“No.” She laughed. “That’s just a thing I say sometimes. It makes people feel good.”
“Yeah, but only if it’s true! You end up negating the good feeling when you tell them you were lying.”
“Whatever,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Well—I talked to Matt today. We went out to lunch together after taking Will to his first day of school, and he asked me why I had been so… friendly, lately. I ended up telling him that I think we should start up a romantic relationship again and he agreed.”
“What? That’s amazing. Tell me everything.”
“There’s not much to tell,” I admitted. “It was a short conversation. But the gist was that I told him I didn’t want to awkwardly avoid each other anymore. I said that I enjoyed spending time with him, and that since the two of us obviously liked each other, we should just be adults about this and stop fighting it.”
“Woah, bold move! What did he say in response to that?”
“He’s totally into it,” I said.
“Into what, exactly? I mean, did you guys put any labels on it, or set up any parameters?”
“Not really,” I said. “But I know we were both on the same page. We both like each other, we like having sex with each other, and so we aren’t going to deny ourselves the pleasure of one another’s company anymore.”
“Right… but what about the romance part?”
“What do you mean?” I said. “I just told you.”
“No,” she said. “What you’re talking about is sex. Get to the part where you told him you wanted to be romantically involved.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand. How are those two not the same thing?”
She laughed. “Oh honey. C’mon.”
“I’m serious!”
“So am I! Everything you just said makes it sound like you told Matt you wanted to hook up with him again, but I didn’t hear anything that sounded like you wanted to be romantically involved with him. Did you tell him you wanted to date? Did you say that you had feelings for him?”
“I think I said I liked him. Or that we liked each other.”
She scoffed. “That doesn’t mean anything. I like my mail lady, but that doesn’t mean I want to settle down and have kids with her.”
“You’re twisting all of this around,” I told her. “Or, maybe I’m just not doing a good enough job explaining to you. Either way, the point is, I got the sense from his tone and what he said that he and I are on the same page. We want the same thing, and everything is good.”
“Okay,” she said. “If you say so.”
“I do say so. You weren’t there, you didn’t see the look on his face. He likes me, and he wants more than just sex I’m sure.”
“As long as you’re sure.”
“I am. 100% sure.”
Well—maybe 99.9.
* * *
The rest of that week went by in a bit of a blur, but the good kind. Matt and I had breakfast together almost every morning, and when Will wasn’t in the room, Matt would flirt with me endlessly. It felt good to be the recipient of his attention, and I couldn’t wait until we had some real alone time together.
But he was swamped at work, so he hadn’t been able to come home while Will was at school, therefore, I had to find other ways to fill my time. On Thursday, sick of walking around the city alone, I had decided to stay home and go through some of my old writing. I got my dinosaur of a computer out of the closet and started to pull up some of my older documents. I read through what I had, made some edits, and before I knew it, I had a rough draft done of the first three chapters of my book. It was a book about a superhero nanny who fought crime by night and took the kids to school by day. I had created the character back when I was in college, but this was the first time I’d actually written more than a couple pages about her.
The words just flowed out of me, and the best part was, whenever I went back and read what I’d just written,I liked it. I had this newfound confidence in what I was doing, and while the self-doubt was still there, it wasn’t nearly as strong as it had once been.
Where did all this confidence come from? I wasn’t sure, but I knew Matt was at least partially responsible. It was the way he looked at me when he didn’t think I could see him, like I was the only person he ever wanted to look at for the rest of his life. Nobody had ever looked at me like that, and it made me feel as if I was special. My mom had always tried to make me feel special, but it’s hard to trust a mom’s judgment on such things.