Heart on a Shoestring

by Marilyn Grey

  “So, then what?”

  “He called me one night. I almost had a heart attack. He knew who I was and still called me. A few minutes into the conversation he told me about this beautiful girl he liked and asked my advice for how to approach her. My heart probably stopped beating as I told him what a girl would like. Anyway, long story short, he ended up with her and I got depressed. That soon turned into a determination to become so beautiful and popular that he would regret his decision. So I had a bit of a transformation and showed up at school one day. No one recognized me. I felt so high on life. All the guys turned their heads. And by the end of the week I was drinking with the cool kids, who turned out to be not as cool as I imagined.”

  “Did he regret his decision?”

  “Who knows, but I got so into my new status that I made the biggest regret of my life. Well, several of them, including marijuana episodes, but there’s one that I just can’t forget.

  “My little brother was outside one morning. I was a junior in high school and loving life. He was watering the grass in the front yard when I pulled up and got out of my car. He liked watering plants and grass. He’d just stare at the stream of water for hours if we let him. He was really young at the time and I had already started ignoring him to be with my friends. When I got out of the car my brother started jumping up and down and making all kinds of weird sounds. Cool guy that I had a crush on pulled up to my house. Asked if I lived there. I said, ‘No,’ embarrassed of Max. He got out of the car and asked me out on a date. Then he started jumping up and down making fun of Max. I was worried he wouldn’t believe my lie if I didn’t make fun of Max too. So I did.”

  “This isn’t that bad, Miranda.” He seemed so sure. So sure of all my uncertainties. “It’s nothing compared to what I did.”

  “I’ve barely talked to Max since.” Tears dripped from my eyes, meddling with the rain. “He closed up, Derek. Even more than he was before. His counselor was just starting to get somewhere with him. Then he shut down. I’ll never forget his face that day. The hose fell to the ground, spraying him in the face. He panicked because he doesn’t like getting wet. I walked away, laughing and hiding my broken heart.” My voice rose and fell as I spoke with my fists clenched into balls. “Laughing. I laughed at him as he had a meltdown. My mom heard him and came outside but I was already driving away. All for what? For some guy who wanted to screw me. That’s it. Not even passionate love-making. He wanted to use my body and our conversations gave him a doorway into my pants. At least I wasn’t that stupid. Just stupid enough to hurt the sweetest kid in the world.”

  Derek stood in front of me and held my arms. I shoved the tears to a faraway land and looked into his eyes. The rain picked up, but we stayed there, staring at each other as the summer sky darkened. He ran his fingertips up and down my arms, then stopped on my hands. Rain tapped hard on the leaves around us. A rhythmic pulse. I bared my soul, my deepest regrets, and all I could think about was how bad I wanted him to kiss me. He leaned toward me. Pressed his body into mine and held me like a husband holds his wife. I consented. Allowing our bodies to touch when our lips couldn’t. For years I used guys as an escape from myself. My pain. My past. A kiss is all it took to send me into the stars, bouncing off the glowing fire balls from one romance to another. If you could call it romance.

  Derek pulled back, his shirt soaked and clinging to his obviously defined chest. I looked up, allowing the rain to land on my eyelids, my cheeks, my neck. And I inhaled the life around me.

  “My regrets are five-thousand and seventy times worse,” he said.

  A deep cry immersed from my heart. Then another. But he couldn’t tell. Our bodies were laden with the earths tears. Mine blended in. The tears I should’ve cried long ago. Instead of smiling as my brother screamed in the yard, wondering why his best friend made fun of him.

  Derek’s palm rested against my cheek. I placed my hand over top of his. The weight of the wind bore down on the trees as they crouched and swung in the howling sky. Throned in sheets of lightening, somber clouds hovered, taunting us. It wasn’t the wrestling sky that scared me. Or the fleeting thought of Dorothy carried in a breeze. It was the feeling I had, as the sea and the air became one, that perhaps I loved the man in front of me. Perhaps the warmth of his hand really was making me forget I was wet and cold. And scared.

  The storm hissed and wailed as Derek pulled me back to his garden. He shoved some bricks into the tent and pushed me inside, then followed after. We sat together. His body next to mine, close enough to feel his arm muscles move, but too far to hear him breathe. The night, alive and well, entertained us with its exploding thunder and etches of light.

  I didn’t fear the man sitting beside me.

  I feared my inability to give my heart fully, unadulterated, and guiltlessly to another soul. And no, it wasn’t the giving that petrified me. It was the forever that would bind my soul to another’s. That intimidated me even more than the crashing trees around us.

  Derek inched toward me and cupped my face. “You okay?”

  “Yes,” I said, but he couldn’t hear me over the whipping and lashing of nature.

  Lightening streaked the sky, imprinting shadows of trees on the fabric around us. I thought of Max and I huddled under blankets when we made shadow stories with our hands. I begged my parents for another sibling. I wanted a sister so bad. All boys. And I didn’t want to be the baby. Dad didn’t want another kid. Not sure he even wanted the ones he had.

  Max was an accident.

  When emotional storms swept through our house at night, they didn’t know I was listening. So many times I heard my father whisper in a tone so fierce it made me cringe, “One night of pleasure wasn’t worth a lifetime of autism.” My mother’s sobs climbed three flights of stairs and smoothed their way under the crack beneath my door. I’d creep into Max’s room and thankfully find him asleep, in peace, unaware of how unwanted he was.

  I could relate.

  Until I spoke the same lie into his heart that my father spoke into all of his children.

  You are not worth the love of another.

  Holding Max all those nights I told myself over and over, “Tuck your heart away, Miranda. Tuck it away and don’t let anyone in.” Now, after all those years of tucking away, my world was being changed by the man who only wore brown.

  Stranger things have happened, I suppose.

  Ch. 10 | Derek

  I held her until she fell asleep. The storm settled as she rested in my hands. I couldn’t believe it. She opened up and gave me a piece of herself and by the uncontrollable tears, I had a feeling I was the first guy besides her brother and brother-from-another-mother that ever saw her cry. Her regrets may not have been half as repulsive as mine, but you always feel like your scars are the deepest because they’re your own. Pain isn’t comparable. My measuring stick doesn’t work for anyone else but me. Which is why I’ve never been a fan of the “suck it up” mentality.

  I watched her sleep as long as I could. Wanting to rub her face, but afraid she wouldn’t like it. She rustled a few times and her hair fell, like a blanket over her eyes. I moved the fading green strands of hair behind her shoulder and zeroed in on her lips. Slightly open. Relaxed. Looking quite kissable.

  Women are off limits, I reminded myself. They brought nothing but problems.

  I rolled onto my back and listened to the slight tap of rain. Probably falling from the thirsty wisteria vines above us. Miranda was a quiet and still sleeper. Not like Ashleigh. That girl always stole the covers and snored louder than most men I knew. She was gorgeous. Although her personality quickly made her the ugliest person I’d ever known. Funny how the most beautiful people in the world aren’t always the types to gloss the covers of magazines and yet most people spend their lives trying to turn heads.

  David Bennett knew all about arrogant and attention-seeking pride. I could see it so clear. Images of my former self, trying to be cool, and succeeding, only to regret every moment I lived without my h
eart. Fun, sure. But not authentic. Life without the heart is cold and lonely, no matter how many people fill your apartment.

  I spent too much of my life like a thanksgiving turkey. Filled to the brim, but dead.

  Miranda moved closer to me. I turned my head. Such beauty staring back at me. A woman in the middle of the night. Something about it could ruin me if I let it. All inhibitions are gone in the middle of the night. Or is it just me? I had a tendency to bare my soul when the lights went down. Especially tempting with her. The way she looked right now. Stripped from all of her masks. Vulnerable and real. A real woman. I don’t think I’d ever been so close to something so beautiful.

  She touched my arm. “Derek?”

  I nodded.

  She sat up and traced my brow with her hand, then ran her fingers through my hair. I tried not to look at her. I’m not known for my self-control and she was pushing buttons I didn’t know I had. I loved her eyes. They changed depending on the colors she wore. Or her hair color. Right now they looked grey.

  “Why so serious?” I said.

  “Do you think I’m pretty?” This wasn’t a question. It was a need. When I didn’t answer she pressed her fingers against the tips of mine and said, “Because you seem like you’re just trying to change who I am. Like every other guy I’ve ever known.”

  I ignored the physical sensations as her hand touched mine. “I’m not trying to change you. Blue, pink, brown hair. Doesn’t matter much to me. I’m trying to help you find out who Miranda really is. Not the version of you that depends on what other people like. And definitely not the version that rebels against what other people like. Just you.”

  “So.” She pulled a damp piece of hair in front of her face and held it there. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  I closed my eyes. “Doesn’t matter what men think of you.”

  She curled up beside me and pressed her chin into my shoulder. “It matters what this man thinks of me.”

  That’s it. Everything she did in that moment worked together to activate a switch inside of me. To tackle my self-control and detonate a bomb that would destroy any chance of love. Not that I loved Miranda. I couldn’t. Well, I did love her. Not romantically. Not yet. I couldn’t.

  Could I?

  All I knew is if our lips touched … the temptations would outnumber me. I’d fall into the trap and regret it. If I did love her, or could love her, it needed to be the right way. I will never forget the day Ella walked in on me and Sophie Monahan making out on the basement couch. I was seventeen. Ella was in eighth grade, I think. She smirked and with such certainty declared, “The door to a woman’s heart is not her vagina.”

  From that day on I remembered her words every time my hands wandered a woman’s body and I knew, without a doubt, that if I continued I’d soon enter the wrong door and end up with nothing more than another dent in my heart. Except for Ashleigh. I left her with more than a dent. A blow so hard my heart barely functioned anymore. And if it did, I didn’t know it.

  Miranda deserved better.

  She fell asleep against me. Her chest expanding and hitting my arm. Eventually, after torturing myself with dreams of kissing her, I fell asleep too.

  The slightest hint of daybreak and I could no longer sleep. So I watched Miranda until she woke up and without much time to think, she supported her head on her hand and said, “Do you believe in God?”

  I shrugged. “Good morning to you too.”

  “Oh, good morning. So do you?”

  I put both hands behind my head. “Do you always wake up with profound questions on your mind?”

  “It’s not profound. Just like asking if you believe in aliens or not. Yes or no?”

  “It’s more complicated for me.”

  “How? You either believe God exists or you don’t? Evolution? Big Bang? What do you believe?”

  “Why do I get the feeling I’m being attacked before I’ve had a chance to open my eyes?”

  She sat up, crossed one leg over the other, and leaned back. “I’m serious, Derek. I want to know.”

  I sighed, then gulped. I didn’t know. Truth is, I didn’t want to know. If God existed then I’d go straight to hell anyway, so I preferred ignoring the question altogether.

  “Well,” she said. “I believe in him and I realized on this little vacation that I miss him. The storm made me think of him.”

  “How do you miss an invisible person?”

  “Clearly you don’t know God.”

  I sat up too. “Clearly. So there’s your answer. If I don’t know him, how can I believe in him?”

  “Exactly.” She pat my shoulder. “You need to get to know him.”

  “And how do you get to know invisible things?”

  “First, you realize he’s not invisible and go on a quest to discover how he makes himself visible.”

  I rubbed my temples. “I’m not a stupid guy. At least I don’t think I am, but it’s debatable. This is too much for me to think about though. I’d much rather talk about the weather.”

  She unzipped the tent and stepped out. “Weather is nice. Damp ground. Sunny sky. From what I can see.”

  I stepped out and she wrapped her hand around my forearm. Couldn’t help but notice the increase in her touches.

  “You know,” she said. “You helped me get rid of a ton of stuff from my bag of burdens. I’m thankful for you, but I wish you’d release yours. Whatever you’re hiding. I can see it.”

  “I’m hiding a past that’s darker and worse than anything you can imagine, and if your God is real he definitely hates me.”

  “Doubt it.”

  “I don’t.”

  She let me have the last word. Thankfully. I made her breakfast as she watched me. Never took her eyes off. I felt like a piece of art hanging crooked on a wall. The kind people stare at for hours trying to make up abstract meanings for every stroke when really the guy just slapped some paint on a canvas to pay his rent.

  “They say every cynical person is really just a discouraged idealist,” I said.

  Miranda laughed. “Who told you that?”

  “Ella told me once. In case you haven’t noticed she tends to be a little on the idealistic side. I always told her she hoped for things that would leave her hopeless. She insisted that I was idealistic too, except she said I gave up easily and turned my unfulfilled dreams into cynicism.”

  “And you believed her or no?” She held up her hand. “Wait. I’m gonna guess no.”

  “I’m a skeptical optimist.”

  She smiled. “Or a hopeful pessimist?”

  Ch. 11 | Miranda

  After breakfast under the magical wisteria heaven, I took my journal and went for a short walk alone. Derek hiked somewhere too. In the opposite direction. I asked him to stay close in case I got scared. He laughed, but I trusted him.

  I had so many guy friends throughout life that my closeness with Derek didn’t strike me as odd, but I was starting to feel like the platonic level had somehow vanished. Or perhaps never existed at all. When we looked at each other something was different. And I found myself wanting to say, “I love you,” during various moments, but I refrained. Not even sure I knew what love was.

  It’s a fine word.

  Love.

  A word I tossed around many times before. A word I never tried to understand before tainting it with guys who didn’t know how to live from their heart.

  Derek scared me. Not because he was a bad guy. Or a mean person. He scared me because he had tucked his heart so far inside of him that I feared I would fall in love with him and he wouldn’t be able to return the favor. I know because I did it to so many other guys. I’ll never forget the night I broke up with Mark over the phone. He showed up at my door in tears. Kind of annoyed, I tried to get him to leave, but he insisted we talk about everything. So we sat in his car and he made me tell him why I thought it wouldn’t work between us. I gave him a few reasons and he rebutted them all with things like, “I can change. People change.” I finall
y walked away that night and felt horrible. Honestly. I didn’t like breaking hearts, but I guess that’s part of my own selfishness. My preference to protect myself at the cost of others. I stayed single for a while after Mark. Didn’t want to hurt anyone else and only dated people who obviously didn’t want anything serious. Somehow I managed to keep my wall up and prevent love from seeping through the cracks.

  I didn’t blame him Derek. I understood. Whatever happened in his past had left its fangs in his flesh.

  But I wanted to know him.

  I sat down against a tree by the lapping water and pressed my pen into the blank page. The only way I knew how to process my feelings was by story. So I began.

  June 11

  The Adventures of Turtle and Lizzy

  Never in a million years did Lizzy ever think she’d find a creature as intriguing as Turtle. He often retreated into his shell out of fear. Not sure what he feared, but Lizzy found herself sitting by him and waiting for him to embrace the world around him.

  It seemed, however, that Lizzy spent most of her time stroking his back and waiting for something that would never happen. Had she not done that so many times before with various other creatures, perhaps she would have experienced a wee more hope.

  Turtle helped Lizzy. Now Lizzy wanted to help Turtle. Not because she felt bad and wanted to repay him. Not at all. She just wanted Turtle to be happy. Maybe she had already fallen in love with him. Crazy how love can sneak up on you when you’re not paying attention. Like a basketball left on a staircase. Step on it when your joyfully skipping down the steps and you fall. Head first. And love catches you. Like a safety net you never knew existed.

  That’s something Lizzy enjoyed. Most creatures took baby steps down the canyon, across the canyon, and back up the canyon. Even the birds feared their wings and walked with the other animals. Not Lizzy. She took one look at the other side and knew she’d rather die leaping than spend her life walking to the other side and possibly never make it.