“And just so you know,” he said, “I’m not going to get tired of you and I’m not going to leave you. I’m not like those other people.”
I let that sink in. It was a moment before I was able to say anything. When I finally did, my voice was barely a whisper. I wondered if Kellen could even hear me.
“I won’t do it again,” I said. “The cutting. I promise. I won’t do it again.”
“Good,” Kellen said, “but don’t do it for me. You need to do it for you. You have to want it for you or else it won’t stick.”
I nodded.
“I deserve more than this,” I said. “I deserve more.”
I’d never said that out loud, probably because I’d never believed it. I wasn’t sure that I fully believed it now either, but for the first time in a long time I felt like it might have the potential to be true. Maybe I’d just keep saying it until it was true.
I deserved more.
I used to think I was broken, like there was some kind of crack in my surface and it was just going to keep growing and breaking until I eventually just shattered into a million pieces. I was starting to wonder if that was ever really the case. Maybe I was never broken at all. Maybe I was just a little jagged, a little rough around the edges. And you know what? Who really cared if I was a little broken? Broken things were put back together every day. It’s what they’d invented glue for.
In that moment I felt a little better. I felt like I could do this. I felt like it didn’t matter if at the end of this I ended up looking like one of the ceramics I’d made in art class when I was eight – pieces held together by super strong glue and wishful thinking. At least I’d be held together.
And then I realized what I’d seen in Kellen’s eyes before. That thing mixed in with the sadness. That thing that made me believe everything might be okay. It had been hope.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You don’t have to apologize,” Kellen said. “I just want you to feel better.”
“No,” I said. This time I was the one smiling. “You asked me to wear pants the next time we hung out.”
Kellen smirked. “Well I wasn’t going to say anything, but you are terrible at remembering the pants.”
“There’s always next time,” I said.
And I knew there would be a next time.
And then there would be a next time after that.
And after that.
Because Kellen wasn’t my father and he wasn’t Bree. He wasn’t my loser football boyfriend from ninth grade and he wasn’t all of those guys that I’d let use me since then. The difference between Kellen and all of those people was that Kellen had stayed, even when I’d tried to shut him out.
He’d stayed.
Chapter 22
A Few Broken Pieces
It’s a scary thing
When someone finds your broken pieces
Even if it’s only a few of them
Because you’re afraid they’ll wonder
Are there any more?
How many more?
Is this girl just a fractured mess?
And you’re afraid they won’t
Handle your broken pieces with care
But what if a person comes along
A person that found your broken pieces
Just a few of them
And they say
It’s okay
I don’t care if there are more
We can put the pieces back together
And you know they’ve seen broken pieces before
Because they carry them gently
I’m not sure which is scarier
“This will make your life a thousand times better. I guarantee it.”
I rolled my eyes but smiled. In the past week, I’d heard Kellen Jordan say the same thing at least a hundred times. Pizza from this hole-in-the-wall diner was going to make my life a thousand times better. Playing pool at this non-alcoholic bar (I didn’t even know those existed) was going to make my life a thousand times better.
I had to admit, the pizza did make my life a thousand times better. It put all other pizza to shame. I’m pretty sure a piece of heaven must have been baked into the crust or something because I’d devoured four slices. The waitress had asked if my mother was starving me and I’d almost said yes because I thought it might get me a fifth slice, but Kellen was on to me. He’d given me a look that said, “do not lie to this waitress just to get a free fifth slice of heaven.” When she walked away he’d offered to buy me another slice, but he’d already insisted on paying for the first four and I had to draw the line somewhere.
Now, when it came to playing pool I’d had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Kellen tried to help me, but I’d ended up stabbing him in the stomach with the end of the pool stick so that little adventure probably didn’t make his life a thousand times better. I’d felt bad until I caught him lifting up his shirt to check for bruises when he thought I wasn’t looking. The boy had a bruise, but he also had an impressive set of abs. Needless to say, I hadn’t felt so bad after that.
Kellen got so excited about everything. It was like hanging out with a little kid, except for the fact that he was tall and cute and apparently had an impressive set of abs. Okay, so not so much like a little kid. It was weird because people like Kellen used to annoy me. I’d wonder how they could be so happy about things, but after spending so much time with him it had become one of my favorite things about Kellen. Maybe it was because I knew he hadn’t always been like this. Life hadn’t just handed him a basket of rainbows and sunshine. He’d fought like hell to find his own.
Don’t get me wrong; I still got a little annoyed about the cheeriness from time to time, but I didn’t feel the need to chisel my eyeballs out of my skull every time someone smiled at me anymore. I’d say that was progress.
Today Kellen brought me to a bike shop. I followed him as he weaved his way through the aisles, clutching the Happy List in his left hand and looking like he was on an important mission. He insisted we bring the list with us wherever we went in case we were in need of inspiration. Apparently the boy was inspired today.
“Kellen, are you going to tell me why we’re here?” I asked, practically running to catch up with him.
“We need a bike,” he said, like this was the most obvious thing in the world.
Kellen walked through a back door that said “Employees Only.” I stopped outside the door and stared at the sign, pretty sure that it was meant to keep the people looking for bikes on this side of the door.
“Oh, what the hell,” I muttered. Rules were meant to be broken, right?
I walked into the “Employees Only” zone and found Kellen looking through a stack of papers on a metal desk.
“Um, did you forget that we rode a bike to get here?” I asked.
Kellen looked up for a minute, a smile on his face.
“I rode a bike,” he said. “You stood on the back of my bike. It’s not the same.”
Kellen then moved to the computer on the desk and started typing. I looked around nervously. I was all for breaking a few rules, but there were broken rules that would get you thrown out of a bike shop and there were broken rules that would get you thrown in jail and I was pretty sure Kellen was crossing that line.
“I don’t think you should – ” I started, but Kellen just waved his hand at me.
“Relax,” he said. “I know the owner of this place. I help out here sometimes.”
Of course, he did. Because working at a bookstore, helping the homeless, and volunteering at a preschool wasn’t enough. No, Kellen Jordan also assisted local bike entrepreneurs.
I wasn’t sure Kellen Jordan actually ever slept.
“Got it!” he said, walking away from the computer and going around another corner behind a tall metal shelf full of bike parts.
“Got what?”
A few minutes later Kellen rode around the corner on a bright blue bike.
“Your new bike,” he said proudly.
&n
bsp; “Um, it’s nice,” I said, “but I don’t exactly have the money for a new bike.”
“Well, it’s not exactly new,” Kellen said, riding over to me. “It’s an old bike that I fixed up and put together for you.”
Right then Kellen’s smile was lighting up his whole face. It was breathtaking.
“You made a bike for me?” I asked slowly.
Kellen hopped off the bike and flicked the kickstand down with his foot.
“Yeah,” he said. “When you showed me the List I saw the thing about going for a bike ride. I knew they had this old bike here that they were planning to toss so I asked the owner if I could keep it and fix it up.”
“I… I don’t know what to say.”
“Do you like it?” Kellen asked. He looked nervous, like he was afraid I was going to say no.
I wished I could put into words how much this meant to me, but I didn’t think there were actual words to describe what I was feeling right then. Kellen had taken a lump of metal on wheels that was ready for the dump and he’d turned it into this… this bike that looked brand new. And he’d done it for me. Nobody had ever done something like that for me.
“I love it,” I finally said.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said, smiling. “It’s amazing. How did you even do it?”
Kellen was beaming. “I got some new tires, did some work on the chain, and fixed the brakes. When I got all the mechanical stuff finished, I painted it and that was it. It’s not a big deal or anything…”
“Yes, it is,” I said. It was a very big deal and I wished I wasn’t such an idiot with words, or I’d have been able to tell Kellen how big of a deal it was. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said as if I’d just made his entire day when he’s the one that had built me a bike. “I just thought it’d be cool if we could ride together. Is the color okay? I know you like black, but I thought something different might be cool.”
“No, I like the blue,” I said.
“I was, um…Never mind.”
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s stupid,” he said. I could see that he was blushing.
“Well, being that you just saved a bike from death row and turned it into the beauty queen of bikes, I think you’re allowed to say something stupid,” I said, smirking. “Just this once.”
“I was trying to match the color of your eyes,” he mumbled.
Now I knew I was the one that was blushing.
“I, oh,” I said awkwardly. Here I was thinking there was just a can of blue paint lying around, but no. Kellen really had made this bike just for me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. You probably think I’m some weird creep now – ”
“Stop.” He was reading my reaction all wrong. In my defense, I hadn’t had a lot of practice reacting to people doing nice things for me, especially things that involved them paying such close attention to details like the exact shade of my irises. “Don’t apologize,” I said as I walked over and hopped on the bike. “I love the color.”
I looked up and Kellen was smiling again. I took this as a sign that I hadn’t completely screwed up at accepting my gift like a decent human being. I gripped the handlebars and shifted in the seat, getting comfortable. My eyes roamed over the whole thing, wanting to take it all in. I was feeling that rush of excitement I felt when I’d first learned how to ride a bike. That feeling of freedom being so close and all I had to do was reach out for it. This was a thousand times better though, because instead of a drunk father staggering beside me and paying more attention to the beer in his hand, I had Kellen. There was no comparison.
My eyes fell on the bar right below me, the bar that brought the front of the bike and the back of the bike together. I was sure this bar had a name, but I wasn’t exactly an expert on bicycle anatomy, so I just called it the super important bar. The super important bar had a word scrawled across it in fancy black script.
“Porcupine?” I asked smirking.
“Yeah, I asked my tattoo artist if he could write that on there for me because I have the penmanship of a first grader.”
“You brought this bike to a tattoo artist so that he could write ‘porcupine’ on it?” I raised my eyebrows and bit my lip to keep from laughing.
“Yeah, and would you believe Roscoe gave me a funny look when I asked him to do it for me?”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Your sarcasm is noted, Carson Reynolds,” Kellen said, smirking. He pointed at me. “Just remember, prickly and scary on the outside, sweet and cuddly on the inside.”
I pushed the kickstand up and inched forward. “Just remember,” I said, “Nobody wants to hug a porcupine, no matter how fluffy and adorable their insides might be.”
I put my feet on the pedals and got ready to take off when I felt Kellen come up from behind and wrap his arms around me.
“Hey!”
“People do want to hug porcupines,” he said into my ear. “Yeah, there are some people that get intimidated by the quills, but porcupines don’t need those kind of people in their lives.”
For a minute I sank into Kellen’s chest, breathing in the smell of his cologne. I started to think I might be able to stay there forever, and I remembered that feeling I got the other day when Kellen and I were playing board games, that feeling that maybe there was a peaceful place in the world. I was starting to wonder if maybe the peaceful place wasn’t so much about where you were, but who you were with.
I playfully pushed Kellen away from me. “You’re weird,” I said. “If I gave you a cactus you’d probably hug that too.”
“God, no,” he said. “I’m not an idiot.”
I started laughing as I made my way over to the door that separated the “Employees Only” zone from the rest of the store. Kellen held the door open and I cruised through, riding my porcupine bike right through the shop. It was the first time I’d ridden a bike in forever and I couldn’t even believe how good it felt. I thought about the Happy List of things Dr. M wanted me to do.
Go for a bike ride.
Check.
Chapter 23
Let Go
For once in my life
I don’t want to be tough
I don’t want to be strong
I don’t want to fight
I want someone to fight for me
I want to crumble
I want to fall
And feel your arms catch me
Holding me steady
Holding me tight
Because you want to keep me there
Because you want to keep me safe
And I want to rest my head on your chest
Wrap my arms around your neck
And not worry
And not be afraid
Just let go of the fear
That you’ll let go
That you’ll let me fall
Further
Harder
Faster
On Sundays I liked to sleep in and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist.
That didn’t happen this morning.
This morning I was woken up by a tapping sound on my window. At first I thought it was a squirrel or a bird, but after ignoring it for about five minutes the tapping turned into more frequent tapping accompanied with bird squawks.
“What the?”
I glanced at the clock beside my bed. It was 5:30.
I wrapped my blanket around me and stumbled over to the window. When I moved the curtains aside and looked down I saw Kellen standing there with a brown paper bag in his hands.
I lifted the window open and frowned at him.
“Sorry, no drugs before six in the morning,” I said.
Kellen gave me a look. “You know, to anyone else that might have been funny.”
“When you throw things at my window at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning then you accept the risk that there’s a 95% chance I’m going to be a bitch.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “You look beautiful, by the way.”
“If you weren’t all the way down there I’d probably kick you in the shin.”
Kellen laughed. “Have you ever had a green donut?”
“A what?”
He lifted up the brown bag. “There’s this place by my house that makes colorful donuts. They’re delicious. My mom used to get them for me all the time when I was little. So have you ever had a green donut?”
“No.”
“Awesome,” Kellen said, lifting up what I guessed was the Happy List with his other hand. “You can try a new food while we take a walk.”
“This couldn’t have waited until later?” I asked. “The sun isn’t even awake yet.”
“And that’s exactly why we have to go now,” he said. “There’s nothing like a good sunrise on a Sunday morning.”
“I hate you.”
“That’s just the hunger talking. As soon as you get a taste of this green donut you’ll want to kiss me.”
“If by kiss you mean strangle,” I said, but I could feel my stomach clench and something told me it didn’t have much to do with hunger.
“Either way, you’ll have to get out of your blanket burrito and come out here.”
I stood there for a minute considering my options, but I knew there really weren’t any. I had known from the second I saw Kellen outside that I wouldn’t be getting any more sleep.
“I’ll be out in a second,” I said.
“Soooooo, what do you think?”
“I think you might have been dropped on your head as a small child,” I said.
“Actually, I was. Well, I fell and hit my head while trying to climb out of my crib.”
“I fell out of my stroller and hit my face.”
“We have so much in common.”
“We share possible brain damage. Nothing screams romance like that.”
Kellen laughed. “Anyways,” he said. “I was talking about the green donut. How does it taste?”
I took another bite.
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