“Why?”
He lowers his voice to a near whisper. “Do you ever wonder why Roland ended up the way he did in college? Star basketball player for a D-one school that ends up washed up, alone, and no titles to show for it just a couple of years later?”
“Every single day,” I admit somewhat absently.
Matt takes a deep breath. “My dad may have made it through college in one piece, but that says nothing for what happened later. Like way later. I guess sometimes I just try to figure out where he started. It was a slow slide, I think, but if I can find where it started, I’m hoping—”
“That you can avoid the same fate?”
He nods.
“But you don’t believe in fate, right?” As far as I’ve always been taught, fate isn’t a Christian thing.
Matt shrugs. “I don’t know what I believe most of the time, Kennedy.”
“A. Stop calling me Kennedy all the time, it’s weird. B.,” I grin, mimicking his speech pattern from earlier, “What in God’s name happened with your dad? You’ve told me nothing, which is hardly fair since you know absolutely everything I know about my relationship with Roland.”
“Fair?”
I nod. “Fair. That’s how friendships work, Matthew. Reciprocity. If you’re going to be friends with a girl, you better get your act together. Now,” I shift so I’m sitting cross-legged on the bench, facing him, “what’s the deal with you and your dad?”
Matt licks his lips and looks away from me. “Do we have to do this today?” he asks with a heartbreaking amount of vulnerability in his voice. It sinks my stomach.
“I … I guess not. No, no we don’t. Sorry.” It’s the first time I’ve been so direct about his dad, and it turns out my instincts were right. Off. Limits.
Leaning forward, I wrap my arms around his neck and squeeze into a warm Matt-hug. He gives the best hugs. This time, though, he barely hugs me back. A slight pat between my shoulder blades that feels like it’s more my Great Uncle Marlin and less like the Matt that hugged me when I told him I was having a hard time trusting anyone.
Guess I pushed him way too far.
“Sorry,” I whisper, returning to my regularly seated position.
Matt’s eyes look vexed by something I can’t quite make out.
Yes. I’ve definitely pushed too far.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Impression That I Get
Matt.
Pulling away from the train station in Gastonia, I close my eyes and hope to fall asleep for the majority of my five-plus-hour ride to Atlanta. Kennedy left before me, and that hour I had to kill until my train boarded was near torture. I tried texting her a couple of times, but I knew as soon as her train departed, her signal would be spotty through most of North Carolina. She hasn’t responded to any of them yet.
At least I hope a bad signal is the reason she hasn’t texted back. I tried not to be too weird when we hugged goodbye, though admittedly, her hug then was weaker than the hug she gave me when we were sitting on the bench in the station.
Crap.
She said “sorry” several times, and I’m sure she sensed I wasn’t giving her the kind of hug I usually do—thanks to my friggen pep talk with Jonah. He was right, though. I don’t want to give her the wrong impression, and if I’m left feeling like this after not hugging her the way I wanted to, I better be careful. I know how quickly desires can get ahead of someone. I don’t want to hurt anyone—Kennedy especially—so I need to be careful since I’m destined to be screwed up in that area.
Kennedy says she doesn’t believe in fate or destiny, and I know that I shouldn’t, either, but it’s hard not to when you watch your father fall into the same manhole that swallowed his own father decades before. I never met Granddaddy Wells, as my mother still affectionately refers to him, but I can’t say I long for that missed opportunity. He drank himself to death a few years before I was born, a fact my father was sure to remind me of during his “anti-everything” campaigns warning me of the dangers of sex, drugs, and alcohol.
Funny that I didn’t even have to feed him his own words when the time came; stepping away from the pulpit after tiredly addressing his congregation for the last time was the only public service announcement he needed. Even if he gave it to himself.