Michelle and Matt

[Author's note: The scene I just described is from a photo I saw on the Internet, which was the initial inspiration for this story. The caption with the photo reads:

"They planned a week-long camping trip almost every summer. This year there were quite a few other young people on the trip, which made for a fun time, at least until she started to flirt with one of the other guys. John complained to her and she apologized and promised to stop.

But the very next day she vanished in the afternoon. John asked around and a few people told him they thought she had hiked to the waterfall. It was unclear who she went with but John noticed right away that the guy she had been flirting with was also missing. When she returned and he confronted her, she told him point blank that she was going to sleep in a different tent tonight. She did have the decency to tell him this with tears in her eyes. But she still left the campfire that night, in front of everyone, with the wrong guy."]

Obviously embarrassed, Roger stood up, put a consoling hand on Matt's shoulder for a second, and walked away towards his own tent.

Matt sat alone, largely unaware of the growing cold, for perhaps another couple of hours. One or two people quietly called "goodnight" and he vaguely waved his hand at them.

Contemplating Roger's story, Matt idly wondered how he could be both unsurprised and profoundly shocked at the same time. It only confirmed what he'd suspected since Michelle's return from the hike, and what her plans for that night had clearly implied; and yet it gutted him.

It ripped into pieces his whole idea of who Michelle was, and what they meant to her. He could no more have abandoned her like that, to go off and fuck another girl, than he could have poked his own eyes out. It was unthinkable. She was his and he was hers.

Belatedly, he realized that he was alone; and cold; that the fire had gone out and that it must be well past midnight. He sat a few more minutes, going over the plans that had been forming almost unconsciously in his mind as he sat lamenting what Michelle was doing to him. Then he got up, carefully, and went back into his tent.

He spent a few minutes organizing some things. Then he picked up his cell phone and called his old friend from home, Danny Cappello. They spoke for about ten minutes. When he was done, he deleted the call from his call log.

***************

***************

***************

Michelle ached as she carefully picked her way through the darkness back to their tent, the one she shared with Matt. Her heart ached for him—she felt more guilty about what she had done than seemed possible.

It made so much sense at the time! Anthony was hot, they'd already fucked once, she knew it wouldn't ever mean anything. It was just a fling—she had liked that word, "fling," like throwing something up in the air. A frisbee, something harmless. Certainly not something that would cause pain to the man she loved.

And now all that reasoning seemed hollow, utterly ridiculous. Stupid. He was probably furious, hurt, shocked. How could she ever make it up to him? Would he even give her a chance?

She also ached between her legs, and not in a good way. Sex with Anthony had gone in a steadily declining line from "fabulous, unbelievable, cosmic" through "fun but empty" and arrived at "painful and unwelcome."

When he'd fucked her in the clearing the afternoon before, she'd come like she'd never come in her life. He was skilled and determined and sweet-talking, and his hands were magic. He got her naked, and he got her wet and panting, and then he got her on her knees and made amazing love to her.

Okay, he fucked her. There wasn't any love in it, she understood that now. But he was gentle and slow and incredibly skillful, and he rocked her world. Three phenomenal orgasms, over what must have been at least thirty minutes of fucking. God, the stamina he had! And the way he used his hands, caressing her large sensitive breasts, or her ass, or reaching around to stroke her clit gently. That was it, he was so powerful and so gentle at the same time.

And there isn't much doubt that she was thinking with her pussy when she agreed to spend the night with him; she wanted more of what she'd gotten in the afternoon.

But that night in the tent he was far less solicitous, far less patient. He acted like it was a done deal, her cunt was his to use, and he used it. The first time was fine—but it wasn't as great as in the clearing, and she was distracted thinking of poor Matt. Was he back in the tent, crying? Was he sitting in a chair, drinking beer, cursing her? Thinking of how he could get back at her?

And with Anthony, that night in the tent—he just went on and on. He fucked her, then he had a beer, then he fucked her again. And he wanted his dick sucked, and mocked her for not being very good at it. And he fucked her again, probably at 2 or 3 in the morning, before finally falling into a deep, boozy sleep. By which time Michelle had had more than enough—her pussy was stretched and sticky and very very sore.

Eventually she dozed a little; but when she awoke and saw by Anthony's wristwatch that it was 5:45, she quietly got up and dressed and left, determined to get back to Matt before it got light and anybody saw her.

The tent was empty—where was he? She poked around, using her cell phone's flashlight. His wallet and his shoes and jacket were gone, but his sleeping bag and the rest of his clothes remained, as did his car keys and his phone. She figured maybe he'd gone for an early walk, or been unable to sleep. Or even that he'd spent the night in someone else's tent. With Adam, maybe, and Sandy had slept elsewhere? Had he sat up drunkenly and complained to Adam about Michelle, the shameless slut fiancée?

Michelle was unhappy, sore, and very very tired. She pulled her shoes and pants off and crawled into the sleeping bag, and within minutes she was lightly snoring.

The nightmare began when she finally awoke, but it came on slowly. Michelle heard the usual morning noises, looked at her phone and realized it was long past 10. She glanced around and saw that Matt had not returned.

Quickly pulling on some clean clothes, she went outside and joined the other stragglers for breakfast and clean-up. Quietly she asked around, but no one had seen Matt since last night.

She spoke to Adam, but he just shook his head. The cool stare he gave her made Michelle feel worse; and she got much the same from Sandy and a few of the others. Not knowing what else to do, she went back to the tent to straighten up. She stuffed the dirty clothes into her laundry bag, brought out the sleeping bag to air it out, folded up the chairs for later.

By noon, Michelle was worried enough to put her embarrassment aside. She went around to everyone in the group, telling them that Matt seemed to have gone off somewhere and asking if they knew anything.

Carol and Pete were leaving; they promised to check down at the parking lot to see whether Matt's car was still there. When they called twenty minutes later, they confirmed that it was—which made sense, since Matt's keys were still in the tent.

Several small groups of friends were going off to hike one place or another, and they all promised to keep an eye out for Matt. Michelle was too worried to leave the campsite, so she just sat and fretted. Until about 1:20, when the call came.

It was Sandy, on Michelle's cell, and she sounded serious. "Michelle, we're down at Cave Run Lake. You'd better come down."

"What is it? Have you found Matt?"

"Just come down here, all right?" Sandy hung up.

Michelle ran down the trail and was there in minutes, her heart pounding. She found Sandy and Adam and a handful of others standing at the edge of the lake.

"What is it?" she shouted, before she'd even reached them. A few steps later she saw it.

Neatly folded on the ground was Matt's jacket. Next to the jacket, his running shoes. And lying on top of the jacket, all neat and tidy, were his socks. His boxers. His pants. His Illini T-shirt. And at the very top, in the center of the neat pile, the promise ring.

"Noo!" Her cry startled them, and caused birds to fly out of the trees around them. Michelle fell to her knees and began to cry.

***************

It took a week. That first day, they all searched, nearly 30 of them. They walked the entire perimeter of the lake, looking for Matt or any evidence he'd been there. Then the National Forest Service people were called, and they took over.

Matt was a reasonably competent swimmer—he might have been able to swim across the lake, if he'd wanted to. But it would have been in the middle of the night, and it was pretty cold, and he might easily have gotten disoriented.

Or—and no one wanted to say this to Michelle—he might have gone into the water not intending to come out.

After a few days, everyone had to get back to their lives, and they left the search to the Forest Rangers. Anthony had packed up and left the first afternoon, without a word to anyone. Andrea and Heather stayed a couple of extra days with Michelle, who refused to leave, but finally they had to get back as well.

Of course they'd spoken to Matt's parents, and to Jason down in Louisville, but no one had heard a word. Michelle called them the first day, trying to hold back her sobs. After that, it was the Forest Service that made the daily call—Michelle simply couldn't face it.

When they finally called off the search, Jason was there. He'd driven up from Louisville, and he helped Michelle pack up Matt's things. Before that he'd sat down privately with her, and made her tell him what had happened the last night anyone had seen his brother. The last night of his life, presumably.

It was excruciating. She cried, wept, looked piteously at Jason as she gave him the toned-down, non-X-rated version of her tryst with Anthony. Her tryst with Anthony and her abandonment of Matt.

Surprisingly—unbelievably, even—he didn't berate her. He didn't shout, curse, stomp away. He could see she was in agony, beside herself with grief and guilt. He didn't exactly console her, didn't wrap her up in a big hug. But he stayed with her, and they packed up the things together. The tent, the sleeping bags, the cooking things, Michelle's clothes and Matt's.

They drove back to Carey in their two cars, Jason staying behind Michelle the whole way. They'd agreed she'd go straight to her own house. Jason had asked her if she could come talk to his parents, but Michelle had broken down again, shaking her head desperately, and begged him not to insist.

"I ... will, I'll go see them, I promise, Jason, but, please—please not just yet? Please, can you understand, I just ... I just can't right now." She was almost hysterical, pleading with him, and he finally just nodded.

When Michelle got home her parents, who had been following the tragic story by phone, welcomed her wordlessly into the house and put her to bed. The next morning they put her into the back seat of the family car and drove off to visit her mom's parents in Iowa. They were gone for the rest of August.

***************

Michelle's mom and dad took care of her. They couldn't have been nicer. She was their princess, and they gave her what she needed. Her grandparents doted on her and spoiled her, and they didn't say a word about Matt the entire time. She knew they knew the story, of course, but not having to talk about it was a relief. She slept a lot, and they fed her her favorite foods and let her go on long walks with the two dogs.

And when Labor Day came and it was time to go back to Illinois, her parents drove her straight back to her dorm. And they went home to Carey and packed up all the things she needed that she'd brought home for the summer, and drove them back up to her at school. She just couldn't face the thought of seeing anyone at home—seeing Matt's friends, and her friends, and oh my God Matt's family.

Michelle pretty much stayed in her room. She didn't want to see anybody, didn't want to go any of the places she and Matt used to hang out—their favorite spots in the Undergraduate Library, or benches on campus, or restaurants—and she certainly didn't want to see any of their friends and have to answer the inevitable, horrible questions.

She told her roommate Helen, of course. The two girls were pretty close, and Helen held her as she sobbed and stumbled her way through the terrible story. What an awful thing she'd done, how sorry she was, how she could never have imagined that Matt would ...

Helen was aghast—but she was a good friend. She listened through the whole story; and she had pizza delivered so they could eat in their room and Michelle didn't have to go to the cafeteria.

And later that evening she went out and quietly passed the word of the tragedy to Michelle's friends, so that no one would mistakenly welcome her back to school by asking about Matt.

Classes began the next day and Helen insisted that Michelle go, even walking with her to her first class. That afternoon, heading back to her dorm from her Stats class, Michelle saw a guy 50 yards away, walking away from her with another guy on a side path next to Davenport Hall, and she almost called out "Matt!" and ran towards him. And then her heart stopped and she nearly fell to her knees, realizing that it was just some guy who looked like Matt from a distance.

She ran straight back to her room and cried for the rest of the afternoon.

The following day Michelle was walking across the main quad on her way to lunch, trying hard to think about Macroeconomics and not about Matt, when she dropped one of her books. As she bent down to pick it up, she saw the shadow of someone standing a few feet away.

"Hello Michelle," he said. Straightening up, she saw Matt. She shrieked—and fainted.

***************

"You faked it?" she asked, for the third time. She was still trembling, clutching her arms around herself tightly. They were sitting on a bench in the sunshine near the Illini Union, but she still felt cold.

"Yes," he said again. "I don't feel very proud of it now—but I was hurt, hurt worse than I'd ever been before, and I wanted you to feel as bad as I did."

It was taking her forever to think through it. She was just too shocked, so relieved and confused and furious. Who knew that the phrase "her head swam" was actually a real thing?

"How did you do it?"

"I called Danny Cappello and asked him to come pick me up at the boat launch ramp on the lake. Then I cleared the call from my phone, left my stuff where you guys must have found it, and walked over to wait for him. I took an extra pair of shorts and a T-shirt, but I was still pretty damn cold, and I cut up my bare feet a little.

"Danny lent me a few hundred dollars. We drove into town and I found a Walmart and bought some clothes, and then I got on a bus and went down to Louisville and stayed with my brother. I bought a cheap phone and called him and my parents, so they wouldn't freak out when they started getting calls."

Michelle was still struggling to absorb everything. "So, when Jason—when he came up to the lake, and heard my story, and we packed up your stuff ... he already knew you were alive?"

"Yeah. That's why he didn't chew you out, just made you tell him the story. He told me you were pretty distraught."

"And ... oh my God, Matt, what about all our friends? They must—"

"Everybody back in Carey knows I'm alive. Once you and your parents left, I asked my parents to make a few calls so people could spread the word.

"I kind of feel bad about it now—making people suffer like that, mourn me and all. I never intended to hurt anyone, except you that is. And I didn't have all that long to plan the whole thing, I just did it.

"I hope somebody's told your parents by now—but just in case, please call them tonight. I hate the idea of them thinking I killed myself, and that it was because of you, Michelle."

They sat some more in silence. He watched her trying to get her head around it, think it all through.

"The first few days were pretty bad," he said. "Jason was terrific, patient and supportive. I got drunk a couple of times, threw some things around, even broke a couple of his plates. And he just listened, let me get it out, didn't rush me.

"You know, for a while I was planning not to come back to school ... just disappear, maybe take a year off, go to the West Coast and find a job or something. But I realized it didn't make any sense. Why should I delay finishing college, just because you ... just because I wasn't with you anymore? And the other thing was, I couldn't go on letting people think I was dead. It wasn't fair to anybody."

He stood up. "I've really got to go, Michelle. Are you all right? You still look awfully pale."

"Wait, Matt, don't go! Can I ... uh, will ... can I see you later? I really need to talk with you some more!"

Slowly he said, "how about in a couple of days, all right? I've had more time than you to think about things—so let's give it a little time and we can talk after that."

She was starting to cry again. "Matt—are we ... do you—"

He stopped her, putting his hand out gently. "Later, Michelle. We'll talk later."

***************

"He's ALIVE?!" Helen was shouting, gleeful, hugging Michelle so tight she could hardly breathe. "Oh my God this is amazing! What happened to him? Did he fake it or something? What did he say?"

Michelle couldn't help but smile at Helen's crazed joy, even in the midst of her own pain and confusion.

"Yeah, he did it on purpose. He was ... he was really mad at me, and he figured that was a way to get back it me. God, did it ever work."

They talked for hours, going over it again and again. What she'd done, what he did, who knew; and above all, what would happen now.

Helen said, "well, he's talking to you—that's something. And he let you know he's alive. I guess he could have just stayed dead, gone to school somewhere else or something."

But Michelle just shook her head, with tears in her eyes. "He knew he couldn't keep letting people think he was dead—all our friends at home, and people here. I don't think he came back for me at all."

Helen hugged her. "Well, he said you could talk to him in a couple of days. I'm sure when he hears how awful you felt, how sorry you are for hurting him..." She broke off, wanting to reassure her friend but unable to complete a sentence she couldn't really believe herself.

***************

It was the hardest thing she'd ever done, waiting two more days to call him. He had his old cell phone back, because he picked up on the third ring and said, "hello, Michelle."

"Matt, hi, uh ... do you think we get together today, you know, and talk?" She was nervous, and stumbled over her words a little.

They agreed to meet in her room at 5. She cleaned it like a madwoman, ran out and bought a bunch of flowers and set them up in a pretty vase on her desk, changed her outfit four times.

When Matt arrived he came in quietly, looking distant, removed. He sat in her chair near the window and just looked at her, like, "this is your show—why don't you just get on with it?" Not hostile, certainly—just serious.

And she tried, he certainly had to give her that. She owned up to it, no excuses, no trying to minimize what she'd done.

"It was terrible, Matt—I didn't see it then, I don't know why not, but I see it now. I betrayed you in the worst possible way. I was thoughtless and selfish—and cruel, though I didn't mean to be at the time.

"It was inexcusable and wrong and heartless, and immature."

"What's the 'it', Michelle?" He wasn't going to make it easy. He was going to make her say it.

She looked down, and then back at him, trying desperately to keep her eyes on his face.

"Sleeping with—no, that's not right. Having sex with another guy. With Anthony. First on the path to the waterfall, that afternoon. And then—I can hardly say it, Matt, but I did it. Then coming to you and telling you I was going to spend the night in his tent. To have sex with him some more. Telling you that, and then just walking away and doing it.