Chapter 36 Matías
Matías
Two Weeks Ago
Matías sat on the edge of his bed, shaking. Claire had just left, after telling him she wasn’t going to Madrid with him, and while he’d put on a brave facade while she was there, now his shoulders crumpled. It was too much an echo of Vega, deciding against coming to New York with him.
Could I have done more for Claire? He racked his brain. He loved Claire with his entire soul and tried to be the man that she wanted him to be. He had started using his watch to record reminders for himself so they’d automatically create a to-do list for him that he saw anytime he turned on his phone. He remembered never to put his wallet or keys on the dining table or kitchen counters, because those were clean surfaces for food, and money and keys were definitely not clean. He was even in the habit now of removing his shoes as soon as he stepped in the door. No more sand tracked across the apartment floor.
There’s nothing else, he thought. Matías was willing to do everything and anything for Claire, but he couldn’t think of what he’d missed. She wasn’t like Vega, who had been an open book of demands for gifts and attention and compliments.
Sometimes Matías couldn’t see inside Claire at all. There were still pieces of herself that she kept locked up. In fact, it seemed that the more she fell in love with him, the more she also backed away. They no longer went wandering through his professor’s art collaboration to make love in the middle of the forest. She let her work hours bleed later into their time together in the evenings, so that sometimes he was reading on the couch while she typed on her laptop in a separate armchair. And although he did video calls once a week with his gregarious family, Claire had never shown him a photo of her parents. All he knew was they had died on the day she graduated from college. He didn’t even know their names.
Matías had hoped this vacation together to Spain would bring them closer. That he would propose, and an engagement would open Claire up again.
But now she wasn’t coming, and he didn’t know how to reach her.
He let out a long exhale and rested his head in his hands.
All Matías could do was keep being himself, and hope that she would eventually open herself up and let him in completely.