Chapter 27
We leave the restaurant an hour later. Sara barely says a word to me as she gets into an Uber, and Garrett gives me a meek smile as if apologizing before he shakes Matt’s hand, then follows her.
We wave goodbye, but the car has tinted windows, so I have no idea if they wave back.
It leaves a sinking feeling in my chest.
Matt sighs, watching them go, then turns back to me, a weary smile on his face. “Well, that was a clusterfuck.”
I smile, letting out a breath that feels like it’s been stuck in my throat all night. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“Says the girl with a head injury,” he murmurs wryly.
I let out a dry laugh.
“She’ll be okay,” he continues, motioning down the street where Sara and Garrett’s Uber turned and drove out of view. “Just give her some time.”
I don’t know if he’s right, but I still nod, pulling my coat tighter against the evening chill.
A moment passes before he continues.
“I didn’t break up with April just to get back together with you.”
I turn to look at him. Under the streetlamp, I can see the bags under his eyes, the weariness in every crease of his forehead.
“Then why did we meet up?” I ask.
“I needed to see a friendly face,” he says with a shrug. “April and I had just broken up, and I was feeling lost. And, yeah, maybe I thought we could give it another shot, but that’s just because I was so fucking lonely.”
I consider, piecing the information into the puzzle in my brain. “Is that why you were so cagey with me when we met up for coffee? Because you were embarrassed?”
“Of course I was embarrassed. You shot me down,” he says, then throws me a rueful smile.
My brow furrows. “I did?”
“Yeah.” He rakes a hand through his hair, mussing it into something I recognize. “It hurt, but I also get it. I haven’t been happy for a while, and you saw that. Even when we were in California, I was struggling.”
It’s true, I had seen it, just like I can see it now in the lines on his forehead, the shadows under his eyes.
“I thought Boston would fix it,” he continues. “Then I thought the problem was us. But after we broke up, I still felt lost. I had this great job, great life, but I just felt… empty. I think when I started dating April, I expected her to fix that. When she didn’t…”
“Collateral damage?”
He lets out a long breath. “Yeah.”
Another moment passes before I say, “She came into the café, you know.”
His gaze snaps back to me. “She did?”
I nod. “I had no idea who she was, but she acted like we knew each other. Like she needed to apologize, even though she was the one who was sad.”
“She and I worked together,” he replies. “You two met a few times. For a while, I thought you two would be friends, and then…”
I cock my head to the side as I listen, and just like that, facts slide into place in my brain. The details are missing, but I suddenly know the truth, and it fits exactly how I know it should.
“You cheated on me with her,” I say. It almost sounds like a whisper.
His head falls to meet his chest.
I wait for the anger to flare up in my chest, the hurt and betrayal, but there’s just… nothing. Like my heart already knew, it just needed my head to catch up.
“What happened?” I ask.
His gaze slides across the sidewalk. “April and I started our jobs the same week and spent most of our time together, but it was only at work. I even told her about you, and she was excited for all of us to hang out. Then you arrived, and it was okay for a while… but then my hours got longer. You weren’t happy at Probus.
It felt like we were both lost. Living separate lives.
It was like, without Sara and Garrett, we didn’t know how to play the part. Does that make sense?”
An odd relief settles over my body. The knowledge that I wasn’t alone in this.
“Yeah,” I reply. “It does.”
Matt sighs. “It only happened once. I told you the next day. And we decided to break up. We both moved out of the apartment a couple of weeks later.”
I let the words sink in, flow through my brain, connecting to facts I hadn’t considered before. “Does Sara know?”
“God no.” He shakes his head.
I know what he means. I had kept so much from her, too.
“We were really good at pretending, weren’t we?” I say.
“Yeah. We were.” He looks over at me, his eyes kind. “Maybe that was our problem. We were so good at pretending, we never really stopped long enough to become friends.”
I hadn’t considered that before, but it fits.
I loved Matt. In a way, I still do. But he was never my friend.
Not really. I would never pull him to a street market on a random Saturday morning.
Or look forward to spending my day off exploring a museum with him.
I never confided in him, or let him see me at my worst. None of the things you build a relationship on.
“Full disclosure?” I say. “I was scared to move out here with you. I had no idea what I was doing with my life and I was worried I would get swallowed up by yours.”
He smiles, small and sad. “Full disclosure? I still don’t know what I’m doing with my life.”
I laugh.
He turns back to the street. “I’m so sorry I cheated on you, Marnie.”
The words feel substantial, fitting into that space in my heart that had felt empty for so long.
“I think we were over long before you cheated, Matt.”
“Yeah, maybe. But it hurt you. And I never wanted to do that.”
I nod, letting another moment pass before I say, “I’m sorry for tonight. I didn’t mean to go off on Sara like that.”
“It’ll be okay. At the end of the day, she just wants us to be happy.”
Ben’s words from weeks earlier come back to me and I sigh, sending white tendrils through the air in front of me. “You can’t fake happiness.”
Matt smiles. “Yeah. You’ve said that before.”
I blink. “I have?”
“The night we met up. After I made a fool of myself and asked if you wanted to get back together.” He chuckles to himself. “I said I thought we could make each other happy. And you said ‘you can’t fake happiness.’ Then you gave me a hug and left, said you had to get home.”
My pulse starts to thunder in my ears. I had repeated Ben’s words to Matt before. Which means I knew them before the accident. Which means…
“Matt, did I ever give you a copy of Jane Eyre?”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“Did we visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum?”
He shakes his head.
“What about Monopoly?” I ask, working hard to keep my voice from shaking. “Did we ever play?”
He smiles again even as his eyebrows stitch together. “Why would we play Monopoly?”
My heart is beating so fast it feels like it’s trying to escape from my chest. For weeks I’ve been chasing clues from my apartment, moments that Sara was so sure tied back to Matt, but he has absolutely no idea what any of it means. But I think I do.
“Matt, I have to go.”
“Okay,” he says, but I’ve already turned and started down the road, my eyes scanning for a cab.
I need to get home. I need to talk to Ben.