Chapter 31
D id you listen to Heartstrings last night?”
It’s everyone’s favorite question this week, and my answer has remained the same.
“No,” I say, not looking away from the repair inventory I’m working on. “I didn’t.”
Despite my parting promise to Aiden that I’d be listening, I haven’t been able to. I don’t want to listen to him sound composed and charming while I’m wandering around my house in pajama pants that are on inside out, eating directly from a box of Frosted Flakes like a trash panda.
Colin came in earlier in the week to pick up Rosie, another bouquet of roses tucked under his arm.
“So there’s no confusion this time,” he had said, hopeful.
My face must have done something vaguely mortifying because his fell, a soft ah in understanding.
“Something to do with the radio guy, yeah?” he had guessed.
“Yeah,” I agreed softly. Everything to do with the radio guy. The one who hasn’t texted me or called. It’s been radio silence for a week, and I’m trying not to let that sting.
He’s still doing the show, though. Every night. Maya, Grayson, Mateo, and Patty—I know they’ve all been listening, but they’ve had the decency to hide it.
Harvey, however, has never claimed to possess an ounce of decency.
He folds his arms over the partition between my station and Angelo’s, a toothpick hanging out of his mouth. It was his turn to pick the music today and the soundtrack to Bridgerton is currently blasting through the speakers. The string version of “Dancing on My Own” is actually really soothing, if not also deeply depressing. It’s a good soundtrack for my current mood.
“Why not?” he asks.
“Why not what?”
“Why aren’t you listening to Heartstrings ?”
I flick my eyes up to him. “Because I don’t want to.”
As far as I’m aware, no one except for my family and Aiden knows why I’m no longer a guest host on Heartstrings . To everyone else, I simply decided to drive off into the sunset of my road to love . Some days I can almost convince myself that Aiden and I were an overly vivid daydream. But then I catch myself wondering what he’s doing, and I remember I fell in love with that idiot.
It’s his choice what happens now. The ball is firmly in his court. And I won’t torture myself while I wait.
I’ll just remain painfully optimistic, eating cereal by the fistful and drowning myself in work.
“You should,” Harvey says. At my blank look, he pulls the toothpick out of his mouth and grins at me. “Listen to Heartstrings ,” he explains.
“No, thank you.”
“Really, Lu.” He widens his eyes. “You should listen.”
I turn back to my inventory sheet. “I’m good.”
“Lucie,” he says. “You need to—”
“Still working on that Audi?” Dan asks, pushing Harvey out of the way. He yanks the clipboard out of my hands and studies it with furrowed brows. “This is for a Toyota.”
I grab the clipboard back. “Correct. The Audi is in the back, ready to go. I’m finishing up the Toyota now.”
There is a short, whispered conversation somewhere above me. I look up and catch the tail end of a slap to the back of Harvey’s head, courtesy of a grease-stained towel.
“What’s wrong?” I set my clipboard to the side. “Was the Toyota for you, Harvey?”
“No, it wasn’t,” Dan answers. He gives Harvey a significant look that I don’t have the time or energy to investigate. Harvey mutters something under his breath that sounds like just trying to speed things along , and Dan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No one asked you to do that,” he mumbles.
“The Toyota?” I glance between them. “If you need me to reassign the truck, I can—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Dan cuts me off. “I’m worried about you.”
“What? Why?”
Angelo wheels out from beneath the Jeep at his station. “You look like someone stole your galaktoboureko.”
“A galactic what?”
“It is unimportant,” he says, blinking owlishly at me from beneath thick white eyebrows. “You’ve been sad.”
“Yeah,” Harvey adds, sticking out his bottom lip for emphasis. “And when you’re sad, we’re all sad.”
“I’m not sad.” I’m just stuck. Caught in the in-between of wanting and waiting and wishing. Keeping busy keeps my thoughts from drifting, and that’s exactly where I want to be. “You don’t have to worry.”
“The Audi was a six-day fix,” Dan supplies. “You did it in less than twenty-four hours.”
“We had the parts on hand from the Audi that Angelo fixed last winter.” I make a face. “Who quoted him six days?”
“The guys over at the Fed Hill garage.”
“Why are we letting those guys set our standards?” I stand up with a groan and brush my hands against my coveralls. My hand catches on the zipper and I immediately think of Aiden. That day in the tow truck with the pizza box digging into my rib cage. My brain won’t stop with the Aiden Valen Greatest Hits, and the rest of me is struggling to withstand the blows. It feels like tripping over something in a dream. The jolt right before you wake up. I think of Aiden and my whole body goes into free fall only to be snapped back into place by awareness.
I squeeze my eyes shut and exhale a sharp breath. When I open them again, Harvey and Dan are giving me matching concerned looks. Angelo pushes out farther from beneath the car to add his to the mix.
“As my mother likes to say—”
I wave my hand. I do not have the patience to withstand a Greek proverb today. “I’m fine.”
Harvey leans closer. “You look a little green around the gills, Lu.”
“I’m fine,” I say again. I am. I’m fine . It’s easy enough to keep moving forward if I break everything into pieces. This car and then the next one. Another after that. I wish I could reach into my chest and tinker with the parts in there like a radiator. Tighten everything up until I’m humming along again.
Angelo joins Harvey and Dan and together the three of them stand in a line of thinly veiled skepticism.
“All right, well”—Dan pushes his cap off his head and drags his fingers through his hair—”I’ve got something for you to do.”
“Good.” I clap my hands. “I’d love something to do.”
He reaches into his back pocket and grabs a set of keys. He tosses them to me.
“I need you to take Aiden’s car over to the station.”
I almost throw the keys right back. “What? No. Why?”
Harvey makes a sound that he tries to cover up with a cough. Dan gives him another warning look. “Because it’s done, and I told him I’d drop it off.”
“You talked to him?” It’s another paper cut against my too-soft heart. He’s still doing the show. He’s taking calls from Dan. Why hasn’t he bothered to reach out to me ?
My unflagging optimism is starting to flag.
“I talked to Maggie,” Dan corrects gently, like he knows how important that detail is to me. I release a sharp breath. “He listed the station number on the paperwork as the best way to get a hold of him. She answered the phone. I told her we’d drop the car off there.”
I look down at the keys in my hand. He has a crab-claw bottle opener, the metal faded at the top edge from the press of his thumb. I touch mine to it and then sigh.
“And you need me to do it?”
“Angelo’s got an appointment coming in.”
“And Harvey?”
“Date night with Sheila,” Harvey supplies, toothpick back between his teeth. He gives me his best puppy-dog eyes. “Please don’t make me late for date night with Sheila.”
I blow out a frustrated breath. Sheila is a formidable powerhouse in the body of a five-foot woman who makes the best potato salad I’ve ever had in my life. The discomfort of seeing Aiden again pales in comparison to the abject horror of disappointing Sheila. I curl my hand around the keys and squeeze until the metal bites into my fist. I look at Dan. “And you? What’s your excuse?”
“Don’t have one,” he says. “I’m gonna follow you, kiddo. Make sure you have a ride home.”
I roll my lips together and shift on my feet. I look at the Bronco in the corner, then back to Dan. “You’ll be right behind me?”
His eyes soften. “Right behind you.”
Dan is full of it.
He is not right behind me. I doubt he even took two steps in the direction of his truck. I pull out of the service bay in Aiden’s car, and Dan’s Toyota is nowhere to be seen. I go five miles under the speed limit to give him the chance to catch up, but then a guy on a four-wheeler lays on his horn and I resign myself to my fate.
It’s fine. I’ll call a Lyft when I get there. I’ll hand Aiden his keys, smile like his silence hasn’t been the only thing on my mind all week, and be on my way. I can be a mature, reasonable adult.
But it’s hard to hold on to my fortitude when I’m sitting in the cab of his Bronco surrounded by him. It smells like him in here. Like being wrapped in his arms. I breathe in the wintergreen gum he keeps in the pocket of his sweatshirts and the fancy coffee he likes so much and breathe out the ache in my chest.
By the time I pull up to the gate in front of the parking lot, my stomach is in knots. I reach for the black security box with the glowing red light and then curse beneath my breath. I don’t have my access card. I left it on Maggie’s desk along with the rest of my courage, apparently.
I scan Aiden’s dash. He doesn’t have anything besides a half-crumpled pizza menu and an ancient-looking toll pass wedged in his cup holder. I don’t see his key card.
“Of course,” I mutter, leaning across the front seat and flipping open his glove compartment. Half the contents come tumbling out. A pair of earbuds and a folded-up piece of paper. The car user’s manual. A half-eaten pack of Andes mints. I try to shove everything back inside, but his messy handwriting on the worn paper catches my attention.
Feeling nosy, I reach for it and unfold it across my lap.
Chocolate mints
Daisies
Fountain soda
Coconut ChapStick
Christmas cookies, the shortbread kind
Yellow starbursts
Pink starbursts
The coffee creamer in the orange bottle
I read it once and then again. It’s a list of—it’s a list of my favorite things. Things I’ve mentioned on the show and things I haven’t. Things he must have noticed.
The gate to the parking lot swings open and I fumble to fold the paper back up, heart pounding while I shove it back in the glove compartment. I drive the rest of the way up the hill in a daze. I barely notice Maggie at the entrance, waiting for me with her arms crossed over her chest. I turn off the car as she strides toward me, her shiny heels eating up the pavement between us.
“Where have you been?” Maggie asks as soon as I slip from the driver’s side. She shuts the door for me and grabs my elbow, towing me across the parking lot.
“I’ve been at work?” I try to keep up with her quick pace as she guides us through the front door and across the lobby. “Dan asked me to drop off Aiden’s car. What is—what’s happening right now?”
I stare longingly at the front door as it slams shut behind us.
“Aiden isn’t here,” Maggie manages, heels clicking across the floor. “And it’s six oh eight.”
“Is he—” I hit my shoulder on the door to the hallway as she thrusts us through. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. Something about a bird and the gutter on his roof—”
“What?”
“—and then he forgot he doesn’t have his car and Jackson has been on the air by himself for eight minutes.” She checks her watch and flinches. “Ten minutes. I need you to get in there until Aiden arrives.”
“What? No. I’m not doing the show anymore.”
Maggie pulls us to a stop in front of the booth. Through the glass window, I can see Jackson talking with his hands. His wild, panicked eyes shoot up to me. Help me , he mouths.
“He’s been talking about volcanic lightning for five minutes.
We live in Maryland, Lucie. There are no volcanoes.”
“Oh boy.”
“I need you to get in there.” Maggie urges me forward, a gentle tap on my back when I know she wants to press her palm between my shoulder blades and shove. I’ve never seen Maggie ruffled, but she seems ruffled right now. “Please.”
“Right now?”
She nods. “Right now. You’re the only one who can help us.”
God damn it. “What do you want me to talk about? Aiden usually has the show plan.”
“You can talk about whatever you want.” She pats me again with a little more force. “As long as it’s not volcanic lightning.”
Jackson lets out a wheezing gasp of relief as soon as I slip through the door, turning in Aiden’s chair and beckoning me forward with both hands. “Lucie is here! Oh, thank god, Lucie is here. Don’t worry, everyone. I won’t bore you with weather phenomena any longer.” His laugh is wild and borderline manic. “Lucie is here.”
“Yeah, I’m here.” I pat his shoulder and slip into the seat next to him. My seat, the one that hasn’t been moved out of the studio even though I haven’t been here for a week. Aiden’s kept my pilfered pen cup out too. The plastic Orioles one I stole from the break room.
It shouldn’t make me feel as good as it does.
I slip on the extra pair of headphones. The sound of the room becomes muffled and I’m anchored in the space. Just me and the city I love, waiting on the other side of the static. Some of my anxiety slips away. “Hello, everyone. It’s been a while.”
Jackson bends forward and rests his forehead against the desk, relief in the curve of his body. “Thanks for helping me out, Lucie.”
I pat his back and smile. “It’s no problem. Hopefully I’m only here for a few minutes before Aiden”—I stumble over his name, then quickly correct myself—”before Aiden gets here. Maggie said something about a bird in his roof gutter?”
Jackson turns his head and squints. “She said what?”
“A bird? She said he had an emergency with a bird stuck in his roof gutter?”
“I don’t know about any birds.” His eyes dart over my head. I turn to look. Maggie goes from gesturing wildly to smiling sedately through the glass. I’m either in the middle of an elaborate prank or the sleep deprivation is getting to me. Jackson clears his throat. “Oh, that’s right. The—the bird problem he’s been having. That’s right.” He pauses and blinks at me. “Should we take some calls?”
There’s something circling around my awareness. Too many people are insisting on too many things. There’s a piece I’m not seeing. Something out of alignment that’s clunking along.
“Sure,” I say, watching him out of the corner of my eye. “That’s fine.”
Jackson murmurs something under his breath and hesitantly presses a button.
“You’re on Heartstrings with Lucie and—”
“Oh my god!” a voice screeches on the other end, the decibel level high enough to have me flinching down in my chair. “I’ve been waiting to talk to you for, like, forever! Girl! Where have you been? Why did you leave the show? It was just getting good! I swear, you and Aiden have the best chem—”
The call cuts off abruptly. “Whoops,” Jackson says, hand hovering over the keyboard. “Looks like the call dropped.”
I stare pointedly at his thumb, resting next to the delete button. “It dropped, huh?”
“It dropped,” he repeats. He presses two shaking fingers to his temple, sweeping up to the middle of his forehead. His glasses slip down his nose. “Let’s try another one.”
He taps a button to take another caller and I brace myself for screeching. Instead, I hear a familiar voice drifting through the static.
“Mom?”
I go from slouched to sitting straight in an instant, palms pressed to the headphones over my ears like it’ll drag me closer to her. “Maya?”
“Mom! Hi!”
“Hi,” I say, short and clipped. She’s supposed to be doing her science homework, not calling in to radio stations. “I thought I blocked this number on your phone.”
“Don’t worry. This is a supervised call. Dad is sitting right next to me.” There’s a muffled sound from Grayson in the background and I relax. “Everything is fine. How are you doing?”
“I’m—” I glance at Jackson. He’s turned almost completely around in his chair, his face angled away from mine. Secrets, secrets. “I’m confused.”
“Figured you would be,” she quips. “Lots of weird things happening today, huh?”
Jackson chokes on nothing and turns farther away. The man is not good under pressure.
“You could say that.”
“I think there’s something going on with the planetary alignment. Dad was telling me about it in the car this morning.”
“Sure.” I narrow my eyes. “Must be that. Why are you calling in to the radio station right now?”
“Because I need advice.” She pauses. “I had no idea you’d be there. Wow. What a coincidence.”
“Sure.” I can hear Grayson snickering in the background. “What do you need advice about?”
“A friend of mine. He’s been having some trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“I’ll let him tell you about it in a second, but I want to tell you something first.”
“What’s that?”
“I love you.”
My heart grows three sizes in my chest. “I love you too.”
“Okay, good. Remember that, okay? Keep it in the forefront of your mind. I’m gonna hand you off to my friend now. Bye!”
There’s another burst of static as Maya hands her phone to whoever it is that needs advice. I hear some muffled conversation, the slam of a car door, and boots against asphalt.
My lungs feel tight, my pulse hammering in my chest. My heart knows the sounds of him before my head can catch up.
“Hi,” Aiden says, his voice a rough scratch. Goose bumps erupt on my arms like he’s sitting right next to me. Like our knees are tucked together and there’s a pot of coffee on behind us. Like nothing has changed when everything has. He clears his throat, and I can picture him perfectly, standing with his hand cupped around the back of his neck.
“Long-time listener, first-time caller,” he says over the line. There’s a reluctant grin in his voice. It twists his words up at the edges, just like his smile. “I was hoping you could give me some advice.”
AIDEN VALENTINE: Wish me luck, Baltimore.