Flat-Out Matt (13 page)

Flat-Out Love
Chapter 32 retold

Matt Watkins
Sometimes I feel depressed that I've wasted so much time, and I'm still no closer to discovering the resonant frequency of the human head.

Julie Seagle
just “checked in” to your heart.

Years ago, Finn told Matt what he should do.
Let your world as you know it be blown to bits because you fall heart-crushingly head-over-heels for someone.
Matt had done that. And then he’d fought as hard as he could not to lose her that day last spring when Julie walked out of his life. He’d fought as
hard
as he could, and it didn’t help. His conversation with Julie—when the truth came out and when he begged her to stay—played over and over in his head all summer. Her words kept him up at night.

This was never going to end well. You realize that, don’t you?

And you’re so broken.

And you hurt me.

We’re not anything, Matt. Not after this.

You’ve broken my heart twice.

Nothing that happened has been true.

If you loved me, you couldn’t have done this. You couldn’t have been so careless with me. You know pain and loss and hurt better than anyone. And that’s what you gave me. I know that it’s not the same. I know yours is worse. I’m so sorry for you, Matt. For your whole family. You’ve all been through hell. And you’ve been braver than anyone could. But I hurt now too. And I can’t love you.

Matt had kissed her, poured out his heart, pleaded with her to give them a chance. He threw everything he had on the table, and Julie left him anyway. Matt didn’t blame her.

He wrote to her many times, hoping that communicating by e-mail would be easier and that he might be able to reach her. She was worth the pain it took to write her because he would never love anyone this deeply. The only response he got was one message asking him not to be the one to bring Celeste to any of the meet-ups with Julie. Eventually he stopped writing. He finally accepted that she would never love him.

So he let her go.

But then this morning, she came to Celeste’s going-away party for Flat Finn. He knew she would be there, and he expected her to be tactful but cool. She wasn’t a vicious person, but she clearly wasn’t coming to the party for him. So he prepared himself to be as polite as she would surely be, and he also prepared to have his heart torn out again.

Instead she ran to him, right into his arms. Never had he been so shaken by love. And he heard words that changed everything.

I missed you.

It was always you. I thought it was somebody else, but it was you. You were the person I felt.

I love you.

I want to jump with you, Matt. For real this time.

The nightmare was over.

Right now, on what was turning out to be the most surprising and wonderful day of his life, Matt and Julie stood by the open door of the plane, the wind raging and the sky calling. She was strapped closely to him, her back pinned to his chest as they readied for their tandem jump. She looked adorable in her jumpsuit, helmet, and goggles, and her energy and excitement were palpable. He couldn’t believe that she wanted to do this with him. And not just the skydive.

It was loud in the cabin, but he put his mouth to her ear. “Are you scared?”

“No!” she yelled above the noise.

He smiled. “Are you scared?”

“Yes! Yes, I’m scared!” Matt could feel her laughing against him.

“I’m here! I’ve got you!”

She nodded hard. She knew.

Matt looked to his left to one of the instructors he’d known back when he jumped with Finn. He got a smile and a thumbs-up, so Matt walked Julie to the edge. He had never been so happy. “Do you feel the rush? You feel it?”

It took her a minute, but she nodded. She had to feel it. The clear day gave them a spectacular and expansive view. There was no denying how high they were or what they were about to do.

The words he used as Finn came out. “You can do this. You’re strong enough, and you’re brave enough. You can do anything.”

She nodded again.

Julie crossed her arms over her chest, just like she’d been taught in today’s training.

Matt put his hand on her forehead and tucked her head back hard against his shoulder. “Here we go, tough girl.” He grabbed the metal bar above and rocked them back and forth. One, two, three times.

And then they jumped.

The fall was smooth. It must be happening in slow motion, Matt thought. It was quiet, the ripping noise of the air nearly inaudible.

Matt could feel Finn so profoundly in this freefall. The grief was still sharp, yes, but he was equally affected by how much he just damn adored Finn and how unbelievably lucky he was to have had the brother he did. Not everyone gets that. Matt had Finn’s love and playfulness and devotion when he was alive, and now, even after his brother’s death, Matt still had those in his heart. That was something pretty damn beautiful.

With Flat Finn folded and secured in the pack on his back, Matt knew that this freefall was for Finn, for Julie, for Celeste, for his parents, and for himself. He floated with Julie, just the two of them in the infinite sky, as together they healed in the aftermath of devastation.

He didn’t want it to end, but he was ready for the landing this time. “Hold on. I’m pulling the chute.”

“Woo hoo!” Her thrill rang loud in his head and his soul. Julie loved this. And she loved him.

He yanked the cord, jettisoning them up briefly as the chute opened, then slowing their descent so that they drifted.

The view was gorgeous, and the landscape in Western Massachusetts came into focus as they floated over acres of green foliage and grassy fields. There was so much out there, and Matt had been lost in his cloistered life for far too long. No more. It was time to reconnect, to explore, and to dream again. With Julie. Maybe they would travel this year? There were places to visit, new people to meet, experiences to savor. There was life to be lived.

“We’re about to land, so get ready to run,” Matt told her.

When the ground was just beneath them, they both started running in the air until their feet hit the grass. As they ran, the force of the landing threw Matt harder than he was expecting, and they fell forward. He caught himself on his arms just before his weight crushed Julie.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Hell, yes, I’m okay!” She was breathing hard, the exhilaration coursing through her system in the same way that it was for Matt.

He reached between them and undid the buckles that kept them together. He held himself above her, frozen, because this was the hard part. She wasn’t strapped to him any longer. She could go.

Julie rolled onto her back under him and lifted off both of their helmets and goggles while she caught her breath. 

“Matty.” She smiled. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“That was fun. Like, really, really fun.”

“Good.” Matt tried, but he wasn’t able to smile with her.

She grew serious. “What is it?”

He couldn’t answer.

She touched his cheek, studying him and reading him in the way that only Julie did. “Are you scared?”

“No.”

She asked again. “Are you scared?”

“Yes.”

“That I’ll leave? That I’ll get up and walk away?” She was sending his own words back to him, bringing their online life further into reality.

“Yes.”

“I won’t do that. I won’t leave.” Julie reached her arms around his neck. “Close your eyes, Matthew, and listen while I tell you how I feel about you.”

He did what she asked.

“You are my everything,” Julie said. “You are challenging, and difficult, and guarded. I love those things about you. You are fascinating, and complex, and brilliant, and funny. I love those things about you, too. I am in love with your selflessness and your ability to sacrifice too much. I am in love with the parts of you that fear and that hurt and that push people away. I am love in with your vulnerability and your strength. I am in love with your capacity to love harder and with more loyalty than I ever imagined anyone could. I am in love with the choices you’ve made, even the mistakes, because they brought us to where we are right now. More than those things, I am very simply in love with you and everything that you are. Your past, your present, and your future.” She touched her fingers to him, tracing his lips and then moving across his jaw and over his cheek. “I think about you all the time, and I can’t get you out of my head. I am listening to my heart,
finally
, without doubting anything. And I will never stop.” And then she kissed him. Long and hard and endlessly, only eventually slowing. “Now open your eyes and look at me. I feel everything that you feel, Matt. I always have, and I know that now. And it is time to stop hurting.”

Matt dropped his head and rested his cheek on hers, not caring that Julie felt the tears now pressed between them.

I did it, Finn. I did it. I was ready to jump, and now she’s jumping with me. 

Flat-Out Love
, Bonus Chapter 33, Julie’s Point of View

Matt Watkins
I will never compromise on my poorly-thought-out, internally-inconsistent, quasi-irrational principles. That's just how I roll.

Julie Seagle
You are my favorite status reader in the whole wide world. Yes, you.

Celeste Watkins
has no contractual obligation to use contractions. So maybe she will use them, and maybe she will not… So maybe she’ll use them, and maybe she won’t.

Julie leaned her head against the window and looked at Matt as he drove. He was clearly trying as hard as she was to keep from smiling. The effort was particularly adorable on his part, considering that he was not prone to walking around grinning at the slightest thing. It was wonderful to see him happy. Not that she didn’t love his serious side. While Julie could be reduced to silliness at the mere mention of, for instance, any one of the Kardashians, Matt was more controlled. Controlled, disciplined, focused.

Not bad qualities for a number of things.

She shifted in her seat and drifted her hand over his thigh. Matt took a deep breath and gave her a quick glance before staring back at the highway in front of them. He tightened his hand over hers.

Aha!
He was just as squirmy as she was.

“Why aren’t you two saying anything? This is incomprehensible!” Celeste leaned forward from the back seat and popped her head between them. “There has been a major event, and it seems that it would be appropriate for both of you to be engaging in some sort of dialogue in which you detail the experience.”

Julie couldn’t stop watching Matt as she spoke. “I jumped out of an airplane,” she said slowly.

“I know, Julie! You did, didn’t you! It was an act of outstanding bravery, if you ask me.”

“I jumped out of a goddamn airplane.” She was aware that she was still reeling from the day. Still in shock. The last thing that she wanted right now was another rapid-fire conversation, but with Celeste around, avoiding that would be nearly impossible. Stringing coherent words together was simply not easy, though.

“Say more,” Celeste demanded.

“I jumped out of a goddamn airplane with Matt.” She paused. “Because of Matt.
For
Matt.”

She heard him catch his breath. “Julie.”

The sound in his voice now, the way he spoke her name….

There was a new tone there that she wanted more of. She could feel the ache between them now. The need. This morning she kissed Matt, threw her arms around him, and told him how totally wrong she’d been to walk away from him before. Then she felt that first surge of crazy heat that came after months of denying what they meant to each other. And now that they’d jumped from that plane together, Julie couldn’t get over how deeply she trusted Matt.

Celeste sighed happily and sunk back into her seat. “I find that quite the romantic declaration. Yes, it’s true that I may not be the utmost expert on romance, but I can say for sure that gestures like this must certainly be up there with Romeo and Juliet’s. Although clearly those two died at the end of their story, and fortunately there was no glitch with your chute because here you are. Alive and well. Obviously.”

Matt practically snorted. “Gee, thank you for that, Celeste. I bet Julie made cardboard cutouts of us, though. You know, just in case.”

“Jesus, Matt,” Julie muttered.

“Ha! I thought that was funny. Don’t worry, Julie, I can appreciate some teasing regarding Flat Finn. Granted, that joke was still morbid and disturbing, but considering that has been my family’s predominant theme for so long, I am quite comfortable with it.”

Matt squeezed Julie’s hand again. “You do know that we weren’t going to die, right?”

“Yes, Matthew. Today was certainly not about creative suicide. At all. It was about us. Also,” she said more softly, “I should point out that the day is not over.”

The car picked up noticeable speed. “How many more exits until we’re home?” he asked.

“Why are you in such a rush?” Celeste demanded. “It’s only six o’clock.”

“I just…. I just would like to get you back to the house.”

“What about you? Won’t you two be staying for dinner? I bet we could get Mom and Dad to watch a movie with us. Mom will probably try popping popcorn kernels herself in that idiotic oversized pot she likes so much, and we’ll all be stuck eating charred nuggets, but it could be nice and representative of a highly functional family.”

Matt cleared his throat. “I’m just going to drop you off, Celeste.”

“Oh. Are you and Julie going somewhere? What will you be doing? There’s a Greek festival in the South End this evening. That could be delightful, don’t you think? Spanikopita, baklava, and lots of yogurt items, I imagine.”

Julie grinned. “Is that what you were thinking, Matt? Are you in the mood for a little music and dancing? A tour of the Greek cathedral, perhaps?”