NOTE: This story was tough to write, because it required me to get inside the head of Matt Camden – not a very pleasant place to be. Please do not believe that I share Matt's opinions about women. When I look at the character that was created on the show, this is how I see him.
As you probably know, I do not own any of these characters or anything else having to do with the show. Those are solely the province of Brenda H. and her minions. With those caveats, please read and enjoy.
Marry in Haste …
Chapter Two: Georgia Girl
He had met her in his psychology class on the first day. One look at Lindsey and you could tell that she wasn't from New York. All the other students wore shapeless layers of black clothing and overcaffeinated expressions. Lindsey had the peaches-and-cream complexion and smart pastel clothes that marked a person recently arrived from somewhere else.
"Georgia," she had said in her sweet lilting accent when he asked her where she was from after class. "Is it that obvious, then?" She smiled, and he noticed that her teeth were perfect.
"Yes, it is," he smiled back. "I'm afraid you look far too happy and healthy to be a New Yorker."
"Well, darn it," she drawled. "And I've been trying so hard to blend in."
They sat together the next class, and that happened to be the day that they assigned lab partners. Matt was secretly thrilled. He hadn't really wanted to take this class, he had only signed up because it filled a requirement and fit in his schedule, and it definitely made the class more pleasant to know that he would be spending most of it with Lindsey.
He didn't think anything was wrong with thinking about her that way. Not yet.
As the weeks went by, Matt and Lindsey saw more and more of each other. He said nothing about this to Sarah. They weren't doing anything wrong, after all. They were just grabbing a cup of coffee after class or meeting in the library to get some studying done. It was nothing. And besides, he was married, and she had a fiancé she'd left back in Georgia, so they weren't even thinking about doing anything inappropriate. It was out of the question.
But then he began to think about Lindsey in comparison to Sarah, his wife. Reluctantly, he had to admit that Lindsey came out better in almost every way. For one thing, she was definitely prettier. Sarah was good-looking, but even he, her husband, had to admit that she couldn't hold a candle to Lindsey's natural golden hair, big turquoise-blue eyes, and pink unmarred skin.
Then there was Lindsey's sense of humor. She had a beautiful laugh, soft and throaty, and she was always laughing. She could turn any story into a joke, could find the humor in almost any situation. She had him roaring with laughter at some of her anecdotes about Bobby, her Georgian fiancé, and the lives of other people in the small town where she had grown up. He hadn't laughed so much in a long time. Sarah's sense of humor tended toward the dark and sarcastic, and while she had a sharp wit, sometimes he got tired of the undertone of bitterness. They hadn't been doing much laughing lately, anyway.
Lindsey was smart, too. She'd gotten into Columbia by working and saving her money since she was thirteen years old and dreaming of becoming a doctor. She was the first girl in her family to graduate from college and the first of either gender to attend medical school. She had been valedictorian of her class in high school and college and had never gotten any grade short of an A. Of course, Sarah was very intelligent herself, but she had always had her parents and her money to smooth things over for her when she needed it.
Matt told himself that he was not being disloyal, just honest. He may have been married, but he wasn't dead, and a guy would have to be dead not to notice how wonderful Lindsey was. But gradually he found himself growing more and more critical of Sarah. She would come home from the hospital looking tired, dark circles under her eyes, a zit forming on her chin, her fingernails bitten, and he couldn't stop himself from remembering Lindsey sitting at her desk and smiling her perfect smile, clothes unwrinkled, hair unmussed after eight straight hours of studying. Sarah screeched at him out of exhaustion and frustration and all he could think about was the throaty timber of Lindsey's laugh as she told him about her life in Georgia. Sarah snored as she slept, keeping him awake even though he had worked an eighteen-hour day and had another one planned tomorrow, and he found himself thinking about Lindsey asleep in her apartment across campus. She would have cute little pajama sets with kittens or something on them, he thought, and her breathing would be even and soft, not Sarah's noisy rasp.
After he saw that his marriage was a mistake, after he realized that the rest of his life would be spent under a cloud of guilt for destroying two lives the way he had, thinking of Lindsey was the only thing that ever made him feel better.
It was so easy to see what he was doing in retrospect, so easy that Matt cringed at the awfulness of his own conduct while remembering it. But at the time he had been convinced that they were only friends, and he needed a friend in New York. He knew that Sarah was feeling more and more alienated from him, that she kept demanding that he tell her what was wrong. He placated her with empty assurances. She cried, screwing up her face and letting her mascara run, and he thought, Lindsey's mascara always looks perfect.
Finally, two nights ago, his cell phone rang just as he was finishing his shift. Lindsey.
"Do you think you could bring me some coffee on your way home? I think I'm out." He heard her voice wobbling all over the place.
"Lindsey, what's wrong? What happened?"
"Just come over, please," she sobbed.