Broken Glass and Bleeding Hearts

I could feel the anger building up rapidly inside of me two days later as I sat at the beach with the guys. The slut was there, sitting way too close to us for my personal preference, making freakin’ goo-goo eyes at my boyfriend. Matt wasn’t paying attention to her but I sure as hell was. Actually she had the majority of my attention. I swear if she tries anything that painted on face is going to need a shit load of plastic surgery when I’m done with her.

Finally she waved at Matt and I felt my face heating up with anger. She smiled one of those sickly disgusting flirty smiles and my middle finger flew up in the air. I heard laughs from Zacky, Jimmy, and Brian. Matt remained silent as he looked out at the ocean. She cut her eyes at me and I did the same back as my hands balled into fists. “If you don’t calm down steam is going to shoot out your ears.” Brian told me as he patted my shoulder with a sympathetic sound to his voice. He knew how much it took for me not to go over there and kill her.

“I’ve got an idea!” Jimmy yelled as he jumped up, causing everyone around us to look at him for a moment. He was bouncing around like a five year old who had just consumed a little too much sugar.

“Jimmy why don’t you sit down before you bounce yourself into outer space?” I suggested drawing a laugh from everyone else.

“That would be awesome!” Jimmy responded a half second later as a stupid grin spread across his face. “So does anyone want to hear my idea or not?”

“Uh I’m kinda scared.” I answered looking up at him from behind my sunglasses.

“Yeah Jimmy does it involve florescent socks again?” Zacky asked with a look of complete seriousness plastered on his face.

“No it doesn’t involve florescent socks this time,” Jimmy paused for dramatic effect. “It’s better than florescent socks!”

“Great” Zacky groaned.

“Wonderful.” I mumbled as I covered my face with my hand. Jimmy’s ideas usually involved some crazy idea that only he could think of.

“No guys this is seriously a good plan! Just listen!” He stopped bouncing and the childish look disappeared from his face. “We are going to kidnap her,” He pointed to the slut “And then we are going to tie her to a chair and find a shark tank and-”

“Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, any pain that thing has to endure is going to come directly from my fist.” I cut in. Jimmy’s expression dropped.

“Damn it.” He sank back to the sand and began pouting.

“Sorry Jimmy but really that is the only thing that will make me feel better.”

“It’s okay. I knew it was a long shot anyway.” He sighed and then turned right back into being his crazy Jimmy self. I glanced over and saw she hadn’t given up. I’m not sure exactly what triggered my next action, or at what point I decided to go through with it, but it happened. The next thing I knew my lips were pressed against Matt’s and of course he was kissing me back. Then I heard the guys.

“Damn.” Had come from Zacky I think.

“Wonderful now they are making out.” Must have been Brian.

“Whoa! You two stop before I’m forced to watch something going on!” That one just had to be Jimmy. At first I didn’t understand what he meant, and then it hit me. My head jerked back and away from Matt’s lips, his face fell.

“Jimmy! Matt and I are not doing that!”

“Sure you aren’t.”

“We aren’t! Honestly do you think that if we were that Matt wouldn’t have told you guys about it?”

“Ouch Ellie! You don’t think I could keep my mouth shut?” Matt added in finally.

“Dude! You wouldn’t tell us about that kind of stuff! Man I’m hurt!” Jimmy looked at Matt with a look of shock on his face. Brian and Zacky were laughing too hard to join in on the current debate.

“Why would you? Matt they’d look at you and know! For pete’s sake Matt you have a look on your face right now that would tell them that we just kissed!”

“Made out” Zacky coughed through his laughter. I gave him a shut the hell up look.

“She’s right! We’d know! But why wouldn’t you tell us?” Jimmy didn’t let anything go and picked it right back up.

“Uh-huh I’m really going to tell any of your, who cannot keep your damn mouths shut, and then piss Ellie off. Let’s compare this what would be worse for me, having the three of you pissed at me or having my girlfriend pissed at me?” Matt fell back onto the sand and covered his face. I kinda felt bad for him.

“Ouch Matt that really hurts.” I complained with a joking tone.

“It’s not like it matters anyway. We aren’t doing a damn thing.”

“Well you know that explains a few things.” I heard Brian mumble.

“Shut the hell up Gates.” I fell into the sand beside Matt as we snapped at Brian to shut his trap. Ha, like that would actually work.

“You wouldn’t tell us? Not even me?” Jimmy still hadn’t moved on.

“I don’t know! Don’t you guys think that something like that would be a bit personal to Ellie and I?” Matt was desperately looking for a way out of this conversation, and I was beginning to see why. We hadn’t even had this conversation about anything like this between the two of us yet.

“But you have to tell at least me!”

“Jimmy we haven’t even thought about this!” I burst out finally without realizing that I was going to.

“Oh. Okay. We are talking about this at a later date!” Jimmy then jumped up and looked around. “I’m going for a swim!” Before anyone responded he ran off towards the water.

“Oh my god that was embarrassing.” I mumbled to myself and heard Zacky and Brian laughing. I uncovered my face and looked at them. “What the hell is so funny?”

“Look at her!” Zacky pointed towards the thing. My eyes wondered over to where she was sitting and I had to laugh with them. She was so mad she looked like a pissed off blowfish. Matt looked over and laughed too.

“That is hilarious!” I managed to get out after taking a gasp of air. I could feel my sides hurting from the hysterical laughter.

“Come on!” Jimmy yelled running up and then running back to the water. Zacky and Brian stood up and looked down at Matt and I.

“I’ll pass.” I waved and laid my head down in the sand.

“Me too.” I heard the guys walk off after Matt’s answer.

“You can go with them. I don’t care Matt.” I looked over at him and smiled.

“I’m good right here.”

“Well that was um interesting.” I nervously looked away. “I guess we should uh probably talk about where we stand on that huh?”

“We don’t have to yet Ellie.”

‘Good then we won’t. Far too embarrassing.” I heard him laugh as I sat up and looked over at the slut again. She was gawking at Matt still. I leaned down and kissed him again.

“What was that for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ignore her. She’s nothing to worry about or waste time being pissed about.”

“Damn you! I think you aren’t paying attention and yet you know everything!”

That night I sat in my room staring at the wall, just thinking back. The TV was on but it wasn’t holding my attention anymore than anything else was. I wasn’t sure why my mind was taking me back to when Matt and I were younger but I didn’t mind it.

“I’m not getting on there. No way in hell am I getting on that!” I informed Matt as I pointed at the carnival ride that we were standing in line for. It placed two people in a cage and flipped them upside down repeatedly and spun them in a large circle. Star was gladly standing in front of us talking to her latest crush.

“Ellie we are 14 not 4. Stop being a wimp.” Matt crossed his arms and looked at me with that look. I knew he was right, he wasn’t just being an asshole.

“But I am scared of it!”

“We are already in line.”

“So? I’ll get out. You are brave enough to go alone. Or one of the guys will help you flip it. Really they won’t be a chicken like I am.”

“It will be okay Elliebear, you’ll have fun.”

“No I won’t Matt. I know that I won’t.”

“You are getting on it with me. Because if you don’t then I won’t.” Matt reached out his opened hand and smiled at me.

“Fine. But if I die-”

“Yeah I know, red roses on your grave. I got that.” I took the hand of my best friend and continued in the line towards the thing that very well might kill me. I could see the looks from a few girls who saw Matt and I. They looked like they were discussing if Matt and I were boyfriend and girlfriend, which we obviously weren’t.

“Those girls think we are together. Every damn time.” I whispered to Matt.

“Ignore them. Do you really care what people think?”

“Well no, but sometimes it feels weird. I mean we are obviously just best friends.”

“We know that so does it matter what they think?”

“You have a point.” I realized that after Star and the new guy we were next. “Matt do I have to do this?”

“Yes.” The next cage came and we climbed in. Matt was still holding onto my hand to calm me down a bit as the ride slowly began. I moved closer and grabbed onto his arm with my hand that was free. He laughed at me and I rolled my eyes.

“I don’t like you right now.”

“Then why are you holding on to me?”

“Because I still trust you.”

“Nice Elliebear, nice.”

“Shut up.” The ride flipped and Matt was thrown closer to me as I was thrown closer to him. His lips pressed against my cheek on accident and I burst out laughing as he did too. “Only to us would that happen.” Then we flipped several more times and I began screaming.

Thankful halfway through the ride I had calmed down and stopped screaming. Another plus was that I didn’t start feeling sick. Neither of us noticed that our hands were still linked until we got off and Star looked at us funny. Our hands immediately let go and fell to our sides.

Star was the only one who never thought it was weird that Matt and I were so close to each other, her and the guys, but even they sometimes wondered when we did things like that. We had never thought of anything like that though. To us that was just a normal thing that we did.

“Matt?” I asked as we sat in my back yard on the first evening of summer break. It was the beginning of the summer and come July 31 Matt would turn 16. Star had already went home so we sat alone in the back yard on the swinging bench talking.

“Yeah?” Apparently the sound of my voice had caught him off guard.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Um nothing.” I noticed how incredibly cute Matt looked at that moment and looked away. He was my best friend, I wasn’t supposed to think like that. “What were you going to say Elliebear?”

“Promise me one thing.”

“Anything.”

“That when you turn 16 and all that you won’t suddenly become too cool to hang out with me or anything like that. And that we’ll make the most of the summer.”

“I promise. I’m never going to do that Ellie. Why would you even think that?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged and changed the subject. “So do you still like that one girl that was in your homeroom?”

“Nah. She wasn’t really my type.”

“Your type huh? And what exactly is your type?”

“You tell me yours first.”

“Asshole!” I thought about it and my answer was simple. Basically the guys I liked tended to favor Matt to some degree. “The hot ones.”

“Nice answer.” Matt paused and thought. “We’ll go with what you said.”

“Asshole.” We both laughed and fell into silence. I got this weird feeling sitting like this in silence with him. It wasn’t uncomfortable but it was new. I kind of liked it. Come to think of it I’d been getting it a lot lately, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

Like always I moved closer to Matt and rested my head on his shoulder with a smile. That was the great thing about Matt, he never took anything like this the wrong way and he never complained about it. “Tired?” His voice was calm and happy as he spoke.

“A little. Have I told you that you rock lately?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

“Thanks Ellie.”

“No problem.”

Now as I thought back I realized what I was feeling. I’d been so blind back then. I had been falling for Matt since the beginning of the summer. It just took being away from him for me to realize that I didn’t just like him as a best friend anymore. How had I been so blind? But how could we have known that this would happen? We couldn’t unless-crap unless we listened to our parents.

At eight years old Star, Matt, and I stood in the stairway listening to Matt’s parents talk to my mom. We had been playing a game in my room until it got a bit boring. We had been coming downstairs to go outside when we heard it. “You know I’ve heard of it happening before.” My mom commented.

“Which one do you think? I mean do you think Ellie or Star?” Matt’s mom’s voice had an odd laugh to it as she asked.

“Ellie. For some reason they seem to be connected to each other. Think about it.” Matt’s dad ended up with a laugh.

“I think it really would be cute if when they are older they started dating.” I grimaced at my mom’s words. Me date Matt? Ew.

“And kiss, don’t forget that!” Matt’s mom laughed again before his dad and my mom joined in. Star covered her mouth to giggle as Matt and I looked at each other and mouthed disgusting out.

“What if they ended up getting married?” Matt’s dad finally suggested with another wholehearted laugh. They had to be joking right?

“Ew!” Matt and I yelled at the same time and ran into the living room. “That is disgusting!” We both stomped, making them laugh harder.

“Its not nice to eavesdrop remember?” My mom reminded. “Besides we are kidding. We just heard a story about something like that. So just go play and be kids.”

I’m sure they were joking at the time but it had become a reality for Matt and I. We were dating, and we had kissed. Hell my first kiss had been with Matt. But us ever getting married? The thought tossed around in my head and I found myself cringing. We were too young to even think about that. I grabbed my cell phone and called Matt. His voicemail picked up though.

“Hey this is Matt. Leave a message if you want.” I waited for the beep. It wasn’t the first time I’d said this so it was no big deal that he hadn’t answered. BEEP.

“Hey uh Matt, it’s just me. You don’t need to call me back, I just really wanted to say something real quick. I love you.”