Verena said that wasn’t love. I wasn’t sure what else to call it.
“Let’s totally sit here in silence,” Verena said darkly. “We’ll both think about the error of your ways.”
By the time Matt came onstage I had almost forgotten why I was there. Okay, not really. But sitting in the dark, crowded room with Verena felt like a throwback to our days at the conservatory. Even the longing for Matt Cheney felt nostalgic. Sitting there, hidden in the audience, I felt there were no consequences to my actions. I was suspended in time, and I wanted the night to go on forever.
And then Matt walked across the stage, and it felt like time stopped altogether.
Knowing he didn’t know I was there and couldn’t see me past the stage lights, I let myself study him in a way I would be afraid to if he could see me do it.
He was still as absurdly, impossibly compelling as he’d ever been. That restless, thrumming energy moved through him like an electric current and made those dark green eyes hard to look away from. Up onstage, his gorgeous features morphed into something even better. The stage made everyone better-looking, especially if they could sing. This was simple fact.
As Matt pulled out a stool and sat on it, then strummed a few chords, the entire female population in the bar fell silent, the better to ogle him.
And it was about to get worse, I knew. They hadn’t heard him sing yet.
“Hey,” he said into the mike. It was odd to hear him over the speakers. Intimate and yet public. A voice I still wasn’t used to hearing again, after so long. “I’m Matt Cheney.”
There was a round of enthusiastic applause that had everything to do with the way his body was packed into those jeans and the glorious chest beneath his black T-shirt, and nothing at all to do with his name.
“This is a song about a girl,” he said, his voice low and suggestive. He began to strum the guitar. “You know the girl I mean. She broke your heart a long time ago. And then she did it again, not so long ago.” He looked almost rueful. He shifted his position on the bar stool. “And you know she’ll probably break it again.”
And then he began to sing.
The song flowed through the speakers like whiskey and smoke. Matt sang of love and loneliness, of sacrificing everything and getting nothing in return, but holding on anyway. It was a quiet, heartbreaking song, and his voice caressed it, coaxing it into deeper meanings and possibilities.
“How can I believe you’re here,” he sang. “When I don’t know which of us I fear. You will always leave me in the end, and I will always want you back again.”
I felt the song deep down inside me, where I tried to tuck away those long, long years of loving him from afar as well as those few breathless months of actually being with him. The funny thing about a broken heart was that it wasn’t like glass; there weren’t pieces or shards to be swept up. A heart was an organ. When it broke, it tore open. Years later, only scar tissue remained to remind you of the wound that had once been there.
I felt my own scars throb.
Matt sang about sex and magic, promises and separations, and as I listened to him I felt a complicated mix of relief and nostalgia.
I couldn’t believe that I’d nearly kissed him.
I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t.
I also couldn’t believe that I couldn’t seem to control the secret excitement that pulsed in me at the idea that he’d clearly written songs about me in my absence. I had always wanted to be that kind of woman. The sort for whom songs were written, hearts were broken, and lives were altered. Didn’t everyone?
And more than that, I had always wanted Matt Cheney to believe I was that woman.
That was really the crux of it, right there.
The song ended as quietly as it began, and then the room erupted in applause. I was holding my breath, and so I let it go. I was a little bit shaky.
“So much for my plan,” Verena murmured. “That was quite a song. I think I forgot that he was talented.”
I had nothing to say in response. I could only watch him on the stage.
Up there, he could never disappoint. There were no unreturned telephone calls, broken promises, or impromptu relocations to distant states. Up on that stage, he was golden and glorious, and I felt an emotion swell inside of me and threaten to burst free.
“Thank you,” Matt said huskily. “I’m Matt Cheney.”
“I love you, Matt Cheney!” some girl screamed like he was a teen idol, and the audience laughed.
“Thank God I’m not going on directly after this,” Verena said under her breath. “Look at him up there—he’s like the crowd’s wet dream. I’m surprised women aren’t throwing their panties at him.”
He made as if to stand up then, but stopped. He smirked slightly, and leaned back into the microphone.
“Thanks,” he said again. He paused. “And thank you, Raine, wherever you are tonight, for fucking up my whole life. At least it made a good song.”
And, just like that, my world fell apart.
I should have known.
I should have known years ago, long before Matt had ever touched me, when the two of them first met and spent every waking moment together. I should have known back when they were freshmen in high school and would giggle like much younger kids and bar themselves in Raine’s room. I should have known when they were both in their twenties and living a strange sort of bohemian life in and around Philly, or when they took off to follow Phish around the country together, for almost a year.
I really should have known when, in the middle of my relationship with Matt and Norah’s wedding reception, Matt and Raine took off together for California.
I should have known when I found them still living together, still wrapped up in each other, in San Francisco. I should have known when Raine looked at me like she hated me in that dressing room, and the only thing that had changed was that I’d nearly kissed Matt.
How could I have lived in denial for so long?
They were the most important people in the world to each other. Nothing had ever come between them. How had I managed to convince myself that I might be able to when everyone else who’d ever tried had failed? How had I believed that my puny attempts at loving Matt or thinking the best of Raine could change anything?
“Are you all right?” Verena asked. Her voice was so careful. It made me ache. “I didn’t see that coming, either.”
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “Really.”
“You look like you’re about to cry,” Verena said, leaning closer, and now her voice was impatient. “Courtney, you have to let go of this. Right now. What does it matter? You’re marrying someone else. Someone who would never do this to you.”
“Everyone already knew about this,” I said, almost in wonder. “How could I be so stupid?”
“I don’t know why you’re doing this to yourself,” Verena said. “And I want to stay here, but I have to go backstage.”
“Go,” I said immediately. I fixed my eyes on her, though I couldn’t quite focus. “You were right all along, even back then, and now I see it. Shouldn’t you be happy?”
Verena made a face.
“I always thought I would be,” she whispered. She leaned over and kissed me on the top of my head, and then she set off for the backstage entrance.
I sat there and tried to remember how to breathe.
The fact was, I didn’t know what to do. Cry? Scream? Curl up into the fetal position and rock back and forth like a baby? All of the above?
I had no right to any of those responses. Maybe six years ago, they might have been appropriate, but now? I was engaged to Lucas. Life had completely moved on. What should it matter to me that they’d lied about their relationship?
And yet, it did.
I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there, when there was some commotion over near the bar, and I knew without having to look more closely that it was Matt Cheney, in all of his glory.
How could he look exactly the same as he always
did? How could he so nonchalantly shatter all the things I’d believed and bear no outward sign of it? I didn’t understand. It seemed to me that if someone hurt you, there should be some kind of boomerang effect. They should get hit with it, too, so it wasn’t just you. So they didn’t get off scot-free while you marinated in the pain.
But he looked perfectly fine. In fact, as a trio of girls settled into a giggly circle around him, he looked more than fine. They, I knew, would offer to ease his broken heart, because he did “wounded” so well. They would flatter him and flirt with him. Waste their whole lives trying to love him. Judging from his satisfied little smirk, he would let them.
And I had believed that he had loved me.
I had wanted to believe that what we shared, no matter what anyone else said, was love. True love. I had wanted to believe that more than anything in the world.
But the truth was, he had always loved Raine more.
Always.
And the only person on this earth who hadn’t known that was me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
You seem down,” Lucas said, coming into the bedroom while I was dressing. “Was it Verena’s act? Did someone actually throw a rotten tomato the way she always says they might?”
“I’m just tired,” I said, pulling a T-shirt on over my head. As it settled on my shoulders, I looked across the room and saw my gorgeous new dress hanging outside the closet, waiting for our celebration. It shimmered copper and bright, the way I should be feeling. It made my stomach hurt.
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Lucas asked. His voice was quiet, but still seemed to resonate. I looked over at him, saw the solemn gray of his eyes, and looked away.
I had woken up the morning after Matt’s performance to realize that it was, tragically, Saturday, which meant that I would have to deal with my entire family without having time to process what had happened the night before, as we were scheduled for our last all-family dinner before the engagement party the following weekend.
Which was fine, I told myself. Perfectly fine. After all, what was there to process? My slight shift in perception? The fact that I finally saw the world the way it really was? No processing required. The truth was just the truth.
“I don’t feel like going to Family Dinner,” I said, answering Lucas. “That’s all. They’re a little too much work and I’m supposed to be on vacation.”
We stood there, not looking at each other. I wanted to reach out to him more than I could remember wanting anything else. But I knew I didn’t deserve that kind of comfort. It was my fault there was this space between us. I’d created it, nurtured it, and now it had devoured us. I would have to deal with it on my own. Just as I would have to face the truths I’d finally learned last night on my own, since Lucas had decided he had to work rather than attend Family Dinner. I thought he was avoiding me. I couldn’t blame him for it.
“When you get home,” he said after a moment, “I think we should talk.”
The worst five words in the world. I felt my stomach sink.
“Why?” I asked with an approximation of a smile. “You’re not enjoying all this distance and weirdness?”
If he enjoyed my attempt at levity, he didn’t show it.
“When I get home,” I said. Because I knew, sooner or later, we would have to talk. We would talk, I would confess, and then . . . I didn’t want to think about and then. But it was inevitable.
I made my way out to my mom’s house alone, thinking that it was probably for the best. I didn’t want to explain the distance between Lucas and me to anyone—assuming they even noticed. My family’s track record for seeing the blatantly obvious when it was sitting there before them was not good, to put it mildly.
I didn’t know what would happen to Lucas and me when I finally came clean. I couldn’t bear to think of the possibilities, but there was nothing I could do about it now, except think about everything he’d said to me about my family. I knew he was right. What I didn’t know was what I was going to do about it. Everything that involved my family seemed to be such an emotional pit of snakes. Even an engagement party, it seemed, couldn’t simply be what it was: an occasion for everyone to gather and make merry. Instead, it had to be an opportunity not only to air our dirty laundry but shove it in each other’s faces. As every family gathering seemed to be. I was the only one who clung to the vain hope that it might be different.
I was pretty sure that was the textbook definition of insanity.
I trudged up the front steps to the house and let myself inside, rearing back when I all but ran into Matt Cheney as he jogged down the steps, kitted out in highly incongruous gym gear. The Matt I’d known had always viewed exercise with deep suspicion, and usually from a safe distance. But then, I reminded myself bitterly, the Matt I’d known was about as real as unicorns and leprechauns, so why shouldn’t he wear gym clothes?
He came to a stop in front of me, and I could hardly stand to look at him. So I didn’t—I looked at my feet and crossed my arms over my body as if to shield me.
“Where’s your boy?” Matt asked in that lazy voice, so insinuating.
“Working,” I said, still not looking at him.
“Uh-huh.” There was something smug in his tone. It confused me, and I looked up. “Did you tell him?”
Once again, I was forced to confront the possibility that I was exactly as naïve and stupid as everyone seemed to think.
Because it had not even occurred to me to prepare for the fact that Matt thought he’d won something after that scene in the kitchen. And of course he thought so: we’d nearly kissed and now here I was, without my fiancé. Score one for his power over me. I could see him thinking it.
Which, in turn, made me realize something I’d missed last night while I was too busy hurting: this was all a game to him.
“You’re pathetic,” I hissed at him. “All these years later and you’re acting like a surly teenager. This isn’t a game!”
“Don’t get mad at me just because you feel guilty for what happened between us,” he threw at me.
“Nothing happened between us,” I said, and something shook loose inside me, as if I’d voiced a truth I’d been afraid to face before. How true that statement was. How pathetically, tragically true. “When you think about it, nothing ever did.”
As I said it, something dawned on me for the first time. I remembered telling Lucas long ago that Matt had been such a big deal for me because he was the only male in my world outside classical music. But it wasn’t just that. Matt Cheney was the only man I’d ever known. He’d been the only man in my life, ever. Especially when I considered my issues with my father—my birthright of abandonment. Talk about inappropriate Daddy issues.
How had I never noticed it before?
Of course I’d sought his approval. Of course I’d adored him. He’d been the only male around. He had, literally, been everything to me. I’d imprinted it all on him: daddy, boyfriend, older brother, first love.
I felt almost dizzy, and shook my head to clear it.
I opened my mouth to reply, but we were interrupted by Norah and her family at the front door. Norah was holding a covered dish in one hand and Eliot’s hand in the other, but her eyes still pinned me to the wall. She looked fierce and frozen, all at once.
“I hope we’re not interrupting anything,” she said tartly. She and Matt glared at each other. Then she turned it on me.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told her, dismissing Matt without even a glance. “What could there be to interrupt?”
I headed for the back of the house, Norah hot on my heels. I could hear Phil behind us, engaging Matt in awkward conversation.
“Courtney, what the hell are you doing?” Norah demanded in an angry hiss, grabbing me by the elbow as we entered the kitchen. I turned to face her, but not before I looked through the window and saw Mom and Raine outside, walking across the yard toward the back door.
Great. Soon it would be a full house, and the usual fireworks could beg
in.
“I’m not doing anything,” I told Norah. I shook my arm free.
“I feel like I’m having a flashback,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “A horrible flashback. You can’t huddle in corners having intense conversations with Matt anymore, Courtney! You have to get over this ridiculous crush! It wasn’t cute way back when, and it borders on the pathological now!”
It was too much.
“It was not a crush,” I managed to grit out at her. She made a noise of disgust.
“I’d say it’s gone well beyond—”
“Norah, listen to me.” I hardly recognized my own voice. “He was my first boyfriend. That whole summer, the summer before they disappeared? We were together.”
As I said it, Phil walked into the kitchen with Eliot, oblivious to the tension between us.
“Matt said to tell Bev he’s going for a run,” Phil announced. I could hear the front door slam, as punctuation. I couldn’t say I was surprised. Wasn’t that the story of my life? The men who were supposed to love me took off when things got tough. Either way, they left. My father. Matt. Lucas, probably, when I got home and he had a chance to hear what I’d been keeping from him. I felt sick.
Norah looked at Phil, then blinked at me as if she couldn’t process what I’d told her. Her expression might have been funny, under other circumstances. I shrugged, feeling both angry and defensive.
“It wasn’t a crush,” I whispered.
Mom and Raine came into the house then, and the commotion of it all took over. Norah and Raine went into their Viciously Polite Routine. I switched into autopilot. There were tasks to complete: the table to set out on the patio in the simmering heat, dishes to arrange and carry. The bustle of domestic chores. If I raced around enough, maybe I could outrun the churning inside my head.
We sat down to an early dinner, out on the patio. I found myself watching Raine. Looking for clues to the truth I hadn’t known before. She and Matt had been on and off for years, clearly. Which were they now? Did she love him? Had she yearned after him the way I had? Or was she the one who called the shots, who appeared or disappeared at will?