Chapter 28 #2
“What do you mean? You invited me,” I said.
How was he angry with me?
“You weren’t supposed to say yes, Stella. You’re making a complete fool of yourself. Can’t you see?”
As though a tide was turning in my stomach, nausea mixed with confusion and the sense of being cornered by an enemy.
There was so much anger and blame in his expression.
Anger at me. Yet it was me who was supposed to be angry. He was to blame. He’d run off with my best friend.
What had I done?
“If you hadn’t wanted me here, you shouldn’t have invited me,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady despite feeling like I was trying to keep afloat on choppy waters.
The injustice of the situation was tempered by the shame that Matt always managed to sprinkle over me.
Like when he told me I was being pretentious whenever I showed him a piece of furniture I’d found that would look good in our flat.
Like the look he gave me when I won the pitch to redesign the interior of a local hotel up in Manchester.
I’d never noticed before, but now that I thought about it, Matt made me feel ashamed of many things I was excited about.
“This is so typical of you, Stella. Needy. Desperate.”
Matt and I had gone to India the summer of our graduation.
On our first night in Delhi, on the way back from dinner, we came across an elephant and its owner in the middle of the city.
The owner was charging tourists to take pictures with the elephant.
I didn’t understand how such a powerful animal was so easily led with a simple chain around its thick ankle.
It could run his owner down and escape back to family and friends.
How had the owner trained it to follow him?
It was only now, standing in front of Matt, that I realized.
The elephant had been conditioned to expect pain if it stepped out of line. It was the fear of hurt that stopped it from trying to flee.
The elephant’s pain was physical. The pain Matt inflicted on me over the years was mental. But both the elephant and I had been cowed.
Diminished.
We’d both had our power taken away.
And standing in front of him, I could still feel the pull of the chain, the rub of his ire, and I wasn’t sure if I had the strength left to charge over him and free myself.
“Karen wanted to be nice. I told her you’d pull a stunt like this. You’re completely oblivious to reality, Stella.”
I didn’t know what to say. This was a man I loved for seven years.
A man I’d trusted, thought I’d have a family with, yet he looked at me with a mixture of contempt, anger, and irritation as if we were almost strangers.
“You invited me,” I repeated. I could hardly tell him it was the last place I wanted to be.
“What did you expect when you came up here? That I’d change my mind?
You should have realized years ago that we were only a temporary thing.
I never proposed, Stella. I thought you’d take the hint.
Things were hardly good between us, but you seemed to carry on regardless, not reading the signs, thinking we were going to be together forever.
I thought moving to London would finally put an end to things.
But you went ahead and followed me. Christ—wake up. ”
I was a deer stuck in the headlights. Okay, Matt didn’t love me.
Okay, Matt was marrying my best friend—but he was trying to say it was all my fault.
I felt myself weakening under the cold determination in his stare.
He was determined to hurt me. Determined to break me.
Matt acted as if he’d cut the chain from my ankle years ago and had been trying to shoo me away ever since.
Had I been so na?ve? When he’d told me about the job in London, it had been a shock, but he’d never said anything about splitting up.
Just that it wasn’t an opportunity he could turn down.
He never suggested going on his own. Up until the night he told me he was moving out, I’d never had any indication things weren’t working.
But maybe they’d never been good from his perspective. He had me questioning everything.
Had I missed him trying to end things? Clearly, I’d been working toward a shared future he didn’t want, but why hadn’t he just said he didn’t love me anymore? Why hadn’t he left sooner? And if he hadn’t wanted me to move to London with him, he should have just told me.
“This isn’t my fault,” I said. I felt pathetic that I couldn’t put together a more coherent defense to his accusations.
He sighed, rolling his eyes. “You only ever see what you want to see. You’ve always been the same—it’s like you have some kind of tunnel vision and you only see the Stella version of reality.
No doubt you’ve done it with this new guy too.
” He nodded toward the window where Beck was sitting with Henry.
Perhaps I had missed signs with Matt. Maybe I should have pushed him more about our future, but I loved him and I thought that he loved me. It didn’t occur to me not to trust him with my heart.
It wouldn’t happen again. My heart wouldn’t ever be given away so easily. Despite what Matt thought, in future I wouldn’t assume someone’s feelings matched mine. I wouldn’t expect people to be honest, and straightforward, and loyal. I was done being the woman that men took advantage of.
I’d learned my lesson, and I wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes again.