I wasn't expecting him to pick up when I called. It had been 5 days since I'd last spoken with Matt, and if I had been put in that position, I wouldn't have wanted to ever hear again from the person who felt I wasn't even worthy of an explanation over the ignoring. But Matt picked up after the first ring.

"Chloe?" His voice was low and tentative.

"Yeah," I started out.

"I've been waiting to hear from you." I could hear him steadying his breathing on the other end of the line.

"I've been waiting until I was ready to talk to you," I responded. It was Friday. I had gotten home from school and changed into jeans and a t-shirt before proceeding to pace back and forth between my bedroom and the living room. I dug my toes into the carpet and rocked back and forth on my heels.

"Well, can you tell me in person?" Matt's voice remained uncertain.

"Yes. Should I meet you somewhere?" I began to chew on my thumbnail.

"I can come over," Matt suggested.

I thought it over. It might be better to stay here and have him storm out, pissed off. Then I could just run to my bedroom and pitch my fit rather than having to figure out how to get my ass home from some different locale. I never drove well when I was upset.

"Alright. Are you at work?"

"No, actually. I worked a short shift in the morning, but I'm home now. I can be by in about 20 minutes, is that OK?"

"That's fine. I'll see you then." I clicked my phone closed. I didn't want to say more than I needed to over the phone. Might as well get it all out when he was in front of me.

To pass the time until Matt knocked on my door, I decided to knock back the last of my gin. There was only enough liquor left for two shots, but the act of drinking it was more soothing than the alcoholic effect. I gripped my glass tightly in my hand and stood wide-eyed in the kitchen.

I hadn't planned out what I was going to say to him. A part of me figured that I would be able to discern the proper words once he was in front of me, although another part of me want to kick the first part's ass for thinking that. My head was a milky sea of confusion. I shook my head, trying to work some sense out of it.

The knocking that came at the door was so light, I almost didn't hear it. I could have made it from where I was standing to the front door in a half dozen good strides, but at this time I counted 22 short steps. Matt stood with a hung dog expression at the door. I greeted him with a nod. He returned it with one of his own and stepped inside.

"Matt..." I started.

His head began to move up and down in a series of tiny bobs. "Yeah."

"You're a really great guy," my lips quivered as I formed them around the words.

"I am, actually."

It wasn't what I was expecting to hear. The tone of his voice was strong. The delivery of his agreement decisive. My eyes moved from the floor and focused on his face. He was glaring at me, his blue eyes burning holes through me.

"I AM a really great guy. A nice guy. A good guy. A sweet and caring and considerate guy," Matt picked up steam as he continued. "I open doors. I call when I say I'm going to. I don't pressure anyone into doing something that they don't want to do."

I was getting confused. "You think I pressured you?" I asked.

He shook his head, but the gesture was small. His mind was on something else, and he was going to get it out. "I'm patient. I wait for what I want because I know that with waiting comes a great reward. But I'm also human. I get lonely. I get weak. And the other side of the fence where everyone else is frolicking looks pretty damn good to me sometimes."

My mouth was hanging open. I had no other option but to allow him to continue.

"I'm not going to say that I made a mistake when I slept with you, Chloe. It's really tempting, considering how these last few days have played out, but I refuse to think of it that way. I prefer to think of every decision that I make as a learning one, whether the lesson is a positive or a negative one. I learned something about myself in all of this. I learned that I still need to work on my resolve. I can't just cave to something because I know that it will feel good in the moment. I learned that I need to hold out for what I truly want, even if it pains me to do so."

He stopped for a moment and sighed deeply.

"I'm not stupid. When I came by the other night, I saw a car here that I thought I recognized. It took a few days to dawn on me where I'd seen it. I saw it when we were leaving the beach that day. And I saw it at the bar the night that everyone was celebrating your big news. There was a good reason why you didn't want to let me in on Sunday, wasn't there?"

I hung my head. It was turning out that I'd given Matt far less credit than he deserved. Far, far less credit.

"I don't hate you. When I first put it together, I was pretty fucking pissed. Mostly at myself for not seeing where this had been headed the entire time that I was with you. I don't think you even knew what was going to happen, so as much as I should be mad at you, I'm not. You were only following what you thought was right for you."

Matt started to pace in a tight circle. "At least I hope you're doing what you think is right for you. Because through all of this, I really did care about you, Chloe. You're smart, you're funny and you're worthy of knowing. I made some bad decisions in handling this 'relationship,' if you want to call it that. But at least I didn't make the wrong decision of who to make them with. I value you as a person, I really do. But I hate that you turned out to be just like anyone else."

He stopped pacing and stared hard at me. "I guess this could have been much worse. You could have carried on with me, tried to fake it. You could have lied. But at least you were willing to own up to me and break things off. That's what you were planning on doing tonight, weren't you?"

I nodded as my answer. Tears were welling up in my eyes, but I stood my ground and held his gaze.

"Well, thank you for that. But I think I'll be the one to say the actual words. You can't have it all, Chloe." He paused and took a deep breath.

"I never want to see you again. I don't want to talk to you, I don't want to know you. I would appreciate it if you found another place to do your business at or at least respected me enough to not come in when I was working. You know what my car looks like. If you've got to buy anything, make sure to do it when you don't see my car in the parking lot. It will be easier for the both of us if we walk away from it all with no drawn out bullshit. True, I can't control you, but know that if you try to talk to me, I will not respond. We are not going to be friends at the end of the day. As far as I'm concerned, I no longer know you."

Matt pressed his lips together and nodded fiercely. He stood before me for a couple of seconds, then turned on his heel and went to the front door. He opened it, stepped outside and closed it quietly and firmly behind him.

I stood motionless in the kitchen for a minute before I crumpled to the floor and began to sob.

----------------------------------------------------------------

"Oh, wow." Lilly's eyes were wide and round. "Chloe. Jeez. Wow."

"Yeah," I said softly.

The girls were all in my living room. Steph had lead the procession over to my apartment after calling me to see how everything had gone down. I was still surprised with myself for answering her call. After Matt had left the night before, I'd cried in the kitchen until my chest ached and my head was throbbing. I'd spent all of Saturday in bed until I'd gotten up to use the bathroom and heard my cell ring.

Malory and Claude were sitting on either side of me on the couch and Lilly was in the armchair next to us. Steph had pretzeled herself into the Indian position on the floor. Malory was stroking my back softly.

"Nice guys do have balls," she commented, and continued moving her hand back and forth. It felt good and I leaned into it.

"You know," Claude remarked, "I've always said that I hated being the bad guy. Every time that I date some nice guy, I dread having to give him the 'It's not you, it's me," speech. He usually fights me on it, asks for a second chance and just ends up looking pathetic. Irritating as fuck."

The girls all nodded. We'd all been in similar positions.

"But you know what?" she continued. "I think the alternative blows as well. I officially take back all of the times that I secretly wished that the nice guy would grow a backbone, see that I was being a selfish, stupid bitch and call me out on it." Her eyes suddenly widened and she whipped her head over to look at me in the face. "No offense though, Chlo."

I sniffled and heart-heartedly laughed. "Nothing you could say could possibly make me feel worse right now, trust me."

"But you've got Geoff to fall back on," Steph chimed in. "So it's not like you're going to be mourning this for very long. Matt got to say his piece, and sure it stung, but you were going to break it off with him so that you could be with Geoff. So just go be with Geoff."

"Is that really what I wanted? Do I really want to hop from one poorly made decision to another one?" I pulled another tissue from the box in my lap and dabbed at my nose.

"You think being with Geoff is a bad decision?" Lilly asked.

"Isn't it? What if the only reason why I want to be with him right now is because I was trying to escape a situation that I DIDN'T want to be in? That would just be using him, and it would ultimately doom us in the long run."

"So what are you saying?" Malory asked.

"Maybe that this was all a way of proving to myself that I need to be alone. That I've needed to be alone all the time." The tears started welling up again.

"Oh, god," Steph moaned, rolling her eyes. "Here we go with that shit again."

"Is it really shit? Man, I fuck up everything. I fucked up a perfectly decent situation with Matt..."

"Which you've already admitted was wrong for you in the first place," Steph interjected.

"Fine," I admitted. "But I still say it all adds up to me not being in the right place to have a relationship. How many of us have had something work out when it was centered in the middle of drama? Geoff and I have been drama from the very beginning. Fuck. How do I know that it wasn't just the allure of something unfamiliar that drew us together in the first place? That despite all of the road signs reading 'STOP! TURN BACK! BRIDGE OUT AHEAD!' we pursued anyway just because we wanted to really see for ourselves that the bridge wasn't there?"

"Do you ever not talk in analogies?" Steph quipped.

"Fuck you!" I shot back. I watched her jump back, startled at the ferocity of my response. "I'm sorry. But dammit, this is how I figure shit out. Analogies help me to make sense of it all."

"Or they just cloud the real meaning. Why don't you just say that you're afraid to be with someone? You're afraid of having to make a deep commitment and all of the compromises that go with it? Why don't you just own the fact that you're a self-centered bitch at times, and fuck it if society doesn't like that, it's who you are?" Steph's eyes were ablaze.

"I've always liked that about you," Lilly said softly. "I try so hard to please people all the time. Sometimes I want to tell them to leave me the fuck alone. You actually do that."

"No I don't," I argued.

"Well, not always," Claude added. "But you're not afraid to tell people off if they're of no importance to you. Remember that one time when we went to Santa Barbara and those guys kept hitting on us? At that festival thing? I tried ignoring them. Mal tried walking away. You marched right up in their faces and gave them the run-down on why they had no right to speak to us in the first place. Man, that was awesome."

"Shit, I remember that! You should have gotten your ass beat for that!" Malory was laughing. I remembered the guys. They were young and stupid college boys from UCSB. Spoiled little pricks who felt like they had the right to harass anyone they pleased because their Mommies and Daddies had obviously never told them no. They had us outnumbered 6 to 3, and Malory had started inching toward a security guard as I was verbally eviscerating them. In the end, all they'd managed to combat my attack with was some puffed up chests and a declaration that I was a cunt. They promptly walked away and didn't bother us or any other females for the rest of the night.

"It's all coming back to haunt me," I sighed. "My cockiness isn't so amusing anymore."

"Oh, boo fucking hoo, emogirl." Steph moaned. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You're too much of a badass bitch to do that. If this is what getting dick does to you, then I need to put you on a strictly pussy diet!"

"Ugh. That's your solution for everything!" Lilly protested loudly, surprising us all and gaining the full attention of the room. "Chloe, you know that I always back you up, but DAMN! You are really starting to piss me off. Have you noticed that whenever you have a problem, it's the end of the fucking world? We all come rushing in and support you. It makes me think that you're just making a bigger drama out of things for the attention."

I blinked. Lilly was never this forceful. It was a captivating thing to watch. The other three women in the room must have been on the same page as me, as they all sat and stared at her.

"If I have a problem, I know that I can count on all of you. In fact, I've always known that I can count on you first, so I've never had an issue with doing the same for you. But you think everything that happens in your life that distresses you in any way is a life-stopping moment. The Matt thing sucked. I'm here for you. But if you want sympathy over being confused about a guy who's already waiting in the wings and 'Oh, what am I gonna do? What do I really want?' then forget it. That's just stupid." Lilly pulled her feet up and wrapped her arms around her knees. "I'm sorry if you get mad at me for saying it, but it's how I feel."

"You're right, Lil, and I should be the one saying that I'm sorry right now." I took a deep breath. "I'll figure out what I'm going to do about Geoff on my own. I'm an adult. It IS possible for me to act like one from time to time." I managed to eke out what I felt was a reassuring smile.

The girls smiled back. Steph pushed herself up into a standing position. "Point me to the liquor. I do believe we all need a round," she said.

"Oh," Lilly giggled, leaning over and picking her purse off the floor, from which she produced a plastic baggie and a pipe. "I'll do you one better!"

"Durka Durka!" I laughed.

"Well then," Steph redirected her approach. "Point me to the chips and cookies and I'll get us set up!"