Eyes Bright, Uptight {EDITING}

//finale//

But Matty and Claire saw something in each other that they both yearned for. Matty was a bad boy, tattooed and troubled and smoked too much. Miss Teen California ate that shit right up, rebelling against the world she knew the moment she spread her legs for him. And Matty loved it too; he was the champion of this sick, twisted game, "Defile The Virgin" or whatever he had called it. Surely she wasn't actually a virgin, but Matty probably made her feel like one.

I loved Matty, with everything that was in me, ever since we were teenagers smoking weed for the first time and cutting class to bump uglies. Matty loved me too, I knew, and in a mutual way that was not stereotypical love. I was not scared of him, not infatuated with him, not mesmerized but the way he flipped his hair or the big words he used. Matty could not break my heart, because I knew how to mend it by myself every time.

I was doing some internal mending at this moment, making crude little stitches against the holes and gapes oozing with blood in my chest. I could fix myself, I could. But the nearly-dead Matty in the other room wasn't making it easy.

"Kid," George said, cupping Claire's hand in his chin. "I'm going to call Matty's parents."

Claire's gaze didn't flinch, she simply stared blankly onto the linoleum floor, illuminated by the migraine-inducing hospital lights.

"Will you be okay?" George asked her, moving her face to where she would have to look into his eyes.

"Mmm-hmm," she whispered, the noise barely audible.

George glanced at me.

"I'll watch her," I offered, though I knew it was probably unwanted.

George nodded his handsome little head and kissed Claire on the forehead before roaming down the hallway, making the dreaded call. I always liked Matty's Dad. His mother hated me.

Claire and I waited in silence for a while, along in this giant waiting room, the rain starting to die down a little as the sounds of her sniffles and the clock ticking filling the loneliness of the room. Claire was staring at the door to the emergency department, her big eyes unmoving, blinking quickly as if she would miss them open for a doctor to come out and give us an answer, any answer.

"This is a good hospital," I struggled to find words to ease her. "They'll do everything they can."

She didn't even glance my way.

"This is your fault," she said. Her voice was quiet, but it hurt. 

A tear was beginning to form at the corner of my eye, but I fought against it. I would only allow myself one, at most, in front of other people. It wasn't entirely the truth. I only did recreational drugs recreationally, not daily like Matty did.

Sure, I had stirred the shit pot, so to speak. I had just rushed things a little, sped up the clarifications of her relationships with Matty and George. It wasn't fair to any of them, they were both in love with her, she was in love with both of them. It had to end, and if I was the hand that pulled the trigger, so be it.

Claire was so entitled, with her perfect hair and her perfect fucking teeth, her pristine little soul serving as the muse for Matty's creative spirit and George's boyhood fantasies. She and I were worlds apart. Also, where was she when I was over at Matty's nearly every day, busting my ass to make sure he was still alive, begging him to check into rehab again, dragging him into the shower because he smelled like death, forcing him to eat because he was skin and bones?

I knew it wans't the time, the place, for an argument. It would solve nothing anyways. Even if I told Claire she needed to get off her high horse, Matty would still be lying in that hospital bed behind those doors, clinging onto life.