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He picks up his phone first, his expression neutral and maybe even a little annoyed. If he didn’t want to see me, why would he have allowed me to come?
I thought that getting cleared by him for a visit would be some indication that he wanted to see me, but I suppose I’m just thinking with the part of me that misses him. I hate this grasping, needy, immature pull toward him that I have to mitigate with a poker face. I know he knows that I’ve missed him, but I can’t allow him to see it.
“Didn’t know if I’d be seeing you any time soon,” he says in a monotone, grey voice.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing. I saw in the newspaper that you got arrested, and I was worried for you,” I reply as my voice shakes. “I just needed to make sure you had a plan, that you were alright.”
He scoffs. “Oh yeah? Did you write the article about me getting arrested? That would be pretty fucking ironic, wouldn’t it?”
His comment is a major punch to the gut, but I need to persist.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t even run the article about how good of a person you are, and now I’m happy I didn’t. I would have been ruined by that story after all of this,” I reply, trying to add venom to my words where only my hurt feelings will fit. This is starting to feel like a mistake.
“Yeah, damn right it would have,” he says, sitting back and staring down at me.
There’s an uncomfortable silence between us now, and my first instinct is to slam the phone back onto the receiver and bolt out the door. He clearly just wanted to make me feel worse.
“You know I didn’t kill that girl,” he says, breaking the silence and startling me a bit.
I pause for a moment, wondering how much I’m allowed to say without incriminating him or myself. Idoknow that he’s innocent, at least for the murders. I doubt he’ll be able to hide much of anything now that there’s a full-blown investigation. They might already know way more than they’re letting on, waiting for him to confess to his myriad crimes.
“I know you didn’t. We both know you didn’t. But what can you do about that now? What about Vitale?” I ask, trying to feel more involved in a partnership against Vitale than standing alone against Matteo.
“Shh! For fuck’s sake!” he hisses. “You can’t throw people’s names around like that in here.”
I snap straight up, my back rigid against the chair. I hate being scolded by men, and it’s even worse now that we haven’t had a single positive interaction since I got here. I’m feeling the same sickness that I felt last night at work. This was all a huge mistake, start to finish.
“I’m sorry. I thought you would have given a statement about him by now,” I respond sheepishly.
He leans in closer to the glass as if it’s going to help me hear him better. “No fucking way. The cops aren’t going to do shit about him if I send them after him. Once I get out of here on bond in a few weeks, I have a plan to deal with him.”
My guts wrench at the thought. Of course I want Vitale to die, but now the cops are so intermingled with Matteo’s life that he’ll definitely get caught for murdering him. I hate that he solves everything with violence, but it’s all he knows. That’s how people like him end up in prison. It’s guilt by association.
“Matteo... I really think we should try to work this out,” I say, derailing the conversation about Vitale altogether. Vitale isn’t the real reason I came here. I need to know how Matteo really feels about me, how he feels about a future with me.
He rubs his temples, sighing heavily. “I’ve thought a lot about this, and I really don’t think this is going to work. I’m no good for you, and you’re not cut out for the lifestyle that I live. I think we just need to go our separate ways or you’re going to get involved in some shit, just like I am right now.”
My heart falls to the floor, and I wish he would stop talking after the first sentence.
I don’t want reasons.
I don’t want an explanation.
Iwanthim to tell me he’s missed me, that he’s been thinking about me, but all he’s been thinking about are the reasons he doesn’t want to be with me.
My heart is shattered, and I’m ready to begin crying like a little girl in this room full of felons and their families. What a cliché! The crying girl getting broken up with by her jailbird boyfriend.
I don’t even give him a chance to continue. I get up from my chair, leaving the phone hanging from the divider, and I storm out of the room as the tears begin to flow.
I feel like such a fool now. I can’t believe that I thought Matteo would ever want to be with someone like me. Why didn’t I consider all the gorgeous, influential, dangerous women he could entertain? I’m too boring, too civil, too soft for him. It was a pipe dream for me to ever believe that he would want to date me in the first place. I guess any pussy is good enough to fuck. I bet he’d think I was embarrassing to him if people thought I was his girlfriend.
Checking out of the jail is the most humiliated I’ve felt in a while. Why the hell is a journalist, a professional, crying about a convict? I’m sure I look just as pathetic as I feel.
By the time I make it out to my car, I’m crying full, uncontrollable tears. I don’t even have the ability to open my car door before I break down, almost falling to my knees as I sob. I’m overreacting, and I know this, but it feels like something is being vacuumed out of my chest.
What am I supposed to do now? Did the time we spent together mean nothing to him? I suppose that all relationships have elements of the same feelings when they end, but I feel so cast off by him. He’ll probably move on to someone so much cooler, hotter, and less insecure than me.
The thought makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I start my car, shuddering as I breathe, and speed out of the parking lot as fast as I can without gaining any unwanted attention.
