The Secret Of Us

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.

Chapter Six

I grew up in a military community, surrounded by the sight of uniforms and crew cuts and the sound of planes buzzing the skyline. The lifestyle was one I grew accustomed to, the ever-changing sea of people in my life a testament to the fluidity of the military, while I remained static. People were there one day and gone the next – sometimes without warning or explanation, sometimes for short blocks of time, sometimes permanently.

It all came with the territory, and I’d learned to roll with the punches.

Growing up around all of that prepared me for Matt and everything that his own military career entailed. He was sent on deployments so frequently that his days home were far outnumbered by his days away. Still, though, I always knew when it was coming. When Matt left, it was usually planned, expected, and definable. He’d never had to leave suddenly or without notice, never had to go somewhere that he couldn’t discuss.

I knew he had an upcoming deployment, and part of me was glad that he would be away for those few months.

It would give us some time apart, provide some space for me to think without it being a question of avoidance. It would grant me a reprieve from the façade I was so desperately trying to maintain.

During the five months between our kiss and Matt’s deployment, we continued to see each other regularly, to do things together just as we always had.

But there was always an underlying current of pretense, an unspoken barrier that had never been there before now.

We avoided the topic of what had happened between us as though it was forbidden, a strange source of shame. I wondered sometimes what would happen if I broached the subject, if I asked him if anything had changed. If he ever thought about that night with anything other than regret.

My tenacity was diminished in the face of this – this fear. That’s what it really was, if I was honest with myself.

I was afraid.

Afraid of losing him.

Afraid to let go of the tight control I’d kept on my heart, in case letting go meant realizing that it had been crushed to pieces.

A more “modern-thinking” woman might have been able to view our kiss with cool detachment, writing it off as a failed experiment – but for me, kissing had always been far too intimate a gesture to be passed out willy-nilly at the end of a date. Matt had known this – had always known this – which made the fact that he had finally made the first move so much more significant to me. And why I’d been struggling so much to let go of it.

The day of Matt’s upcoming deployment was circled on my calendar in red, an inky reminder that there was an end in sight, even if it was only a temporary one. Maybe then I’d be able to take a step back and regain some sense of control. I watched time dwindle as that circled date approached, a strange mix of relief and dread filling me every time I crossed through the calendar days.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so alone, so at a loss as to what to do.

I had friends that knew both of us, obviously, but none of them were close enough for me to lean on. Which also meant that none of them knew me on a deep enough level for me to trust them with such confidences as this.

It was times like this that I lamented my lack of having a sister nearby – or, at least a close female friend. Which was another reason that the whole situation with Matt was so hard to deal with. He was my best friend, my closest ally.

My confidante.

And everything I was struggling with was related to him and our relationship.

I drove him to the airport the morning of his deployment, wondering what would happen between now and when I picked him up again, ninety days from this moment.

Would he change his mind and realize that he loved me and was in love with me?

Would he come home and want to start a life with me?

Would I, in the meantime, be able to decide that I was going to move on to a life without him, or would I be able to satisfy myself with friendship?

So many questions and emotions crowded my mind that the trip to the airport passed in thick silence, and when Matt walked through the sliding doors of the airport’s main entrance, I felt something break. Every brick I’d had so firmly in place for the last five months crumbled into dust, and there was nothing left for me to do but cry.

He’d asked me, his friend, to take him to the airport and drop him off. No parking, no long goodbye, no loitering outside the security gate while he wound through the throng of travelers lined up to go through all the checkpoints and x-rays.

Just drop him off.

I could do that, right?

Of course I could, or so I thought. We were friends.

Which was why I was now sitting in my car, falling apart at the seams.

I had the next ninety days to figure out my life, but I had no idea if anything would change.

Or even how it needed to change.

All I knew was that I was miserable, and I was alone, and I needed not to be.

I needed my mother.

I reached into my glove box and rummaged around for some tissues to wipe my soggy face. No doubt there was mascara running rampant streaks down my cheeks, but at the moment, all I really cared about was talking to my mother. My wise, loving, understanding mother, who would have the answers I was looking for.

My mother, who still didn’t know about the kiss.

I hadn’t told her for fear of what she’d say. My relationship with Matt had been a bone of contention between us – not because she had anything against him, but because she knew how much of myself I’d invested and didn’t want to see me hurt. Sometimes mothers know too much, even when they don’t know everything. They know you well enough to read between the lines and see that your heart is on the line, even when you’re too blind to see the danger you’re rushing headlong into.

I knew how much she wanted to see me happy, but I also knew how she felt about my continuing such a close relationship with Matt, despite the fact that he’d told me it would never be more than friendship.

Despite that fact that I was in love with him and wanted more.

Despite the fact that she’d advised me on countless occasions to end it before my heart was smashed to smithereens. All of which explained and – in my way of thinking, at least – necessitated my withholding the details of the night that Matt and I had kissed.

For all she knew, nothing had changed between the two of us.

For all intents and purposes, that was true – we were still nothing more than friends.

Now, though, there was also a huge complication that was making everything even more painful than it had previously been.

It was torturous.

I felt like I’d walked across broken bottles on numb feet and had no idea when I would regain sensation. All that was certain was the fact that when I did, the pain would be excruciating.

There was nothing left to do but tell her.

It wasn’t like it could really make things any worse, could it? Sure, she would probably tell me that I should have known better and kept better guard of my heart, but I also knew she wouldn’t lord it over me just for the sake of making me miserable. She was my mother. She loved me, and all she really wanted was the best for me.

I pulled my phone from the purse on the seat beside me and stared at it for a moment, trying to find the words I was going to need. I shook my head at my own foolishness. There was no way I would really be able to prepare for this phone call. I was just going to have to suck it up and do it.

In the end, it was the best thing. I needed support and advice, and there was no better source for that than my own mother.

I guess you never really do outgrow that need, do you?

“Hi, babydoll, what’s up?” my mother said breezily when she answered.

“Oh, you know. Stuff,” I hedged, wondering how I was going to ease into this one.

“Stuff?” her voice was laden with skepticism.

She knew me well enough to read every nuance in my words, no matter how subtle I thought it was. The woman was truly superhuman.

“Uh huh. Stuff. Lots of stuff,” I said heavily, a sigh escaping unbidden. I closed my eyes and leaned forward to rest my forehead on the steering wheel. “I just dropped Matt at the airport. Actually, I’m still at the airport.” I sniffled and dabbed my runny nose with my already damp tissue.

“How long is he going to be gone?” she asked.

She knew how this worked; my parents were no strangers to the military machine. My father had retired after more than twenty years in the Air Force, and she had been with him for the majority of his career. My mother could easily sympathize with my concern for Matt and the feelings that came along with his absence.

“Ninety days,” I said flatly. “The usual. So,” I breathed, still not ready to dive into why I was actually calling. “How are you and Dad?” I was quite aware that my feeble attempt at evasion was transparent, but I was hoping my mother would take the hint and allow me some room to ease into things.

“We’re fine, just fine. Your father’s out washing the car, and I’ve just put the meat on for the spaghetti. We’re staying busy, I guess. But never too busy to have you up here for a nice long visit, if you ever find the time,” she hinted.

“Mama, you’re as subtle as a two-by-four,” I said, laughing.

“One of the many reasons you love me,” she replied, the smile evident in her voice.

“Yes, one of the many,” I echoed, realizing that I was going to have to talk.

Now or never. I sucked in a deep breath and held it.

“As is your wise counsel, which is actually why I’m calling,” I said as I released the breath.

“Ah hah,” she said soberly. “So tell me, honey. What’s really going on?”

I straightened in my seat and shifted my gaze to the headliner of the car, wishing there were words up there to read. It would have made things so much simpler.

“Matt and I kissed, Mom,” I blurted.

There was silence on the other end of the line as she processed the information I’d just imparted. I knew she would be choosing her words carefully, but I also knew she would be completely honest with me. She was one of the few people I knew would give me the unvarnished truth, and that was what I needed right now.

“I was wondering if that might not have happened yet. When?” she asked.

“Five months ago. It wasn’t planned. At least, not for me,” I replied. “It kind of just… happened,” I finished lamely. I realized how cliché I sounded, but it was true.

It had just happened.

“And then?”

“And then, we acted as though nothing happened. Or, at least, as much as we could. It’s there, now, though, and we both know it’s there. It’s like this big elephant in the room; there’s a palpable difference in our relationship. We do things together, just like always, Mom, but,” I paused, shaking my head. “It’s not the same. We’re not the same,” I sighed.

“How could you be?” she asked, reasonably. “He knew how seriously you take your relationship, and he knows the way you feel about him. It’s a mighty risky thing to do, Eira, for someone who thought it wasn’t going to go anywhere.”

I traced the seams on my steering wheel with my index finger, wondering what I was doing, where all of this would lead. I felt like I was on a runaway rollercoaster.

“I guess I was just deluding myself in believing that maybe we would be able to have a life together. A real life together,” I explained.

“You were hoping that Matt would open his eyes and finally see you.”

“Ludicrous, wasn’t it?” I barked out a little laugh of self-ridicule. I knew how stupid it sounded, how childish and naïve.

Maybe that was my problem.

Maybe that was the way Matt saw me, as a hopelessly naïve child.

“No, Eira, it wasn’t ludicrous. It was optimistic and romantic, and both of those things are traits I hope you never lose. Life has quite a way of jading people until they believe that real, selfless love isn’t possible, and that it’s not even worth the risk to try and find it. They won’t even admit it, but they’re afraid of the complications that love will have on their lives. People want everything to be perfectly definable and all wrapped up in a nice little box, and love isn’t like that. It’s messy. It’s complicated. It’s painful. Anything involving other people is like that, and when you open your heart, you make yourself vulnerable. Vulnerability is also a liability in many people’s eyes. A weakness. And so they run from it.” My mother sounded almost sad as she spoke, her insight obviously drawn from experience.