5. Present
Chapter five
Present
"So, then what happened?”
“That was it,” I explain through the Bluetooth in my car. “I told him to think about it, and then we hung up. There wasn’t really much else to say.”
“He didn’t ask how you found out?” Jessica asks.
“No. I mean, he’s got to think it was the GoFundMe page. You know what they say about bad news traveling fast. I don’t think he knows anything more than that.”
“And what’s the deal with Leyla? When will she come home?”
“No idea. She just got cast in that show, and it looks like they’re filming a whole season.”
“I still don’t understand how she could leave him right now. I mean, if my long-term boyfriend just had a stroke, I would not be in California pursuing an acting career.”
“Mini stroke,” I correct her. “And ugh. Please don’t call him that.”
“My bad. That was insensitive. But keep in mind, there’s a reason why he never married her.”
“Fair point,” I reply.
“Has he heard from her?” Jess asks.
“Don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“So, what now?”
“I just wait, I guess.” I exhale. “I can’t get over what he said, though.”
“Which part?”
“That he was humiliated to see me.”
“Can you blame him? Think about if the tables were turned. What would you want to look like if you saw Matt after a million years? Would you want to be all made up and put together, or would you want to look all sick and weak?”
“Jess, he didn’t even look sick. He looked the same. Thinner, and sure, a little older than the last time I saw him, but not sick. I was expecting half his face to droop, or for him to be using a walker or something. But Matt looked totally normal.”
“I’m just saying I’m not surprised that he didn’t react the way you wanted him to.
Listen, I know your feelings are genuine—I mean, my God, Taylor, nobody has a bigger heart than you do.
But I think it’s hard for someone to even conceive of pulling a stunt like the one you just pulled on him.
I’m sure he doesn’t want his business out there on the internet to begin with—so maybe if he’s saying he was humiliated, it was more that he didn’t want the whole world to know he was anything other than perfectly healthy. Does that make any sense?”
“I guess?”
“And then his ex shows up at his house with ten grand and zero notice?”
I grunt. “Okay, I see your point.”
“Cut him some slack,” Jess suggests. “You’ve always had more going on in your life than Matt has, and he could never really understand what you were going through because he hadn’t been through it himself. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“So, the tables are turned now, and he’s going through something that you have no experience with.”
I let the thought sink in. “So, what should I do?”
Jess clears her throat. “Give him time. Let him think about it. It’s like that old saying—how does it go? If you love something, set it free?”
“You sound like a fortune cookie,” I reply.
“We’ve been friends for twenty-five years, Taylor.
I know how much you hate uncertainty. But Matt’s been through a lot, and not for nothing, that’s a hell of a rabbit hole for you to start falling down so suddenly.
I love you, but I don’t a hundred percent know if you realize how hard being there for him might actually be. ”
“Too late to worry about that, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. I mean, what’s done is done. But give this some room to breathe. See what happens.”
I sigh. “What if he doesn’t call me?”
“Then you might just have to leave him alone,” Jess says.
I shake my head and begin to gnaw on a cuticle on my thumbnail.
“Hey, if it’s any consolation,” she adds, “you and Matt have been circling each other in an orbit since we were kids. You have some kind of gravitational thing going on with him. He’ll call. Mark my words.”