Page 48 of A Smart Girl's Guide to Second Chances
‘Yes. After I met you I just... never wanted to not be with you again,’ he said simply. ‘But it wasn’t like that for you, was it?’
‘No . . .’ I said slowly.
Almost two years earlier, I’d decided to accept Matt’s invitation to go on a first date. I’d said yes to the invitation in the moment – it would have felt rude not to – but planned on politely backing out of it like I normally did.
Around that time baby Evie was struggling to sleep. I watched helplessly as Stella seemed to fall apart in front of me. Nick, of course, was a bit more sleep deprived than he’d been before Evie had arrived. But otherwise, his life looked pretty much the same – he went to work, he travelled to medical conferences, he taught at his old uni.
The day after I met Matt in the cinema, I visited Stella and Evie at a sleep school. I sat on the edge of Stella’s hospital bed, watching her cry with exhaustion and guilt – full-bodied, rib-aching sobs. Stella loved Nick wholeheartedly. I witnessed what love had done to her – it had torn her to pieces. It tore everyone to pieces.
Stella had fallen head over heels for Nick. Mum had lost her mind when she’d met Dad, and then again when she’d met Hamish. I’d had a crush on Alex and then been swept off my feet. I didn’t want that kind of love. If you fell head over heels or were swept off your feet, you’d land on your face or arse. To lose your mind was the kind of diagnosis that landed you in a psych ward. The only things that were meant to be crushed were banged-up old cars and pineapple.
And I also knew that love could catch you by surprise – I’d been caught off-guard before. I wondered whether maybe the best way to inoculate yourself against the contagion of all-consuming love was to embrace a gentler type. To not fall head over high heels, but take dainty steps from like to love in sensible flats. To spend my life with someone like Matt, who I’d already sensed was thoughtful and helpful and hopeful – all the good ‘ful’s.
I could feel Matt looking at me intently. I felt a sting of animosity towards Belinda; she was a licensed celebrant not a psychologist – where did she get off asking these intimate questions?
‘For me, it was a slow burn. But in a good way, like a perfect winter’s log fire,’ I said.
Matt’s smile widened as I wroteThe best kind of slow burnon the form.
I hadn’t realised how emotionally frozen I’d been until we’d been together for a while, and I’d begun to thaw. Matt was all warm embers, fireguard in place.
Alex had been a bushfire. He’d swept in, during the peak of summer, an uncontrollable force, destroying everything in his wake. I’d been a gum tree set ablaze, that had exploded and then been left a charred stump. Even if that’s not how he remembered it.
‘Are you feeling well enough to go out for lunch?’ Matt asked.
‘Does that mean we have to get out of this bed?’ I asked as I rolled across the wrinkled sheets into his arms.
‘Tragically, it does.’
Chapter 23
‘Now, you have to choose one final side dish.’ Lucy, our perky wedding venue’s event coordinator (whose job to date had mainly been communicating bad news) looked at us expectantly.
‘Fries, please,’ Matt and I replied without consultation or hesitation. We turned to each other and smiled. Matt had organised a last-minute food tasting (take two), knowing that nothing would be better for morale than ticking something off the wedding to-do list.
‘Great, well that’s your menu sorted again. And’ – Lucy, whose aesthetic was generational wealth and whose energy was real estate agent on a Saturday in spring, flicked her glossy hair as she paused for effect – ‘the amazing news is that the renovations are on track to be finished by your wedding date. And, even better, the builders said it should smell way less smoky after they’ve painted it!’
I felt Matt kick my foot under the table and tried not to laugh. We both found Lucy’s ability to deliver any information as if it was the best news ever, even though almost every update had been dripping with disaster, hilarious. Matt had even started sending me text messages in the style of Lucy that made me cackle at work. (The great news is that only one of our toilets is blocked!!!)
‘Amazing! And I’m sure all the flowers will help with that too!’ Matt added, pathologically incapable of not being the most positive person in a room.
Lucy left us alone at the small table in the corner of the commercial kitchen to finish all the samples of desserts we’d been given.
‘Maybe things have turned around. I think from now, everything will come up Matt and Rebecca,’ I said. Matt smiled, and it went all the way to the crinkles in his eyes. I could tell that my renewed positivity meant everything to him. I felt Matt’s leg brush up against mine under the table and I felt my stomach flip.
‘There’s a theory called emotional hedging,’ I said. ‘I think we should apply it to our wedding, so no matter what disaster strikes, it’s all upside.’
‘I’m intrigued,’ Matt said. I reached across the white linen tablecloth and took his hand in mine.
‘So how it works is... we brainstorm all the possible bad things that could happen at our wedding and come up with a correspondingly good thing. This means that even if everything goes wrong, we’re still happy,’ I explained. ‘So, say... a dog breaks into the venue and eats all the fancy charcuterie and cheese on the grazing table, then—’
‘That night we do it doggy-style,’ Matt said, a twinkle in his eye.
I snorted with laughter. ‘Exactly, you totally get how the theory works,’ I said, when I could speak again. ‘Okay... the wedding day temperature is forty-three degrees so...’
‘We do it doggy-style,’ Matt replied, deadpan. This time we both collapsed into giggles.
‘I’m loving your thinking. But I think we might need some variety.’
