“Things with you are always complicated,” Moira hummed. “They always have been, for as long as I’ve known you. I think you need to figure out if you liked kissing him or if you liked him or if you like the memory of him, because I’m sure he’s changed from the kid you knew in high school. You’ve changed from that kid. I mean, I didn’t know him, but I knew who you were at Brown, and you’ve changed a lot in the years I’ve known you.”
As always, Moira was right.
“How do I figure that out?”
“Spend more time with him. Only way to find out. And if you’re bugged by the fact that he wouldn’t sleep with you, maybe you should find out why he didn’t. Maybe he just doesn’t sleep with people on the first date.”
“I mean, not sure we can call making out in my car a date.”
“No, but you said you spent the day with him. What did you guys do?”
“Lunch, then we hung out on his boat for a while.”
“That’s basically a date. Especially if you went back over after just to kiss him.”
“I didn’t go backjustto kiss him. That was an unplanned thing.” She sighed so heavily that I could hear her rolling her eyes. “I didn’t plan on kissing him, Mo!”
Her laugh turned into a yawn, and that guilt about waking her up tried again to escape its cage. “It doesn’t matter if you planned it or not. You two spent the day together, and then you ended the night with a kiss. It was basically a date, and he could just be someone who doesn’t hook up on the first date. Talk to him, because talking to me isn’t going to do anything about the problem.” She paused for a moment, the way she always did when she was about to deliver a heavy blow that she didn’t know if I’d like. “You also need to figure out what you feel. If it’s just physical, then you need to make sure you’re clear on that. Otherwise, you’re just going to get hurt again.”
I was right. I didn’t want to hear that at all, but she was right. I did need to figure out how I felt about Matt. I needed to know where his head was. If I didn’t, we’d just find ourselves in a big mess. “I will,” I promised her. She yawned again. “Okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I know you’re tired and you need your beauty sleep.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m no longer dying.” It wasn’t the complete truth, but there wasn’t anything more she could do to help. “Get some sleep, Mo, I’ll call you after I talk to him.”
“I better hear from you in the next three days,” she warned. “Otherwise, I’m going to start nagging, and if you still haven’t done it, I’m going to board a plane and kick your ass.”
I laughed, wished Moira good night, and disconnected the call. She might have helped pull me out of the rejection spiral, but she’d left me with a lot to think about.
The problem with Moira leaving me with a lot to think about was that the thoughts kept me awake most of the night. Even when I tried to fall asleep, I was tossing and turning. My brain wouldn’t stop.
I dreamed about the kiss. Half of the dreams ended with him rejecting me and traveled that path further. It went back to every other rejection I’d ever experienced in my life. It went back to the moment when Matt admitted that he didn’t want to go to MIT, that his dream school was now in southern California. Thousands of miles away from where our plans were based. They expanded to him rejecting me now, over and over again.
The other half of the dreams might have been worse. They filled in the blanks of where that kiss might have gone. They were cut through with memories of the way Matt had touched me when we were younger, hesitant at first and then more confident. They were filled with things I’d learned since we’d broken up, and the ghost of the sounds he used to make when he came. It might not have been a problem if those dreams were about literally anyone else, but jacking off to memories of the exwho hadjustrejected me seemed like a terrible idea. It felt like I would be crossing fifty lines, even if he never knew about it.
Needless to say, I felt like the walking dead when I got to work. I was exhausted, and I was pretty sure I had unsightly bags under my eyes. I hadn’t noticed them in the mirror when I’d done my morning skin care routine, but then again, I hadn’t looked too closely. There was no way in hell I could handle that on top of a near sleepless night. I was too vain for it.
The worst part was even after dreaming of the kiss, over and over again until it was warped into an almost nightmare-ish version of the event, was that it didn’t even untangle any of the knots it had left me in. I wasn’t any more clear on why Matt had rejected the idea of going upstairs. I didn’t have any more clarity about how I felt about him. It was all a big mess.
I tried to think it through as I went about my daily duties.
On one hand, Matt was the only person I’d ever really loved. The crush I’d developed on him was the first time I’d ever felt anything like that at all, and nothing since had compared. He’d seen me in ways that no one else ever had, and he’d loved me despite my numerous flaws. He’d listened to me ramble about art and science and books that I was reading. He supported my dreams, and he’d dreamed them with me.
On the other hand, he’d broken my heart in a way that made me think that I was broken for years. We weren’t the same people that we were back then. Time and life had shaped us into new people. We were practically strangers to one another, even if we knew parts of each other that a stranger wouldn’t. Of course, that begged the question of whether those parts were still there. Was his favorite color still forest green, or had that changed? Did he still wear shirts with nerdy sayings sprawled across the chest? Did he still hate artificial fruit flavors?
Once upon a time, I knew all those facts just as well as I knew my own favorite color, my own fashion sense, my own likes and dislikes. I’d known him as well as I’d known myself.
It was complicated. Kissing him had turned my life into one big complication, and a part of me felt like I should regret it, but I didn’t. I didn’t regret the moment our lips touched or the flood of memories that came rushing back to me in that moment. I didn’t regret spending the day with him. I didn’t even really regret suggesting that we go upstairs, even if his rejection had stung and made me doubt pretty much everything about myself.
I didn’t know how I felt about him now, only how I’d felt about him when we were younger. I only knew how much I wanted to kiss him again and learn the answers to all those questions. Maybe then, I’d figure out how I felt about him in the present tense, learn if it was just nostalgia or if there was something real there.
Moira was right, like she always was. I needed to talk to Matt.
When my shift ended, I was going to do it. I was going to text him, and I was going to set a time for us to meet so we could talk about it for real. I wanted to know where his head was after our kiss, and I wanted to know why he didn’t want to go back to his apartment. Maybe Moira had been right about that too, and he just didn’t sleep with someone on the first date. Whatever it was, there was only one person that could sate my curiosity.
I just had to make it through the rest of my shift.
Unfortunately, I still had six hours left. My agonizing had only filled two hours of my eight-hour shift. Knowing I had a potentially unpleasant task ahead of me made the day drag. By the time I hit my lunch break, I felt like I’d worked three weeks without sitting down. I was so exhausted that I could only choke down half of the ham sandwich I’d bought from the small cafeteria in the museum’s basement. Which, for me, was a major red flag. I could usually eat a horse.
