Chapter 9: What Matt Decided
Matt called four days later.
Not to me.
To Selena.
He told me afterward, sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee he'd made himself because he always said I made it too weak.
"You called her?" I said.
"I did."
"Why didn't you tell me first?"
"Because it wasn't about you." He said it gently, without any edge.
"It was between me and her."
I sat down across from him.
"What did you say?"
"I told her I didn't need an apology.
I told her I'd heard a hundred versions of what she said and thought over the years, from people who didn't know any better and from people who did.
I told her it stopped hurting a long time ago."
"Matt—"
"Let me finish." He wrapped both hands around his mug.
"I told her that what she did at the wedding wasn't about me.
It was about you.
She tried to make your wedding day smaller so she could feel bigger.
And that — that I'm not interested in forgiving on a phone call."
"What did she say?"
"She said she knew." He paused.
"She asked if she could meet me.
In person.
Just the two of us."
I stared at him.
"And?"
"I said yes."
"Matt.
You don't owe her—"
"I know I don't." He looked at me steadily.
"But I've spent my whole life letting other people's smallness decide what I'm allowed to do.
I'm not doing that anymore.
I'll meet her.
I'll listen.
And then I'll decide."
I didn't say anything for a moment.
"When?" I finally asked.
"Thursday.
Coffee.
Somewhere public." He almost smiled.
"I'm not completely without caution."
They met on a Thursday morning at a café two blocks from Matt's apartment.
He told me about it that evening.
Selena had arrived first.
She stood up when he walked in — not the performative rise of someone making a show of courtesy, but the involuntary stand of someone who doesn't know what else to do with themselves.
She said: "Thank you for coming."
He said: "Sit down, Selena."
She sat.
He ordered coffee.
She didn't order anything.
"She talked for a long time," Matt told me.
"About her own childhood.
About the things she'd been taught to value.
About the way she'd learned to see the world." He paused.
"I didn't interrupt.
I just listened."
"And then?"
"And then I said: 'None of that is an excuse.
But I hear you.'"
"That's all?"
"That's all." He looked at his mug.
"She cried.
I didn't.
And when we left, she shook my hand, and I let her, and that was that."
"Is it enough?"
He considered the question seriously.
"It's a beginning," he said.
"Whether it goes anywhere from there is up to her.
But I walked out of that café feeling lighter than I walked in.
And that's enough for me right now."
May you like
I reached across the table and put my hand over his.
He turned his palm up and held on.
