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I was coming from our bedroom, the book of photographs his dad had asked to see in my hand, when I heard his mom say, “Genesis should be at home, cleaning your apartment. Not gallivanting around Dallas taking pictures of strangers. What a stupid hobby!”
Matt, to his credit, had mumbled a few supportive words, shutting his mother up.
But the damage had already been done. Her words not only hurt, theycrushedme for a minute.
I had to let a few beats go by before I entered the lion’s den so they wouldn’t see my sad expression. I missed my parents, and I so wanted Matt’s to become my own.
Yeah, that never happened.
I figured out rather quickly that his parents... well his mother mainly, hated me when she fake “oohed and awed” over my work thenaccidentally-on-purpose spilled a few drops of coffee on the cover of my portfolio as she played at being hostess.In my house.
After that, I never brought up the subject to them again. And trust me, they never asked.
So very different from Royce who has done nothing but build me up. In the years Matt and I were together, I never felt more empowered, more confident in my talent than I have in the time I’ve spent with Royce.
That’s just one reason why I love him.
Thinking of my feelings for Royce softens my anger at Matt. And even though my words bite, I say them without rancor.
“So, you think my photos are good, do you? Really weird how you’ve never said so before.”
“Yeah, I was stupid back then. Stupid about a lot of things. Stupid how I left things with you.”
For a one half of a split second, the part of me that was humiliated and hurt by Matt’s callous act of leaving me at the altar, raises her fist in the air and shakes it, a smug smile on her lips.
Then the other half of the second drops.
His words are as fake as he is.
Matt is his mother’s child. I realized it the moment I received his text, jilting me. He would crawl on his belly and kiss my feet if he wanted something from me, just like his mother had when she schmoozed her way into the top group of the country club she and her husband had joined.
I look from the parking lot onto the road. A shimmer hovers over the concrete and the heat of the day presses down on me, hard and heavy.
I’m tired. Bone weary, in fact. Matt, like an alien invasion with ray-guns, has sapped away my energy.
In the days following his jilting me, all I wanted to do was to hear him apologize. Now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I just want this conversation to be over so I can go home, get out of my sticky clothes, take a cool shower, and fall asleep.
“Matt, that is an awfully strange thing to say after all this time. And just in case you’re wondering, I’ve moved on. I’m in a… uh, relationship now.”
The lie races my heartbeat up a notch.
Royce and I, although moving forward, didn’t put a definition on what we have. What we are.
“Oh?” Matt says slyly, like he’s fooling someone. “With who?”
The air from my fed-up sigh bounces back from my screen.
“None of your business. That’s who. Now tell me why you called or I’m hanging up.”
He clears his throat. A plane flies overhead, cutting off all sound except for the roar of the engine. When it subsides, Matt finally gets down to the nitty gritty. “Gen-bear, uh Genesis...Seth let it slip to his mom that you were seeing Royce Grayson and of course my mom heard the news and told me to ask you… well, I was kind of hoping you could help find me a job.”
I drive home on autopilot as thoughts whir through my brain like a fork in a blender.
I’m not mad at Seth. He’s so damn easy going, always thinking the best of people. He probably didn’t realize how my…connectionto Royce would eventually spread through his family and reach his cousin’s ears.
And to say I’m in shock is an understatement. Matt, the golden child, has slid down a slippery slope of late.
His wife, Pam, had longed dreamed of becoming the next greatest electronic athlete (or gamer in layman’s terms).
