Mat’s eyes flashed panic. His gaze flicked to the letters in front of me, then back to mine, full of questions. “I have. Not now. Maybe one.”
“You think you’ve been in love once?”
“I . . .” He blinked.
“Can you tell me about her?” He clearly heard the need to connect in my voice, because his look softened. “Please.”
Mat shifted in his seat. I did the same, getting more comfortable, as his gaze lifted up and over my head. I felt like he was about to take me back in time. Perhaps not eighty years, but back to a few that mattered to him.
“Her name was Bethany. She was blonde and blue eyed, and I only say that to give you a mental picture and a sense as to how surprising it was my mom liked her.”
“No blue eyes for your mom?” I have blue eyes.
“Not that. It’s just that my brothers both married women of Greek heritage. My family is loud and opinionated.” Mat’s brows met above his nose in a deep wrinkle. “How telling you that Bethany had blonde hair and blue eyes conveys that she was the complete opposite of that—and quiet—I have no idea, but that’s where I was going . . . Anyway, we met during my first year in grad school while she was working in a biology lab a few buildings away. We were together a couple years and, for most of it, I thought we were good.”
“You weren’t?”
“I suspect I idealized what love should look like rather than seeing what Bethany and I actually had.” He shook his head as if he’d phrased it wrong, again.
And he had—I needed less philosophy and more details.
“I eventually noticed, but we lived parallel lives, not interwoven ones. I’d have my day, she’d have hers, we’d recount them and spend time together, but—” Mat rubbed his chin. “Bottom line, I don’t need someone to say, ‘Oh Knight-in-Shining-Armor, come save me.’”
He pitched his voice high and I clenched my jaw to keep from giggling. He was not trying to be funny.
He continued, oblivious of my struggle. “But I do want someone who believes ‘Guy-I’m-in-love-with, hold my hand because we’re stronger together.’ I want a woman to believe that about me, with me. It’s what my parents have and, without it, marriage has too many obstacles to tackle. Bethany was never going to figuratively hold my hand. She didn’t need that from me and I didn’t need it from her.”
My mind drifted back to Mat holding my hand the night before. Saying nothing, just walking beside me holding my hand. I hadn’t wanted to let go and felt the coldness of separation the instant we did.
I coughed to cover the heat crawling up my neck. “So you broke up?”
“Not quite.” Mat scrunched his face. “While still dating me, she found a guy, engaged to another woman, mind you, whose hand she did want to hold. Last I heard, they married and may even have a kid by now.”
“Ah . . . the Arnim issue.”
Mat’s blush matched my own. “Yes, well, I did confess my reaction was experience-born.”
I waved his concession away. “All along you’ve said everything is subjective, and that’s all, to a degree, experience-born, right?”
“True. So I merely confirm my own assertions.” Mat gave me a crooked smile. “And you? Turnabout is fair play.” He glanced down to his notebook as if unable to maintain eye contact. “Any true loves?”
I hesitated, now understanding why he paused a few beats when I first asked him the question. We hadn’t treaded into these waters. It felt like we were trespassing upon a friendship long dead, like guests at a class reunion hoping to ignite a lost connection. I wasn’t sure if I had the courage for such a vulnerable life update.
Yet in studying Mat for those few heartbeats, I discovered that, even after all these years, I still knew him. I still trusted him, and he was still my friend. The connection wasn’t long dead. Quite the opposite.
“I came here for my junior year abroad.” I motioned out the window. “To Paris.”
Mat’s jaw flexed. “I remember.”
Something about his expression hit me wrong, but I skipped over it as memories of Paris and that year flooded in. My mind wandered to Caro’s final letters and her love story, then back to my own, which had felt as gilded and surreal as Caro’s time in Paris.
“I met someone. His name was Caden and I . . . I really thought I loved him.”
“Caden,” Mat repeated. “What happened to Caden?”
I swallowed and found the best way to explain was to simply start from day one. “I met him right after Christmas. I didn’t go back to Boston for the break; there was nothing there for me, and I loved Paris. I felt free there. New. It was like everything I hated about my life and myself got left on the other side of the Atlantic. And one day, wandering the street vendors in Montmartre, he was there. We spent the next six months falling in love—at least I did.”
“Was he a student?”
I shifted deeper into the seat. “He worked at the Kenyan embassy. It was his first time out of Kenya, and his worldview, family, experiences . . . Nothing was like my own and he was like air. I even considered leaving school and staying to find a job.”
“But you didn’t.” Mat prompted me with a statement, not a question.
“I didn’t. The plan was for me to return for senior year and he would put in for a transfer. It was all very An Affair to Remember. We were going to meet post-graduation in New York.”
I was lost in the past until Mat prompted me with a soft, drawn-out “But . . .”
“But he changed his mind. We called and texted for about a month, then he called at the end of September . . .” I closed my eyes, remembering that final night. “He said I’d changed. I wasn’t the same woman, and he wouldn’t come. He never called again.”
“That was it? Nothing more?”
See? I lifted both shoulders and let them fall. Everyone leaves.
I dropped my eyes to the table, seeing nothing. At the time, I’d been hurt. Beyond hurt. But seven years had given me one perspective. The last few days had given me a different one. This morning’s talk with my mom, yet another.
I could finally recognize and admit Caden hadn’t needed to say anything more that night. I had felt the truth of his statement like a heavy blow back then, but comprehended the nuances of it now. Whatever I had become and whatever freedom I had found in Paris, it hadn’t been real. I couldn’t sustain it, because I hadn’t owned it and made it mine. I’d played a role, that of a happy, carefree young woman, and I left her in the Charles de Gaulle Airport the afternoon I flew home.
How alike we were through the generations, I mused once again. How resistant to trusting, feeling, relaxing, being . . . loving.
A new thought pierced through my memories. “When we met last Friday, you said I hadn’t changed. What did you mean?”