I’m seeing Heather in a new light. She may be annoying, but at least she’s not homicidal. (Yet.)
“I was more surprised than you are, believe me,” Matt says. “We weren’t exactly friends, and I didn’t even realize he was flunking out. One night, I woke up at like two in the morning, and he was just standing there in the middle of the room, holding a gun. He started babbling about how he couldn’t cut it in med school and how he resented me.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t even think he was serious until he pointed that gun at me. At my head. And then…”
Matt gets quiet for a minute, just staring at the ceiling. I somehow sense I ought to keep my mouth shut, so I just stroke his chest with my fingers.
“He killed himself after he shot me,” Matt says. “That’s the first thing I remember them telling me after it happened, like two weeks later. Also, they told me I was lucky to be alive. But when you can’t move half your body, you don’t feel lucky.”
“My God,” I say. “That’s… unbelievable. So you decided not to go back to med school after that?”
He’s quiet again. Long enough that I figure out myself that it probably wasn’t entirely his own decision not to go back. Thatmaybe getting shot in the head affected his ability to perform to the rigorous standards of medical school. After all, the bullet did a lot more than just graze him.
“Matt…” I murmur into his neck.
“It’s okay.” He tries to smile but fails. “It all worked out in the end. I’d probably be a surgeon now if I never got shot. Probably working one hundred hours a week, divorced with some kids I’d never see. I’m happier this way.”
He’s lying, though. Matt is a lot of things—he’s really smart, he’s a great teacher, he’s adorable, and he’s fantastic in bed. But I’m pretty sure he’s not happy.
42
Our second midterm comes way,way too fast.
I’m at an advantage, what with all the private tutoring with the anatomy professor. But I’m still nervous as all hell. If I screw up, I screw up. Matt has made it painfully clear that he won’t change my grade.
“You wouldn’t really want me to, would you?” he says to me.
“No, of course not,” I lie.
I would. Come on, of course I would.
Matt wants to live in some sort of fantasyland where I’ve changed all my corrupt ways, and now I’d never cheat in a million years. But that’s just not true. If he offered me an A, I’d take it. I wouldn’t even have to think twice.
The night before the exam, I head over to Matt’s house for a study session. When I arrive, he’s got all the textbooks—including the book he himself wrote—laid out on the coffee table. I settle down next to him on the couch, and immediately he tenses up again.
“Hey,” he says.
“What?”
“You’re on my right side.”
I frown. “Huh?”
“Maybe you never noticed,” he mumbles. “But I always sit with you on my left side.” He adds sheepishly, “I don’t move my right arm as well, as I’m sure you can tell. And I can’t see as well on my right side. It just… it makes me uncomfortable.”
I had no clue. He must have been positioning himself with me on his left very surreptitiously. Anyway, I get up and move to his left side, but he still looks tense.
“Matt,” I say, rubbing his arm. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
He looks at me for a minute then drops his eyes. “Honestly? Sometimes I have no idea why you want to be with me.”
I can’t believe he’d say that to me. I mean,he’sthe brilliant professor. I’mnothing. Okay, yes, I’m young. But so what? I’m just a loser who has no friends and cheated my way through college.
I start to tell him that, but before I can summon the words to tell him exactly what he means to me, he snatches one of the books off the table and says, “Never mind. We better get to work.”
Okay then.
Eventually, the study session migrates to the bed. We have this bowl of grapes, and if I get three right answers in a row, he feeds me a grape. I don’t even like grapes that much, but it’s really hot when he feeds it to me. I like how he holds it just out of reach of my mouth, waiting for that final right answer.
“You earned this,” he says with mock seriousness as he pops the last grape in the bowl into my mouth.
