Black Hearts Red

by Leigh, Anne

  But now…I was feeling the lack of.

  I breathed in, sighed, and tabled my thoughts for another day.

  Right now, it was time to take care of the woman who I’d neglected for so long.

  The time between us was closing in.

  She was going back to college soon.

  I’d wasted enough time creating so much distance between us.

  If I didn’t fix it now, who knew when I’d be granted this opportunity to be this close to her again?

  She was singularly the most important girl in my life for years.

  How did I reduce her to feel as if she was nothing but dust in my world?

  I saw the resignation in her eyes this morning, as if after all these years, she was finally clocking out and moving on.

  I couldn’t –

  I didn’t want it to happen.

  In my darkest days, the hope of seeing her was what kept me going.

  In my deepest grief, the memory of her laughter was the ember that kept my faith alive – that another day was going to be better than the last.

  And in my loneliest moments, I clung on to the promise that I’d hug her again, and the knowledge that it would happen again swathed me with the promise of future sunrises.

  “How did you find this place?” Ali asked, her violet eyes glimmering in contentment. “Everything is so good. I want to eat everything again.”

  “We can always come back,” I smiled, basking in the warmth of her smile. It’d been so long since I’d seen her smile directed at me, all because of my doing. I’d texted Greyson, asking him for places that Ali liked to eat at and he’d replied with an emoji showing his face was tightly zipped.

  What an asshole.

  A few minutes later, he’d texted back, asking why I wanted to know.

  I said that we’d been working a lot and I’d wanted to take her out to a place where she’d enjoy.

  He gave me Indian, Italian, and Chinese.

  I gave him a thumbs up and he’d sent back Treat her well.

  I didn’t know if he was trying to be facetious, but he was one of Ali’s best friends, so I believed that he meant well.

  “Should I order dessert?” A troubled look passed over her beautiful face, as if she was contemplating the meaning of life.

  A chuckle left my mouth, “You can have anything you want.”

  “Hmmm…that’s a dangerous statement.” Her words were loaded with meaning. She wasn’t just talking about dessert anymore. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Ali –“ I started, linking my hands together on top of the small table. “I want a re-do. I want to start over with you. With our friendship. With anything and everything.”

  “Why now?” Gone was the innocence in her voice. Now there was an edge to it. I couldn’t begrudge her for it. I was the one who imposed the distance between us. I was the one who stopped answering her calls. I was the one who ignored her whenever she was around. “Why the sudden change? Are you sick? Is something wrong with you? Is this some sort of making amends before you go type of thing?”

  A server in black interrupted our conversation, “Can I tempt you with dessert?”

  My stomach was filled with the delicious chicken curry and bites of the chicken tikka masala that Ali shared with me along with the appetizers that she’d said I just had to try. The thought of dessert made me want to pat my stomach under my dress shirt and see if I could handle it.

  I wasn’t into sweets, so I deferred to the lady seated across from me, “You want to?”

  She pursed her pink lips and addressed the server, “Can we take it home? I’m not sure I can handle it at this time, but I really want to taste your coconut ladoo.”

  Throughout dinner, she’d marveled me with stories of her travel to India. How it had opened her eyes to the suffering of children, how her life had been changed because she’d seen the other side of the world where children didn’t just starve for bare necessities, but that they’d also been denied parentage and the love of a family.

  Ali had been brought up in a world much like my own. Where money was not a necessity. Where privilege was handed out because of our last names. Where we didn’t have to think twice about how we were going to get food on the table.

  “Will that be okay with the chef?” Her question was one of the many reasons why she was Ali.

  Because unlike the women that I’d been around lately, whose noses were stuck so high up in the air it was a wonder if they even had the time to smell how self-important they were, Ali had always been considerate of how others felt.

  The server, whose name was Ker, was taken aback, judging from the look on his face, “It should be okay.”

  Ali nodded her head, a few honey blonde tendrils fell from her ponytail, “Okay. I don’t want to offend him.”

  The server shook his head, “It should be alright. I’ll pack it up for you.”

  Turning to me, Ker asked, “Will that be all for you?”

  “Yes, thank you. Can you just bring the bill as well?”

  After saying yes, he left us and I watched Ali look at me with a small grin on her mouth.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she remarked.

  “It’s not nothing if you’re smiling like that.” When I asked her if she had any plans for tonight, she’d hesitated. I figured that she might have plans with Deckard, but I’d given her my lost boy look, a look I’d perfected when we were kids, and she didn’t want to share her secrets with me. I’d asked if she could give me tonight to talk and laid it on thick that she was leaving for Berkeley soon and who knew when we were going to have time like this again.

  I was elated that I’d convinced her to have dinner with me, but I didn’t plan to stop there.

  Not when her words this morning penetrated through my thick skull.

  Silence with her wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

  Impassiveness wasn’t going to bridge the gap I’d built.

  And there was no way that she was going back to college without knowing how I felt about her.

  I denied it for years.

  Not because of Nic. Well maybe a little because of Nic. Because he was my best friend and she was his sister.

  Maybe there was time to salvage what I’d ruined, and I was going to do it starting tonight.

  “Wow. This is amazing.” Her voice was breathless. “I’d forgotten what it was like.”

  “Me too,” I stated, my eyes landing on her svelte figure encased in a simple white tee shirt and jeans. We’d stopped by my parents’ place after work so she could change into more comfortable clothes. I could’ve changed too, but I was on edge and I wanted to leave before Ali changed her mind, so I was still in my work clothes.

  “What’s that one again, Matty?” The slip of my childhood nickname warmed my heart.

  I took a big gulp of air, “It’s Sagittarius.”

  I put my fingers up in the air, tracing the stars in the sky. “It’s a centaur. Look at his torso while he sits on top of a horse. He’s aiming his bow at his neighbor, Scorpius.”

  Sagittarius was a huge constellation, but sometimes the stars could be faint so it was harder to identify. On this warm night in the Red Rock Canyons, I spotted the lid, handle, and spout easily and that was how I knew it was him.

  I didn’t bring a blanket. I wasn’t insightful like that.

  But I did manage to bring a jacket. Ali didn’t want me to use my suit as a protective shield for her against the rocks, but I refused to have her back scratched in any way. She agreed only if we shared it. So here we were, her shoulder leaning against me, my right arm wrapped around her middle as she asked me to point out the constellations in the night sky.

  “I miss her…” Star gazing was Reece’s favorite hobby. Dad had brought her a telescope when she was only six, when she could barely lift the humungous equipment herself.

  I nudged my head towards her hair, scenting flowers and citrus.

  Dior.

  After all these ye
ars, she still wore the perfume my sister gave her as a gift for her birthday.

  “I miss her, too.” A lance in my chest pierced through me. “She’d have loved to see all the stars tonight.”

  “She’s with them – the stars.”

  I felt a trickle of wetness slide down my right arm, the one caressing her face.

  “Do you still blame me?”

  Her words were a thousand thorns searing through me, the pain such a heavy weight for me to write off.

  “Ali…No.” I sat us up and nudged her face towards me. The stars provided enough light for me to see the onus that she’d been carrying throughout these years.

  “You say that now, but you ignored me all these years because you blamed me. I tried to save her. I tried so hard that I even – “ Her face turned away from me, where the darkness had engulfed the rock formations that surrounded us.

  “I’m sorry.” Two simple words, but they were the only ones I could say to cut through her accusation.

  My hands felt the river of tears that flowed from her eyes, “I didn’t know how to deal with it, Ali. I didn’t know what to do. One minute she was there and the next minute she was gone.”

  We were on a summer trip in the Yucatan Peninsula with the Zombowskis, Lockheeds, and Stones. Vacationing together had become a yearly thing for us.

  “She wanted to jump. I said no.” Ali’s voice was cracking. I’d heard her story. I’d seen her story from afar. Kassius and I were standing a few rocks away from them when it happened.

  It was a nightmare that replayed over and over in my head.

  “I should have jumped before her, she wasn’t the adventurous one. I was.” Regret was stamped all over her words.

  Reece loved fun, but she was also cautious. Between the two of them, Ali was the one who would climb the rope first and Reece would follow.

  “You didn’t know,” I said, it was the first time we’d ever talked about what happened. “I don’t blame you, Ali. I may have before. I may have put it all on you because I wanted to blame someone. But it wasn’t you, it shouldn’t have ever been you.”

  I remembered Reece shouting “Let’s go, Ali Galley!” and Ali saying, “It looks too high, Reecey Peacey!”

  Then seconds later, Reece was no longer in sight and Ali’s screams had turned from excited to frantic.

  Kassius and I jumped after them, but we were a few seconds too late. The girls didn’t gauge how far and treacherous the cliffs were. Reece’s head hit a rock and Ali had lost consciousness in the water. By the time our parents arrived, Reece was pulseless and Ali was as pale as death.

  The repercussions of that day vibrated to the present.

  So many regrets.

  So many what-ifs.

  So many whys.

  But as I felt the tremors of the guilt that gnawed at the woman beside me, I knew that I had to tell her. For my sake. For her sake.

  “It was an accident,” I said, releasing the sorrow that had been eating at my soul for half a decade. My parents tried to help me. My friends had done their best to give the support that they thought I needed. But there was perhaps no one else who understood the emptiness that I felt than the girl, now a woman, that I had stayed away from. “She didn’t know. You didn’t know.”

  The silence between us was incapacitating, trifling. Healing.

  “Why did you stay away?”

  Ali was hospitalized for two days at the local hospital, and they had to fly her back to the States in medical transport after the tragedy.

  Mom and Dad were busy arranging for Reece’s funeral that they didn’t think twice when I asked if I could fly to Minnesota where Ali was confined.

  Ali didn’t know it, but on the fourth day after my sister died, I was in the ICU of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota holding her hand.

  I’d simply told the nurse I was Ali’s brother, especially since there was a notice posted on the unit saying that only immediate family members were allowed.

  I’d pulled on my baseball hat and said I was Nicholas Zombowski, and they let me in.

  I’d stayed for an hour, crying for the sister I’d lost, and for my friend, the girl in front of me, who was fighting for her life.

  “I stayed away because I had just lost Reece.” Sometimes memories come flooding back like it just happened yesterday. And other times, as if it was too far in the past. “And I couldn’t bear to lose you, too.”

  “Matty.”

  “I loved you, Ali. You were my friend. My closest friend.” My grandfather once said that love was for the weak. I’d spent a few summers with him in his palatial yet lonely home in France. “I didn’t know if you were coming back. I was scared, I was tired of mourning, I was just a stupid boy and I thought keeping you away after I heard that you’d recovered would be the best way to protect my heart.”

  “And now?” She was never one to mince words. Not with me. “What’s changed?”

  “You’re here.” I held her hands and clasped them tightly, placing them on my chest. “I’m tired of wasting time in the past. I’m tired of watching you with other guys even if they’re just your friends and ignoring me. I’d like for that chance with you again. If you’d let me.”

  She didn’t say anything, the only indication that she was processing my words was her uneven breathing and the intense look in her eyes when she flexed her chin to gaze at the stars.

  After a few minutes, she loosened her hands from mine.

  Disappointment barraged through me, I’d pushed her away for so long. This was my redemption.

  I was about to say something again, to convince her to let me in, when two fingers pressed on my mouth.

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah?” I couldn’t contain the relief inside of me.

  “Yeah. But you’ll have to let me spar with you on the mat one of these days.”

  As a young girl, Ali was a force to be reckoned with on the mat. I’d seen and felt how her skills had improved as a fighter at my mom’s birthday party.

  “It would be an honor, Ali-gator.”

  The laugh that emerged out of her stemmed from her heart, and it was a sound that I’d missed. I pulled her in my arms, she’d never shied away from affection, and hugged her tightly.

  On a night filled with stars in the skies above the canyons, I found myself feeling lighter than I’d ever been.

  I’d never been a man to shun love and all that came with it. I grew up with parents who loved each other with everything they had. Contrary to what my grandfather said, love made them stronger.

  And for the first time in years, I felt the shadows and grief of the past leaving me.

  It was time to accept that the past was just that and the future was something great to look forward.

  Hopefully, with this woman at my side.

  Alissa

  “How do you know you’ve made the best decision?” My question lingered in the air as we ate lunch.

  Matteo asked if I wanted to have a quick lunch with him before he flew to Santa Barbara.

  He looked deep in thought, “I base it on facts, but a large part of it is intuition.”

  “Do you get scared? Like what if it’s not a good one?” I’d observed him in meetings and tele-conferences, and he exuded one hundred percent confidence in his statements.

  He shrugged his shoulders encased in another suit. “Not really. Every decision has an advantage and a risk. I just try to make the best of it.”

  Today he was wearing a light grey suit that accentuated the colors of his eyes. He’d always been classically handsome. Cut jaw, thick eyebrows and lips that made me dream of kissing him at least once every hour.

  It’d been five days since our late night rendezvous at Red Rock. Since then, he’d traded many jokes with me and he’d made me blush when he complimented how I looked every time he picked me up in the morning.

  I didn’t know what we had. I didn’t want to think about it.

  I just savored each moment.

  I
’d been on the verge of letting him go, forgetting him as a part of my life, and then wham bam, he took me for a spin when we had the heart-to-heart in the canyons.

  Another person would probably say I was stupid for sticking around here and giving him the time and day after he’d ignored me for so long.

  But he was a big part of my past and our families were good friends.

  Plus, he’s always been my Matty.

  “You think Deckard got the hint last night?” He took a big bite of his roast beef sandwich and leaned back against his swivel chair. He looked so composed yet so young at the same time.

  “What are you talking about?” I sipped on my peach mango iced tea. I needed to see if Health Nut had branches in San Francisco because I really loved this tea.

  “Deckard.” His answer came with a clench of his jaw. “The preppy boy who’s thinking he has a chance with you.”

  “Deckard’s not preppy.”

  “Oh come on. Collared polo with jeans.” His dark brows were raised, “For bowling.”

  I stipulated, “Maybe a little. You’re preppy, too. You went to the same prep school that he did.”

  His wide shoulders shook, “Private school. Hell no, I ain’t preppy.”

  I stole a handful of French fries from his plate, “Really?”

  “Why didn’t you just order fries?” He asked before scooping two of the fried potatoes and feeding them to me.

  “Because I feel healthier when they’re on your plate rather than mine,” I smirked.

  “Do you really think I’m preppy?” His tone was serious.

  “Sometimes,” I answered honestly. “Like the time when you wore a salmon shirt to the barbecue party two years ago.”

  “That was your brother’s shirt. I didn’t bring enough clothes and your mom just threw an impromptu party. I’d just flown in to see Nic for a few hours before I headed to Chicago.”

  I wasn’t expecting Matteo to be at our house. I’d brought David after our brunch date. He’d been asking me out, and after prom I promised him that we’d go out sometime. David had stayed for the barbecue, and Nic questioned him like an FBI interrogator. My dad was laughing the whole time and my mom had to slap Nic a few times, but Matteo’s unexpected presence made it awkward for me.