Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Iris
Sunday morning, I wake up to no newspaper alarm, thankfully, but with an intense craving for French toast.
Matteo has ruined Pop-Tarts for me forever.
As I make my way through my morning routine, filling the carafe with water and brewing my coffee, there’s a knock at my door.
My heart skips.
It’s not even eight. Is this payback?
And why am I excited at the thought?
That excitement quickly turns to dread when I remember that unlike Matteo, I don’t look like a walking billboard when I roll out of bed.
I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a small mirror on the wall and wince. I pull the elastic from my messy bun and shake out my hair, but I’m bringing “casual” down to a whole new level. I carry my mug with me as I walk to the door, and when I pull it open, I find Matteo wearing the slightest hint of a crooked half-smile that makes me feel fuzzy on the inside .
“Please tell me you were still in bed.” His expression holds.
“You wish!” I blurt. “You’re going to have to get here before seven if you want to catch me still in bed.”
His mouth twitches, and I feel the heat rush to my cheeks.
“I mean—I didn’t—” I press my lips together, but I can’t think of any way to erase the visual I’ve just created.
He just stands there, smirking.
I turn around, leaving the door open, and walk back into my kitchen, mentally flogging myself for being so awkward. I can’t help it—this is the first time he’s sought me out. It feels buzz-worthy.
And I’m definitely buzzing.
I walk into the kitchen and pull out a mug, aware that he’s closed the door and followed me inside. I turn and find him looking around.
“Are you getting hives just being in here?” I ask with a quick glance around my apartment, which looks like a “before” photo on The Home Edit .
“It’s . . .” His eyes scan the space. “Very you.”
I frown. “That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
He shrugs. “It looks exactly like I pictured.”
“Considering how neat your apartment is, I’m taking that personally.”
“It’s not an insult, I promise,” he chuckles. “Is the artwork yours?”
I look around at the brightly colored canvases I’ve hung on the walls. “Yeah. I don’t paint much anymore, but I hung them to remind myself that I can.” I wonder if my smile is wistful or sad.
His expression doesn’t answer the question. “You’re good.”
“Well, thanks,” I say, feeling a little self-conscious. Probably because I unloaded my pathetic art show misery on him. Seeing it through his eyes has me rethinking every piece of mismatched furniture and every crocheted granny square.
“What you’re seeing is the result of every bad break-up of my adult life.”
Matteo’s eyebrows shoot up in an unspoken question.
I set down my mug, walk into my living room, and point to a throw pillow. “Peter. College boyfriend. Told him my whole life story on our first date. Thought for sure we’d end up together. When he started his job at a fancy law firm in Boston, he met Ruby and fell in love. Peter said Ruby’s energy was a better fit for him.” I pause for effect. “I learned to crochet because I needed a distraction.”
I walk over to the coffee table and point. “Brian. Post-college. Met him at a coffee shop. Brian’s mother came to his house to pick up his laundry every Saturday morning, then brought it back all neatly pressed and folded—which might have been a red flag, you know, because he was twenty-five, but I somehow convinced myself I could help him make that leap into adulthood. In the end, he said it was too much pressure, and I stressed him out.”
I lean down and pat the table. “Found this on the side of the road the day he broke up with me and decided to teach myself to refinish furniture because I needed the distraction.”
I point at a cactus. “After Brian, there was Bryan with a y .” I look at Matteo, who winces. “Yes, really. He was an adult with a real, adult job. But because I wanted him to fall for me so badly , I did just about everything I could to make his life easier. I got his groceries. I tidied his apartment. I even picked up his dry cleaning.”
Matteo purses his lips, like he wants to say something but doesn’t.
“And oh, yes, he let me do all those things. Pretty soon, he expected them. And I became less of a partner and more of a personal assistant.” I pull a face. “The worst part? I’d probably still be with him if he hadn’t decided I was smothering him.” I scoff, then pick up the cactus. “I learned all I could about caring for succulents because I needed a distraction.”
“So you keep all these? Don’t they make you think?—”
“Of what a relationship destroyer I am?” I finish his thought for him. “Yes.”
“That’s not what I was going to say, but okay.”
I shrug.
“I was going to say ‘don’t they make you think of how wrong they were for you?’ Why would you even keep them around?”
I shrug. Names and memories are attached to nearly everything in my apartment.
Ceramic vase? Hunter. Three dates and he’d had enough.
Macrame wall hanging? Timothy. Little bit longer but felt like we were still “moving too fast.”
Button art? Jason. Turned out he was gay. Oh, well.
The hobbies, like the men, didn’t stick around either.
And that’s a brilliant question. Why have I kept all this stuff? Why am I putting it on display, like some Broken Hearts Museum?
I don’t look at Matteo. “I think some people who have divorced parents think they’re never going to fall in love or get married. They’ve seen what a mess it can be—and my parents’ divorce was messy.” I inhale a slow breath. “But for other people—” I go quiet then, because it hits me all at once that I’m realizing this as I’m saying it out loud.
And I’m saying it to Matteo, which is probably a mistake. Is he really the person I should be confiding in?
“For other people?” He presses for me to finish the thought.
I shake my head. “Ah, nothing, it’s dumb.”
I expect him to take the out. To tell me why he’s here and refocus this conversation on something productive—the magic. So when he sits down on the edge of my vintage couch closest to me, it catches me off-guard. “For other people . . .?”
I scrunch my face. “You don’t really want to hear this.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “I don’t?”
“Do you?”
“Just because I don’t like to talk about myself doesn’t mean I don’t want to listen.”
I study his face for a long moment, searching for some sign that he’s placating me. I don’t find one.
It’s different, talking to someone with a genuine interest in what I have to say.
Huh . Another real-time revelation.
“For other people . . .” I clasp and unclasp my hands. “It makes the whole concept of a family that much more appealing. It’s a glittery, shiny thing I’ve never really had.” I pull my legs up under me. “I think I chase after it because I’ve romanticized it, but so far, that pursuit has only brought me?—”
“Ugly furniture?”
I bark out a laugh and swat his arm. “It’s not ugly.”
He makes a face that says, You sure about that?
“You said it was very ‘me,’ so you’re basically calling me ugly.” I mock-glare at him.
He shakes his head. “No, I’m not.”
My mind instantly locks on a meaning he probably didn’t intend, and when it does, I have to look away. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you want the whole wife, kids, family dog life?”
There’s a flicker of sadness in his eyes, and I see the second he shuts down. “No questions, remember?”
I groan. “Come on ! I’ve practically told you my whole life’s story! How is that fair? ”
“Are you always this . . . open . . . with people you’ve just met?” he asks.
“ Yes . You finally get it. It’s one of my fatal flaws.” I stand and walk back into the kitchen. “Do you want coffee?”
He glances at my drip carafe and winces. “We need to get you a French press.”
“It’s just coffee, fancy pants,” I say, pulling a mug out of the cupboard and pretending like the coffee he made yesterday wasn’t the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.
“I don’t think it’s a flaw.” He’s moved from the couch to the other side of the kitchen island, and I’m thankful there’s a little space between us. “I just don’t share like that.”
“Really?” I say, mock-surprised. “This is breaking news.”
He rolls his eyes.
I laugh. “Well, be glad. It usually makes people run the other way.” I take a mug down from the cupboard and pour him a cup of coffee. I know he takes it black, but I also know it’s going to taste like sewer water compared to what he’s used to. “I’m working on it.”
“This is one of those things you’re trying to change,” he says, remembering.
I nod.
“Don’t.”
The word hangs there, in the space between us, and I want to reach up and grab it.
“It’s . . . nice,” he says. “You know what you want, and you’re going for it. That’s not something to be embarrassed about.”
I’ve never looked at it that way.
“But my baggage?” I say, as if I need to pull it out of the closet and wave it in front of his face. “Nobody needs to see that on day one. Or day thirty. It’s too much.”
He shrugs. “For the right person, you won’t be too much. ”
He says it so simply. Like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
Nobody’s ever said that to me before. Not like that.
It’s the second day in a row Matteo has been kind to me, and I wonder if kindness means more coming from an unexpected place. I’m starting to see why the magic picked him.
He takes a drink of the coffee, and his face contorts. “This is terrible.”
I laugh. “Was waiting for that.”
“This is your real fatal flaw.” He pushes the mug back toward me. “From now on, you’re not allowed to make coffee.”
“Oh, really?” I frown. “Are you going to be my caffeine dealer every morning?”
“If it means saving you”—he points at me—“from that”—he points at the mug—“then, yes.”
I laugh. “Fine. I get up early. And be prepared for a jump scare when you open my door, because pre-coffee I’m prehistoric.” I smile from behind my cup. I like that he’s here.
More than I should.
I know what he wants. I know it’s not what I want. And just because he listens and is way more decent than I thought does not change the fact that I really don’t know him at all.
Yet.
“What are you doing today?” he asks.
“Trying to figure out your whole life’s story, probably,” I say.
“Can you put a pin in that?”
“Make me a better offer.” I walk over to my pantry closet and pull out a box of Pop-Tarts.
“Don’t eat those in front of me,” he says.
I turn back. “My apartment, my rules.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll come back later. ”
“I’ll be eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos with cream cheese later,” I say. “That’s my plan for lunch.”
He lets out a groan and stands. “Is this your way of getting me to cook you breakfast again?”
I smirk at him and set the box aside. “I mean, if you’re offering. I did have a dream last night that I was being chased by a giant piece of French toast.” I sit down at the little two-seater table I’ve got in the corner of my kitchen and watch as he opens my refrigerator.
He winces at the lack of ingredients. “We’re going to have to go to the store.”
“We can’t do that on Slow Sunday,” I say.
He frowns. “Slow Sunday?”
“It’s a me-day. A day where I can go slow. I’m sure you can relate, right? You’re completely tapped, I’m guessing, after a huge night at the restaurant. I’m with children for eight hours a day, five days a week.”
I hold out my arms and show off my outfit, presentation-style. “Slow Sunday.”
He leans against the counter and crosses his arms over his chest, and I have a fleeting thought that he looks really good in my kitchen. “You might need to make an exception today.”
I frown. “Why?”
“I’m going to give you a magic lesson.”
My brain goes into overdrive with the words give, you, and lesson.
“Oh.” I stand, trying not to let on that I’m suddenly warm. “You are?”
He shrugs. “The sooner you learn everything I know, the sooner I’ll be done with the magic.” A pause. “Or maybe it’s the magic that will be done with me.”
I give a definitive nod because of course that’s what this is about. I already knew his feelings on the subject, so I can’t be hurt that this “friendship” is conditional .
And once the magic officially passes to me—I don’t know if I’ll like what comes after.