Читать книгу The Secret Of Us - Liesel Schmidt - Страница 14
ОглавлениеFrom: Eira Larson
To: Matthew Noble
Subject: Please Read This Right NOW: I’m Going to be Totally Honest
Date: October 12, 2004
Right now I’m terrified.
Again, I don’t really know how I should be feeling, but terrified is one of the first things that comes to mind.
I want to be happy.
I want to be able to take the memory of Friday night and for it to be simple.
I want to take the memory of your face, your hands, your taste, the ridge of your jaw, your hair in my fingers – the feeling of you so close that all I wanted to do was get closer – I want to be able to think about all of those things without the sickening feeling that it was all a lie.
Was it?
Was it just some conjuring of my imagination that’s going to dissipate in the next gust of wind? I feel like I’ve lost my equilibrium, and I have no one to talk to about this except you. Only you know what you were thinking, so please tell me, Matt.
We crossed the line we’ve been dancing next to for so long, and now I need to know where to go from here. I have no choice but to take your lead. As much as I trust you, I’m afraid of what you could do to me. You already knew you had the upper hand, but now I have nothing. I laid down all of my defenses, and now I feel like I’m waiting for the destroying blow, like I’m playing Battleship with someone who can see my board.
When will I sink?
Is this the part where you forget my name?
Is this the part where our friendship dissolves, and I never hear from you again, or the part where you tell me it was all a mistake?
Are you simply going to tell me that you were just feeling adventurous and wanted to see how far you could push the limit? I’m not asking this out of anger. I’m asking it with the heart of someone who has been stripped completely bare. I’m aware, as I write this, how cynical this all sounds. It makes me sad, how quickly fear follows on the heels of happiness.
For one night, I was in a fairy tale.
But I’m not naive, and you’ve plainly stated so many times how much you don’t want a relationship. With me. So now I’m anticipating something, some explanation of things in the same vein.
Or maybe I should just expect silence.
You wouldn’t be the first man in history to decide to throw friendship under the wheels of a bus, giving in to hormonal whims and walking away as though nothing has happened. But I’m hoping you’re above that.
I’m trusting that you’re above that. Please don’t prove me a fool. You have so much power in your hands right now, and I don’t know if you’re even aware.
I need to talk to you, I need to be able to look into your eyes and see what’s going on with you. We owe each other that much, I think, because at this point, the most damaging thing we could do to our relationship is to not talk about this.
Face to face.
You’ve become my best friend, Matt, and I thought you felt at least that much for me. Please don’t prove me mistaken on that, as well.
I’m feeling so alone right now in this attempt to sort things out. All of the women’s magazines and relationship books ever published have articles that scream at women over their stupidity in situations like this. All of the evidence, all of the patterns should be enough to keep me on my toes, strapped in to a bullet-proof vest.
But maybe I really am a fool.
I wanted to be able to go home and talk about things with someone – my sister, my mom – someone.
Someone who would listen to me excitedly relay the events of a date and the possibility of more dates in the future.
I wanted to run up and down your street shouting at the top of my lungs that you had finally kissed me. Instead, I had to go home and try to fall asleep with an excited rush of blood pounding in my ears, all the while trying to keep a firm grip on reality. Because this is the reality: I want there to be a later, and you don’t.
I’ve heard experts say that couples should expect nothing from each other. That way, when one of them does something – washing the dishes without being asked or putting a load of laundry in the dryer or bringing home a bouquet of roses – it’s a surprise and that much more appreciated.
I never expect anything from you, and maybe that’s been my problem.
Having no expectations works within the commitment of marriage, but outside of that, it leaves you terribly vulnerable.
I never expect anything from you, so when you call – at 4 a.m. in the middle of a hurricane, from California when you’re on your way to a buddy’s wedding, while you’re out having new tires put on your truck – I come running. I come running in the hopes that maybe something will make you change your mind, and I live with the delusion that maybe being your fallback plan will change. I’m worth more than being a fallback plan, just as you are worth more than being some woman’s one-night stand.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t wondering how you spent your weekend and if you were thinking about me at all.
I’d be lying if I said I really didn’t care.
I don’t know if your kisses were a lie, but mine weren’t, and I won’t say it was a mistake.
Please talk to me, Matt. We need to talk about this – no phones, no computers, no fumbled explanations in a restaurant parking lot.
Please.
Yours,
Eira
From: Matthew Noble
To: Eira Larson
Subject: RE: Please Read This Right NOW: I’m Going to be Totally Honest
Date: October 12, 2004
Eira
I was out all weekend with friends, so it isn’t that I chose to ignore you.
All I can say is that I think you’re a great person, and I care about you as a friend. I wanted to feel more, but as I told you before, I don’t.
I thought maybe Friday night would change things, make me feel something I didn’t already – that it would be different to kiss you and hold you – but it wasn’t.
I can’t make myself feel something I don’t. That’s the bottom line – I was trying to make myself feel something I don’t; and in retrospect, it was a mistake.
But I wouldn’t have known, had I not tried.
I think we should be able to take Friday night, keep the memory of it inside for warm, great thoughts of times past, and press on.
I won’t do it again, make you suffer again – but you also have to understand that there will be nothing more. We never will be more than friends, but I don’t want to lose our friendship over this.
I know it hurts, but you’ve been nothing but honest, so I want to give you honesty in return.
Matt
From: Eira Larson
To: Matthew Noble
Subject: RE: RE: Please Read This Right NOW: I’m Going to be Totally Honest
Date: October 12, 2004
Matt
Thank you for getting back to me. And for being honest.
As I said before, the rational part of my brain knew that this was coming.
It struck me, though, as I read your e-mail, that you seem to be looking for instantaneous lightning bolts.
Sometimes, lightning never comes. Sometimes, it’s a whisper.
I won’t lie and say that I want to take anything that happened on Friday night back.
The heart wants what it wants, and I’ve wanted that for almost two years.
You didn’t do anything wrong, and I don’t think either of us should regret anything. I guess neither of us would have ever known if you hadn’t taken the initiative; there always would have been that little bubble of wondering.
So maybe I should thank you for finally taking the risk.
I don’t want our friendship to be damaged, either, but I also know it will be a little while before the sadness will wear from the memory of Friday night.
Still, I’ll pick up and move on.
I always do, right?
But there’s always sadness that comes along with the loss of hope, the realization that someone you trust with so much of yourself doesn’t love you back.
So this is the part where I tell you there’s nothing to worry about.
I’ll be okay.
We’re okay.
Everything’s fine.
And eventually, maybe it’ll be true.
Eira
Those e-mails should have been the end of things. I should have shown some backbone, some courage, and allowed myself to get angry, rather than letting it so completely shatter me that I was weak enough to let things go on. It would have made more sense, really. But by then, I was past making sense of things. Sensible decisions seemed almost something I was incapable of, when it came to Matt. Or any guy in whom I’d invested my heart, if I was perfectly honest. I created my own problems, but I was too blinded by emotions to see it.
Instead, though, I had allowed our “friendship” to continue. I sucked it up and decided that I was going to be a big girl about the whole situation.
When all was said and done, I was too afraid of losing him. Even though Matt wasn’t mine, I didn’t want to lose the relationship we did have.
And I was just delusional enough that I was still clinging to a tiny shred of hope that maybe he would change his mind. If I proved to him that I was strong, that I was willing to stay, that I was loyal – maybe, just maybe Matt would realize how much he loved and needed me.
To say that out loud to someone would have made me sound pathetic, and I knew it.
But I was still determined, and I was a determined woman in denial.
And a determined woman in denial is hard to derail.
True, he’d told me countless times in the past two years that our relationship would never be more than friendship. Yet he knew how much I loved him, how much I wanted a future with him, and he made sure he maintained a deep friendship that would most assuredly keep me emotionally bound to him.
If that didn’t say he wasn’t completely convinced of his own lack of feelings for me, then what did it say? I had allowed that supposition to completely blind me, to rob me of rationality that would have, in other areas of my life, made me stand up for myself and my own dignity. But I had never been completely confident in myself when it came to my dating relationships, never quite convinced that there was really enough in me to make someone take notice and decide that they wanted a future with me.
It was an emotional flaw I could hardly trace to my parents’ relationship. They were exemplary in the marriage they had created, the way they complemented one another. True, they were hardly perfect, and they were quick to admit that to one another as well as to Claire and me. So they’d never conveyed the expectations of fairy tales or the unattainable hope that love came easy – but they did show what was possible when both hearts were dedicated. They had always shown us that true love could last, but it required mutual respect and honor. And they raised their daughters to know that they were worth being honored and cherished. So why had I never fully been able to embrace that lesson when it came to my own relationships?
It was actually something that both my mother and my sister had addressed with me many times in the past, always raising their concern for my heart and their desire to see me happy in a relationship, without having to compromise myself to someone who couldn’t see me, who couldn’t cherish me.
Little wonder, then, that when I fell for Matt, I fell hard; and that that tendency to let my heart get thrown under the bus repeatedly kept me from observing the signs and actually listening when Matt told me he would never be interested in more than friendship. I was naive enough, insecure enough, to hope for more – all the while allowing my heart to ride a sickening rollercoaster of emotions.
And what about all those long, meaningful looks?
What about the familiarity we’d shared for so long and all of those times we had come so close to kissing?
Two years of the air between us crackling with electricity, of becoming so close people often assumed we were married.
And then, that untaken step had been taken, and he’d kissed me.
We had started the evening much like any other Friday night, draped on his couch, watching a movie. When he came back to reclaim his spot after getting a glass of water, there was a palpable shift in the room. He was focused – tightly wound – and his gaze seemed to sear through me.
He leaned forward, closing the distance between us.
In those seconds, time seemed to grind to a halt, and my mind raced.
I searched his eyes, hoping for some sign of something, wondering if this would be the beginning of the change I’d been waiting so long for.
Wondering if I should stop him from blurring the lines any more than they already were.
Wondering if I had the strength to.
And then silencing all of my logical instincts, laying down my defenses, and giving in to my emotions.
Now I was left with the knowledge that everything had changed for me, while he seemed to want to retreat to what was looking strangely like cool civility. It was heartbreaking, and I had no idea how to proceed, other than to take it on the chin. After all, we were both adults, right? I wasn’t just going to pack up my toys and go home when I didn’t get my way.
I was not going to be the one to hide, and I spent the next five months proving it.
