Well, This Is Awkward
Matt finally meets the daughters Kristina hid from him for seventeen years — and nobody in the café knows how to breathe normally.
There are scenes you build toward for an entire novel.
And then there are scenes that quietly terrify you while you write them.
Today’s chapter is the first time Matt sits across from the daughters he never knew existed.
No dramatic music.
No cinematic reunion.
Just rain, coffee, seventeen years of grief… and one deeply awkward table in Downtown Brooklyn.
Chapter 7: The Café is live now. ☕💔
Chapter 7: The Café
“Memories have no manners. They’ll spill themselves over coffee.”
Matt sat in the taxi too long.
Rain streaked across the window in blurred silver lines while Brooklyn moved around him in wet flashes of traffic and umbrellas and people who had no idea his entire life was about to change again.
Across the street, through the fogged café windows, he could just make out two girls seated at a corner table.
His daughters.
The realization hit him fresh every single time.
Two girls who had every right to hate him.
His chest tightened violently.
He checked the time.
Late.
Not disastrously. Just enough to make him look uncertain before he had even walked through the door.
Perfect.
Sandy’s warning replayed immediately:
They’re going to be defensive. Maybe even cruel. Don’t take it personally.
As if there were any possible version of this that wouldn’t feel personal.
Matt pressed cash toward the driver and stepped out into the cold rain.
One breath.
Then another.
Then the walk across the sidewalk that somehow felt longer than the seventeen years he had already missed.
The bell above the café door chimed too brightly when he entered.
Three heads turned immediately.
Sandy stood first.
Hope and exhaustion crossed her face so quickly it almost looked painful.
Kaley sat stiffly beside her, arms crossed tightly enough to feel rehearsed.
And then there was Kate.
Still.
Completely still.
One hand resting against a paper napkin she had nearly torn apart without seeming to
notice.
Matt stopped breathing for half a second.
Photographs had not prepared him for this.
Kristina lived in both of them in completely different ways.
Kate carried her sharpness.
Kaley carried her softness.
And somehow both of them looked at him like they were trying to decide whether he deserved to exist inside their lives at all.
Sandy broke the silence first.
“Matt.”
Her voice grounded the room enough for him to move again.
He stepped toward the table carefully, like approaching something wild enough to bolt.
Or bite.
“Hi,” he managed finally.
God. Pathetic.
Kate’s expression didn’t change.
Kaley looked down briefly at the table.
Sandy gestured toward the empty chair across from them.
Matt sat.
The waitress appeared almost immediately, too cheerful for the moment.
“Can I get anyone anything?”
“No,” Kate answered instantly.
Matt almost admired the efficiency of it.
The waitress retreated awkwardly.
Silence settled again.
Heavy.
Unavoidable.
Matt folded his hands once to stop himself from fidgeting.
“I know this is strange,” he started carefully.
Kate let out a short laugh.
“Strange is one word for it.”
Sandy shot her a look.
Kate ignored it completely.
Matt nodded slowly.
“Fair.”
That seemed to surprise her slightly.
Only slightly.
Kaley finally looked at him then, uncertain in a way that felt painfully young despite the anger sitting underneath it.
Matt realized suddenly that he had no idea what their voices sounded like before this moment.
No idea how they took coffee.
What music they listened to.
Whether either of them cooked.
Seventeen years of missing details crashed into him all at once.
And still, somehow, they were here.
Thanks for reading.
On this Substack, I share essays, poems, fragments, and occasional chapters from works in progress—writing that tries to make sense of a complicated world.
If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe here.