Flat-Out Matt Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    Matt briefly registered that Erin was drinking, but the lure of the food in front of him dulled any concern he had about that. He immediately sat down and started eating, barely hearing his mother as she talked to Julie. An actual home-cooked dinner? And … Celeste helped do this? This was entirely weird. But, God, did it taste good. Matt didn’t normally care for manicotti, but this dinner seemed like the best thing he’d ever eaten.
    Someone had cooked for him. What a stupid thing to think. Or to care about.
    “You’re home late. How was school? Did your meeting go well?” Erin asked.
    Matt nodded and wiped his mouth with a napkin. A cloth napkin, at that. “Very good. Sorry I’m home late. And even sorrier that I’ve managed to double my workload by agreeing to be a research assistant.” This was also adding to Matt’s stress level. He would potentially be spending more time at school and therefore be less available to Celeste. Finding a way to make this work was going to be difficult.
    “This is with Professor Saunders, correct? He has an excellent reputation, so this is an important opportunity for you.” Erin took a sip of her wine, and Matt looked away. “You’ll have to be incredibly diligent with your work.”
    “I realize that.” Like he needed reminding about anything related to his academics. It wasn’t as though Matt had a long history of completely screwing up in school—he’d gotten into MIT, after all—yet his mother frequently implied that his education was somehow perilously hanging in the balance, and he might just crash off the academia scale at any given moment. “In fact,” Matt said as he stood up, “I should get upstairs and get to work. I’ll finish dinner up there. Thanks, Julie.” He took his bag and plate and started out of the kitchen. It had been a long day, and the last thing he needed was to be around Erin and her air of doubt around his competence. He stopped at the doorway. “Julie?”
    “Yeah?”
    “So things went all right today?” Asking her to pick up Celeste today had taken every ounce of nerve he had. But once—just once—he hadn’t wanted to drop what he was doing to attend to his sister. But he felt awful about it, as though he had let down Celeste yet again. Meeting with his professor had been important to him, because as much as he loathed the way his mother rode him constantly about his education, she hadn’t managed to kill his insatiable interest in learning. He’d delayed a year of school after Finn died. Wasn’t that enough to let him off the hook for asking Julie for help today? No, it wasn’t really. One day could change everything. He knew that all too well.
    “Totally fine. I told you that when you called. Both times,” she said.
    He admired the tone in her voice, the same one that she used a number of times the day they went apartment hunting. It actually was a bit Finn of her. She wasn’t being mean or making fun of him, but she could get away with slightly teasing him without making him feel bad. The way that she treated him like… well, like a normal person… was slightly jarring. Nice, but jarring in its familiarity. And he was both grateful and anxious from the lack of detail that she offered about the pickup.
    “Okay. Thanks again.”  
    When he reached his room, he shut the door, opened his laptop and finished his dinner. He browsed a few of the message boards that he frequented and tried to focus on fine-tuning his attack on another user’s take on internet security. Matt loved internet security issues, but tonight his concentration was shaky. Eventually he caved to what he really wanted to do, which was check an e-mail account that he used on occasion, the one that the he used to write Celeste so that she could pretend to get e-mails from Finn. It was part of a fantasy world that she liked to maintain, a world in which Finn was still alive and sending her updates on his travels. Yes, it was a little crazy, but