In Waves | ✔️

06 | pitfalls

My wheels haven't stopped turning since I left the record store.

All throughout work I thought of Matt and how sweet he is, and how surreal it was being in his car and hugging him this morning. Thinking about him gets me so worked up it's as if I have ten cups of coffee vibrating through my system, making me so jittery and queasy that I have to take controlled breaths to calm down.

But then these flashes of Nate Miller shove in, and it annoys me because I've never even thought about this person until he knocked me into the sand. And now he's just there, barging his way in. 

That's how it goes. My mind holds Matt's sky blue eyes and loops every look he gave me today, every interaction, every smile, and then bam! Nate knocks him into oblivion and the loop starts over with his forest green eyes and his big grin and honey-soaked laugh.

I look at my fingers in my lap. The electric current he caused is still humming under my skin. I curl them into my palm, squeezing hard until they go numb.

Mom adjusts the AC, keeping her irritated watch on the road. Rob didn't show up to the restaurant. Go figure. I didn't tell her he ditched work to suck face with some random girl. If I did, she'd be angry enough to race home with tracks of fire in her wake.

"Sorry again that I couldn't find Rob earlier," I say. "I'm sure he just forgot."

"He has a goldfish memory now, hm?" Her knuckles go pale on the steering wheel. "We both know he would've been dragging his feet anyway, but still, lord knows your brother has a knack for pushing my buttons. Showing up for one shift is not hard, and neither is answering a damn phone. This is just a preview of his attitude being amped up for senior year, isn't it?"

I would counter that point, except I know it's one-hundred percent true. Rob has been a defiant pain in the butt my whole life, so I can only assume he came out of the womb kicking and screaming harder than any baby that's ever been born. Ever.

For crying out loud, one of my earliest memories of him is his toddler-self proudly standing next to a mountain of flower heads he ripped from my mom's beloved rosebushes.

I watch the glowing streetlights flit by as Mom mutters to herself in Italian. I only catch a few words because she's speaking too fast, and my Italian is so rusty it's practically non-existent at this point.

She gives a long, tired sigh. "At least I still have one good child. Promise that won't change, farfallina."

"Cross my heart."

Her annoyed mood melts away in a matter of seconds. "You never even told me how your first day back was."

"It was good." The neon green door of the record store grabs my eyes as we pass, and I pull them to the front, focusing on the illuminated road. "You know, typical first day stuff."

"Yeah? So... no boy stuff?"

My stomach lurches, the carbonara I devoured in the restaurant kitchen coming dangerously close to my throat. "What? No, why would you ask that?"

"Please, you think I can't see the signs? You wore an extra cute outfit today, you finally used that perfume I got you for Christmas, and you've been walking on sunshine all afternoon. No one is that enthusiastic about work, not even you." She doesn't even have to make contact; her voice is giving me a nudge on its own. "So, who is he?"

Jumping from a moving car to get out of this conversation wouldn't hurt too bad, right? Not that it would stop Mom. She'd speed me to the hospital and keep on prying as soon as I was bandaged up.

"It's Matt," I slowly admit. "Benson."

She quickly turns to me with moons for eyes. "Lia! The one you've been pining over forever?"