I Said What I Said

“You don’t even know him,” she tells him, rolling her eyes at him. Sterling had to do everything in her power to get herself away from him, leaving him behind at the bar while she tried to look for Lucas. It wasn’t weird for him to be off talking to his friends while they were all out at the bar together, it was just weird that Matthew had been hanging around with her rather than talking to him like he normally did.

Sterling stood in the middle of the dance floor trying to look through the crowd of people when she felt Matthew come up behind her, gently resting his hand on her shoulder as she felt herself relax at his touch. “I know him better than you know him, Sterl. And I know I could be a better boyfriend than him.”

“What makes you say that?”

She turns around to see Matthew smiling, his hand still on her shoulder as he gave her a gentle squeeze. He takes in a deep breath, looking down at his feet before looking back at her. Shaking his head, he tells her, “he left you alone. Every one of our friends is around us dancing, and I’m the one with you, not him.”

Sterling looks around her, finding Eli, Chloe, Ataliya, Jackson, Annabelle, Chris, Jacob, every friend that they went with and met up with that night was surrounding them, off in their own worlds and having a good time with each other and the other patrons while Lucas was nowhere to be found. She took in a sharp breath, wanting to dance with him. Her boyfriend was nowhere to be found and Matthew was right there. Dancing with him was harmless.

Sterling placed her hand on his shoulder, Matthew’s moving down her arm as the two of them moved together to the beat of the music. She was having a good time, not noticing the space between her and Matthew getting smaller and smaller with every passing song. It felt right, it felt like something she had been missing without even realizing it all this time.

The music slowed down, Sterling’s body pressed against Matthew’s as his hand found the small of her back, holding her close.

“Thanks for keeping her company,” she hears Lucas behind her, standing there with an angry look on his face as she tries to do everything to not look guilty. She wasn’t technically doing anything wrong. She was dancing with her friend. Nothing happened.

At least, that’s what she told herself and what she told Lucas once Matthew slinked away.

“You just looked a little too close there, Sterl,” Lucas said, gently taking her and pulling her into his chest. “He’s not trying to steal you from me, is he?”

Sterling let out a laugh as if she was trying to say that he had nothing to worry about. “He wouldn’t do that.”

But she wanted him to.

Lucas held her close, his hand in the same place that Matthew’s was moments before, feeling him place a kiss on her cheek as the two of them danced. She had lost sight of Matthew, closing her eyes and pretending that he was still the one holding her there on the dance floor. “I love you, Sterling” she hears Lucas murmur against her skin.

She hesitated before responding, telling herself it was just from the alcohol that she was doing this. Lucas was her boyfriend. Matthew couldn’t be better than he was. Could he be?

“I love you, too.”

“Hey, you’re spacing out,” Ataliya said to her, pulling her from those words ringing in her ears. “What are you thinking about?

She swallowed hard, turning to her friend. “Just him,” she tells her, forcing a smile.

Ataliya smiled back at her. “That’s so sweet.”

Lucas moved away, breaking up with Sterling without her putting up much of a fight. The only person she wanted to see was Matthew once Lucas left her apartment that night. She called him up right away, knowing he didn’t have a game and should have been at home that night to ask if she could come over.

He opened the door and pulled her in for a hug as soon as he saw her. “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t know why, but hearing him say that, feeling his body against hers made her break, all of her weight falling onto Matthew as she succumbed to tears while in his arms. He pulled her inside to his couch, trying to calm her down. “Hey, talk to me. What happened?”

Sterling heard herself laugh. “I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

“Because your boyfriend just moved away and broke up with you,” Matthew said to her.

She looked at him, feeling a tear fall down her cheek. He reaches up, wiping it away from the pad of his thumb, a chill going down her spine from the warmth of his touch. “I’m not upset about it, though.”

Matthew shrugs, resting his hand on her thigh. “You probably need time to process?” he asks her, just as confused as she was. This had to mean something, that she would show up to him right after she broke up with Lucas when he knew Sterling was much closer to Ataliya than she was to him. “Let’s go somewhere for a little bit. Get your mind off things,” he suggests, standing up, suddenly worried about being there like that with Sterling in front of him.

She nods, following him out of his place and to his car, Matthew trying to keep a little bit ahead of her while he rushes there. The two of them drove in silence, Sterling staring out the window while Matthew tried to keep his focus on the road, the rain just starting to fall while he drove further and further from his place, stealing glances at Sterling as he did.

Matthew stops in what felt like the middle of nowhere, putting his car in park and turning to her. “When I first signed here, I would drive around a lot if I felt like I needed to get away from the city,” he starts to explain, looking out the window in front of them, the rain falling and seemingly melting onto the windshield as it rolled down the glass. “I found this place was the best to clear my head if I got overwhelmed; it’s far enough away and quiet enough that I felt like I was somewhere completely different, anywhere but where I was told I had to be.

“When I was younger, if my dad was gone and I started to get overwhelmed by anything, my mom would take me out into the backyard and lie down with me in the grass. We would play a game called “close your eyes,” where she would tell me what she saw when she closed her eyes and we would try to see if we could see it in the clouds.”

Sterling giggled, trying to image a younger Matthew telling his mom the most absurd things, Chantal probably telling her son she saw exactly what he saw when his eyes were closed so that he would be happy.

“Close your eyes,” he whispers to her, Sterling barely able to make out what he’s saying over the sound of the rain hitting the car. She does as he says, taking in a deep breath while his voice fills the car. “We’re sitting outside in the sun instead of here in the car, in the rain. It’s warm, the air is fresh, the birds chirping. What do you want to see?”

“I see,” Sterling starts, a stupid smile starting to grow on her face. “A turtle wearing a top hat, pulling a scarf out of his sleeve.” She hears Matthew laugh, his face popping into her mind instead of the clouds she was supposed to be telling him about. “Is your turtle a magician?”

“Yes, stop,” she teases, reaching over in an attempt to swat at his chest. “He’s with a bunny, sitting on a rock with a fishing rod that’s trying to catch a mushroom.”

Matthew laughs again, Sterling’s eyes open to see his head thrown back in laughter. “I don’t think I could even come up with that as a child.”

“I guess you just weren’t creative enough,” Sterling tells him.

Matthew pretends to be hurt, closing his eyes before she could say anything else to him. “I see the Eiffel Tower, a flower coming from the top of it while a giant tries to water it.”

Sterling waited for him to keep going, hoping for more. She rested her head back on the headrest, a lazy smile on her face. “Keep going.”

A smile grows on Matthew’s face as he tries to. “He’s watering the flower, watching it grow. It keeps growing until it’s taller than him, when another giant, taller than the flower comes out and keeps watering it until it keeps growing. The people of Paris notice none of it while the world's largest flower reaches space.”

The two of them keep playing this game until the rain clears, Sterling’s mind completely gone from her thoughts of Lucas. Nothing Matthew could say or had said would remind her of the boy that was now her ex. She could only think of Matthew.

“You probably think about him all the time, right?” Ataliya says, sitting down on the stool beside Sterling. She looked upset, looking Sterling up and down in her dress.

“What?” Sterling says, her mind having wandered back to Matthew before she realized who Ataliya was talking about. “Oh, yeah.” She studies her friend, picking at the hem of her own dress. “Lee, what’s wrong?”

“Seeing you today, in your dress, ready to walk down the aisle, I don’t know,” her voice trails off. “Lee, come on, tell me,” Sterling tries to get it out of her friend.

“No, it’s fine.”

“Ataliya.”

“I’m never going to find anyone.”

Matthew had spent every night he wasn’t playing a game or on the road at Sterling’s place. He was there whenever he needed her, being whatever and whoever she needed him to be. Most nights they just sat on her bed and watched tv, normally in silence with Sterling’s sarcastic comments coming in here and there. If the two of them weren’t at Sterling’s place, they were at Matthew’s, a drawer in his dresser already set aside for her full of clothing that she could borrow. Matthew’s clothes were a little bigger on her, but he loved the way they hung on her body, his shirts being long enough that she didn’t have to wear anything else if she didn’t want to, and damn, he wished she didn’t want to.

Sterling had chosen one of her favorite movies, Midnight in Paris, to watch that night.

Owen Wilson, playing Gil, was sitting on the park bench with a woman after he found something written in the 1920s that he found his name in Adriana’s diary expressing her love for him, her disappointment and heartbreak over finding out that he was set to marry Inez instead.

“I don’t get why he isn’t with Adriana? Why is he with Inez?” Matthew says.

“Besides the fact that Adriana is from 1920s Paris and he’s from 2010s America?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s with someone else,” she starts to explain. “He thinks he loves Inez and knows that Adriana is someone he can never really be with.”

“He should just be with the one he wants to be.”

Something about those words coming from Matthew triggered a memory for Sterling, one from a few months ago when they were at the bar. “Hey, Matthew?”

“Yeah?”

“When you told me you could be a better boyfriend than Lucas, why did you say that?”

Matthew knew she had to know what his answer would be. In the few weeks that followed Lucas moving away, Matthew knew he didn’t want to rush things with Sterling. He didn’t want to be her rebound, he wanted to be hers. “Because Lucas wasn’t a good boyfriend for you,” he tells her, unsure how else to put it.

Sterling sits up, unsure how to feel about what he just said. Lucas was supposed to be Matthew’s friend, so why would he say something like that to his ex-girlfriend? “He was a great boyfriend to me,” she tries to convince him, the words coming out more like she was trying to convince herself of what she just told him.

“Please,” Matthew starts, getting off his bed. “He would leave you alone everywhere you went. He never seemed to want to spend time with you unless it was in private where no one knew. He wouldn’t let you take anything from him that a normal boyfriend would like his sweatshirts, food that the two of you made, anything that he left at your place he wanted you to return the next time he saw you. How he wouldn’t want to show you off and show the world that he was probably the luckiest guy in the world is beyond me.”

“Ataliya, whatever person has the pleasure of marrying will be the luckiest person in the world.” Sterling tried to comfort her friend, not sure what to do as it looked like she was starting to cry. She had a feeling telling her that crying would ruin her makeup was the wrong thing to say.

“What if I don’t find them,” she says, starting to panic.

“You will.” Wasn’t Sterling the one who was supposed to be the one panicking on her wedding day, not her maid of honor? Not that she wasn’t, but for other reasons. “I did. And I didn’t think I ever would.”

Sterling hadn’t heard from Matthew in a few weeks, both from his season picking up as their push to make the playoffs was really starting to get to the team and because of the last conversation they had. Matthew tried to convince Sterling that he was the best thing for her and that Lucas was the worst, something Sterling didn’t really want to hear. Matthew was her friend, not her boyfriend. She hadn’t been broken up with Lucas long enough that she was ready for a new relationship, but she didn’t want Matthew to just be a rebound.

“Let’s go out tonight!” Ataliya screamed through the phone. “We can go, get drunk, find the people we’re destined to spend the rest of our lives with.”

Sterling couldn’t help but laugh at her friend's crazy ideas. “You’re putting a lot of weight on this one random night, Lee.”

“Ok, well, can we at least get drunk?”

Sterling agreed, getting dressed and meeting Ataliya at the bar down the street just late enough that she was already contemplating turning back and going to sleep. She made her way in, trying to find anyone she knew, hoping that Ataliya would be the first one she saw.

“Oh, fuck,” she says, bumping into someone and feeling their drink go down her shirt. “I am so,” she starts, making eye contact with the boy who was already frozen in front of her. “Matthew.”

“I was just leaving,” he says before she can do anything, handing his glass off to the nearest person before pushing past her and going out the door.

Without thinking, Sterling turns and follows him, calling his name in hopes that he would stop. Running after him, she finally catches up to him, out of breath. “Where are you going? You see me and leave? What’s your deal?”

“Sterling, not now,” Matthew tells her. “I can’t.”

“You can’t what?”

“I can’t be around you,” he says, refusing to make eye contact with her.

“What?”

He takes in a deep breath, going back and forth between looking at the sky and the ground, anywhere but at the girl in front of him. “Don’t you get how hard it is to be around someone you want to be with when you know they don’t want to be with you?”

Sterling felt her breath hitch at his words, watching Matthew in front of her trying to find what his next thing to say was. “You think I don’t want to be with you?”

Matthew shakes his head, his emotions fluctuating between anger, confusion, sadness, desire, everything he could feel was running through him at that moment. “If you did, don’t you think we would be somewhere other than on the street having this conversation?”

Sterling stands there, unable to find the words to say. Matthew didn’t want to wait any longer, heading back towards his place like he had intended when he first saw Sterling walk into the bar. Before he could, he felt Sterling’s hand on his wrist, grabbing him and turning him back to her, her lips finding his before he could process what was happening.

Matthew was frozen for a second, Sterling doing most of the work in that moment until his hands wrapped around her waist, pulling her as close to him as he could, kissing her like that was everything he had ever wanted.

The only reason they broke apart was for some crude person calling for them to ‘get a room,’ Matthew muttering something under his breath that would have led to Sterling having to bail him out of jail for aggravated assault or some other felony he could probably commit.

“This means something, right?” Matthew asks her, not wanting to let her go.

“Yes.”

Sterling starts to lead him back to the bar, her hand in his as Matthew tried to process what had just happened. “At least you know my clothes will fit,” he jokes, pulling Sterling close to him again for another kiss.

Ataliya fixed her makeup, one of Sterling’s other bridesmaids coming in to tell her they were just about ready to start walking down the aisle. Her future husband was waiting for her at the end of it, Sterling trying to reassure Ataliya that her future partner was somewhere out there, waiting to meet her just like she was waiting for them.

The two friends fix themselves up one last time before Sterling’s wedding started.

“I know you’ve told me, but how did you know he was the one?” Ataliya asks again, down on the ground fixing the skirt of Sterling’s dress.

“Matthew, what are you talking about, leaving?” Sterling asked him, feeling her world crashing down around her. She had already lost one boyfriend because he was moving, she couldn’t lose another.

“If the team trades me, I really don’t get a say on that. Or, what if they don’t want to sign me again during the off season when my contract is up? I’ll have to find somewhere else to play, and there isn’t another team here in this city for me to play in.”

“And what if you do, what am I supposed to do?”

“Come with me,” he tells her as if it were obvious.

Sterling scoffs, Matthew giving her a confused look. “You expect me to just drop everything for you and move somewhere else? Away from my family, my friends, the job that I actually love? Matthew, we’ve been together for a few months. You can’t expect me to do that right now.”

“So, what, if I have to leave, we’re done?” Matthew snaps, a harsh tone in his voice that made Sterling jump.

She bit her lip, trying to hold back the tears that she could feel coming. This was just like with Lucas, only worse. Because with this relationship with Matthew, she could feel her heart breaking at the thought of him not being in her life now that she knew what it was like to have him. Her heart broke over the thought of not being able to call him whenever she needed to hear his voice knowing that it would bring a smile to her face. It broke thinking about the fact that he wouldn’t show up at her apartment anymore if she was upset and hold her in his arms and kiss her on the top of her head. It broke over the thought of Matthew not being hers, being somewhere else, and being someone else's.

“Yes,” she tells him, grabbing her bag and leaving before he could say anything that would make her change her mind. “And while we’re at it, we can just be done right now,” she hears herself say, the tears falling down her face at her worst thoughts and ideas becoming her reality in a matter of seconds.

Sterling didn’t know what to do, aimlessly driving while she tried to collect herself. She trusted that she would somehow just end up back at her place, hoping she would do so before she ran out of gas. By the time she got home, she was exhausted, hungry, physically aching at what had just happened, wanting to do nothing more than crawl into her bed and stay there for as long as she could.

Ataliya was calling her, Matthew was calling her, any friend that they both had was trying to contact her in every way they could in order to try to talk what they thought was sense into her. She turned off her phone, just trying to wallow in the break up that hurt more than the last one. She didn’t care if she was being dramatic in that moment, she just wanted to be dramatic alone, as stupid as that is.

She finally mustered enough energy to get out of bed the next morning, not even sure when she fell asleep or how shitty she probably looked from crying all night. Sterling wandered around her kitchen, trying to find anything she could eat out of necessity when she heard a knock on her door. She ignored it, thinking it was Ataliya who had a key anyway to let herself in if it was an emergency.

“Sterl, let me in,” she heard Matthew’s voice from the other side, his fist banging on the door so hard that she thought it was about to come off its hinge. “Please.”

She opened the door to Matthew throwing his arms around her, his breath shaking as she thought she could feel him crying. “Thank god you’re alright.”

“Why would you think I wouldn’t be alright?” she said sarcastically, peeling him off of her and heading back to her kitchen without giving him anything else.

“You haven’t been answering your phone, I thought something happened to you.”

“Why would you care if something happened to me? You’re the one who doesn’t care that I would have to uproot my entire life for you when I don’t even think you would do the same thing for me?”

“Are you kidding me?” Matthew asks her. “If you left and I was still here, I have no idea what I would do.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you,” he spits out, Sterling caught off guard by his words. “If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t be upset over the idea of having to leave you. It’s why you weren’t upset when Lucas left: you didn’t really love him even though you thought you did. If I didn’t love you, I would be a little bummed about you leaving, or about me having to leave, but if that actually happens, I don’t know what I would do. I wouldn’t be able to function, it would take me months, maybe years, to finally get over you. Fuck, Sterling, I love you.”

“It was the first time he told me he loved me. It was nothing big,” Sterling tells her, thinking back to that day, “we were just sitting on the couch at my place watching some movie and he said he wanted to travel one day. I asked him where and he told me anywhere that I would go with him because he loved me.”

The two of them do one last check in the mirror, Sterling smoothing out her dress and taking a deep breath as Ataliya hands her the bouquet. Sterling was about to walk down the aisle.

“I hope I find my Danny.”

Sterling takes her friend’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “You will.”

Sterling hears the music start playing, signaling that her's and Danny’s closest friends and families were walking down the aisle before her. She was nervous, but that was natural. She had nothing to worry about.

“Hey, Sterl,” Chloe pokes her head as Sterling was about to get ready. “Someone is here to see you.”

She and Ataliya exchange looks, Ataliya heading out before her to see who it was. Ataliya gasps, Sterling’s heart racing at the thought of who it could be. “You shouldn’t be here,” she hears her say to whoever it was.

“I had to see her, I’m sorry,” Sterling hears that familiar voice that sent a chill down her spine. He bursts into the room, panic on his face turning to wonder as he saw her in the wedding dress he thought he would see the first time she was walking towards him on their wedding day.