Heart

Chapter 52 #3

Everyone was crying. Everyone except me. Havi’s mom was making this terrible sound. An awful, gut-wrenching sound. It was a sound I’d never heard before, but one I recognized instantly. A mother mourning. It made me shake hard. So hard that I was cut off from my emotions.

My tears were there, but they couldn’t find their way to the surface.

I’m shaking like that again now. So hard that it’s more than a shiver. More than a tremor. It’s as though something has got into my marrow and is attempting to shake the life out of my body.

“Someone said the words donation after brain death.” I sound calm, almost unfeeling, though my entire ribcage is constricting and the pain is making it hard to keep talking. “And I started feeling really, really…not like myself.”

Connor has one hand clamped over his mouth and the other is on his chest. The other is clutching his heart.

“It’s not that I don’t support organ donation, Con.

I’m registered as a donor myself, and it’s not that it isn’t what Havi wanted either.

We’d spoken about it. I know it’s what he wanted.

It’s… It’s that the version of me that heard those words was…

” My voice trails off, and a thin, wispy sob floats down the street toward the house Havi and I used to call home.

“That version of me wasn’t okay. I couldn’t believe it.

I couldn’t believe what was happening.” I was in the grip of a shock unlike anything I’ve ever felt.

A shock unlike anything I knew existed. Unlike anything I thought people could survive.

“I felt sick, so I went to the restroom while Havi’s mom was signing paperwork, and I threw up, and when I was done, I didn’t want to go back to the beige chair room. I…”

My ribs crack and the wispy sob becomes something different. Something broken. Something that’s still there in that hospital. Something that still exists in that moment, living it over and over on repeat.

“I wanted Havi,” I sob. “I wanted to check up on him… I knew he’d be scared and…

I was his safe person, so I had to get to him.

I”—I wipe my face with both hands, and more saltwater rains out of me—“I got to these brown double doors, and I tried to go through them, but someone said I wasn’t allowed to go in there, and I…

I didn’t know where to be, but I couldn’t leave Havi on his own, so…

” I wipe my face again, eyes and nose, this time on the sleeve of my jacket.

“There was this big yellow bin near the brown doors, and I found some space between the wall and the bin and sat there.”

The wall behind me was cold, and so was the floor. Everything was hard, and the lights were too bright. The yellow bin dug into my shoulder.

I don’t know how long I was there for. Hours. Days.

Time stopped meaning anything when Havi fell asleep on the curb.

“At some point, the elevator doors opened, and these two nurses came out. They were walking fast.”

They weren’t just walking fast. They were talking fast too. There was a frisson of electricity buzzing around them. Excitement. Optimism. A schism of hope that was so foreign to me then that it drew my attention.

Now, knowing Connor like I do, I understand it. I get it. Of course the people who were taking care of him loved him. Of course they wanted him to live. At the time, it was the hope that broke me. The fact that the worst day of my life meant something different to them.

“They went up to this official, navy pants, navy shoes woman—” And one of them said the words that completely and utterly derailed me. “And one of them said, ‘Is it true there’s a heart for Connor Lockwood?’”

I wasn’t supposed to be there, and I wasn’t supposed to hear that conversation.

I wasn’t supposed to know his name, and I wasn’t supposed to type the words a heart for Connor Lockwood into a search bar a few days later.

I wasn’t supposed to click on a grainy picture of him, and I sure as shit wasn’t supposed to see the name of his street and house number in the background.

I wasn’t supposed to drive by his house. Ever. And I definitely wasn’t supposed to start doing it every day.

I wasn’t supposed to be there the day a Welcome Home, Connor sign was hung from the porch, and I wasn’t supposed to follow him and his redheaded friend to a camping goods store a couple of months later.

I wasn’t supposed to overhear them talking about his enrollment at the local university, and I sure as shit wasn’t supposed to get a job there.

For months, I’ve hidden all this from him, and I wasn’t supposed to do that either.

“I googled your name and found your GoFundMe page,” I say so quietly my voice is nothing more than a light breath on my larynx.

“Something happened to me when I saw your picture, Con, and…I— I couldn’t stay away from you.

I couldn’t. I tried. I swear to God, I tried.

You have to believe me that I tried.” I don’t look at him.

I can’t. So I don’t know whether he believes me or not, but I do know I don’t have a right to ask something like that of him.

“I don’t know how to describe it, but something took hold of me when I saw you.

I told you before I was obsessed with you.

I tried to make light of it, to make it sound like a joke… It isn’t a joke though. It’s the truth.

“At first, I drove by your house without stopping, and then I started stopping. I parked down the street and watched your windows to get a glimpse of you. I…I was really, really fucked up about what happened to Havi. I couldn’t accept it.

I didn’t know how to, and I didn’t want to.

I couldn’t make sense of it. Not all the time.

Sometimes I told myself that I was, you know, just checking up on him.

Making sure his heart was okay. Making sure it had found its way into a good person, someone who would take good care of it for him.

Sometimes I told myself we had a big fight, and he hated me, and he never wanted to speak to me again, but he was okay.

“My family said I was in denial, and I mean, yes, on some level I knew they weren’t wrong, it’s just that every time they said it, I felt so disoriented and angry that I could hardly see.

And they wouldn’t stop saying it, so it got really hard to be around them.

I started renting motel rooms and Airbnbs near your place to avoid them, and I got a job at the university to be close to you.

I was in Crema, watching you, the day you put up your roommate wanted notice. ”

I run out of steam abruptly and various versions of reality move through me like glaciers. Big, cumbersome blocks of ice collide. I do my best to hold still and let them converge. I let them flow into me and through me.

It hurts as much as I thought it would. More. It hurts more. But I know it’s something I have to do. Something I should have done a long time ago.

Beside me, Connor is mute. He hasn’t moved a muscle. His jaw has gone slack, and he’s blinking very, very slowly. He still has one hand over his mouth and the other over his heart.

“I’m sorry, Con,” I say quietly. “I know saying sorry for something this bad shouldn’t even be allowed, but I am.

I’m so sorry. You’re the best person I’ve ever met.

You’ve changed my whole life, and I love you.

” It feels wrong to tell him I love him.

The words are small and insignificant, completely out of keeping with the strength and force of the emotion I feel for him.

“Whatever else you think of me, please believe that. The way I feel about you is real. It’s the realist thing I’ve ever felt.

I was so sad and lost and confused before I met you. But being with you…”

I know I should stop talking. I’ve said so much already, and all of it is heavy. Connor needs time to digest it. I know that, but I also know that when he does, he’ll never want to see me again, so there’s this awful sense of urgency to tell him everything while I still can.

I speak fast and with panic. “I know it’s fucked up, Con, I know it is.

But you and me… I think we were meant to meet.

I think it was fate. I think you’re my soulmate, and I think our lives were meant to cross paths.

I wish, wish, wish it could have happened another way, but I think this”—I gesture to the space between us—“is bigger than either of us. I think it’s bigger than you, and bigger than me.

I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t think we’re of this time or place.

I think we’re eternal.” I take a big breath and steady myself, looking at his beautiful face and trying to remember every line.

Every curve. “And I think that if other lives exist…we find each other in all of them. No matter the cost. No matter what, and no matter how.”

I stop talking, and we sit in silence for several minutes.

I cry, and I don’t try to stop. I cry until it stops feeling hard to do. Until it feels easy. Necessary and right. Like rain falling on dry, cracked earth.

At last, Connor moves. He drops the hand that was on his mouth and uses it to dig in his pocket and pull out his phone. He taps at the screen and a strange, calm feeling washes over me.

Regret, obviously, but also acceptance.

“Are you calling the police?” I ask. “Because that’s the right thing to do. Don’t feel bad about it. You should definitely do that, and also, I’ve been meaning to tell you that you should be a lot more careful about the personal information you put onlin—”

He looks up at me, and his eyes narrow with a foreign expression I’ve never seen on him before. It takes me a second to place it. A heavier brow than usual, a slight flare of his nostrils. Annoyance. “I’m not calling the police on my fucking soulmate, Lennon. Who do you think I am?”

“Oh. Um. What are you doing then?”

He glares at me like I’m the biggest idiot on the planet. “I’m looking for the best goddamn therapist in town.”

“Oh,” I say again. I’m a little confused, and I feel completely hollowed out, but I want to be supportive. When I think about it, it makes total sense that he’d need therapy after all the shit I’ve put him through. “Good thinking. I think that’ll be really beneficial for you…”

His lips part and he leans in, top lip pulling up slightly. “It’s not for me, Lennon,” he says, inserting a tiny pause between each word. “You’re the one who’s getting therapy.”

Ah, yes. Actually, that does make more sense.

My mom and dad suggested I get help a while back, and I got really mad at them about it, but it’s clear now that they were onto something. It’s so nice of Connor to try to help me after everything I’ve put him through.

The first thing I’m going to talk about when I go to therapy is what a massive, gigantic idiot I’ve been to have someone like him in my life and fuck it up so royally. “I’ll go, Con. I will. I’ll definitely get help. Please don’t worry about me. I’m going to start taking care of myself. I promi—”

“Give me the keys,” he says, cutting me off with a tiny wave I think is meant to shush me. “I’ll drive. It’s fucking freezing out here, and my ass has gone numb from sitting for so long.”

“Where are we going?” I ask dumbly.

His eyes flash and he gives an incredulous side eye. “We’re going home, Lennon.”

“Wait, what?” My heart, which has felt like it was carved out of stone since early this morning, gradually warms and starts beating again.

A distant, faint palpitation at first. Tiny wings fluttering, followed by electric pulses that rapidly go haywire.

“What do you mean we’re going home? Are you, are you, keeping me? ”

His head tilts to one side and he plants a hand on his hip. He rolls his eyes vaguely, and when they land back on me, they’ve softened.

“I’m mad at you,” he says, his voice clear and carrying an unmistakable, unshakable certainty. “I’m worried about you. I’m upset, and I’m confused, and there’s a lot for me to unpack, but yeah, I’m keeping you.”

He walks over to the driver’s side of my car and raises his hand. I toss my keys to him, and he opens the door.

He smiles at me before he gets in. It’s a strange smile.

Small and knowing with a little twist that quirks one side of his mouth.

“Obviously, I’m keeping you.” His chin drops fractionally, lowering his voice.

He looks up at me through steely lashes, eyes darkening microscopically, morphing into something strangely familiar—the intensity and determination I usually only see when I look in the mirror.

“How many times do I have to tell you that you’re not the only one who’s obsessed? ”