First-Time Caller

Chapter 30

I stay in the booth until everyone is gone.

Jackson spent ten minutes trying to get me to go to a bar with him, and Maggie glared at me through the window with her arms crossed over her chest, mouthing, Team Lucie , with her fist thrust in the air. Her face softened when I dug my finger in the middle of my chest and said, Me too .

I haven’t moved since, watching the lights on the machines around me blink in the dark. If I stay here, I don’t have to acknowledge the last couple of hours. If I stay here, I can trick myself into believing that Lucie will walk back through the door. If I stay here, I can keep everything exactly where it’s supposed to be.

Contained. Managed. Subdued.

But she doesn’t and I don’t.

Lucie was right. About everything. I manage my expectations to keep myself from getting hurt. I keep a careful distance from anything that threatens my ambivalence. But Lucie snuck in through the cracks when I wasn’t looking and made herself at home in the corners of my heart. She ruined all the plans I made for myself with a smile on her face.

And then I fucked it up.

By saying nothing .

By pushing her toward someone else.

I sat in this chair while she held her heart out to me and I couldn’t scrape together enough courage to say a damn thing. I’m no better than that asshole who left her at Duck Duck Goose. Or the dipshit who made her cry. I think I’m worse. I told her she was safe with me, and then I broke her heart.

I drag my hand over my face and press my palms against my eyes until I see spots. I just need another second. One more minute and I’ll know what to do.

Except a revelation never comes. I’m just as lost as I’ve always been. I hesitate, then reach for my phone and dial.

He picks up on the second ring.

“Aiden?” His voice is scratchy with sleep, sheets rustling in the background. The sharp click of the lamp next to his bed being turned on. “Are you—is everything okay?”

My eyes cut to the clock above the door. Fuck. It’s after midnight. I’ve been sitting here in the dark of the studio longer than I thought.

“I’m sorry,” I rasp, embarrassed. “Everything is fine. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“No, no. It’s all right. I’m awake.” I hear a muffled voice in the background. My mom rolls over in bed and asks who is on the phone. Dad shushes her gently and then I hear the squeak of the floorboards in the hallway. The ones I knew to step over when I was a teenager and didn’t want to disrupt my mom’s fitful sleep.

“I’m here,” he says with a sigh, and I imagine him lowering himself down to the bench seat in the bay window on the west side of the house. There’s a giant oak right outside the warped glass with branches that scrape against the glass. I used to climb in his lap in the middle of the night in that seat. He’d comb his fingers through my hair and tell me the tree was my protector. That at night, it wrapped its arms around the house and kept us safe.

On the other side of the phone, my dad muffles a yawn. “What is it, son? Having trouble sleeping?”

“I’m still at the station.”

“Do you need a ride home?” A rustle of fabric. I imagine him looking for his slippers and smile at nothing.

“No, Dad, I don’t need a ride home.” Though I don’t have a car and Jackson was the one to drive me in today. A problem for future me. Another problem for future me. “I’m—” I release a breath. “I could have come on that trip.”

It spills out of me in a rush, a curveball from somewhere between my head and my heart. Good to know I can be honest about some things.

“What was that?” my dad asks.

“The trip to Acadia,” I tell him. I have to clear my throat. “I could have come. I told Mom I couldn’t. Because of work.”

“I know you’re busy at the station,” he says slowly. “But that’s okay. Maybe next time. I’m trying to convince your mom to go on another arboretum tour. We can always go back.”

“I wasn’t busy. I could have found someone to cover my shifts. I didn’t even try. I could have—I should have come on the trip.”

My breathing is too harsh, my throat too thick. My dad stays silent on the other end of the phone, giving me the space to work out my knots.

“I know I keep doing this. I . . . make excuses every time you guys invite me somewhere. I skip out of family dinners and I—I don’t always answer text messages.”

“Aiden—”

“It’s easier for me like this. I think I convinced myself that if I loved you guys less—if I loved Mom less—it wouldn’t hurt so bad if I had—if I had to lose her.” I choke on the words. “So I kept myself apart and hoped it would help.”

Three cancer diagnoses in ten years and I couldn’t figure out how to deal with it, so I just decided not to. I buried my head in the sand and distanced myself from anything resembling emotional attachment. Like that, it was bearable. Like that, I could still breathe.

“I don’t know how you did it,” I ramble on. “How you do it. You love her so much and it—” I have to take a second. Press my lips together to stop them from trembling. “I never told you, but I could hear you crying at night. You were breaking apart and I didn’t want to break apart too. I was trying to be strong, but I think I just messed everything up.”

My dad’s deep exhale echoes on the other end of the phone. “Oh, Aiden. My boy.”

“It didn’t work,” I choke out. I dig the knuckles of my left hand into the middle of my forehead. “Or it stopped working if it ever did. I don’t know how to fix it.”

“What do you need to fix?”

“Me,” I grind out. “I need to fix me .”

This part of myself that relies on distance to function. The part that doesn’t want to get too close because the idea of getting attached to someone scares the shit out of me. I let myself get greedy with Lucie, and now I don’t know how to shut it off. I tried, but I can’t. I can’t . I don’t know how to be the person she needs me to be.

“Aiden.” My dad sighs. “You’re not broken.”

“It feels like it.” I rub my chest. “I feel broken.”

“I think maybe you’re just bruised.” Wood creaks in the background and I imagine that tree outside the window wrapping its arms around me. “You were so young when everything happened the first time. Sometimes I worry that we asked too much of you.”

I blink at my discarded headphones. The empty space next to me where Lucie is supposed to be. “You didn’t ask me for anything.”

I remember pleading with him, begging for something. A task, a checklist. Something for me to channel my energy into. He handed me a shovel and told me to replant the lavender in the backyard. It was the best idea either of us could come up with.

But it didn’t help anything. It didn’t make my mom better.

“You had to grow up too fast. You spent more time in hospitals than out with your friends. Cancer took so much from your mom, but it took from you too. It’s okay that you need to work through that, Aiden.”

“How do you do it?” I choke out. “How do you love her when you’re scared?”

My dad laughs, a gruff, thick sound. “It was never a choice, Aiden. I was always going to love your mom. And I would never have chosen different, even with everything we’ve endured together. It makes it better, doesn’t it? To know how temporary it all is. To know how special. Love isn’t”—he sighs, a deep, rumbling sound—”love isn’t always sunshine and daisies. Sometimes it’s hospital beds and shaved heads. But I wouldn’t trade any of it. Because all of it is with her.”

“You’re braver than I am.”

“Nah. I’ve just had more practice at it.” He pauses, thinking. “I don’t think you have anything to fix, Aiden. I think you just have things to work on.”

“How?” I whisper.

“Well.” I imagine I can hear the shape of his smile. A crooked slash in the moonlight. “Here is what we’re gonna do. You and I, we’re gonna talk. More than once a month. More than we have been. Preferably not in the middle of the night when your old man is sleeping.” He pauses meaningfully and I snort a watery laugh. “You’re gonna answer your phone when your mom calls too, and you’re going to participate in the group chat. You’re gonna come over for Sunday dinner. You’re gonna come with us to baseball games. You’re gonna go back to therapy and talk to someone. I know you stopped going,” he says knowingly. “You’re gonna ask for help when you need it and you’re gonna learn what it’s like to love without being afraid, okay? You’ll take your time about it. You’ll put in the work.”

Something catches my eye on the other side of the desk. I reach forward. It’s one of Lucie’s tiny paper planes, half-hidden beneath a cluster of wires. The one she made from a chocolate mint wrapper and aimed right at my heart. I drag my thumb over one of the creases. Unfold it until it’s flat, then slowly follow the folds until it’s whole again.

“And if I mess up?” I ask. “If I do the wrong thing?”

“Then you try again. You keep trying until you find the right thing.”

My heart starts to pound in my chest. Right beneath the empty key ring I haven’t taken off since I turned sixteen. A whisper of a conversation floats in the back of my mind.

I don’t want the right thing.

Lucie has only ever wanted the real thing.

“What brought all this about?” my dad asks, a hint of amusement in his tired voice. “It wouldn’t be a certain woman you tried to set up with someone tonight, would it?”

“You heard that?”

“Oh, my boy. The entire Eastern Seaboard heard that.” He pauses. “Not your smartest move.”

Yeah, I fucked up. Not just by staying silent but by encouraging her to be with someone who isn’t me. I lied to her face and hurt her in the process. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I was just shoving her away to protect myself. She got too close and I panicked. Simple as that.

I was selfish.

I scratch at the back of my head and stretch out my legs. “If I told you it had to do with Lucie, would you launch an inquisition?”

“That would be my right as your father.” His voice softens. “This is part of it, Aiden. This is where you try.”

I pick up the tiny airplane again. “Okay.” I let it fly across the room. “Then, yes. It has to do with her.”

My dad hums. “Tell me what happened.”

And for the first time in a very long time, I do.

I spend my Saturday deteriorating on my couch in an old pair of sweatpants, a carton of Chinese food on my chest. I spread the cushions out on the floor and watch Temple of Doom all the way through, then when the credits start to roll, I start it all over again. Lucie hovers at the edges of my awareness, traces of her body lotion on the cushions I’m starfished across. A hair tie she left in the studio around my wrist.

I wonder what she’s doing.

I hope she’s thinking about me.

I hope I haven’t fucked it up too much.

On Sunday I wake up at an unreasonable hour, slip into my running shoes, and drag my boneless body over to Jackson’s house. I collapse on his front steps and stare at two pigeons duking it out over a pizza crust in the middle of the cobblestone street while I wait for him to come out, trying to organize my sleep-drunk thoughts into something reasonable and productive.

Instead, all I can manage is a gruff “What the hell are you wearing?” as soon as he opens his door.

Jackson hardly spares me a glance. He bends to adjust his socks, then straightens the straps of the . . . backpack thing . . . across his shoulders.

“It’s a canteen.” He tilts his head and takes a drink from the straw. “So I can hydrate mid-run.”

I squint in the morning light. “Water bottles exist, you know.”

“So do these portable, hands-free options.”

“It looks—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Aiden. I know how you are in the morning. I could probably kick your ass without effort right now.”

He gives me an unamused look and finishes his prerun rituals. There’s a rainbow sticker on the band of the water bottle backpack thing and I wonder if one of his little sisters put it there, then realize how long it’s been since I’ve asked about his sisters. How long it’s been since I’ve asked about anything in his life.

Lucie isn’t the only one I’ve been an ass to in my quest to bubble-wrap myself. I came over here this morning to make amends. The Aiden Valen apology tour, I guess.

“Why are you darkening my doorstep?” Jackson double-checks that his front door is locked and jogs down his steps. I still haven’t managed to lift myself into a vertical position. “I thought you didn’t crawl out of your lair until midday.”

“You go for a run in the mornings.”

“Yes. And? That doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

“I thought I’d join you.”

I haven’t gone for a run in years, but he doesn’t need to know that.

His eyes narrow, suspicious. “You don’t run.”

I swim at the gym five days a week and I do a pretty regular weight-lifting circuit. I speed-walk around the parking lot at the station when I’m stressed, if that counts. I’ve been doing a lot of speed-walking lately. “I can keep up.”

He studies me for another extended minute in silence, his lips in a firm line. I let him look, hoping he can see the good intentions and not the exhaustion and exasperation.

“All right,” he finally says. He doesn’t wait for me before he sets off down the street. “Let’s go.”

Speed-walking, as it turns out, is not the same as running a five-mile loop through the park.

Jackson doesn’t take pity on me either, his form and his pace unflinching as I wheeze and struggle behind him. I’m six feet behind him when we loop the pagoda in the middle of the park for the second time, and I trip over a discarded box of Royal Farms chicken, tumbling and rolling off the path.

I don’t bother getting up.

I lie on the ground and stare at the swaying branches above me. Jackson appears in my line of vision, his canteen straw in the corner of his mouth and his sweaty hair pushed back over his forehead. He’s not even out of breath, the bastard.

He frowns at me and props his hands on his hips. “What are you doing?”

“I tripped over a chicken box,” I point in the direction of the five-piece meal that got caught beneath my shoe. “Who just throws a chicken box away like that? On the sidewalk.”

He doesn’t turn to look. “I’m not talking about the chicken box. What are you doing here? At the park.”

“I don’t know, man. I’ve been following you.”

God. I can’t feel my legs. Or my arms. Sweat slicks down my back. I might never get up again. I’ll make my home here on the side of the pedestrian pathway in Patterson Park. Maybe they’ll decorate me for Christmas like they decorate the pagoda.

Jackson nudges me with his shoe. “You don’t like mornings. You don’t like to run. And you don’t like to spend time with people, so I’ll ask again. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Maybe I need to do more things I don’t like,” I reply, my voice hoarse from all the unnecessary panting. I lift my arms up and then flop them back to the ground. “Maybe I need to stop acting like an asshole all of the time.”

Jackson scratches at the back of his head, still studying me. “You’re not an asshole all of the time.”

“Most of the time,” I correct.

“Some of the time,” he amends. He sighs, then extends a hand to help me up. I groan the entire way up as he leverages me to my feet. He brushes a leaf off my shoulder. “What brought on this introspection?”

“Lucie,” I say, not bothering to wiggle my way around it. I’m too tired, and I miss her too much. “She cracked me right open, Jackie. I’m trying to be better.”

“And this sudden desire for morning exercise? That’s you trying to be better?”

I nod. “It is.” I stretch out a cramp in my side. I either need water or my internal organs are exploding. The backpack is suddenly a brilliant idea. “I haven’t been the best of friends to you. This is my apology.” I swallow. “I was also hoping you could help me come up with a plan.”

Jackson reaches out and presses two fingers against the pulse in my neck. I swat his hand away.

“Sorry, I just wanted to check your vitals. You just willingly asked for my help.”

“Trying to be better,” I repeat, teeth clenched. A better person probably wouldn’t sucker punch his best friend in the face. I want to, though, and his face splits into a grin like he knows it.

“You need help with a plan to win Lucie back?”

“Obviously.”

“Good.” He slaps me on the shoulder, turns on his heel, and starts jogging away. “Buy me a cruffin and we’ll talk it through.”

“You and this fucking cruffin,” I mutter.

I watch his retreating back, heave a sigh, then start to limp after him.

UNSENT TEXT MESSAGES FROM AIDEN VALEN TO LUCIE STONE

AIDEN: I keep waiting for you to walk through the door even though I haven’t given you a reason to.

AIDEN: Have you had the pineapple pizza from the place on Broadway?

AIDEN: I can’t stop thinking about you.

AIDEN: Fuck, Lucie. I think I could let myself love you too.