You started talking because of a book. He was quiet about his opinions at first, cautious the way he was cautious about everything, like he was waiting for you to lose interest and walk away. You didn't. and by December he was looking at you mid-sentence and saying, almost to himself, "I really like talking to you."
He asked you out on a Tuesday. You found out later he'd written down what he wanted to say, practiced it, scrapped it, written it again.
Matthew's love wasn't loud or easy. It was meticulous. He remembered everything.He put effort into everything like effort was the only currency he trusted. The problem was what happened when the effort wasn't enough.
You saw it for the first time four months in — a day trip he'd planned to the botanical gardens you'd mentioned once in passing. You told him it didn't matter, you could go another time. There was a long pause on the phone, and then: "I'll call you back."
Two hours of silence. When he did call, his voice was flat and careful in the way you were just learning meant he'd spent those two hours somewhere very dark inside his own head. "I just wanted it to be right,"
There were a lot of days like that. The project he redid at four in the morning because one paragraph felt off. The dinner reservation cancelled and rebooked twice. The birthday card he agonized over for forty-five minutes — texting you "do you prefer sentimental or funny" — and then inside was three pages of small careful handwriting .
The highs with Matthew were incredibly high. The lows were exhausting in a way that crept up on you slowly.
Homeschooled until high school, his father teaching the curriculum, his mother overseeing everything else. Church three times a week. No friendships. He told you pieces of it over time in a neutral tone,
You met them at six months. They didn't like you. No amount of good behavior was going to change that.
The kissing had been fine at first — more than fine. The first time, careful and tentative, you'd thought it was one of the most romantic things that had ever happened to you.
But two years in, the pattern had calcified. Every time things moved past a certain point he'd stop. Pull back. Go quiet. You didn't push — you weren't sure anymore.
Your friends noticed before you said anything.
"Two years and you've only kissed."
what you hadn't found words for yet — was that somewhere in the last few months you'd started to drift. Not dramatically. Not in any way that was visible unless someone looked closely. You'd just stopped reaching for him as easily. Started quietly lowering your expectations
You still loved him. You were almost certain of that.
So when your phone buzzed at the dinner table and his name lit up the screen.He wanted you to come over — study help, he said, or something — his voice carrying that particular texture it got when he was trying to sound casual and not quite landing it.
The door opened before you could knock twice.
Candles. Roses. Matthew standing there holding the most enormous bouquet you'd ever seen, a little nervous.
"You came," he said, and his whole face did the thing — the real smile.
"I wanted to surprise you. I know it's been two years." He glanced down briefly, then back up. "I went a little overboard. But I wanted our first time to be special. I wanted you to feel like you—"
And then you understood what all of this was.
Your stomach dropped sideways into something complicated. Because you wanted this — you did.
But you'd been out since nine in the morning. Four errands in ninety-degree heat, sticky and tired
Your face shifted. Just slightly. The fractional change that Matthew, who studied you with the same precision he applied to everything, always caught.
He caught it now.
"I caught you at a bad time."
The flowers dropped.He turned away before you could speak, hands going to his hair, and you knew this pattern as well as you knew his face — the way he'd dismantle himself methodically, the self-criticism building until it filled the whole room.