Heart Bones

by Hoover, Colleen

  He shakes his head, refusing to answer that one.

  “That wasn’t even an intrusive question,” I say.

  “If you knew the answer, you’d realize it was.”

  He’s right. This is going to be a challenge. But I don’t think he realizes how competitive I can be. I did earn a full ride to Penn State thanks to my commitment to winning.

  “Sara said you’re going into the Air Force Academy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a family tradition.”

  “Ah,” I say. “A morsel. So your father was in the Air Force?”

  “Yes. And my grandfather.”

  “How is your family so rich? The military doesn’t pay that well.”

  “Some people go into the military for the esteem. Not the pay.”

  “Do you want to go to the Air Force or are you doing it because it’s expected of you?”

  “I want to go.”

  “That’s good.”

  I don’t know if it’s him or the current, but he’s even closer now. One of my legs is between his knees and my thigh occasionally brushes his. I might be doing it on purpose, which surprises me. Maybe he is too.

  “What’s your favorite animal?” I ask.

  “Whale.”

  “Favorite food?”

  “Seafood.”

  “Favorite thing to do?”

  “Swim.”

  I laugh. “These are typical beach rat answers. I’ll never get anywhere.”

  “Ask better questions,” he says pointedly.

  Another challenge. We stare at each other with heaviness while I think of a question I really want an answer to. “Sara said you don’t do relationships—that you only date girls who are here on vacations. Why is that?”

  He doesn’t answer. Another question that’s off limits, I guess. “Okay, too private. I’ll think of an easier question.”

  “No, I’m going to answer that one,” he says. “I’m just trying to figure out how.” He lowers himself until the water is level with his chin. I do the same. I like that all we can focus on right now are each other’s eyes. Although his aren’t very telling.

  “I don’t trust easily.”

  I wasn’t expecting that answer. I was expecting him to say he likes being single, or something equally stereotypical.

  “Why? Did you get your heart broken?”

  He presses his lips together while he ponders that question. “Yeah,” he says flatly. “Crushed me. Her name was Darya.”

  The fact that he said her name out loud causes an unexpected, tiny sliver of jealousy to poke at me from the inside. I want to ask him what happened, but I don’t really want the answer.

  “What’s it like?” I ask him.

  “Having my heart broken?”

  I nod.

  He pushes a floating piece of seaweed away from us. “Have you never been in love?”

  I laugh. “No. Not even close. I’ve never loved anyone, nor have I ever been loved by anyone.”

  “Yes you have,” he says. “Family counts.”

  I shake my head again, because even if family counted, my answer would remain the same. My father barely knows me. My mother wasn’t capable of loving me.

  I look away from him and stare out at the open water. “I don’t have that kind of family,” I say quietly. “Not a lot of people have mothers like mine. I don’t even remember her hugging me. Not once.” I cut my eyes back to his. “Now that I think about it, I’m not even sure I’ve ever been hugged.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I mean, I’ve hugged people as a greeting. A quick hello or a quick goodbye hug. But I’ve never been…I don’t know how to put it.”

  “Held?”

  I nod. “Yeah. That’s a better description, I guess. I’ve never been held by anyone. I don’t know what that’s like. I try to avoid it, actually. It seems like it would be weird.”

  “I guess it depends on who’s holding you.”

  My throat feels thick. I swallow and nod in agreement, but say nothing.

  “It surprises me that you don’t think your father loves you. He seems like a nice guy.”

  “He doesn’t know me. This is the first time I’ve seen him in since I was sixteen. I know more about you than I do about him.”

  “That’s not very much.”

  “Exactly,” I say, facing him full-on again.

  Samson’s knee brushes high up on my inner thighs this time and I’m glad he can’t see anything from my chin down, because my body is covered in chills right now.

  “I didn’t think there were many people in the world like me,” he says.

  “You think we’re alike?” I want to laugh at that comparison, but there’s not an ounce of humor in his expression.

  “I believe we have a lot more in common than you think we do, Beyah.”

  “You think you’re as alone in this world as I am?”

  He folds his lips together and nods his head, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever seen. I never would have thought someone so well off could have a life as shitty as mine, but I can see it in the way he’s looking at me. Everything about him suddenly seems familiar to me.

  He’s right. We are alike, but only in the saddest ways.

  My voice comes out in a whisper when I say, “When I first met you on that ferry, I could tell you were damaged.”

  There’s a flicker of something in his eyes as he tilts his head to the right. “You think I’m damaged?”

  “Yes.”

  He moves even closer in the water, but there wasn’t much space left between us to begin with. It’s deliberate, and so much of me is touching so much of him now. “You’re right,” he says quietly, slipping a hand around the back of my left knee. “There’s nothing left of me but a fucking pile of debris.” He pulls me to him, wrapping both my legs around him. That’s all he does, though. He doesn’t try to kiss me. He just connects us together as if that’s enough while our arms keep us both afloat.

  I’m swiftly succumbing to him. I don’t know in what way. All of them, maybe. Because right now, I need him to do something else. Anything else. Taste me. Touch me. Drag me under.

  We watch each other for a moment and it’s almost like looking into a broken mirror. He leans in slowly, but not toward my mouth. He presses his lips against my shoulder, so gentle it feels like a graze.

  I close my eyes and inhale.

  I’ve never felt anything so sensual. So perfect.

  One of his hands disappears under the water and finds my waist. When I open my eyes, his face is just a couple of inches from mine.

  We both look at each other’s mouths for a brief second, and then it’s like fire shoots down my entire leg.

  “Fuck!”

  Something just stung me.

  Something just stung the shit out of me right when I was about to be kissed and if this isn’t my damn luck. “Shit, shit, shit.” I grip Samson’s shoulders. “Something just stung me.”

  He shakes his head as if he’s pulling himself out of a trance. He catches up to what just happened. “Jellyfish,” he says. He grabs my hand and pulls me toward the shore, but my leg hurts so bad, it’s difficult to walk.

  “Oh my God, it hurts.”

  “Sara keeps a bottle of vinegar in their outdoor shower. It’ll help the sting.”

  When he can tell I’m struggling to keep up, he bends down and scoops me up. I want to enjoy the fact that he’s carrying me, but I can’t enjoy anything.

  “Where did it get you?” he asks.

  “My right leg.”

  When the water is just below his knees, he’s able to walk faster. He rushes me past the fire, toward the outdoor shower on Sara’s stilt level. I hear Sara yell after us. “What happened?”

  “Jellyfish!” he yells over his shoulder.

  When we reach the shower, there’s barely enough room for both of us inside. He sets me down and I spin around and press my hands against the shower wall.
“It got the top of my thigh.”

  When he starts to spray the vinegar on my leg, it feels like tiny knives stabbing me in the fleshiest part of my thigh. I close my eyes, pressing my forehead against the wooden shower wall. I moan in agony. “Oh, God.”

  “Beyah,” Samson says, his voice strained and deep. “Please don’t make that noise.”

  I’m in too much pain to dissect that comment. All I feel is pain on top of more pain when the vinegar hits my skin. “Samson, it hurts. Please stop.”

  “Not yet,” he says, spraying down my leg to ensure he gets all the sting. “It’ll feel better in a second.”

  He’s a liar, I want to die. “No, it hurts. Please stop.”

  “I’m almost finished.”

  He stops suddenly after saying that, but not by choice. Samson disappears in a confusing flash. I spin around and peek my head out just in time to witness my father punch Samson in the face.

  Samson stumbles back and then falls over the concrete ledge of the foundation.

  “She said stop, you son of a bitch!” my father yells at him.

  Samson scrambles to his feet and backs away from my father. He holds his hands up in defense, but my father goes to hit him again. I grab my father’s arm, but it does little to ease the impact of the second hit.

  “Dad, stop!”

  Sara appears and I look at her pleadingly for help. She runs over and tries to grab my father’s other arm, but he’s got Samson by the throat now.

  “He was helping me!” I yell. “Let go of him!”

  This prompts my father to release some of the pressure around Samson’s throat, but he doesn’t let go. Samson has blood running from his nose. I’m sure he could fight back, but he isn’t. He’s just shaking his head, staring at my father wide-eyed. “I wasn’t—she got stung by a jellyfish. I was helping her.”

  My father looks over his shoulder, searching for me. When we lock eyes, I nod vigorously. “He’s telling you the truth. He was spraying vinegar on my leg.”

  “But I heard you say...” My father closes his eyes when he realizes it truly was a misunderstanding. He exhales deeply. “Shit.” He releases Samson.

  There’s blood running all the way down Samson’s neck now.

  My father puts his hands on his hips and tries to catch his breath for a few seconds. Then he motions for Samson to follow him. “Come inside,” he mutters. “I think I broke your nose.”

  TWELVE

  Samson is leaning against the guest bathroom counter holding a rag to his nose to stop the bleeding. I’m sitting on a heat compress in the dry bathtub. The bathroom door is slightly ajar, and even though Alana and my father are down the hall, we can hear every word they’re saying.

  “He’s going to sue us,” my father says.

  Samson laughs quietly. “I’m not going to sue him,” he whispers.

  “He’s not going to sue us,” Alana says.

  “You don’t know that. We barely know him and I broke his nose,” my father says.

  Samson looks at me. “It’s not broken. He doesn’t hit that hard.”

  I laugh.

  “I’m confused,” I hear Alana say. “Why did you hit him?”

  “They were in the outdoor shower. I thought he was—”

  “We can hear you!” I yell. I don’t want him to finish that sentence. This is already too embarrassing.

  My father walks to the bathroom and opens the door all the way. “Are you on birth control?”

  Oh, my God.

  Alana tries pulling him out of the bathroom. “Not in front of the boy, Brian.”

  Samson pulls the rag from his nose and narrows his eyes at me. “The boy?” he whispers.

  At least he has a good sense of humor about this.

  “Maybe you should go,” I suggest. “This is getting too embarrassing.”

  Samson nods, but my father is back in the doorway. “I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to have sex. You’re almost an adult. I just want you to be safe about it.”

  “I am an adult. There’s nothing almost about it,” I say.

  Samson is standing near my father, but my father is blocking the entire doorway as he speaks to me. He doesn’t notice Samson attempting to squeeze by him to escape.

  “This is my only way out,” Samson says to my dad, pointing over his shoulder. “Please let me out.”

  My father realizes he’s blocking him and quickly steps aside. “Sorry about your nose.”

  Samson nods and then leaves. I wish I could escape, but I’m pretty sure there are tentacles still embedded in my leg and it hurts to move.

  My father returns his attention back to me. “Alana can take you to get on the pill if you aren’t already on it.”

  “We aren’t…Samson and I aren’t…never mind.” I push myself out of the tub and stand up. “This is a really intense conversation and my thigh feels like it’s melting off my body. Can we please do this later?”

  They both nod, but my father follows after me. “Ask Sara. We’re very open about this stuff if you ever want to talk about it.”

  “I’m aware of that now. Thank you,” I say, heading up the stairs to my room.

  Wow. So this is what it’s like to have involved parents? I’m not sure I like it.

  I walk straight to my bedroom window and watch as Samson enters his house. He turns on his kitchen light and then he leans over the counter and folds in on himself, pressing his forehead to the granite. He’s gripping the back of his neck with his hands.

  I don’t know what to think of that. Is that a sign of regret? Or is he just overwhelmed because he got punched twice and refused to fight back? The way he’s reacting right now fills me with so many questions. Questions I know he won’t likely answer. He’s a vault and I really wish I had a key.

  Or some explosives.

  I want an excuse to go over there so I can get a closer look at him and see what it is exactly that’s bothering him so much. I need to know if it’s because he almost kissed me.

  Would he try it again if I gave him the chance?

  I want to give him the chance. I want that kiss almost as much as I don’t.

  I do have his memory card. I could take it back to him. I haven’t looked at the pictures yet, though. I really want to see them before I give it back to him.

  Sara has a computer in her bedroom, so I fish the memory card out of my backpack and go to Sara’s computer.

  I wait several minutes for all of the images to load. There are a lot of them. The first ones to load are all pictures of nature. All things he said he takes pictures of. Countless sunrises and sunsets. Pictures of the beach. But they aren’t necessarily pretty pictures. They’re soothingly sad. Most of them are taken with the focus zoomed in on something random, like a piece of trash floating in the water, or seaweed piled up on the sand.

  It’s interesting. It’s like he puts the focus on the saddest part of whatever is in view of his lens, but the picture as a whole is still beautiful.

  The pictures he took of me begin to load. There are more than I thought there would be, and he apparently started snapping pictures of me before I even moved to the front of the ferry.

  Most of the pictures are of me on the side of the ferry, watching the sunset alone.

  He put the focus on me in every picture. Nothing else. And based on all the other pictures he took, I suppose that means he thought I was the saddest thing in his frame.

  There’s one picture in particular that strikes me. It’s zoomed in and the focus is on a small rip in the back of my sundress that I didn’t even know was there. Even with his focus on something as sad as my dress, the picture is still striking. My face is out of focus, and if this were a picture of anyone else but me, I’d say it was a beautiful piece of art.

  Instead, I’m embarrassed he paid such close attention to me before I even noticed he was there.

  I scroll through every picture of me and notice there isn’t a single picture of me eating the bread. I wonder why he didn’t pho
tograph that.

  That says a lot about him. I regret reacting how I did when he tried to offer me money on the ferry that day. Samson may actually be a decent human and the pictures on this memory card back that up.

  I remove it from the computer and even though I’m still in pain and kind of want to crawl in bed and go to sleep, I head downstairs, outside and across the yard. Samson always uses his back door, so I head in that direction. I walk up the steps and knock.

  I wait for a while, but I don’t hear his footsteps and I can’t see the kitchen from this point of view. I hear something behind me, though. When I turn around, P.J. is sitting at the top of the stairs watching me. I smile a little. I like that he’s still around.

  Samson eventually opens the door. He’s changed clothes in the time I was watching him from my window to the point of me knocking on his door. He’s wearing one of Marcos’s HisPanic T-shirts, which seem to be the only shirts he wears, if he’s wearing a shirt at all. I like that he’s supportive of Marcos’s vision. Their friendship is kind of adorable.

  Samson is barefoot, and I don’t know why I’m staring at his feet. I look back at his face.

  “I was just bringing your memory card back.” I hand it to him.

  “Thanks.”

  “I didn’t delete anything.”

  Samson’s mouth curls up on the left side. “I didn’t think you would.”

  He steps aside and motions for me to come in. I squeeze between him and the doorframe and enter his dark house. He flips on a light, and I try to hide my gasp, but it’s even bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.

  Everything is white and colorless. The walls, the cabinets, the trim. The floor is a dark wood—almost black. I spin around in a circle, admiring it for what it is, but also recognizing how unlike a home it feels. There isn’t any soul at all.

  “It’s kind of...sterile.” As soon as I say it, I wish I hadn’t. He didn’t ask for my opinion on his house, but it’s hard not to notice how unlived-in it feels.

  Samson shrugs like my opinion of his house doesn’t bother him. “It’s a rent house. They’re all like this. Very generic.”

  “It’s so clean.”

  “People sometimes rent at the last minute. It’s easier for me if I keep the houses rent-ready.” Samson walks to his refrigerator and opens it, waving a hand inside. The refrigerator is mostly empty, aside from a few condiments in the door. “Nothing in the fridge. Nothing in the pantry.” He closes the refrigerator door.