Read Online Bound Together by Eliza Jane - Free Book Online

I’m sorry — I didn’t know.” My hands felt clumsy on the table, I wanted to reach out and grab his hand, but I was bad at this stuff. I couldn’t even imagine losing one of my siblings. They were my whole life.
    We just sat in silence for a few seconds, Matt looking down at the table. When he looked up at me, his eyes were watery.
    “Let’s make some dirty words in John ’s honor,” I said.
    He smiled. “Let’s.”
    I picked out nine tiles. They barely fit across the little tray. It was obviously designed to hold seven. After studying his tiles for a minute, Matt went first, laying the word MILF horizontally across the center of the board.
    “Can you do that?” I asked.
    “Oh yeah, slang, acronyms, anything goes. As long as it’s perverted.”
    “John’s rules?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
    He smiled and nodded.
    I thought only using dirty words would be harder, but it turns out they came to me more naturally than regular words. I laid down GROIN next.
    “Nice. John would be proud.” He reached over to refill the tiles on his tray. “So you have a sister, right?”
    I remembered that he’d seen Cora and I at the Laundromat. “Yeah. And three little brothers.”
    “Wow. Big family.”
    “Yep.” My thought exactly — who the hell had five kids nowadays?
    He put down CUM next, then I laid down LOAD.
    “ Good one.” He gave me a fist bump across the table.
    “So why didn’t you want to hang out with those guys tonight?”
    He grew quiet and rearranged his tiles. “I don’t know, I guess I just feel like I have to pretend to be someone I’m not around a lot of people. They expect me to be happy all the time and I’m just tired of faking it.”
    I nodded. I understood. I didn’t fit most of the time. I knew he was paying me a compliment even without saying it. He didn’t have to be fake around me.
    “Pussy has two s’s, right? ” he asked, a look of concentration on his face.
    “Last time I checked.”
    “Can we go with one?” he asked.
    “ Pu - sy ,” I tried it out loud . W e cracked up laughing. “That doesn’t sound right.”
    “Here.” He turned his letter towards me. “Help me.” I studied the tiles on his tray, then rearranged the m and spelled the word NUDE. “Y ou’re good at this.” He grinned, and took the tiles to arrange on the board.
    “Yeah, I don’t know what that says about me,” I said, but soaked in his compliment.
     

 
     
    Chapter Twelve
    Matt
     
    By our second morning, I anticipated that Zoey wouldn’t be fully functioning until she had her coffee. I got us a table in the small breakfast nook off the hotel lobby, and carried saucers with one of everything over to our table. Chocolate croissants, pastries with sticky orange jam in the center, pale, thin yogurt topped with raisins, and soft cheeses with hunks of baguette. Zoey slid into the seat across from me, her eyes scanning the table. I flipped her coffee cup over just as the waitress came by with a pot of coffee. “Café?” she asked.
    “ Oui .” I held up Zoey’s cup. When it was filled with steaming, creamy-frothed coffee, I sat it back down in front of her. She remained speechless as she eyed the coffee.
    “Uh, thanks,” she recovered, fumbling for the mug.
    After breakfast, our group set off on the twenty-minute walk toward Notre Dame. The streets were steep and winding and dotted with stone buildings and shops adorned with awning-covered windows. Bobby and Carson ran ahead of the group, practicing French swear words and cracking up laughing at the combinations they could put together. Like cheese dick. It made me miss the time I spent with just me and Zoey. She was low key, and there was a certain degree of sadness inside her that felt familiar, reliable to me.
    Before long, Zoey and I found ourselves several paces behind the group. We walked in silence toward the river and then Notre Dame came into view – its two towers standing tall against the brilliant blue sky.
    After