And She Was Strong.

13

Matthew wasn’t even really sure how he had come to acquire Jeremy’s telephone number. It must have been sometime in between the first time he had ever come to know of him and the last time he had physically seen him. Both times, the two had met under unfortunate circumstances; the first, when Matthew had busted into Lily’s house to pick her up for a day at the movies and found them in her bedroom doing far more than sleeping. The last, when Matthew had seen them both holding hands at his twenty-seventh birthday party.

Now, to anyone but Matthew, that shouldn’t have been as awful as he made it out to be. But to him, nothing could have been worse. It was sweet and romantic and he couldn’t stand to be around either of them when they got like that.

It was probably because of these two meetings that Matthew was hesitant to dial his telephone number and call him up. It wasn’t that Jeremy wasn’t a great guy, because he was everything any woman could ever want. Matthew just didn’t like talking to Lily’s boyfriend when he didn’t absolutely have to. It was kind of like hanging out after school with your teacher. Even if you were there for study purposes only, or perhaps because of a detention, it just didn’t feel right. Strange.

However, it had been five days since Matthew had spoken to Lily, namely since their conversation on the phone. Matthew had since then become painstakingly worried, and felt the need to call Jeremy and inquire as to what it was bothering Lily.

There was the dial tone, that rang in his ear as he held his cell phone to his ear. He was right in the middle of making a grilled cheese, and figured that he would just call Jeremy when he was doing something already, just in case he needed an easy way out of the conversation.

It rang four times before Jeremy picked up. By the fourth ring, Matthew didn’t think he was going to answer at all, but when he heard Jeremy’s voice, he wasn’t so sure he should have called in the first place.

“What,” Jeremy said.

He must not have had Matthew’s telephone number saved, because he sounded positively furious about something. Annoyed. Ridden with anger. He didn’t sound the way Matthew remembered him.

“Uh, hey,” Matthew started, “it’s Matt.”

“Matt?” Jeremy repeated, an echo that sounded a bit shattered in comparison to how he had been speaking before. His tone had made a turnaround. He was back to normal.

“Yeah, uh, Sanders?” Matthew continued, uncharacteristically nervous. “You probably don’t remember me, but I’m friends with Lily…”

Jeremy gasped, an intake of breath sharply shifting weights between both ends. Matthew’s eyes widened and he started playing with the spatula.

“You’re in that one band,” he said, “Avenged Sevenfold, right?” Jeremy didn’t pause to let Matthew answer, he just kept going. “Of course I remember you, how could I not? What can I do for ya, I’m not busy or anything so don’t worry.”

Matt just kind of stood there, his mouth hanging open a little. A completely different guy. Was this the man who had answered the phone?

He must have been having a shitty day, Matthew thought. That’s gotta be it.

He laughed sans humor. “How have you been? It’s been, what, a year? Longer? How are you and Lily going?”

Jeremy was quiet for the quickest of seconds. “We’re perfectly fine,” he told him. “Not much has changed; she still won’t come and live with me, even though I’ve probably invited her a million times.” He laughed, although there was an ironic humor in his tone that Matthew didn’t like the sound of.

He shook off the feeling and tested extreme resistance from telling Jeremy that he, too, had attempted to convince Lily to come and live with him. The conversation didn’t feel genuine. It was lacking something and Matthew couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

“Sounds pretty great,” he said in spite of himself. “I’m happy for you two.”

“Thanks a lot, it’s good to hear you say that.”

Matt paused for a moment, trying to pick apart what exactly he wanted to say. It didn’t come as easy as he had hoped that it would, however.

“Well, hmm, let’s see,” he started. “I kind of had a reason I needed to call you up, I know it’s kind of out of the blue… Sorry about that.”

“It’s all good, bro,” Jeremy said. “What’d ya need?”

Matthew wasn’t one to fumble with his words. In fact, out of everyone, he had always been the one to just spit it out, whatever it was that needed to be said. He wasn’t worried with hurting feelings in the process, he just let it come out and hoped for the best. Still, this situation was unusual as any, and he couldn’t quite get the words to drop of his tongue the way he had hoped they would.

“Lily,” he started, “well, uh, she hasn’t quite… been herself lately, if you know what I mean?”

He waited a moment, offering to Jeremy the ability to interject, to throw any helpful information his way so that he wasn’t quite so in-the-dark about the whole situation.

Jeremy didn’t say anything.

“So,” Matthew continued, trying his best to pry whatever he could out of Jeremy, “I was just wondering if you knew anything about it. I mean, have you noticed any weird mood swings, anything strange going on with her…?” He trailed off.

Jeremy didn’t say anything.

For quite a while, anyway.

The grilled cheese was burning on the frying pan, but Matthew couldn’t move from his spot in the middle of the kitchen. He had his breath held and he didn’t quite know the reason why.

“I don’t know, man,” came the reply. And that was all that came from the receiver for the longest time; that, and silence. Then: “She’s kind of been a bitch lately.”

For the first time in the longest time, he was speechless. He couldn’t get one particular thing to come out of his mouth, tongue-tied at best and void of any emotion except shock.

Bitch.

The word resonated on everything. It was alive and crawling up the walls of his house. It was on the ceiling and it was dripping down onto him. And he was up to his knees in whatever it was that had caused Jeremy to say something so low.

He must have been silent for quite a while because Jeremy had to ask, “You still there, bro?”

“Yeah,” Matthew said after a while. “Still here.” He paused. “I gotta go.”

Jeremy clicked his tongue on the room of his mouth. “Oh. Well, alright, I guess I’ll talk to you later?”

“Alright.”

“Uh, see you later then, I guess.”

And the receiver went silent.
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this is what a day of being sick will get you. i wrote this entire chapter in under forty-five minutes. yeah, i know, it's really amazing what you can crank out when you feel like you have to.

i feel bad for not having updated this in like, forever. two months? three? i can't remember. thanks to those of you who have kept subscribed to this, and to those who will subscribe in the future. i can't thank you enough for getting me to ten stars (even if that was like four chapters ago) and making me feel like a good writer.

hopefully the next chapter will be out soon. (:

also, don't you all love mah new layout? :D i think i did a good job with the picture at the top and how it all looks so marvelous. lmao.