Caged Birds ✔️

Chapter Twenty-Six

Matt's P.O.V

"Why did you have to sleep with her sister" Daniel cries from beside me sitting in his tight suit.

"I was drunk" I explain quickly.

"How come you always seem to be drunk when you do something stupid?" Daniel cocks a brow.

"Isn't everyone?" I point out, finishing my glass.

"Is that why you two hate each other now?" Daniel asks.

I sigh.

"Partly"

"Partly? Jesus Matt" Daniel raises his voice, "what else did you do? Shoot her puppy?"

"Why do you assume that it was me who stuffed everything up?"

"Because it usually is" he raises his brows, "is there something that you haven't told me? A part of this long-ass story that you forgot to mention to me?"

"No" I lied, "what gives you that idea?"

"I don't know its just....there is something that you're not telling me"

It was true, there was a chunk of the story that I had purposely forgotten to mention, the part where I had purposed to Sam.

"Okay, I had purposed to Sam" I admit, "a few weeks before I slept with Demi"

"You guys were engaged and she still left?" Daniel's voice is now quiet and sympathetic.

"That's not all" I hold my breath, looking down at my wine glass, "we made a pact that we would run away together in July...The year we graduated"

"And she left without you?" He realizes.

"Yeah" he nodded, "the little Bitch left me here"

"But it worked outright? You got the hotel and your mum left that dick head of a stepfather, so what's the problem?"

"She left without me!" I cried as if it were the easiest question that he could have asked. "And she took my money and car with her"

"Well you did cheat on her" Daniel points out.

"But she didn't know that"

"Can't you two just call it even?" He suggests.

"If only it were that simple" I sigh at the thought.

"Oh god, there's more?" Daniel slams his hands on the table, "I thought that you had finished the story!"

"Are you kidding? We're only up to the beginning of 2011"

"Where only halfway?"

"Well a little more than halfway" I inform him, "Hey, I can stop if you want"

"Where halfway...there's no point stopping now right?"

"What's happening?" Noah asked as taking a seat beside Daniel.

"When did you leave?" Daniel asked him.

"Ages ago...I had to pee" Noah pours himself a glass of champagne.

"Well, I am still telling Daniel about what happened between me and Sam" I explain to him.

"Still?" Noah rolls his eyes. "Okay I can summarize this whole thing in thirty seconds - they met at a party, a few parties later began dating, she stole his car along with thirty grand, moved to Manhattan, he opened up a hotel-"

"I know all this" Daniel moans.

"Than what part are you up to?" Noah asks.

"He had just slept with Kiley"

"Okay, so Matt had slept with Kiley just after Diana died" Noah cried.

"Can I just explain it?" I beg.

"No, because you take too long" Noah shakes his head. "Long story short they saw each other at that bar and haven't seen each other since"

"I think that I prefer it when Matt tells the stories" Daniel confesses.

"Fine have it your way" Noah drinks his champagne, "stick to Mister takes five hours to explain a ten-second story"

"Anyway...it was just after Diana died" I continued.

I attended the funeral and not so I could see Sam again. In fact, me and Sam didn't communicate the whole time that we were there. At the funeral, I found that Sam had temporary custody over Diana's kid until the dad returned from Afghanistan. Sometimes I wished that my dad joined the military, it would have been better than him leaving by choice.

"I thought your mum told him to leave so that he could clean up his act" Daniel furrows his brows.

"But she didn't tell him to only be apart of my life when it suited him" I clench my jaw.

Anyway, at this point in my life, I was very depressed and tried my hardest to get on with my life. It was when I was twenty-one my mum made me see sense - and all it took was one conversation.

"Matt, what are you doing?" My mother scolded me as I sat at my hotel's bar, drinking scotch from the bottle.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" I snapped.

"Drinking your life away when you should be running this place!" She cried. "How do you think it looks seeing the owner getting pissed in his own hotel?"

"There's no one watching!" I retorted, only to search my surroundings to find that the bar was, in fact, full of people staring at me. "Well, maybe they are"

"What the hell is wrong with you?" She clenched her jaw, "are you really going to throw your entire life away because of a girl? When I was your age I had to raise a five-year-old on my own, I had to send him to school, pay the bills, all on my own! And you think you have it tough! I've had it tough since I was sixteen and you don't see me complaining! Not once have you seen me with a bottle in my hand sobbing at the fact that I had no one, that I can no longer have children thanks to Jimmy! Not once have you seen my drinking because my life was falling apart! So grow up Matt! Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get on with you god damn life!" She cried as storming away from me.

When my mum was eighteen, my dad was drink driving, she got in the car to try and make him see sense but it didn't work. They were involved in a serious car accident and my mum had to get her uterus removed due to abdominal trauma.

My mum told me to get on with my life but it wasn't that simple. Sam was not the only factor in my drinking. I had done some stupid things in the last five years. I've slept with people that I properly shouldn't have, I had drunk more than I ever had. I was not drinking my life away just because of Sam, I was drinking to help me forget about all the stupid shit that I had done but it wasn't working.

My mum was right - as always. She never drank when the going got tough, so why did I? Her life was a lot harder than mine was, after all. So I stopped, I got on in with my life and moved on.