He holds out a pastry box. I take it and descend on a mouthful of tropical sugary goodness. It’s amazing. I eat another one.
“There’s also coffee,” he says, handing me a paper cup.
“Thanks,” I say, taking it and drinking it down so fast I burn my mouth.
“Did you have fun last night?” he asks.
He’s being awfully nice for a person I abandoned at a restaurant and spitefully made sleep on a cement floor last night.
“Yes,” I say.
“That’s great. What did you do?”
“You’re being weird,” I say suspiciously.
“What do you mean.”
“Like, pleasant? Solicitous? Not mean?”
He stands up and looks intensely into my eyes.
“That’s because I’m really,reallysorry, Hope.”
This doesn’t compute.
“Can you clarify what you are talking about?” I ask.
“I’m sorry for jumping to an unfair conclusion about you when I saw Lauren’s posts, for refusing to believe you when you explained, and for generally hurting your feelings and misjudging you,” he says.
This feels like an insufficient accounting of what he did.
“Misjudging me?” I ask. “You insulted me more than anyone has in my entire life.”
He looks pained.
“I’m so sorry I jumped to conclusions,” he says. “I felt very hurt, and I was irrational.”
“Yeah, I was very hurt too,” I snap. “Because you know what? Iamon a very tight budget. And Idowant to find a partner. But I have supported myself since I was eighteen years old. I have mademanysacrifices to make sure that I can do that. And it is degrading to be accused of manipulating someone for money.”
“I’m really sorry,” he says. “Reallysorry, Hope. I believe you.”
I can tell he means it. What I’m not sure about is why he has had this change of heart.
“Can you please tell me why you suddenly get it? What changed?”
“I looked at the posts again. Not the ones of you—she took them down. But the whole account. And it doesn’t seem serious. It seems like Lauren’s playing a character.”
“Itoldyou that.”
He sighs. “Yeah. I know. But I couldn’t take it in before.”
I feel strangely numb to the idea that Felix is truly sorry. Like I’ve built up too much of an armor of resentment to give a shit about what he thinks of me.
“That doesn’t really cut it, Felix,” I say. “I shared a lot with you the past week. I was, forgive the therapy speak, vulnerable. And you dismissed every single thing you knew about me and decided I was a monster in four seconds.”
“Because I was falling for you,” he says. He doesn’t say this in a romantic moonlit confession kind of way. He says it guiltily. Like it just slipped out.
It is astounding.
