Sure.” I looked over at Zoey, sitting alone in the window seat drawing in her sketch pad. “Who’s going?” I asked Bobby.

“Just me, you, Amanda and Stephanie.
They’re upstairs getting dressed.” He grinned.

“Should we ask Zoey?” I nodded towards her.

“No. I want tonight to be fun. Plus,
there’s
two of them, two of us. It’s perfect.”

“I’m
gonna
ask her—I don’t just want to walk out past her without at least inviting her. She probably won’t even come.” I stood and headed towards her, hoping she would come.

“Big plans tonight?” she asked without looking up when I got closer.

“Come with me.” I sat down next to her, trying to see what she’d been drawing, but she moved the book away before I could see what it was.

“Bobby doesn’t want me there,” she said, closing the book and setting it aside. We looked over at him across the lobby. He scowled back at us.

“Forget Bobby, I want you there.”

“Why?” she challenged.

Man this girl didn’t take anything you told her without an argument.

“Because I don’t want to be the only one faking it around the happy people.”
I smiled at her. Amanda and Stephanie bounded down the stairs, giggling in tube tops and short skirts, further illustrating my point.

“Oh, I won’t be faking anything.”

“And that’s what I like about you. Come on, Zoey.” I pulled her up by her hands. “Go put your book away.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “It’ll be fun.”