A million different scenarios played through his mind, a movie played in fast forward that only brought along an ache that Foster was unaccustomed to in all his years. It was so similar to an ache he felt when he’d been younger and dumber and Mattie would disappear with the rolling wind, gone to another hospital visit that left Foster uncertain and his mother saying good riddance. But while it was similar to that ache, it was different in all its own. Foster was older now and he’d been closer to Mattie in a way they’d never been close before. Still his friend, but bordering on something more despite his strong stance on it being anything but sex. Standing there on the porch, Foster felt too many different emotions. It proved the point of Foster not knowing what the hell he was doing with his life.
When that door opened and he saw her, for a second it wasn’t the Mattie he knew now. It was the Mattie he’d seen running through the hallways with Fiona that brought his head poking out of his room. It was the Mattie he pushed on the swings while listening to her talk about whatever book she’d been reading recently. It was the Mattie who’d been laying in his backyard, Fiona droning on about some silly gossip and Foster with his head laying on Mattie’s lap and a video game handheld in his hands. It was the Mattie he convinced to come with him at two in the morning one time to go out for a bike ride to a nearby park and just sit under the moon.
At the same time, it was the ghost of Mattie. The time she wasn’t there and Foster was living his life but with that absence that he avoided getting caught up on. How many times had he picked up a phone to try and call her but only to set it back down? How many times had he told his parents that he wanted to borrow the car to go visit Mattie but they strongly answered no? And admittedly, he eventually gave up. Was there guilt there for giving on up the one person who never had given up on him? Perhaps, but Foster didn’t want to touch that seed. But Mattie had finally given up on him, had pushed him away with a finality that Foster was standing there on the porch ruining.
Hearing his nickname brought a smile to his lips–a sad one. She was the only person who ever called him Arch, stemming from a childhood secret. His stuffed animal he hadn’t wanted anyone to know about, Archie that sat in his room and Mattie had discovered. Arch. Maybe he was struggling with all this because he was struggling between two different people. Foster who didn’t give a shit, wanted to sleep around, wanted to do whatever his heart wanted. Arch who just wanted to be there for his best friend, to stand by Mattie’s side, and to give a fucking damn for once.
Her words were not gentle, cutting into him and pulling a wince out of him. He should have been expecting that considering how they parted. But Foster just stepped forward, leaning against the doorframe and considerably closer to Mattie now, looming over her tiny frame compared to him. “I just want to talk, okay? Come on, you can’t be happy with the way things ended between us. We’re friends, Mattie. We always have been. Sure things got a little complicated, but we’re Mattie and Arch… we always come back together.
Foster couldn’t let her shut the door on him if he could help it. He just wanted to talk with her, to see if he could hold onto whatever the hell it was that they had. But Foster was blind to the fact that decisions would eventually need to be made: good or bad.
“Let me in, Mattie. Please? Let’s just talk, yeah?” Foster said quietly, eyes intently focused on Mattie and nothing else.
We always come back together. It struck her square in the sternum, a single dispelled cartridge that turned to smoldering warmth. “Mattie and Arch,” she repeated dumbly, almost lulled into submission by the sheer romanticism of it. Their names, bracketed naturally together. Paired. She had a flash of a younger, more naive Mattie; one who saw him at Fiona’s house and knew it, a casual certainty in her bones: she would marry him. Then, the ( unwelcome, fantasy-shattering ) epiphany: What a joke. Once, the notion would’ve swept her up, and she would’ve allowed him inside without hesitation. Ached for any passing touch, any glance that could be skewed as affectionate. Then, the passionate grabs, the sating of some animal urge. That’s what it had been, she realized suddenly. That was all.
Her resolve was tentative at best. For every memory that cast the duo of them in a poor light, there was a lovely one: Pilfered candy-bars, shared straight down the middle. Sticky palms gripping handlebars. Fashion shows performed with Foster’s wardrobe, first innocent trial-runs and then serious admissions. He was the only one who hadn’t balked at her, laughed it off when she said often she didn’t feel like a girl. That sometimes, she wanted to simply be. In absence of this gendered body, the corporeal prison that told her not to eat. Half of them had been fantasy-Mattie, fictional-character Mattie enacting childhood romance with abandon. The other half? The real Mattie. Confused, insecure, unsure of who she was. Few had seen that person. He was one of them.
It made it impossible for her to simply shut the door on him. Return to her routine, her empty home, her aimless search for identity. Her grief. Foster had always been the person ( more like a concept ) she turned to when things became difficult. Instead of facing her problems, she disappeared herself into him. Into her love for him. Into his endless push-pull, the desire and dismissal that came as a one-two punch to her gut. It was easier that way, but it was escapism. She tried with marked determination to remind herself of that as she stepped outside, clicking the door shut behind her.
“Okay,” she acquiesced, though her face was still hardened to him. Betraying nothing ( or trying its hardest; even in spite of everything, her eyes still beamed at him like he was the only thing on earth ). “We can talk.” The unspoken caveat: we talk out here. She knew her own patterns. If she let him in, chances were she’d fall just as quickly into old habits. It was with reluctance that Mattie admitted she held the upper hand, but she was suddenly enlivened by the thought. Finally, it was she who held him cupped in her palm. Mattie who could set parameters, end conversations at whim, disappear with only a few terse words and nothing more. She’d endured that from him for years, excusing it with ‘he’ll come around’ or ‘he’s frightened of what he feels’. No longer: her father’s voice echoed, the only voice that mattered at the moment. Stop chasing that Caldwell boy.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Mattie admitted quietly. “Not talk to you.” A tragic misstep. A betrayal that she felt anything at all, still. A chink in her armor. A weakness. The way she looked up at him through her lashes, dark eyes doe-wide, was another. There was the old Mattie in there, caged. Told to shut up, at least for the next few minutes. Quieting her was proving more difficult than expected.
