“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have. Because I did. I loved you.”
Matt looks upset. He clenches his jaw, eyes wet. He’s allowed to be angry at me. I can’t help that.
I wait for him to speak.
“I’m not even sure I really knew you,” he eventually says. “Maybe you didn’t know me, either. We only knew the versions we shared with the world. Our personas, our roles. I began to love you when I started to see the truth you hid from everyone else. I don’t know.” He meets my eye. “I’d like to get to know you. The real you, Logan.”
In that moment, I think he might be saying something else. Maybe that he wants to fall in love with me again. “Yeah,” I tell him. “Me, too.”
Mattie
Though most of my time is taken with the play over the next few weeks, and a significant amount is spent on myself—resting, reading, listening to podcasts, breathing—I want to spend time with Logan also. I don’t want to jump right back into what we had before. That isn’t my intention at all. I even tell myself, at first, that maybe we should meet only as friends. But just as Logan had to admit he has emotions to unpack, I realize that closure was the end of one story with Logan, and that now, a new story is beginning—and I think that might be okay, too.
A few coffee meetups and friendly lunch dates turn into dinners and long walks on the weekends. We’re firm in keeping this platonic for now—at least, that’s what we tell ourselves. Slow, steady, nice and easy—Logan, taking the time he needs to make sure he feels safe. Me, making sure I’m focusing on myself. It’d be too easy to fall back into old patterns. I think that’s what scares both of us.
That’s what scares me, anyway, when Logan invites me over to his apartment. He must understand what my silence on the phone means. He’s been so intentional, communicating and reaching out more than he ever had before.
“I’ve been practicing recipes,” he says, “and I wanted to try to cook for someone.” He pauses. “Well, not for someone. For you, specifically.”
I remember when we were both unable to make much more than spaghetti at his family’s cabin. That’s another issue that I struggle with: the constant nostalgia. The happy memories. We weren’t always so bad together, were we?
“I would love that.”
I get lost on the train a few times—it’s still taking me a while to get used to the rush of NYC. It’s almost laughable that I thought LA was fast-paced. I get turned around before I find his apartment. The complex looks a lot more ordinary and run-down than I was expecting, but maybe after a few years in LA, I’ve become more of a snob than I thought. I press his apartment number on a keypad, and he buzzes me in. Before I’ve walked up to the second floor, Logan already has the door open, waiting against the threshold.
“Hey,” he says, ducking his head. I feel his waves of discomfort. It reminds me of when he would open himself up to me, only to push me away by the end of the night. He clenches his jaw, takes a breath, and meets my eye with a shy smile.
I feel guilty, that I want to kiss him. I feel like I should have his permission to want something like that. I bite my lip. “Hey.”
He steps aside and lets me into his apartment. It’s him, so much more than the stark loft in LA. It looks like he might have found some of his worn furniture with faded paint on the street, and the abstract paintings with splashes of color seem random, but they show sparks of his personality. The living room is cramped, the white kitchen even smaller. Logan’s already started cooking.
“Do you need any help?”
“No, no,” he says, waving me away. He’s already cleared a spot on his sofa for me. “Sit down. Relax. Do you want to watch something?” He searches for his TV’s remote. “I barely turn this thing on. I don’t know where—”
“Logan. Logan,” I say. He stops his frantic, nervous search, embarrassed. “It’s okay. I’m fine. I’d love to talk to you while you cook, if that’s okay?” He hesitates. “Unless you need to focus…”
“No,” he says. “I mean—yes, yeah, I’d love that.”
I want to laugh. We’re like awkward teenagers, more than we ever were when we first started to fall in love. He asks how things have been going with the play, and I describe the long days and the fear that there is no cut or additional takes.
“Is it weird for you, hearing about acting?” I ask.
Logan looks up from chopping. He’s surrounded by vegetables, oil in a pan already sizzling and what smells like ginger burning. “A little, yeah,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear about it from you.”
He’s so nervous about making a mistake with me again, I can tell he is—and that isn’t a fair pressure to have on him, to think that he’ll never make a mistake again. Of course he will. He’s human. And maybe it also isn’t fair of either of us to act like he’s the only one who messed up. Even though it’s been two months since he apologized, I can’t stop thinking that maybe I have a few apologies of my own to make. I’ve been scared to bring this up, scared to delve back into our past when we’re trying something new…but Logan has been so courageous. Maybe he deserves the same from me, too.
“You know, Logan,” I say. He looks up, surprised, some wavy strands falling into his eyes. “I’ve been meaning to apologize to you.”
He looks genuinely confused, head tilting. “Apologize? For what?”
I take a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking, and—I know I made mistakes, too. When we were together, I mean.”
He frowns, still confused, but he doesn’t say anything else as he listens.
“I remember telling you, once, that I would always be with you, because I accepted you.” I swallow. “That was a promise I never should’ve made.”
The pain in his eyes, for that flinch of a second, is more than enough for me to turn my gaze to the ground. But I take a breath.
“I did believe it at the time,” I tell him, “but I don’t think that’s a promise I can or should ever make. Saying that means I’ll always be there for you and for your needs. It ignores my own. Ignores that my needs might change and ignores the possibility that you can’t or won’t meet them.” I look up at him again.
His intense gaze is more than familiar. He doesn’t speak, waiting for me to continue.
“I don’t know where things will go for us now.” That’s something we’ve said a few times—acknowledged we don’t know what our relationship is, the awkward gray space between platonic friendship and romance, the tentative uncertainty overflowing with memories, both good and bad. “But that’s something I should make clear from the start. I can’t promise that I’ll be by your side forever.”
The silence stretches. The ginger is really burning now. Logan curses and spins to the stove, turning it off with a click.