Page 77 of We Fell Apart
He’s got an old stuffed harbor seal, dingy white. Some high school yearbooks, plus some books about herbs and healing from the library. Novels, mostly the kind you get assigned in school. There’s a photo of a couple who must have been his parents. Around them on the wall are pictures of Tatum with various friends he must have had before he became so reclusive.
I wonder why he no longer sees them.
“Can I sleep next to you?” I ask. “Just sleep.”
Of course part of me wants to kiss him and take off all our clothes, but it has been an incredibly overwhelming day, with thedog and the poultry. For now I just want to feel Tatum’s presence. I want to know I’m connected to someone who has been through this day with me.
He nods and I climb into his bed. His sheets are flannel, even though it’s summer.
I have never slept next to anyone. Not my mother, not Luca—not with anyone in the same bed.
It takes a couple minutes to get comfortable. Tatum smells like sea salt and toothpaste. We have to figure out how to be next to one another.
In the end he presses his chest against my back and wraps onearm across me. I knit my fingers through his. Into my hair he whispers, “You said to me once that you’re not the type to inspire devotion.”
I’m surprised he remembers. “Yeah.”
“What did you mean by that?”
“I’m just not. It’s a fact. There’s like, objective evidence that I don’t.”
“You mean your mom leaving?”
“Um-hm. But also—my friends in high school. I had this boyfriend for about half a year. Luca. And when we broke up, they all went with him. He was angry because I said mean stuff and stole his car. So he started badmouthing me, like twisting things about me into their ugliest shape. And they all just dropped me, like I’d never mattered.”
“You stole his car?” Tatum sounds amused.
“More like drove it without asking, but yeah. And I realized that even though I’d spent every weekend with this crowd of people for a really long time, I was just a placeholder to them. Like, I occupied the place ofLuca’s girlfriend,but it could just as easily have beenanother girl in that spot. In fact, there was another girl in that spot pretty quickly, so they were allherfriends then instead of mine.”
He whispers into my hair. “I was devoted to you from the second I saw you.”
“You werenot.You aren’t even devoted to me now. This is all very new. Don’t say pretty things you don’t mean.”
“You don’t know, Matilda,” he says, his hand squeezing mine. “I saw you dragging that duffel bag that was twice as big as you, looking so exhausted but also so fierce. You were obviously a fighter, and obviously lost—but so determined to find your way. I felt like I was in the presence of, I don’t know, a supernova or something.”
“But you were such a weasel that day.”
“I had just been yelled at by my boss. And also, when you see a supernova you don’t always know what todo.” He runs his thumb gently over the back of my hand. “Supernovas are scary. A person might, like, try not to get hurt by one.”
I laugh.
“Then you were in our kitchen, suddenly, like magic. I saw you rummaging around in that refrigerator and it was like the whole world stopped and there was only you.”
“In the glow of the fridge that I was illegally pillaging?”
“Yes.”
“You felt devotion?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Not about this. It hit me like a—like a cement block or a freight train or whatever people say. I thought, there’s a girl I would follow into battle.”
“But you were so mean.”
“The feeling scared me. And it still scares me. I thought maybe Icould shake it off, or maybe it was a phase, but it’s just a fact, actually. Instant devotion that I’m powerless to change.”
