Ace of Hearts, page 5
“Boys!” I shouted, and if Jackson hadn’t moved quick to catch him, Felix would have fallen. “Behave!”
I handed Felix his crutch.
“Let’s go home.”
We started toward Calamity. Jackson wolf-whistled behind us, and I held up my middle finger without turning to look at him.
“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t see that!” Zach yelled, bending almost double to fold himself into his car. He beeped his horn once and peeled out of the parking lot.
As soon as we were alone in the car, Felix turned to me, suddenly serious.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I turned the key, watching Jackson’s El Camino round the corner onto the highway.
“We have to, H. You kind of freaked out on me.”
How much could I say?
How much was too much?
I took careful, even breaths, imagining a circle expanding and contracting in the same rhythm, a technique I’d picked up on the Internet when I’d been hyperventilating from an anxiety attack years ago. It worked, mostly.
“I don’t like touching. You know this. This should not be a surprise.” I headed home, the cans attached to my bumper clinking merrily behind us. “Kissing—even when it’s just for show—is very uncomfortable for me and I don’t like it.”
“But you had a boyfriend in high school.”
Breathe. Don’t lose your temper. He’s trying to understand.
“I did. And I did not kiss him, which is why we broke up.”
“I don’t understand.”
I was humiliated. I wanted to take off the ring, hurl it at him, call the whole thing quits already.
“I was in it for the emotional connection. He wanted a physical connection that I didn’t. Is it really so hard to believe?”
“If he laid a hand on you—” His voice was laced with anger, and I rolled my eyes.
“He didn’t. The breakup was mutual. The point is, I’m uncomfortable with kissing no matter who you are or how much I care about you. I trust you with my life, Felix, but kissing is gross. Period.”
When we made it home, I tried to hurry into the house, but Felix stopped me, blocking the door with his bulky frame. He leaned his crutches against the door and reached for me. He wrapped his arms around my middle, lifting and turning me so abruptly I let out an embarrassing squeak, before putting me down gently inside.
“I know it’s not exactly carrying you over the threshold but, y’know. Bum knee.” He grinned.
I retreated into the cramped little room under the stairs where I painted—the closest thing I had to a studio. The closed space made me feel safe, and a window looked out on the little half-circle flower bed against the house. I tossed my cardigan into the corner and sat at my desk, pulling my headphones over my ears and letting everything else go away.
There was nothing but me and the blank canvas and the music that pulsed so close it felt like it lived inside me. I stopped existing as an awkward thing with so many faults and broken places that I would never be of value—I was a vessel, pouring magic out of my hands and paintbrush. I squeezed a tube of Payne’s Grey onto my waxed paper palette, scraped Titanium White into it with my palette knife, and layered it on thick, a dark and moody sky full of clouds and a sense of turmoil. The closer I got to the horizon, the smoother I made the paint, thin and even, and I dipped my thumb in some lighter gray and skimmed it across the skyline.
That wasn’t my favorite bit though. The best part was in the details. I moved the lamp that was clamped to the back of my desk slightly to get the best light and started working on the things that made it come to life. My brush was barely more than a few synthetic strands, so the dark strokes of the bridge in the distance over the water were thin and delicate. The metal rose and fell in arches that supported the weight as a train barreled across it.
I had started on the rocks on the shore, a dozen shades of gray mixed on my palette to cover the way they shifted in color when the lights and shadows hit them, when I heard a forceful knock on the door. I ripped my headphones off, but didn’t unlock the door, scrambling instead for the roll of plastic wrap I used to keep my palette from drying when I wasn’t working.
“Hes?” Felix called hesitantly. “You okay?”
“Fine!” I shouted, dropping my brushes in the jar of turpenoid I left sitting on the corner of my desk. Pigments were suspended in layers near the bottom, a timeline of all the shades I’d used before.
“How do you feel about dinner?”
I checked my phone. He had texted me several puns—his weird method of apology—that I had missed while I worked. My stomach rumbled, but that was no surprise. It was after six.
“Starving. Just a sec.” I stood up, flipped my light off, and unlocked the door before emerging from my tiny little haven.
I sniffed; the rich aroma of toasted cashews and grilled chicken. Thai, from my favorite takeout place a few blocks away. Felix held a hand up.
“Close your eyes. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I obeyed and latched my fingers into the back of his shirt, letting him guide me as he crutched along quickly. Something soft brushed my arm and I jerked away, startled.
“It’s okay,” he reassured me quickly, his hand finding my elbow and easing me down to sit on the couch. “I just…wanted to make earlier up to you. You can look now.”
When I glanced up through my lashes, I was utterly enchanted. He had stacked the kitchen chairs two high and draped sheets over them, running the tangle of Christmas lights I had stashed in the closet across them, making a twinkling ceiling over the couch. The glass of the coffee table was covered in takeout containers, and I smiled when I saw no egg written on the outside of one. Somehow, he still remembered how I ordered rice. Our little blanket-fort cave looked out on the TV, which was playing a movie about a goblin king that I’d loved so much as a kid, I’d worn out a VHS tape watching it.
It was difficult to swallow, to breathe, to think. What a lovely gesture.
“It’s perfect.”
“Hey hey hey!” He sounded a little panicky, tucking his crutches tighter under his arms and reaching out to wipe away the tears I hadn’t realized were falling. “Don’t cry! This was supposed to be a good thing!”
“It’s a wonderful thing, Felix. I appreciate it very much.”
“Well, I am your husband.” He gave me a wink. “It’s kind of my job to make you happy.”
I settled onto the couch, expecting things to be awkward—but it was easy to fall back into Hesper-and-Felix, like we were kids again. I laughed at him while he tried to eat with chopsticks for a while before he finally gave up, dug into his paper takeout container with a fork, and shoveled rice and shrimp into his mouth. He stuck his tongue out when he realized I was eating my cashew pineapple fried rice very neatly with chopsticks.
He folded his arms behind his head, peering over at me, smiling so big his dimples disappeared into his cheeks.
“Obviously we’re gonna be the talk of the town when we show up married at Morrow. What’s our ship name?”
“Stop,” I laughed, poking him in the ribs, but it didn’t faze him.
“Fesper obviously doesn’t work, it sounds too much like fester. Helix! Hes, that’s our ship name! Worthy of fanfiction. Perfection.”
“You haven’t read fanfiction in years!”
“Nonsense. I love a good coffee shop AU.” He settled his arm around me, refusing to let me budge when I moved to gather our boxes for the trash. “Just stay here. Relax. Watch the movie.”
So I leaned into him, and that’s what we did. It was just like being sixteen again, but so much more—a layer of meaning I was adding to it that he didn’t intend. It was too easy to fall into this when I had fought against those feelings for years, knowing he would never, could never, reciprocate them. I couldn’t even ask, because it wouldn’t be fair. I was damaged goods. And if he was shocked I didn’t want to kiss anyone, how would he feel when he knew the truth about me?
This, I thought sleepily, dangling my legs over the edge of the sofa and nuzzling deeper into Felix’s shoulder, his arm warm and comforting and not too much—never too much, because he respected my boundaries. This is the only kind of wedding night I ever wanted.
Chapter Four
Felix
I THOUGHT I understood everything about Hesper—and I understood a fair bit, that much was true. But I felt like I was creeping closer to some secret side of her she’d kept hidden away for all the years of our friendship. It was nothing short of terror in her eyes when I had leaned toward her at the courthouse; yet she obviously trusted me, because I had been stuck on the couch for hours, afraid to move and wake her up.
She’d slid down from my shoulder at some point, her head in my lap and her hand curled up on my knee. I brushed her bangs away from her forehead with my fingers as lightly as I could, and she only stirred a little. She knew my face better than I knew hers because I seldom got the chance to look at her before she shyly looked away. She had the advantage because she had spent our whole lives drawing me, sometimes when she knew I was looking and sometimes when she thought she was being sneaky about it. She was never as sly as she thought she was. I had fished more than one crumpled piece of paper out of the bin, failing to understand how her drawings always made me look extraordinary when I was so plain. I was no Jackson; I was no frat boy. But maybe she saw me a little bit different than everybody else. Maybe she drew how she felt, or how she remembered me on my very best day, instead of what her eyes actually saw.
No. Those are definitely not her feelings shining through on the paper. She had covered her mouth when I tried to kiss her, a clear sign of revulsion. I had started to think maybe she was growing into some feelings, but that wasn’t how you acted when you wanted a relationship with someone. But this—movie nights on the couch, living in each other’s orbits, cohabiting the same space—maybe this was enough. She made me happier than any of my girlfriends ever had, just by being my best friend.
I finally squirmed my way out from under her and managed to wedge a throw pillow under her head, needles of tingling pain shooting all the way down my good leg. My left one was swollen at the knee, a snarl of raised, red flesh where the wound was still healing. I reached for my brace, strapped it on, and gingerly sneaked toward the kitchen. It was funny—for all that Hesper was desperate to leave our hometown behind her, she kept her ibuprofen in the same cabinet her mom always did. I took three with a glass of room temperature tap water, afraid the sound of ice from the freezer would wake her.
Being married didn’t feel as dishonest as I’d thought it might. Hesper was a much nicer roommate than Jackson; for one, I never felt like strangling her. She minded her space, and I minded mine. I flexed my knee, holding my breath against the pain and waiting for the medicine to kick in.
I was going to get better. I was going to walk—and someday, I’d do it without a limp.
THE NEXT MORNING, Hesper was gone from the couch by the time I woke up. In the night she had folded up the blankets and taken down the lights, putting them neatly on the table after clearing away the empty takeout containers and fortune cookie wrappers.
7:22 AM
Good morning, sunshine!
7:22 AM
What do you call an average potato?
7:23 AM
A common-tater!
7:23 AM
(Please don’t divorce me before I graduate.)
I cocked my head, listening for a groan elsewhere in the house when she got my joke, but there was nothing but silence. Maybe she was still asleep; she had never been a morning person. I picked up her notebook off the table, scrawled a note so she wouldn’t worry, and snapped my athletic pants down the sides. I rattled the door handle behind me, making sure the house was locked up tight before heading out.
Once I was out on the sidewalk, I shifted my crutches, stowing them under one arm and balancing hesitantly on my right leg. I tested my left foot. There was pain, but not as much as I was expecting—not as much as I was prepared for. It was unpleasant but endurable. The handful of physical therapy sessions I’d attended must have done some good; initially it had been unbearable. I had laid on an exam table, howling and cursing while the therapist pressed my knee flat then bent my leg again.
I counted my steps, limping heavily and dragging my left leg a bit but walking sans crutches for the first time since the accident. It wasn’t the amount of progress I wanted, but it was a step in the right direction. I went back to the crutches forty-three steps down the road, before my leg could buckle, because if I fell there was no way I could get back up.
I heard it before I saw it—a vehicle driving at no more than a crawl behind me. My adrenaline spiked. Hesper’s street was right across from Morrow’s campus, patrolled by the college police, and—at least according to the Cleary Act Report they filed—generally very safe. A champagne-colored SUV rolled down its window and a tan, paunchy, older man leaned over the passenger seat, one arm resting against the steering wheel.
“Excuse me, did you just leave Hesper Stalides’s house?”
Alarm bells. Panic. Because I didn’t know this guy, and no telling what kind of creeps got overly familiar with her at the library, where she was obligated to help all patrons equally, regardless of how weird they were. I was surprised Zach hadn’t thumped this guy; had he followed her home before? How did he know where she lived?
“Hesper Morlan, you mean.” I held up my left hand, the gold band glinting in the morning sunlight. “She’s my wife. How do you know her? You don’t look familiar at all.” I glowered at him.
“Old friend of the family. I tried to mail her a birthday card, but it got returned, and I was in the neighborhood, so…” He shrugged. “Shame I missed the wedding. Congratulations.” He gave a halfhearted wave, rolled up his window, and zipped off, failing to stop at the red light down the street.
Missouri license plates.
Shit.
I tapped the license plate number into the notes app on my phone, turned around, and headed back to Hesper’s house—home—as fast as I could. This was bad, so bad, very very bad. I knew what “family friend” meant. That man was sent by her piece of shit father; she had successfully stayed under the radar for three years and I had blown it.
I tucked my phone against my shoulder, but it rang and rang until Hesper’s answering machine kicked in. I tried her home number—same thing. Calamity was sitting untouched in the driveway. I rested my hand on the hood—it was cold and still, so the engine hadn’t been on. I hit the door at the closest I could come to a sprint, and it was still locked just the way I’d left it, but something was wrong. The air was too still. The TV was off, there were no coffee mugs on the counter, her stereo was silent.
“Hesper!” I shouted.
I checked the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom. Her painting room under the stairs was unlocked, but empty and dark. I sat on the bottom stair and went up the awkward, backwards way the physical therapist had shown me, pushing myself step by step with my good leg.
“Hesper Elise!” I bellowed, fear clutching at my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
I leaned against the wall, bracing myself as I made my slow, painful way down the hall without the crutches I’d abandoned at the bottom of the staircase. The end of the hall had an old, square, lead-lined stained glass window that light poured through. The door to the laundry room was open on the left. On the right, her door was closed, an old purple towel shoved in the crack between the wood and the carpet.
I knocked. “Hesper! You in there?”
A muffled noise, and I let out my breath in a great whoosh. I wiggled the door handle, yanking it open past the towel with a grunt. Her light was off, her curtains drawn, the green dress she’d worn to the courthouse thrown carelessly across the back of a wooden chair tucked into a desk. There was a human-sized lump under the black bedspread covered in neon stars, the slight telltale rise and fall indicating she was breathing.
“Hesper!”
“I’m fine.”
The sound of her voice gave me chills. The gold SUV was all but forgotten. I crossed the room in a few strides and sat down hard on the edge of her bed. She didn’t move, didn’t react like there was any outside stimulus at all. Her eyes were open, but vacant and heavy-lidded.
“Hesper. Talk to me.”
She closed her eyes, burrowing further into the pillows. Tears had half-dried on her face at some point, but she wasn’t crying when I ran my thumb along her cheekbone. She jerked back as if I’d slapped her though, and I dropped my hand like she’d burned me.
Every word she spoke seemed to take a monumental effort—like her voice took every ounce of her strength just to form simple sentences.
“I’m off work today. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
“Talk to me, H. Did you…take something?” I began hunting around her bedside table, looking for anything that could explain her behavior—an empty pill bottle, a bottle of alcohol. There was nothing.
“Just my regular medicine.” She tugged the covers up to her chin, closing her eyes. “Please go away, Felix.”
If by regular she meant the antidepressants she had been on since high school, they clearly weren’t doing their job.
“Some days are just harder than others.” Her voice was so quiet I had to lean in to hear her. “I don’t know why. Even if everything is fine, my brain knows it’s fine, I can’t stop this overwhelming…” Her hand spasmed, clutching the blanket tighter. “Dread. Doom. Like nothing matters and nothing will ever be okay. It will pass, because it always does. I’ll go paint later. That usually helps.”
“Can I stay?”
Tears started to well in her eyes, gathering in little drops on her lashes. “No.”
“Is this my fault?”
“I just told you it wasn’t.”
“How often does this happen?” I waited, and she didn’t answer. Either she was too exhausted to speak or she didn’t want to tell me. “How long has it been like this? Have you tried a different dose? A different medicine?”
