Open Road Summer(63)

“1971 Buick Riviera.”

Matt blinks. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“It’s an old muscle car—belonged to my grandpa. I love it, even though it’s temperamental.”

“I like that. Suits you.”

I smile at him, lost for a moment in the collision of real life and this. This talking and kissing and the way he looks at me and how good he is, to me and to Dee.

“Hey.” My voice is quiet. “Thanks for everything you did for Dee yesterday.”

He spins a finger through a wave of my hair. “It was nothing.”

He knows it was something, but I don’t have to say it. Instead, I lean forward, pressing my mouth against his. I’m not always great at saying what I feel, but I speak make-out language very comfortably. By the time I remove my lips from his, Matt has a wicked grin on his face.

“So.” He runs his hand down my arm as if to be persuasive. “Do you think you’d date me in ‘real life’?”

“No.”

“What! Why not?”

“Because of your douche-y car.”

With a laugh, he says, “Okay. I gave you an open door on that one.”

“So, how’d you know about this place?”

“One of my buddies is from the Baltimore area—I texted him.”


“Saying what? ‘Hey, dude, know any secluded places?’ He probably thinks you’re a serial killer.”

“I think I said ‘romantic and private.’ ” He says this with total nonchalance, but I’m charmed that he put so much thought into a date. Brenda would probably say he was “raised right.” For some reason, this makes me think of Matt’s mom. The thought makes the sides of my lips twitch, a frown nearly forming.

“What was your mom like?” I ask.

It’s an abrupt change of subject, but Matt is unshaken. He smiles sadly, his eyes like fog over the Cumberland River. “She was happy. Kind to everyone. Kept our heads on straight during the Finch Four craziness.”

As he usually does, Matt makes air quotes around “The Finch Four” like it’s a touchstone of someone else’s past. I can understand why. I almost never think of him as that Matt Finch, the one whose smiling, fifteen-year-old face was taped on the inside of every girl’s locker in eighth grade.

“You told me before that you spent all your time trying to make her happy when she was sick. What kind of stuff did you do?”

“I don’t know. A lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Okay. Um. The day before her first chemo treatment, she told me that she’d give anything to be one of those stiff-upper-lip women instead of being so emotional. So I printed out a life-size picture of Queen Elizabeth’s face, cut out the eyes and mouth, and stapled some ribbons to the sides. I made a Prince Charles one for myself, and when they put her chemo IV in, I brought the masks out. We laughed so hard and just sat there wearing the masks and talking in these loud, offensively bad British accents.” His mouth makes the slightest smile I’ve ever seen. If I didn’t know him, I’d think it was a soft grimace, but his dimples tell me otherwise. This is a fond memory, if a painful one. “Everyone at the hospital loved it. At the next treatment, one little kid had a lightning bolt drawn on his forehead and a red-and-gold scarf around his neck. Eventually, we brought all my mom’s fancy teacups and had a big tea party with everyone—all these people sitting around, hooked up to IVs, with nothing in common except cancer and the need to pretend they were stronger than they actually felt.”

There’s a pause when he’s done, and I remember to breathe in again.

“Sorry—God, listen to me. Bumming you out.”

“You’re not. You’re really not.”

He looks at his hands. “I think the worst part is reconciling all the things she’ll miss. She missed her first grandchild. She won’t see whether or not I turn out all right. Never meet any girls I like enough to bring home.”

He nudges my arm to suggest that I am one such girl, and I snort. “Nobody would take me home to their mother unless they were trying to piss her off.”

“My mom would have liked you.”

I understand why he wants to believe that, but I know better. Mothers don’t like me, not even my own. They take inventory of my makeup, my tall heels, and, as Brenda puts it, my sassy mouth. They never get past it.

“No, really,” Matt says, as if sensing my doubt. “My mom was sweet, but she could hold her own. She had to, with three boys. She liked anyone who could dish it out.”

“Dee’s mom is like that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Even when I get myself in trouble, she never acts like Dee’s too good to hang out with me. She’s, like, the best mom ever.” I can see Mrs. Montgomery in my mind, serving me chocolate milk in her kitchen late at night while Mr. Montgomery picked up my dad from jail. I was twelve, and he’d gotten into a fight at the local bar—the last night he ever drank. “I used to wish my dad would marry someone like Dee’s mom.”

“Do you think your dad will ever remarry?” Matt asks.

“He did.”

“Really?” His eyebrows shoot up. “You have a stepmother?”