Dysfunctional

Chapter 18 Haze

Lars POV

I was surprised at how none of our friends seemed to have noticed that anything had happened between Matt and me while we had been gone. Or maybe they had, but chosen to not say anything about it.

I felt happy when we were in the car back to Matt's place. Well, first we had to drop off Lilly and Violet, and then we'd go to Matt's place where we could hang out for at least two more hours before I had to go home too. Walking through the forest and the mud together had been fun, and everyone had a good time together, even though Nina had a bit of a hostile attitude towards me and answered very curtly every time I said something to her. We had found some cows along the way, and all had to stop Simon from climbing over the fence separating us from them to "try and befriend one".

"Hey boys, how was the adventure?" Matt's mother greeted us. I had only met her once or twice before, but I had a positive impression of her. She seemed like a kind woman, and I had never heard Matt complain about her or his dad before. Well, even if his parents had been awful, I guess it wasn't in Matt's nature to complain either way.

"It was fun", Matt said with a nod. He took my jacket from me and pointed to where I could put my shoes if I chose to take them off. "Lars and I are going upstairs to my room. Can you give a shout when it's time to go?"

Somehow, as I watched Matt talk to casually with his mother, I felt a pang of jealousy in my chest, and that knocked a feeling of shock into me. Throughout my childhood, I'd grown used to being jealous of kids with dads who would pick them up from school, or take them on adventures on the weekends, or play baseball with them in the backyard. I was also familiar with feelings of jealousy towards other kids with siblings, especially older brothers. How I'd spend hours sulking about the fact that I didn't have an older brother who would teach me how to break the rules and bully me for silly things and lend me his toys because he'd know I'd steal them anyways if he said no.

But I'd never been jealous of someone's relationship with their mom before. I had my own mom, and an amazing mom it was. I remember making Mother's Day cards every year when I was little in which I wrote how my mom was the best in the entire world. I had no reason to be jealous of others kids for that, I had my own mom. But now, I didn't know if I still felt like that anymore. After what had happened, would we still be able to go back to such a gentle and casual relationship that Matt and his mother seemed to have? I wasn't so sure about that.

With a heavy heart and a lump in my throat, I followed after Matt up the stairs and to his room. I'd never been in his room before, but I knew what it looked like from pictures. It was nice; a typical teenage boy's room. One wall was dark blue, the others white. There was a white desk with a black desk chair and a wooden wardrobe. There were posters on the wall of bands I didn't know, and I wasn't sure if Matt did know them or if he just liked the look of the posters.

This was supposed to be a nice moment, to finally be able to be alone with Matt like this, but I couldn't help but feel sad and full of reminders of what I lacked in my life when I had entered the bubble of Matt's world like this. Everything was nice and gentle here, like Matt himself. I knew that he wasn't perfect, nor was his life I assumed, but they all seemed like gentle flaws, excusable ones, ones that made life normal and kept it from becoming mundane. Matt seemed like the type of guy with problems that were troublesome, but relatable to any other normal teen. They were the type of problems you could talk about with your friends during lunchtime, that would get you to receive a sympathetic pat on the back and an offer to talk about them again if you felt like you needed it. I didn't want to undermine Matt's struggles, and I knew that it was stupid of me to compare myself to him like some sort of self-centered middle schooler who would act like it was a competition who had the worst life or who had the worst injuries, but I couldn't shake the feeling off, and I hated myself for it. I hated that all I could feel in that moment was childish jealousy and teen angst, while I was finally alone again with my boyfriend, especially after he had proposed earlier on the parking lot that day to pursue our making out when we were alone in his room.