Page 71 of A Smart Girl's Guide to Second Chances
I didn’t sleep that night. Everything about the hotel room – the adjustable temperature, the high thread count sheets, the soft lighting – felt hostile. I’d been single for years before I met Matt, but I’d never felt lonely. But for the first time since I’d been a visiting student I felt consumed by homesickness. Except the one person who felt like home, the person I loved most in the world, had blindsided me.
I’d had a twilight sedation, once, and this felt similar. The conversation with Matt had been the prick of the injection going into my arm, the burst of ice-cold liquid in my veins. And then came nothingness. That’s how I felt – as though nothing could touch me, as if every sensation in my body had gone into shutdown mode.
He offered to meet me in the hotel’s cafe for breakfast. We were both early.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said, before he’d even said hello.
‘You can’t sign the form?’ I asked. I knew what he meant, I just didn’t want to.
‘I can’t get married,’ he said.
‘But our wedding’s in less than three weeks.’ I could hear the numbness that had enveloped me since the day before in my voice.
‘Forget the wedding. The wedding is just... a day. We need to think about the rest of our lives,’ he said.
A waitress came over to our table.
‘Can I get you guys anything? A coffee to start?’ she asked with a professionalism that was no doubt drilled into all the hotel chain’s staff.
‘That would be great,’ Matt replied. ‘An oat piccolo for me, and a long black?’
I nodded.
‘Thanks so much.’
Even in the middle of the tersest, most emotionally fraught conversation we’d ever had, he was able to be polite and warm and friendly to a stranger. I wracked my brain – I realised I’d never seen him be rude to anyone.
As soon as the waitress left our table Matt turned back to me.
‘Becs, I love you with every part of me. I think you are smart and funny and beautiful. I love the way that you treat every single task in your life as if you’re painting the Sistine Chapel. I love that you only have a few friends but would die for them. I love that you only wear navy or black or beige but in private everything is bright pink or red or turquoise.
‘When you agreed to go on a date with me, I thought I was the luckiest guy alive. When you said yes to my proposal I was the happiest man in the world...’
He trailed off, clearly considering his next words. He took a small sip of his water as if he was about to swallow a pill. Mymouth was also dry but I knew if I reached for my glass I’d smash it by mistake or miss my mouth and spill water all over myself.
‘I’ve always felt that you were holding back, but I ignored it. I think I wanted to believe that it was just how you are.’ He paused. ‘But then I saw you talking to Alex last weekend, and I knew that I’d been kidding myself. I could see that you’d never let yourself be in love with me the way you were with him.’
Matt spoke with a strangled voice and his expression was so stony that his dimple had disappeared.
‘Matt—’Please stay. Please marry me.
‘I’ve spent my whole life being second best,’ he said. ‘But I can’t be second best in my marriage.’
‘Please—’
‘The other day,’ he said, ‘at my old college, when we were talking about your career, you admitted that you wanted to stay in your job because it made you feel safe. And I think that’s how you feel about me... like I’m the safe option. But I can’t be the guy you settled for, I deserve more than that. And so even though I’m breaking my own heart by saying this... I want to marry you, but I’ve made up my mind and I just can’t.’
I stared at him. He loved me. He was leaving.
‘I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I ran away. That was really shitty, childish behaviour from me. You deserved better than that,’ he said.
‘I’m flying home today,’ he added. As the enormity of what had just happened hit, I stared at Matt in shock. In a relationship, on the cusp of your wedding, it was ‘up or out’. You didn’t decide that you weren’t getting married so would just stay boyfriend and girlfriend for a bit longer and see what happened. We were breaking up. And we lived together. We rented a house together. We owned mutual things: a toaster, a TV, a bed that cost the same as a master’s degree.
‘I can stay at Mum’s, I think,’ I said quickly. ‘She’s going to need help for a few weeks anyway and Hamish is still visiting his daughter.’
‘I can move out. Move home,’ he said. Would Jane be devastated or thrilled? I wondered. Possibly a bit of both. She’d be devastated on his behalf but thrilled to have her beloved son back under her roof.
‘Can we... not tell anyone for a few days?’ I asked.
