“All right,” he says. “I’ll meet you then.”
Anxiety builds throughout the day. A few years ago, I would’ve pushed it all away. I would’ve tried to numb the emotions. Alcohol, drugs, sex—anything to not feel. Instead, now, I ask Sarah for a break. I sit in the back room. Eyes closed, I breathe. I let anxiety ripple through me. “Honor your emotions,” Amy always said.
Acknowledging the anxiety helps. I remember it’s a sensation that will pass. That the anxiety isn’t my body. It isn’t me. It eventually fades the deeper I breathe. I take one last breath and open my eyes. Sarah looks up at me from the register when I swing open the back room’s door. “Better?” she asks.
“Yeah. Better.”
*
When my shift is over, I stick around an extra hour at a table in the back. I pull my laptop out of my bag and start writing. I wouldn’t say that screenwriting is my new dream. It isn’t my only goal in life. But it’s something to focus on. Something that lets me use my creativity. I usually write in the evenings. I read other screenplays, since I still have a hard time watching TV and films. I take walks on the days I have off from the coffee shop. I sit in the park and just—I don’t know. Breathe. Watch the world turn. It’s been good. Life has been good.
Five o’clock comes around, so I pack my laptop into my bag and head across the street to the park. Nervousness buzzes through me. It’s been a few years since the last time I had a real conversation with Mattie. I wonder how he’s changed. I sure as hell know I’m a different person.
I don’t have any expectations. I only have one goal. Apologize. Acknowledge that I fucked up. Let him know, maybe, that I’m doing a lot better now. And I want to thank him. I really do. Everything in my life changed because of him. Even if we weren’t good for each other, he was the catalyst for me realizing I was trapped in a cycle—for helping me see there were other ways to live.
I wait on the bench by the park’s entrance and watch people walk by, some with their dogs on leashes. Someone rides their bike. A kid runs past with a laugh, looking back at their parent. Mattie walks up to me, shoes crunching on the gravel. He used to wear yellow sneakers, but he’s in a pair of scuffed brown boots now. They go a little more with the style of the movie that got him the Oscar.
“You look good, Matt,” I say when he sits down beside me.
He watches me closely, his brown eyes soft with…suspicion? Skepticism? Surprise, maybe, that I’m really here.
“You do, too,” he finally says. “Logan—God, what happened to you?”
I take a deep breath. “A lot. The story’s kind of long.”
“I don’t mind. I’ve got the time.”
I tell him everything. That I broke off contact with my father and went to La Jolla and checked myself into the clinic and started intensive therapy with one-on-one and group sessions, was introduced to meditation and learned about trauma.
“There’s a lot of scientific shit that goes into it,” I say, crossing one leg over the other. “A lot of neuroscience and studies about rewiring the brain and…I don’t know, I spent months reading about it nonstop. There were a lot of days before the clinic where I was afraid it was impossible for me to change, but while I was there, I felt like I’d been given a second shot at life.”
Mattie’s near tears. Some things don’t change.
“I’m really happy for you,” he tells me. “I was scared you had hurt yourself, or…I don’t know.”
“Yeah.” I don’t need to tell him how close I was to doing just that when I first got to La Jolla. “I was at the clinic for about a year and a half before I began to travel.” I went across the states for a couple of months, then to Europe. I didn’t even do anything, really, except walk around small villages and towns, getting used to feeling safe in my body. Figuring out what felt good, what little pleasures I enjoyed. After I visited my mom in Florida, I decided to try New York. “Got a job in the coffee shop by chance. I liked the name. Coffee Unlimited. Reminded me of the days of unlimited coffee on set.”
He laughs. “Jesus, that’s the same reason I came in.”
“No shit, really?”
“That’s an incredible story,” he says. “It was brave of you. I mean, going to the clinic and everything…It’s admirable.”
“I don’t know. Being the sort of person I want to be isn’t that brave. It’s just about accountability.” Speaking of which. “I’m glad we ran into each other. I’ve been thinking for a while now that I should try to reach out to you. I told myself it’d probably be impossible to get in touch, with you being a Hollywood star and everything, but I think I was just using that as an excuse. I was afraid to.”
“Why were you afraid?”
“Because I knew what I’d have to do. I want to apologize. The way I treated you was wrong.”
He shuts his mouth, jaw set. He nods, looking away. I can see it in his eyes. I really hurt him. “Yeah. It was.”
I swallow. This is the hard part. “If you want to tell me…express, I mean, how I hurt you…” I stop speaking because I’m not sure how to finish—but Mattie seems to get the point. He’s silent for a while, nodding to himself and staring anywhere but at me before he speaks again.
“Hurting me like that, over and over again—treating me like crap and pushing me away when I was trying to be there for you…Shit, Logan, especially with everything that happened in the end and you wouldn’t even speak to me—I had to chase you down…”
I nod. I know now that it was a trauma response. I was frozen, shut down, didn’t know how to speak to him, let alone what to say—but that doesn’t mean I didn’t hurt him. “Yeah. I understand. I fucked up.”
“For a while, it was hard to trust the guys I dated wouldn’t push me away like that.”
Guys he dated. I feel a flinch of regret, but that’s not his shit to deal with. “I’m sorry. Fuck. I’m sorry I did that to you.”
“But, you know—I understand. You’d been through so much.”
“Being traumatized isn’t an excuse to cause trauma, too,” I say. I sound like one of the leaders for the group sessions. I want to roll my eyes at myself, but it’s true. “I shouldn’t have pushed you away because I was afraid.”
Matt’s quiet, thoughtful. His voice is soft. “I forgive you.”
I’m not expecting the rise of emotion that wells in my eyes. I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted to hear those words from him. He didn’t have to forgive me for anything. “Thank you.”
I’d been ashamed, for a while, realizing how much harm I’ve caused, but that was another thing I had to learn: there isn’t any point in being ashamed for my mistakes. Shame isn’t the same as guilt. Guilt—yeah, I should have that for the shit I’ve done. I should try to right the wrongs. Shame, though, is more about how much I hated myself. I hated myself so much, and I didn’t even know it.