I can see the anger in his eyes.
“Look, just go back to work. I can’t do this right now. I have to sort this shit out, and then we’ll talk.” He starts to walk away from me.
I feel my anger bubbling up inside of me. “If you walk away from me now Matt, then you walk away from me for good!” I shout.
He keeps walking, not even looking back. I feel like punching the wall myself, but I stop myself. Instead, I lean back on it, tipping my head back and sighing. I knew when I delivered the ultimatum that he might call my bluff. I hoped he wouldn’t, but I knew there was a chance of it. Now he has, I wish I could take it back, but I can’t.
It doesn’t matter that I feel more alone than I have ever felt in my life. It doesn’t matter that I feel like I might be letting the love of my life walk away from me. It doesn’t matter how I feel about Matt, because the truth is, I don’t know him. Not the real him. I know the image he’s chosen to project, the lies he’s filled me with.
I bite my lip, forcing the tears that threaten to spill down my face back inside. I can’t cry here. I won’t cry here. I won’t cry at all for Matt. He’s betrayed me, lied to me. And he doesn’t even trust me enough to explain.
Fuck him.
I know by the way I feel empty inside that my feelings for Matt are very real, serious feelings, the kind that make me think we were starting something special. But I can’t be with someone who hides things from me.
I push myself off the wall and head back to the restaurant. I never should have allowed myself to break my no dating colleagues rule, because boy… did this just get messy. And now I will have to face the barrage of questions from my friends inside, with no real answers for them.
How can I expect them to believe that I don’t know any more than they do about who Matt is and why he’s here, let alone how he got Marco to agree to resign?
Chapter Twenty
Callie
I am so relieved when my shift finally ends and I can just be alone with my thoughts for a while. Except as I head for the station to catch my train, I find that my mind is working overtime, and I realize that I don’t really want to be alone with my thoughts – I just wanted to be out from that place with the side eyes and the whispering.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and scroll through my contacts until I find Chloe’s name. I hit call and bring the phone up to my ear. Chloe answers the call in seconds.
“Can you talk?” I ask.
“Sure,” Chloe says. “What’s up?”
“Everything,” I say. “And honestly Chloe, I’m not even being dramatic.”
I tell her everything. About Matt and what happened with Marco and how the other wait staff reacted to me. I can picture Chloe shaking her head when I am done and she breathes out audibly, a half whistle.
“Wow. You really do work with some nasty bitches don’t you?” she says.
I shrug my shoulders although I am aware that she can’t see me.
“I don’t know. I mean would you believe I didn’t know anything if you were them?” I say. The silence from the other end of the line tells me everything I need to know about that one. “See. It’s not them in the wrong really. It’s Matt. I feel like I have no idea who he really is.”
“So ask him,” Chloe says. She makes it sound so simple. “Call him and ask him what’s going on.”
“I asked him once already and he as good as told me to mind my own business. He had his chance,” I say.
“So then you’ll never know and you might just throw away Mr Right because you’re so damned stubborn,” Chloe says.
“Seriously, you’re meant to be on my side. I called you so you could call Matt all of the bastards under the sun and tell me I’m better off without him,” I say, half laughing.
“Well if it turns out he really is some shady gangster type who is into who knows what, then I’ll say all of that. And if he turns out not to be, then I’ll say I told you so instead,” Chloe says. “I mean you said it yourself Callie – there’s nothing he could have said that would have made you walk away from him.”
“But that’s the thing isn’t it? He didn’t say anything. I can handle difficult truths. What I can’t handle is secrets and lies,” I point out.
“Right,” Chloe says. “Then tell Matt that. Give him a second chance Cal.”
I open my mouth to tell her that I can’t do that, that it’s too late, but she gets in before I can interrupt.
“And before you say it’s too late and you can’t do it, promise me you’ll at least think about it,” she says.
“Fine,” I say, feeling my mouth spreading into a genuine smile for probably the first time today. “I promise.”
“Good,” Chloe says. “Now go home and eat ice cream and drink wine and watch some crappy feel good rom coms.”
I agree to this, although I’m not sure I am quite ready to become Bridget Jones just yet.
Chapter Twenty-One
Callie
I go to work the next day with a feeling of dread lodged in my stomach that makes me feel sick.
I spent the rest of yesterday’s shift fielding questions and biting back tears. I honestly don’t know how I kept my cool as everyone fucking quizzed me, but somehow, I did. By the end of the shift, I felt emotionally drained, empty inside except for
