She paused and her voice got softer. And what I feel when I’m around you, Jake, that’s real. That’s more real than anything I felt in my entire marriage. I stood there frozen, trying to organize my thoughts. Victoria wasn’t like Clare. She was older, obviously, 53 to my 27. But she had always been kind to me, easy to talk to.
during family gatherings. She was the one who asked actual questions about my projects, who remembered details from previous conversations, who made me feel welcome when Clare’s father barely acknowledged my existence. But this this was something from another universe entirely. I don’t know what to say. I admitted, you don’t have to say anything right now, Victoria replied.
I just wanted to be honest with you. I’m not trying to take advantage of you when you’re vulnerable. I’m not trying to catch you at a weak moment. I felt this way for a long time. I just never said anything because you were with Claire and I would never cross that line. Never. But now things are different. And life is too precious to pretend I don’t feel what I feel.
I looked at her, really looked at her. She wasn’t pushing me. She wasn’t demanding anything. She was just being honest in a way that Clare never was. For 6 years, Clare made me feel like wanting commitment was asking too much. Like wanting a future or just basic respect meant I was being needy.
But here was Victoria standing in my apartment telling me she saw value in me, telling me I was worth something. Why now? I asked. Why are you telling me this now? Because I’m tired of watching good people get overlooked, she said simply. Because I’ve wasted enough of my own life pretending things don’t matter when they do.
Because you deserve to know that someone sees you. Really sees you. Not as a convenience or a temporary distraction, but as someone worth choosing. She reached into her purse and pulled out a business card. She flipped it over and I saw a phone number written on the back in neat handwriting. “You already have this from family events,” she said with a small smile.
But I’m giving it to you again just in case you want to use it differently now. She placed the card on my kitchen counter, then walked toward the door. She stopped with her hand on the doororknob and turned back one more time. Take care of yourself, Jake. You deserve better than what you’ve been getting.
You deserve someone who knows your worth. Then she left and I stood there in the silence of my apartment holding that business card, my mind spinning with a thousand different thoughts. Part of me knew this was insane. This was Clare’s mother. If I said yes to whatever she was suggesting, there would be drama. Serious drama.
Clare would lose her mind. Victoria’s family would judge us. My friends would have opinions. My brother would probably think I had gone crazy. But another part of me, the part that had been beaten down and ignored for 6 years, was saying something different. It was saying that for the first time in forever, someone saw me. really saw me not as a project to fix, not as someone convenient to have around, but as someone worth pursuing, someone worth taking a risk for.
I looked down at the card in my hand. Victoria’s number stared back at me, waiting. I thought about her words, about being tired of pretending, about life being too precious to ignore real feelings, about deserving better. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I was about to make everything more complicated. Maybe I was just confused and hurt and not thinking clearly.
