EmPATHETICally Blind (A skinny love story)

Chapter 36: Home to stay

      Matt's POV:

I regret putting the "i'm probably going to drink myself stupid" part in the letter. I wasn't really. I was just angry and emotional at the time and felt like giving her extra guilt. 

I'm sitting in the very same tree (or at least I think it is) that Emilee and I had a leaf fight in. My sound-blocking headphones are over my ears, and I'm sitting with my sunglasses on my lap. I can feel the tree shaking a little as something climbs up it. A squirrel possibly. No, the tree was moving too much for it to be a squirrel. Marcus probably found my hiding spot, or one of the guys. Any second now I was about to be pelted with leaves or sticks or possibly a basketball. 

I brace myself for impact, or getting my headphones knocked off me, but nothing came. Instead, the saddening yet familiar smell of pina colada suntan lotion mixed with blue raspberry dumdums came. Oh great, I was missing her so much, I started smelling her.

Then, without warning a handful of leaves was thrown right at me, hitting me on the side of the face. 

        "Hey! That's not funny! Whoever you are you can just get the fuck outta this tree right now, it's not fair to pick on a blind person!" I say, yanking my headphones off.

I hear smothered giggles, and pause.

I know those giggles.

        "Now that's no way to treat your best friend." A familiar voice says, and I have to grab onto the next branch up to keep from falling out of the tree in surprise.

        "Em! What the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be in California!"

        "Well, actually, I received a letter from a random first grader who just learned how to write. He has the same name as you. He told me he was going to do something stupid, and I came back just to make sure it didn't happen. See any first graders walking around with a liter of alcohol?" She asks me. I smirk and throw some leaves at her.

        "Ha. Ha. So did you come all this way just to make sure I don't do anything stupid and then leave again? Or is this permanent?" I ask, not daring to hope.

        "That's kind of a complicated question. You see, I know for a fact that you're going to do something stupid. Probably repeatedly. And I realized that on the way here. I also realized that, I just wanna be here to help you out of it, and even laugh at you for it if I find it funny enough." She says. I roll my eyes and chuck my sunglasses at her.

        "See Em? This is why you're single again. Because you know how to ruin a perfectly good goodbye. I sang the most saddest song of 2014 to you, telling you how much I loved you and that it was okay for you to go, I even planned it, and you went and came back anyways." I say, smiling so she knows I'm giving her crap.

        "Yeah, well, as we both learned, planning things out never really works anyways." She gives me crap right back. Also my sunglasses. I look straight to where her voice is coming from and throw the sunglasses over my shoulder.

        "Don't need these anymore." I say. She snorts and mumbles something about me never really needing them in the first place. I climb down the tree and she drops down next to me, where she throws her arms around me quickly, squeezing pretty much all the air out of me.

        "I'm not leaving you Matthew Taylor. Not ever again. And if I do, it's not by choice. I left because I was homesick but with you, I am home." She says, and I can hear her voice getting thick from crying.

I swear, it was more sentimental then, "I got off the plane!"

To those of you who don't get that reference I just made, you are seriously missing out on classic television.

        "I know." Is all I can say. She laughs and pulls back.

        "Besides, I still have your jacket. I never gave it back." 

        "Keep it."

        "I was going to."

I couldn't see anything visual, but what I could see was that even though we were both truly odd, messed up, destined to probably being the world's most spontaneous people, we would be side by side.

How cheesy.

The End