Fantasy Land

Chapter Seven

That was harder to do than I had expected. It wasn't like I could just ignore Matt when I saw him at least four times a day, counting our two classes and rides to and from school. In past years, I didn't ride home with the Wentworths, but with Matt's detention ending around the same time as my cheerleading practice, Trevor waited around for both of us to finish (usually by sleeping in the backseat of Matt's car) and the older sibling would drive the three of us home.

And it wasn't like I wanted to cut Matt out of my life. I just needed to stop letting my crush get in the way of expecting more from him, even if it had seemed like he might be interested in me too. So I didn't blame Matt at all; I just needed to stop acting like a little schoolgirl and get over it.

Even though Matt might not consider me as his friend, it wasn't in my DNA to go without celebrating a birthday of someone I knew and saw frequently. So the Wednesday of the second week of school, September 2nd, I made sure to beat the Wentworth brothers to the Honda Civic in their driveway.

Trevor was the first to appear. His look of surprise morphed into excitement when he noticed the plate of brownies covered in saran wrap that I held in my hands.

"Fuck yeah," Trevor said. He reached to remove the plastic and I smacked his hand away. Trevor glared at me, but I looked pointedly at his brother, who was locking the front door of their house behind him.

"Matt gets first pick." Trevor rolled his eyes but didn't argue. It was also 7:30 in the morning, but it was never too early for sweets in Trevor's mind. When his brother had reached the car, I held out the plate toward him. "Happy birthday, Matt."

"Thanks, Ana," Matt smiled.

He took the baked goods from me before opening up the plastic wrap and putting one of the brownies in his mouth. Trevor seemed to be slightly disappointed, even though the only reason I had made the sweets in the first place was because of his brother.

Luckily for me, I got to sit up front, which was really only fair since I had beaten both of the brothers to the car. Trevor didn't seem too upset by it, because Matt gave him the plate of brownies to hold on the way to school. No doubt Trevor ate about half of the plate during the car ride over.

When we did arrive at the school and as Matt parked the car, Trevor leaned forward and put his hands on my shoulders. "Hey, you should come to our dinner with Dad tomorrow night, El," he said. "We're celebrating Matt's birthday so we'll probably go to Outback or something."

It wouldn't be my first time crashing one of their weekly dinners with their dad, but this one would be for a special occasion. I looked over at Matt to see how he felt about his brother inviting me to his birthday celebration. After putting the car in park, Matt shrugged at me and turned the car key before removing it from the ignition.

I rolled my eyes at his indifference. But at least I could get a free steak out of it. "Yeah, sure," I accepted Trevor's invitation. I would have to ask my mom for permission, but she would undoubtedly let me go.

"Hell yeah," Trevor grinned, squeezing my shoulders before letting go and getting out of the car. At least someone was excited about it. Free food was always nice and Mr. Wentworth was a pretty cool guy, so I tried not to feel like Matt was annoyed with his brother's friend crashing his party. It didn't seem like he was, but Matt was so nice it was hard to tell. His appearance of indifference had most likely been fairly representative of his true feelings on the matter, so I tried not to give it too much thought.

Usually I looked forward to Creative Writing, but today I was almost dreading it since it meant seeing Matt. This was getting to be ridiculous. I really needed to get laid already to take my mind off of him.