Broken Hearts & Busted Stereos Ch. 08

Ted heaved a heavy sigh, knees bent to nearly his chest with freckle heavy arms sitting atop them. Eyes glanced to a tree to his left, in it the intials J.A., M.F., and T.T. were carved above a pot leaf with 4/20/99 written beneath it. He remembered that Easter Sunday. Janey had still been a relatively new friend, but a promising one who could roll blunts and smoke them. Matt had driven to the dead end street and parked before they hopped the fence at the back end of the Nature Center and found their way off the trail to this secluded boulder at the edge of the cliff.

The view was always beautiful, the cliff dropping off into a field and then a slowly rising hill littered with trees that were probably older than their great grandparents. It had been more simple then, Janey was just some pudgy tom boy in huge jeans and a t-shirt with hair too short for her features and all the obnoxious tendencies of a younger sister.

Ted's line of thought was broken by a twig snapping near by. Although the quiet of the woods was given to every small sound on the trails that wound through them, this one seemed to close for comfort. He sighed, turning for a moment before looking straight ahead again. Matt was just about the last person he wanted to see right now, but he knew there was no deterring him.

"Yo." Ted lifted a hand in a half wave in response.

"Yo." Matt stepped onto the boulder, settling beside him and assuming a similar pose to look out over the view as well.

"This place doesn't change, does it?"

"Nope." Matt was ready to turn and leave. He was in way over his head and Ted's monosyllabic responses weren't exactly boosting his confidence, either.

"Look," Matt let his head drop so he was looking down at the rock between his legs before they lifted again to stare out at the view, "you really need to talk to her. You know I've kept my nose out of this on both ends, but couldn't you guys just clear the air, for my sake?"

"We just talked."

"No, the shit just hit the fan." Ted laughed and shook his head. "Seriously, Ted. I don't know, man. I just can't stand to see her sad like this. I don't know. Things have changed. This isn't what it started out as."

Ted turned then to look at his friend. There was something in his eyes... mature emotion. This wasn't devil-may-care Matt who came up with plots to take over the world, or ran through the woods in the pitch black of midnight in all black with a paint ball gun. This was Matt who would soon don a suit and sit in traffic for two hours at 6:30 in the morning before spending a 12 hour day at the office. "Do you love her?"

Matt swallowed hard at the question. Any hope for looking Ted straight in the eye during this conversation was gone, and he quickly turned back to the woods. "Remember when we used to come up here all the time?"

"Yeah, you and I had a lot of good times up here."

"No, I mean the three of us. I couldn't stand her. She annoyed the crap out of me. I wanted to push her off this fucking cliff. She would babble and babble and babble, but she always had trees, and she was always with you."

"What's your point?"

"It's just weird, coming full circle." He turned to look at Ted, the sets of intials in the tree catching his eye. "Oh man!" He laughed, sliding off the rock to walk towards it, studying it. "I had forgotten about this. I remember I was sitting up on the rock when she did it and I thought it was the stupidest thing anyone had ever done."

Ted just shrugged. "Yeah. You still haven't answered my question."

"I'm moving, Ted."

"What do you mean? Your lease up on your place?"

"Yeah, but I mean, I'm really moving.... Up north... she doesn't know yet."

"Wait, what?"

"Ted, I really need you two to settle things." Matt turned to look at Ted. "Until you do, there's this... this dirtiness hanging over everything. This guilt of, what if, and I can't live with that, and it's tearing her up. Even when she pretends to be okay, I mean, I've known her for years. I can tell when she's faking."

"You ever think maybe she just needs to get over it? I'm not angry with her, I don't hate her, I just have nothing left to say." Ted shrugged, looking towards Matt. "She'll get over it."

"It's been what? Two, three years? She isn't getting over it. I don't know what it is. Anytime your name comes up, she just... you can see it in her eyes, she's trying to tune it out because she's given up on thinking she won't care."

"What do you care? You guys are just fucking." Perhaps it was the wrong thing to say, but Ted had never known Matt to be one to carry much affection for the flavor of the month. Matt jumped up quickly, with balled fists.

"Is that what this is about? You don't think I fucking care about her? Is that why you're being such a prick, because she didn't pick you, she picked someone who would just drop her when he got bored?" Matt's voice carried that scary form of anger, the one that forced him to speak in something just above a whisper, so controlled and monotone that it couldn't only mean anything else was uncontrollable. "I'm not just fucking her. You think I'd just fuck her for two fucking years? I haven't fucked anyone else in 8 months."

"Oh, so before then you were?"

"She's not my girlfriend, we lived 1,000s of miles apart."

"Do you know that she didn't want to tell me I was right when I figured you two out? She BEGGED me not to tell you that I knew, she was so petrified you would be angry with her."

"Ted, I can't change what happened back then. I can only move forward. I'm moving so I can try things for real with her. I need you to give her your blessing."

"I can't do that unless you answer my question. Do you love her?" Matt sighed and looked at his feet and then into Ted's eyes. There was a heavy pause in the air as Matt hung on to his silence just staring at his friend. He hadn't even told Janey how he felt, and now he was putting the information out there. It wasn't how he wanted things to be. It was something she deserved to hear first. But this was for her own happiness. This would take away that sadness that danced at the edge of her irises. It was worth her hearing second if she never had to hurt like that again, as long as she heard it from him. He swallowed hard and managed to find his voice.

"Yes." Ted matched the sigh, looking down before back up.

"Really?"

"She's just so..." Ted shook his head, lifting his hand.

"I know."

"So will you talk to her, please?" Ted simply nodded.

"Give me an hour or two more though?" Matt nodded and stepped back, turning to go before turning back around and resting a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"Ted, if I had known how you felt I wouldn't have -"

"I never said anything."

"I'll talk to you later." With those final words Matt turned and left, twigs snapping beneath his feet. So this was it. It was time for things to be... okay, again. He needed to get his head straight, needed to know what to say. His mom would know. Ted slipped from the rock and down the path, hopping the fence and getting back in the car. It was going to be along evening.