Unrequited

At Your Door-Nate Walcott, Mike Mogis featuring Big Harp

At Your Door-Nathaniel Walcott, Mike Mogis featuring Big Harp (11)

NOT IN BRICK, NOT IN WOOD DO MY MEMORIES RESIDE. I COULD LEAVE THEM FOR GOOD. IT’S TO YOU…THAT I’M TIED.

Originally, chapter eleven was supposed to be Made in the USA by D.L but this song (from Stuck in Love) somehow made sense and spoke to me. I clearly have to explain down below…

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BEATRICE

A small stitch on the side of my left brow, a bruise on my right arm, a grazed skin on both legs right under the knee—they are completely nothing compared to the torture Matt is giving me.

He’s talking to me but it feels as if he isn’t. He’s holding back something and he wouldn’t let me talk to him about what happened with Nathan that night. He keeps on swerving me whenever I bring it up and I try not to push it. I’m afraid he’d completely ignore me if I do. I let it go for a few hours. But when a brawl between him and Nathan began, I know I’ve reached my limit.

MATT

Confession: I didn’t know how and when all of this started. I’ve never fought—physically and yes, actually fought—with one of my friends before. And I didn’t know why I started now.

All I could remember is that I punched Nathan on the gut, a teacher pulled me off, we are sitting in front of the principal and as soon as we were outside, we started laughing like idiots.

Beatrice came running down the hall and I know that she was going to hug someone—and it wasn’t me.

Well, then again, there is the term: surprise.

“Damn it, look at you,” she wasn’t really cursing me. It was more like Thank God, you’re okay but in a different version—hers. She pulled me in a hug and pulled away quickly, examining my face. Then she started to rant. “You are such an idiot! Why did you two fight?” She looked at Nathan too but she focused on me as she asked.

I looked at Nathan now but he only shrugged. “All yours, man,” he said and walked off, Chelsea waiting at the other end of the hallway.

“Well, you better start talking,” she murmurs in her most menacing tone and suddenly puts an arm around my waist, ushering me towards where I know we’ll end up—the music room.

BEATRICE

I actually have no intention of knowing what it was they fought about. It’s a stupid guy thing, he told me and because they are okay now, why ask?

He’s been more open again and somehow the relief had been there all along. Knowing that Matt could never really resist not talking to me…well, I guess it was a short miserable torture that was threatening and satisfying at the same time.

He handled that guitar as if he’s trying hard not to break it while I look at the band, playing for me. M started singing this song I’d been addicted to months and months before we got here. And I was glad he remembered I liked this.

“I don’t need no roof, I don’t need no walls—I need you and that’s all. That’s all.”

He asked me that if it was his way of apologizing for that night of the accident and today with Nathan, would I forgive him. With narrowed eyes, I looked him from top to bottom and tried to shake him up. When I knew he was getting nervous, I grinned.

“Don’t do it again.”

He nodded and smiled that way that makes my heart do flips, I wonder why… Then this song, At Your Door, started playing in my head as he drove me home and talked and ate dinner together in my house. And then it changed from a lovely montage to a terrifying realization. It was a countdown; the drums playing in that beat and that little jingle in the song. We have six and a half days before the festival. He smiles at me every minute. There would be a lot of people in the competition. Every time he sings, he looks at me as if he’s telling those lyrics to me. There would be lights and judging eyes. He gazes at me every five minutes—not looks but gazes. I don’t think I could sing in front of a lot of people—

“Beatrice,” Mom shouts and I snap out of my train of thought. She sighs. “Thank goodness you’re back on earth.”

“How long was I out?” I asked and risked a glance at Matt.

He shrugged. “Not a long while,”

“Fifteen minutes, sweetie,” Mom says in spite of M’s casual answer. “That’s a new record,” she adds and gets up from the table. “Rehearse, go, your mind is somewhere else and I bet only Matt could help with that.”

My cheeks burned at the comment and stood up instead before he notices. “Thanks, Mom. It was a wonderful dinner.”

But she smiled the way she smiles when she knows I’m lying and I go out of her way, dragging Matt to the white room where the well-polished instruments are and all I could think about is how I was holding his hand and how he was holding mine.

MATT

My heart was pounding too loudly. I breathed in but I couldn’t breathe out. The sight of her makes me a little poetic. I know B. I’ve seen her. In different lights, I have. I’m not blind. But I couldn’t fall for her now, could I? Or was this the point why we’ve come to be so close? I know that she knows I’m nervous around her. I know that she’d know eventually how I was feeling. I just wonder if she would accept it—or if I could. I groaned. This competition will not be easy.