Heart of the Matter Read Online Free PDF

that maybe he was an actor playing a doctor, on his way to a TV set. I remember looking into his eyes—the warmest brown eyes I had ever seen—and feeling overcome by a crazy, gut feeling that can only be described as love at first sight. I remember thinking that I was saved by a moment, by a person I didn’t know and probably would never know.
    “Hello,” he said, smiling, as he reached out and held the same pole I was gripping.
    “Hi,” I said, catching my breath as our hands touched, and we rattled our way uptown, making small talk about topics we’ve both, remarkably, forgotten.
    At one point, after we had delved into a few personal matters, including my Ph.D. program and his residency, he nodded down at my diamond ring and said, “So when’s the big day?”
    I told him twenty-nine days, and I must have looked grim when I said it, because he gave me a knowing look and asked if I was okay. It was as if he could see straight through me, into my heart, and as I looked back at him, I couldn’t stop myself from welling up. I couldn’t believe I was crying with a complete stranger when I hadn’t even broken down on Cheryl’s tweed couch. “I know,” he said gently.
    I asked how he knew.
    “I’ve been there,” he said. “Of course, I wasn’t on my way to the altar. But still. . .”
    I laughed through an unattractive sob.
    “Maybe it will be okay,” he said, looking away, as if to give me privacy.
    “Maybe,” I said, finding a Kleenex in my purse and gathering myself.
    A moment later, we were stepping off the train at 116 th Street (which I would only later learn wasn’t Nick’s true destination), the crowd dispersing around us. I remember how hot it was, the smell of roasted peanuts, the sound of a soprano folksinger crooning from the street above. Time seemed to stand still as I watched him remove a pen from the pocket of his scrubs and write his name and number on a card I still have in my wallet today.
    “Here,” he said, pressing it into my palm.
    I glanced down at his name, thinking that he looked like a Nicholas Russo. Deliciously solid. Sexy. Too good to be true.
    I tried it out, saying, “Thank you, Nicholas Russo.”
    “Nick,” he said. “And you are ... ?”
    “Tessa,” I said, feeling weak with attraction.
    “So. Tessa. Give me a call if you ever want to talk,” he said. “You know. . . Sometimes it helps to talk to someone who’s not. . . vested.”
    I looked into his eyes and could see the truth. He was as vested as I was.
    ***
    The next day I told Ryan I couldn’t marry him. It was the worst day of my life to that point. I had had my heart broken once before him—granted, on a much more adolescent level—but this was so much worse. This was heartbreak plus remorse and guilt and even shame over the scandal of calling off a wedding.
    “Why?” he asked through tears I still can’t bear to think about too closely. I had seen Ryan cry before, but never because of me.
    As hard as it was, I felt that I owed him the truth, brutal though it was.
    “I love you, Ryan. But I’m not in love with you. And I can’t marry someone I’m not in love with,” I said, knowing that it sounded like a canned breakup line. Like the sort of unsubstantial, shallow excuse middle-aged men give before divorcing their wives.
    “How do you know?” Ryan asked. “What does that even mean?
    I could only shake my head and think of that moment on the train, with the stranger named Nick in the blue-gray scrubs, and say again and again that I was sorry.
    Cate was the only one who got the full story. The only one who knows the truth, even today. That I met Nick before I broke up with Ryan. That if it weren’t for Nick, I would ve married Ryan. That I’d probably still be married to Ryan, living in a different city with different children and a different life altogether. A watered-down, anemic version of my life now. All the same downsides of motherhood, none of the upsides of true love.
    Of course,