Page 34 of Chasing After You
I slide the necklace back over my head and let it drop into place around my neck before I start backing up the same way I came. A minute or two later, I’m sitting upright beside Matti again.
“Admit it,” I tell him. “You don’t mind that we wound up here again.”
“I’ll do you one even better.” He smiles. “I was hoping we would.”
“Really does feel like old times.” I let my feet dangle, peering over my knees down at the ground. Heights have always fascinated me. I swear, in another life, I was a bird. Something that could fly high up above the clouds. Actually, given my fondness for fire as well, I was probably a dragon.
“I think you’re getting tired,” Matti says softly.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re mumbling to yourself about dragons.” He smirks. “And your mind always wanders into odd places when you’re winding down.”
“Oh.” Of course, I had to say that out loud. “You know you’re the only person that ever happens with? That I start rambling on about things I think I’m only thinking?”
“I actually did know that.” He nods, chuckling. “I used to ask around about it.”
“What?” I never knew that. “Who did you ask?”
“Like, every member of your family. And your friends.” He shrugs. “Later, Isobel and Nate. By then I was just checking to see if it was still my exclusive or if they were in by default. You know, being genetically part me.”
“You’re ridiculous.” I shake my head, trying not to laugh. “I can’t believe you went around asking everyone I know if they all noticed that I talk to myself when I’m tired.”
“I mean, it was weird!” He laughs even harder. “And it’s not like you just talk to yourself. It’s that you talk about strange shit when you do it. Like dragons. And whether spiders think we’re the ones hanging from the ceiling. Oh, and one time, I remember you went on for a good three minutes about the way you thought mice might really be more like Jerry, Speedy, Mickey, and Mighty Mouse than we think.”
I gasp, appalled. “I did not!”
“You absolutely did. I distinctly remember hearing that those cartoons could have been based on true stories.”
Is it sad that I vaguely remember my brain taking that turn once? “In my defense, Nate was really into those shows for a while. It was probably a solid year before anything non-rodent caught his interest.”
“I remember.” He chuckles, his amusement morphing into subtle delight. “Though I probably didn’t have to suffer through those cartoons as much as you did.”
I arch a brow and smirk. “To the brink of insanity, you mean?”
“Don’t kid yourself. You can’t blame Nate for that.” He playfully pokes at my shoulder. “You were doing that talking to yourself business that first night we went out too.”
“No, I wasn’t.” I couldn’t have. Surely, that level of comfort had to be grown and developed over time. Right along with peeing in front of someone or letting them see you when you’ve had a head cold for three consecutive days and you no longer give a shit that your hair is greasy, you have on the same pajamas you put on the first day you felt something coming on, you haven’t brushed your teeth since at least the night before, and your nose is red and puffy and starting to scab at the creases from too many tissues rubbing it raw.
“Yes, you were,” he insists. “I remember because I instinctively opened my mouth to answer you before I realized you weren’t talking to me.”
I narrow my eyes, frowning. “What did I say?”
“You said, ‘the world could flip upside down, and everything would still be right side up’.”
My hand flies to cover my mouth. “I remember that.” For a moment, those very thoughts come rushing back and all the clarity I felt in having them returns to me. “What were you going to say?” I ask. “When you first thought I was talking to you?”
For a long moment, he just stares at me. “I was going to say, ‘You’re my center of gravity, too’.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
MATTI
I wondered for the longest time if she’d been lost in thought thinking about me when she mumbled those words. Then, as the years went by and I overheard more of the chaos her brain was capable of churning up, I gave in to the fact that it likely never had anything to do with me. It was far more plausible, she’d been staring at the sky, thinking about us up in a tree, how far we’d moved from the ground, the depths we could have fallen, and the height to which her bracelet flew when her mind went off on a tangent.
“I wish you had said that,” she whispers. “I would have loved hearing it.”
“Wherever you were inside your mind, you seemed out of earshot,” I gently tease her.
