Page 98 of Cherry Picking
He’s fussing with a waitress at the counter, carrying a tray of two milkshakes and cheese curd fries, laughing as she makes distinctive gestures with her hands at his retreating back.
Matty slides into his side of the booth, the bright blue of his hearing aids catching one of the fluorescent lights above.
The milkshakes come in those blooming flower shaped glassware, the ones with skinny bases that widen at the top, with an unhealthy swirl of whipped cream and a pointed cherry at the tip.
He picks the stem out of his shake and pops the fruit in his mouth, a wide smile showing him pinching it between his teeth.
“You look tense,” he says around it, closing his lips to bite down and pull the stem free. “I’d invite you back to my apartment, but I’m not too keen on poisoning you with black mold.”
I laugh, because as out of my element as I feel—as I’ve felt for months—Matty’s humor is familiar. Comforting.
“You look healthy for someone living in toxicity.”
He does. Truly. He’s put on weight since I saw him last. Some meat and muscle on his bone where he used to be all wiry and lank. The years of hormone therapy have filled him in, given life to the body it once felt like he only tolerated.
His long, black hair is twisted into a bun at the top of his head, and his brown eyes watch me with the same curious intensity they always have. There’s even some scruff covering his cheeks and chin.
“It’s the injections. They give me superpowers.”
We both chuckle, Matty grabbing our food and divvying it off the tray, then holding it out to that same waitress who walks by.
“Thank you, Hannah,” he says, holding his palm to his mouth and then dropping it down. He does something else with his fingers I don’t understand.
She scrunches up her face and replies with her free hand, and then the two of them break out into smiles as she walks away.
Matty catches me watching and leans his elbows on the table, wrinkling his button nose in my direction.
“That’s Hannah. She’s deaf. Been teaching me sign language for a couple years. Helps when I gotta turn down the world a little bit.”
He fiddles with one of the hearing aids but doesn’t switch it off or turn it down.
When he fell through the ice that day—underwater for who knows how long until I found him, nearly frozen and not breathing—he came out with damage to his ear drums. Something about the pressure and the temperature.
One ear lost about seventy percent, the other just under fifty. He used to obsess over the numbers. Every doctor's appointment was met with frustration when the tests didn’t show improvement.
Once upon a time, he tried explaining to me what this new world sounded like, but no matter the image he painted, it was lost on a knucklehead like me.
“Thanks for finding time to see me.”
His eyes soften, and he lays his hand out on the table: palm up; an offering.
I don’t take it, my own damp and trembling.
“I was starting to lose hope you’d ever reach out.”
When I frown, he averts his eyes and reaches for his shake. “That sounds more desperate than I intended.”
With a quick swipe to wet my lips, I shake my head and say, “Matty, you know that this isn’t?—”
“Riley.” He flexes his fingers on the table, grabbing my attention, but I still don’t take them. “I miss my best friend, alright? Sue me for thinking you might get over yourself long enough to remember that.”
In any other circumstance, I would be offended, but Matty says it so easily. With a smile fit for a child. A joyful innocence.
“It hurt, you know. You leaving.”
That smile doesn’t fall, but it sobers, and he leans his chin on his fist.
“You left me first.”
