“This is amazing.” I unwrapped my burger. “So, is this where you bring all your girlfriends?”
“Nah,” he said. “I’ve never brought anyone up here before.”
I met his eyes. “Really?”
“Really,” he said. “Look, I know everyone lumps me in with all the jocks because I do sports. And some of those guys, yeah, they’re all about banging whoever they can. But, I don’t know, that’s just not my thing.”
“I didn’t think so,” I said. “You don’t seem like you’re anything like those guys.”
“Not really,” he said. “A lot of them are my friends, and they’re cool. But I’m just interested in different things.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “Books. I like to read and they think that’s weird. And I want to travel. There are all these amazing places in the world and I’m supposed to be content with shooting hoops and eating pizza?”
“Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” He took a bite of his burger.
“Why did you ask me to the dance?”
He finished chewing before he answered. “I noticed you when you moved in, and I saw you at school. You were intriguing. I’d wanted to talk to you for a while, I just hadn’t gotten up the courage yet.”
I laughed. “Why would you need courage to talk to me?”
“Well, you’re not very approachable. You’re so quiet and you don’t seem to talk to anyone.”
“I don’t mean to be that way,” I said.
“Yeah, I know that now,” he said. “I should have asked you out a long time ago.”
My cheeks warmed and I was glad for the cover of darkness. “So why the dance?”
“I didn’t plan that or anything. I saw Karina being a bitch to you and it pissed me off. I kept seeing you in the mornings, coming out of your house, or randomly in the halls at school, and there was something about you. I was curious. And I figured that was my chance. If it got Karina off your back, even better.”
“Thanks again for that,” I said.
“Sure. Besides, those girls like Karina, they’re all the same,” he said. “I dated Christy Robertson for a while last year. She was supposed to be like, the girl, you know? The guys were all impressed that I got her. But she was boring. We had absolutely nothing in common—nothing to talk about. I didn’t want to date someone like that again, but it seemed like the girls at our school were all the same. Until you came along.”
“I’m always the different one.”
“That’s a good thing,” he said.
“I guess. It makes things hard, though. I’m such a cliché—the weird, quiet girl who doesn’t talk to anyone, just scribbles in a notebook all the time.”
“You do it well,” he said, a hint of humor in his voice. “Really, you have the whole thing down. Pink and blue streaks in your hair. Ripped jeans. Maybe you should add some black lipstick. Complete the look.”
I laughed. “I don’t think so. Not really my color.”
“What are you always scribbling in those notebooks?” he asked.
“Lots of things, I guess,” I said. “Sometimes just thoughts. Or poems. Things I wish I could say out loud but can’t.”
“Will you read some of it to me?” he asked.
“Oh, I…” I bit my lip. “I don’t know.”
“Come on,” he said. “I showed you my secret spot. I even admitted I come out here to look at the stars. Do you know how badly I’d get my ass kicked if that got out?”
I laughed again, amazed at how easy it was to laugh and smile with him. I’d never been so comfortable with another person. “Okay, fine.”
I jumped down and got my bag out of the cab. My tummy fluttered with nerves as I got back into the bed of the truck.
“I’ve never really read any of this stuff to another person.” I pulled out my journal—just a cheap spiral notebook, small enough to fit in my bag—and flipped through the pages, trying to find something that wouldn’t be mortifying to read out loud.
“Be honest, you have pages and pages of my name with little hearts,” he said.
“You wish,” I said.
He grinned back at me.
“All right. This is just… not really a poem, but kind of. Maybe it could be, I don’t know.” Deep breath. “The air burns my eyes, leaving them dry and gritty. Hurts as it slips past my tongue and into my throat. Don’t they realize? But no. They’re too numb. Dead to the world, their skin slack and lifeless. Their eyes hollow. They feel nothing, while I am left to feel everything. I drown in a sea of emotions I cannot control, but no one else can see. On the outside, I am glass. Smooth. Serene. Inside, I am a storm.”
Hesitating a moment, I kept my eyes on the page, afraid of what I would see when I looked at him. He shifted, moving closer, and put his hand on my knee.
I lifted my chin and he surged in, his lips meeting mine. My eyes fluttered closed as his mouth moved slowly, softly. He cupped my face with his hands and his tongue brushed against my lips. With my heart hammering in my ribs, I shyly met the tip of his tongue with my own. Sparks raced through my body and he pulled me closer. I opened for him and our tongues slid against each other, our mouths warm. I’d never felt anything like it.
Slowly, our lips parted and we paused, our faces close.
“I’ve really been wanting to kiss you,” Liam said, his hands still against my cheeks.
“That was my first kiss,” I said, before I could stop myself. Oh no, why did I say that?
The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. I know, it’s lame.”
“No, that’s not lame,” he said. “That’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard. I love that I’m your first kiss.”
Before I could respond, he kissed me again. Deep and slow. He was intoxicating, the feel of his mouth tangled with mine pushing everything else away. All the stresses, fears, and worries I carried with me melted into nothing in that moment.
Nothing existed but us, kissing beneath the stars.
4
Sebastian
February. Age eighteen.
Staying in the hospital was going to make me lose my mind.
It had been a week since I’d collapsed at the state tournament. The doctors still didn’t know what had happened to me—at least, not why. I’d had a ventricular fibrillation, which was a fancy way of saying my heart had quit working right. Something about the electrical impulses getting jammed, so instead of the chambers of my heart squeezing to pump blood through, they’d fluttered—completely useless. By the time I’d hit the mat, I wasn’t breathing and my heart had stopped.
They told me Coach had jumped in and started CPR. The arena had an automated external defibrillator, and fortunately for me, someone had found it. Right there, on the mat where I’d just won the biggest match of my life, in front of fifteen thousand wrestling fans, my parents, and my girlfriend, they’d shocked my heart into working again.
At least enough that I hadn’t died.
After that, I’d been airlifted to the University of Iowa hospital, where I spent the night in ICU. I had no memory of any of it. All I could remember was winning, then pain, then waking up in a hospital bed with no idea what the hell had happened.
They’d run what seemed like an endless string of tests. Blood work. Chest X-rays. EKGs. Ultrasounds. Still, no one could tell me why my heart had suddenly quit working.
I was eighteen years old, in peak physical condition. The best wrestler in Iowa, a state where wrestling was everything. Clean diet. I’d never done drugs, or drank much. I hadn’t even been dehydrated. I’d had plenty of fluids after weigh-in. But for some reason, my heart had freaked the fuck out, and I’d almost died.
My parents had been here every day. Our home in Waverly was almost two hours away, so they’d been staying at a hotel nearby. The first few days, I’d been grateful to have them here. Waking up in a hospital and finding out my he
art had stopped had been terrifying.
But as the days had gone by—and we still didn’t have definitive answers—my parents’ presence had become stressful more than comforting. I knew they meant well, and I couldn’t blame them for being concerned. I was their son. But the worry lines etched in my mom’s forehead seemed to get deeper every day, and my dad paced all the time. They were keeping me on edge.
Every twinge or pinch in my chest made me nervous, but I tried to keep it to myself so they didn’t worry more. But I didn’t know if my heart was going to stop again. Until the doctors could tell us why it had happened, I was half-convinced I’d go to sleep one night and never wake up.
I was scheduled for one more test that day—a procedure the doctors had said should give us the final answers we needed. Knowing I’d had a ventricular fibrillation wasn’t good enough. We needed to know why.
And apparently that meant they were going to carve off a piece of my heart muscle.
They called it a myocardial biopsy. They were going to slice a tiny hole in my neck and thread a catheter through a blood vessel until it reached my heart. It sounded fucking awful, but if that’s what they had to do to find out what was wrong with me, I’d deal with it.
“How you doing there, Seb?” Dad asked. His arms were crossed and he stood near the door.
“Okay.” I glanced at Mom. She sat in a chair near the head of my bed. I hated seeing her so upset. But she’d watched her son collapse. His heart fail. That wasn’t the kind of thing a mom could brush off.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Mom, look at me. I’ll get this over with, and pretty soon they’ll tell us nothing is wrong and we can quit worrying.”
She met my eyes and I could tell she wanted to believe me. But she didn’t.
“Are you sure you’re not in any pain?” she asked.
“Nope,” I said. “Not at all.”
Dr. Senter, one of the cardiologists, came in and explained the procedure again. I nodded along as she spoke, but I already knew what to expect. My parents asked a few questions and next thing I knew, I was rolling down the hallway to a procedure room.
Bright lights blazed above me, and there was a lot of equipment—something that looked like a camera and a bunch of monitors.
“Hi, Sebastian,” one of the doctors said with a calm smile. She lowered the bed so I was lying flat. “I’m going to give you a mild sedative to help you relax, but it won’t put you to sleep.”
“Not too much of it,” I said. “I don’t like the way that stuff makes me feel.”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “You’re a big guy. And we need you to stay still. This might burn a little.”
The sedative flowed into the IV and a mild burning sensation spread through my hand. I focused on a spot on the ceiling, taking deep breaths to stay calm. In seconds, the sedative took effect. My limbs felt too heavy to move and my head swam. I blinked slowly at the ceiling, still staring at the same spot.
Activity swirled around me. I was half-aware of the doctor speaking, equipment being moved and adjusted. The needle stung my neck when they injected the local anesthetic, but I was too sleepy to worry about it.
“Okay, Sebastian, we’re going to get started now,” someone said. “Lie as still as you can.”
Even with my neck numb from the local, it hurt. A lot. I breathed in and out, willing my mind to focus on something else. I would not think about the incision in my neck, or the catheter being snaked through my blood vessel. I would not think about the little device that was about to harvest a sample of tissue from my heart.
I stared at the ceiling, detaching myself from the moment. Focused. Just breathing, in and out. My eyes locked on one spot.
There was nothing quick about it. I was used to being tested mentally—wrestling did that to you. But this tested me in ways I hadn’t expected. They worked, moving things, talking, watching the monitors, adjusting, trying again. It took almost an hour before they finally finished and a nurse held a compress to my neck to stop the bleeding.
Even with the sedative, my entire body was tense, my muscles rigid. My mind was fuzzy, making it difficult to use my usual tricks to stay calm.
They brought me back to my room and my parents stood, looking at me as if they’d been afraid I wouldn’t come back.
“He’ll be tired for a while,” someone said. “You should let him rest.”
Vaguely, I was aware of my parents telling me goodbye. My mom bending down to kiss my forehead. My dad saying something I knew I wouldn’t remember. Then I drifted off to sleep.
I woke up to an empty room and a very sore neck. I swore I could feel the entire route the catheter had taken, from the incision to my chest cavity. Groaning, I shifted, trying to get comfortable. But it wasn’t much use.
A nurse came in to check on me and just as she was leaving, a familiar face peeked around the curtain.
“Charlie?” I asked.
“Hey, McKinney,” he said.
Charlie Hall walked in, his thick body looking nondescript in street clothes—Iowa City West High School letterman’s jacket over a t-shirt and faded jeans. He kept his dirty blond hair cut short, although I’d seen him off-season, and he let it grow out a little then.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Not really sure yet, actually. Still waiting on some test results. Want to sit or anything?”
“Sure,” he said, lowering himself into one of the chairs next to the bed. “They sent out an email to all the families who were at state. It didn’t say much, other than you’d had some kind of heart problem, and you were here for treatment or something.”
“Not much treatment yet.” I lifted my hand with the IV. “Bunch of drugs. But they won’t know what to do until they figure out what caused it.”
“It’s brutal, man,” he said. “Look, you wrestled a great match. You deserved that win. I’m sorry about all this.”
“Thanks.”
“How much longer are you here?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it depends on what they find out.”
“Do you mind giving me your number?” He pulled out his phone. “Just, you know, so we can keep in touch. You can let me know what’s going on.”
“Sure, man.” I gave Charlie my number.
I was so surprised to see him here. Charlie and I didn’t know each other well, not outside of wrestling. We went to different schools, in cities far enough apart that our social circles didn’t cross. Yet, here he was. Cami had been here twice, and I’d been getting some texts from people at school, but none of my teammates or other friends had visited. Granted, Charlie lived here, in Iowa City. I guess that made it easier.
“You decide on a college yet?” he asked.
“U of I,” I said.
He grinned. “Me too. I guess next year we’ll be teammates. Assuming, you know…”
I glanced down at myself—at the hospital gown, the IV in the back of my hand. Since we didn’t know what had gone wrong, we didn’t know my prognosis. But there was one thing I knew for sure. I was going to be healthy enough to wrestle next year.
“Hell yeah, we will,” I said. “You’re going to have to cut some weight, though. I’m taking the top spot.”
“Oh, you think so?” he said. “We’ll see about that.”
It hurt when I laughed, but I didn’t care. Felt like I hadn’t laughed—or even smiled—since before state. I was glad Charlie had brought up wrestling. It was good to talk about something normal for a change. Not doctors and heart medications and test results.
Charlie hung out for a while longer and we shot the shit. Talked about school, and graduation, and what college was going to be like. He’d wanted to find an out-of-state school, but U of I had offered him a scholarship he couldn’t refuse. I was in the same boat.
He asked about Cami, and whether I thought we’d stay together. We were going to the
same school, so I figured we would. He’d broken up with his girlfriend before wrestling season had started—said it was too hard to keep her happy when he was focused on his sport. Now she was dating someone else, but he was over it. Ready to meet some college girls in the fall.
When he got up to leave, I thanked him for coming. But I didn’t think I’d done a good job of expressing how grateful I was. Having a normal conversation—with someone who assumed I’d get better and things would go back to normal—did a lot to ease the stress I’d been under since I’d woken up in the hospital.
I was a state champion wrestler. Say what you will, no other sport required as much focus. As much mental toughness. It was just you out there; no one else had your back. To win, you had to learn to dig deep, leave it all on the mat. And I was the best.
Charlie was right. I’d be his teammate next year. I had to be. I didn’t know what I’d do without wrestling.
The doctor came in earlier than we expected the next morning. My parents had arrived by nine, looking pale and haggard. Neither of them looked like they’d been sleeping much. Dad was tough. He’d been a wrestler too—state champ in his weight class. He held himself like the athlete he’d been, taking each bit of news as it came, staying focused on what was in front of him.
Mom, on the other hand, was softer. Dad often said she was made of feelings. It was hard to see her so concerned. But no matter how often I told her I was doing okay, the fear never left her eyes.
Dr. Senter had a folder of paperwork in her hands. She flipped through a few times after she’d said hello to me and my parents.
“Well, I have mostly good news,” Dr. Senter said. “The biopsy gave us the answers we need.”
I let out a breath. Finally.
“You have what’s called myocarditis. That basically means you have inflammation in your heart muscle. The inflamed tissue caused the electrical impulses that regulate your heartbeat to become erratic. The signals were too uncoordinated, so your heart stopped pumping.”
“What caused the inflammation?” Dad asked.
His Heart Page 3
