Page 9 of I've Walked Where You've Been
“That’s rough, man, wow,” Jessica said, and Josh nodded in agreement.
“I mean…” Carly tilted her head, speculative. “Youarepretty shitty to him most of the time.”
Matty gaped at her. “The fuck?”
“I just mean, you’re like,superfriendly with everybody else but him. Like, I haven’t seen you talk to him loads, but when you do it’s…cold. Like, you barely look at him, you ignore him, and…I mean I’d feel pretty shitty if someone did that to me. If mybondmatedid that to me.”
“That’s not—that’s just how we are. We don’t like each other. But I’m not, like, fuckingbullyinghim. I’m not getting him alone in a bathroom to fucking beat him up.”
“I mean, sure. But like. You can’t expect him to be all ‘Thank you, Matty, you saved me!’ just ’cause of one nice thing you do. You guys have baggage.”
Josh cut in. “He could be thankful for this one thing, though. Pretty fucked up to tell Matty that he’d beat Ethan up when he literally just punched someone in the face for him.”
Carly shrugged. “I’m not necessarily saying it isn’t fucked up, I’m just saying…you can’t expect Ethan to just react logically and see Matty as the good guy.”
Matty choked on nothing. “So I’m a bad guy?”
“No, but, I mean…you haven’t been good tohim.”
“Because he’s shitty tome!”
“I’m not saying you didn’t have your reasons not to be nice; I’m just saying you haven’t been, and you can’t expect him to just see you as nice, regardless of your reasons behind it.”
Josh shook his head. “Still think it’s fucked up.”
Carly just shrugged again as Matty stared at the ground.
Maybe he hadn’t been the nicest person in the world to Ethan, but he had reasons not to be. It was just how they were to each other.
It wasn’t Matty’s fault.
**********
Things would be so much easier if he could just stop thinking about Ethan.
All of the things he’d said to Carly were true. Ethan had never been nice to him. Had never made an effort to play with him, or get to know him, or not make him feel like an idiot in comparison. And granted, Matty hadn’t exactly been receptive to Ethan’s hobbies, but they wereboring.
Okay, so Matty might see what Carly was referring to. But, still. It wasn’t his fault.
Matty tried to cling to that thought, to the frustration and hurt of having Ethan throw it back in his face when Matty had risked getting into trouble by hitting those two morons that were trying to bully Ethan.
Despite all his efforts, the red fog of anger he tried to cling to kept being pierced by the knowledge that Matty had played a part in how bad things had gotten between them.
Matty rarely paid attention to the bond—if there was a strong emotion like the distress the other day, it would fill his head and be impossible to ignore. Day-to-day stuff, however, he’d learnt to tune out like background noise.
Now, however, he started paying attention to the flow and pull of the living organism that was the bond. He’d never noticed its small subtleties—how it seemed to shy away at times, try to call his attention at others. How carefully he had to focus for the quieter emotions to come through. How the bond was thin and weak and hard to reach most of the time.
It wasn’t just the bond that was quiet, though. Ethan himself seemed to be subdued. He had friends, sure, but the more Matty actually watched him and not the bond, the more he realised how much time Ethan spent alone. Matty guessed it was by choice—when he was with his buddies, he seemed perfectly happy—but it seemed kind of sad anyway, that Ethan didn’t have anybody he wanted to spend more time with, even if it was just to sit quietly beside them, immersed in his own world.
Matty might have been projecting his extroverted personality, but whatever.
Jessica and Josh started poking fun at how Matty seemed to have suddenly developed an obsession with his bondmate, going as far as conveniently being where he knew Ethan was going to be—not following him around, okay, Josh?
The teasing might have been the reason Matty started trailing after Ethan alone—or maybe it was because he began to not really want to share this quiet, confusing Ethan with anybody. Not until he figured out exactly who it was Matty was bonded to, and why, exactly, everything had gone so fucking wrong.
Matty subtly followed Ethan deeper into school grounds, where the trees got a little thicker, closer to where some of the students had patches of fertile ground they could cultivate. Ethan was just standing there, looking tense, fists clenched at his sides.
“You know I can feel you through the bond, right?” Ethan’s voice startled Matty from where he’d been hiding behind a tree.
