Damaged Hearts

by Andi Bremner

  I concentrated on the lettering and tried not to think about the woman in the back room. But it was hard. Impossible. And I couldn’t help but think.

  Think about the first time I saw her. She was only a freshman, but she was such a talented artist that Mr. Schofield had organized for her to join our senior art class and she’d arrived one day after school, her hair all scruffy around her face, freckles scattered in wild disarray across her face, and a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles parked on top of her nose. She’d looked like a fish out of water—young. The guys around me had chuckled and muttered something about jail bait that she’d obviously heard. Then there were other comments about special privileges and something about the mayor’s daughter. Her freckles, which were a pale-orange color, had darkened and then spread out over her cheeks and down her throat at having heard their words, but she never said a thing. She just set up her easel and canvas and silently got to work.

  I’d painted countless images of her over the years, but my favorite was by far the one I’d done that night when I’d gotten home. I’d used just pencils and it was only A3 size, but I’d captured the wide-eyed look on her face and the dark stains on her pale skin. Years later, I’d recognize it as the moment I fell in love with her. The moment I realized the sweet girl was full of layers. That the good girl, the mayor’s daughter who lived in the fancy house, was also confident, talented, and stubborn. That I’d never stop loving her and that she’d captured my heart the day she showed up in class. Without me ever realizing it.

  Of course, there were other memories too. Of the nights we spent together, later when we were officially a couple. The arguments between myself and her dad, between Gillian and her dad. The tears, the negotiations, the blackmails. There were the tender moments between us that warmed my heart on the cold nights I’d spent overseas in war zones. Then there were the memories of when it all went wrong. When the future we’d hoped, and dreamed of, was snatched away from us cruelly.

  The door opened behind me, and I stiffened, knowing that she must have emerged from the bathroom. Pressing my lips together, I focused more intently on the work I was doing. The longer I could avoid looking at her, the longer I could keep it together. The longer I could keep myself fixed in the place where the past was behind me, where the past didn’t matter anymore.

  “How are you feeling?” Miranda asked her. “Any better?”

  “I think I ate some bad curry,” she muttered, “last night.”

  “You poor thing. Take the day off. Go home, rest, sleep it off. You never take time off and I owe you big time.”

  “I think I will. Thanks.”

  I inhaled sharply, fighting the desperate urge I had to turn around and look at her, to let her know with my eyes that I understood. That I was there too. That I felt the pain she felt. It was only when I heard the front door jingle that I looked up, only to see the back of the girl I loved walking away from me for the second time.

  Chapter Five

  Gillian

  I called my mom as soon as I was home, safe in the confines of my apartment.

  “Gillian,” she said coolly when she picked up, “so good to hear from you.” I heard the comment for what it was. Part delight but mostly criticism. I rarely called.

  “Sorry it’s been a while,” I said dutifully. “I’ve been busy.”

  “You’re always busy,” she replied. “A phone call every now and then wouldn’t go astray, you know. Just so we know you are still alive.”

  I bit my tongue, biting back the retort I had. There was no point getting into an argument with her. I would never win. “Anyhow, how are you?”

  “I’m good,” she said, “and your father is well, too.”

  I never asked about my dad, but my mom made it a point to tell me. A therapist had once suggested it might be best if I cut all ties with my mom and dad, that I needed to focus on building healthy relationships and not wasting time on dysfunctional ones. I’d considered it, thought long and hard about it, but eventually decided I couldn’t do it. Even after everything, my mom was still my mom. She was still the woman who’d driven me to countless after-school dance classes, who’d paid for extra art tuition, who’d baked cakes for the PTA stall and volunteered as a soccer coach when no one else would. We lost every game that season, but it was still my favorite time of my short-lived soccer career. And besides, there was more than just my mom and dad to give up. If I gave up on them, then I would also be giving up my sister Catherine and her family. I might not have any affection for my parents anymore, but I still loved my sister.

  “Good. I was wondering—”

  “Are you going to be here for Christmas? Your Aunt Bernie is flying in to spend Christmas with us. She’s making the effort.”

  Again. Another dig. “I’ll see. What I really want was to ask you about the Sayers.”

  I held my breath and heard the long silence that accompanied my statement on the other side of the phone. It had been years since I’d mentioned their name to my mom and I wasn’t sure how she’d react.

  “Why do you ask?” Her voice was tight.

  “I was just wondering.” I paused. “You know, it’s coming up on another anniversary—”

  “When are you going to stop rehashing all this, Gillian?” she interrupted. “Honestly, I don’t think it is at all healthy for you to be constantly dragging up the past.”

  “I just want to know,” I replied tightly, “if you’d heard anything about them. About Alex.”

  Again, there was silence on the other end of the phone. I had no idea how my mother did it, but she had some uncanny ability to transfer her moods over the phone without saying a word. It wasn’t body language because I obviously couldn’t see her and it wasn’t anything she said. It was like she was psychic, able to transcend across two hundred miles and ten years.

  And I knew, right now, my mother was angry.

  “Mom, I’m just asking…”

  “I know you’re asking,” she snapped. “And you’ll be asking after that god-forsaken family for the rest of your life. I don’t know anything, okay? I heard a while back that he was out of the army and that his brother was out of prison. You knew his brother was in prison, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” I knew Dylan had been in prison, and my mom knew I knew this. She just liked to say things repetitively to make a point.

  “He went to prison”—she wasn’t done on this point yet—“for armed robbery.”

  “It was a toy gun.”

  “No one knew that! For all anyone knew he could have been brandishing a real weapon. Is this the family you are so fixated on, Gillian? Is this the family you would choose over your own?”

  I bit my tongue and stared at the ceiling. Then I counted to ten. Then I tried to think of three things that made me happy. The beach. The stars on a cloudless night. My baby.

  I started again. The beach. The stars. Alex.

  Third time lucky. The beach. The stars—

  “Gillian? Are you still there?”

  I refocused on the phone call and my purpose. “Yes. I’m here. So, you don’t know anything about Alex? Why he left the army?”

  “He probably left because he couldn’t be bothered anymore.” She snorted. “He was always selfish. I only wish you’d been able to see it.”

  I was getting nowhere in this phone call and regretted even reaching out to my mom. I should have known better. I did know better, but I hadn’t been thinking clearly. I’d reacted, which is what I always did when it came to Alex.

  “I’ve gotta go, Mom.”

  “What? That’s it?”

  “Is there anything you wanted to say?”

  “Are you coming back for Christmas? It’s been years since you had Christmas with us. We are your family, you know, whether you like it or not. And we’re all you’ve got.”

  I rung off.

  Then I opened the fridge and searched through the contents until I found what I was looking for. Wine. After speaking to my mother, I really, really
needed a glass of wine.

  Chapter Six

  Alex

  I sat in my car out the front of Gillian’s house for about thirty minutes before I mustered up the courage to get out. It was a quaint house, a cottage, with a neat, kept garden and lace curtains hanging in the windows. It was so Gillian.

  Closing my eyes, I pictured a Gillian from long ago. The delighted look on her face, the way her eyes sparkled. I used to think that was the way she looked at everyone, but I soon realized it was reserved just for me. And what made it ten times better was that she didn’t even know she did it. It came from deep inside her, and was completely unconscious, which made it even more precious.

  I’d looked up her home address on the computers at Ink Addicted. At first I wasn’t sure I should come and see her, but then I decided I had to. I wanted, needed this job, and therefore we needed to find some way of working together. I also didn’t like the way she’d gotten sick on seeing me. I was ass for not checking on her straight away, but I thought it would be best to give her some space. And besides, I wasn’t sure I was the best person to comfort her. I might have been once, but now…

  After a while of just sitting there and thinking, I noticed one of the neighbors had come out. She was an older woman and she craned her neck to see what I was doing. It probably looked like I was scoping the joint out. I didn’t exactly come across as a wholesome guy or a charity doorknocker—I never had—so I needed to decide whether I should leave or get out and confront the past that I’d never wanted to confront.

  Making my way up the path to Gillian’s house felt like the longest walk of my life. I remembered another walk, years ago, behind the tiny, white coffin that carried both our hearts. I remembered hearing the words, the tears, and the sobs through a long tunnel—some of them mine, some of them Gillian’s. I remembered holding Gillian tightly, holding on as if just having her in my arms would bring back what we’d both lost. But it didn’t work. We couldn’t hold on to her. We couldn’t even hold on to each other.

  Knocking on the door, I waited, and then, mere seconds—or was it years?—later, she opened the door.

  Gillian.

  She was thinner than I remembered. She’d lost the soft curves she used to have, the full breasts and hips. Now, she was more angular, her shoulder blades jutting out beneath the soft gray t-shirt she wore. Her arms were well defined and I suspected she worked out, a thought which made me smile. Who would’ve imagined Gillian Crown in a gym?

  Her face had aged too. She was still under thirty, but there were faint lines around her eyes which were wizened beyond her years. The freckles, which I’d loved so much, were still scattered across her nose, and her hair, which she’d always worn long, was now cut short around her shoulders. There were tattoos on her arms and I noted one poking out from the top of her t-shirt. I wondered what she’d chosen to ink on her body since the last time I’d seen it. I knew there was a cherry blossom on her stomach that stretched around to her back and a dove on her ankle. I knew about those tattoos because I’d done them. Years ago. In that other life.

  “Alex,” she said simply, “come in.”

  “You were expecting me?” I followed her in, waiting as she closed the door behind us. Her home smelled like strawberries and vanilla which sent a pang of familiarity right to my core.

  “I figured you’d come by,” she said with a slight shrug. “I thought you might give me today, though. To, you know, get over the shock.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know. I mean Miranda said a girl called Gillian worked for her but I never thought…”

  She waved her hand away. “Of course not.”

  And that was that.

  We stood in the doorway for a long moment, staring at one another. There was a time when I knew exactly what Gillian was thinking. I knew if she was hungry, if she was tired, if she wanted another tattoo or to lock herself away in her room and paint undisturbed for hours on end. If she wanted me to kiss her or fuck her or just wrap my arms around her and hold her.

  “Anyhow,” I began lamely, “how are you?”

  She laughed. It was an odd sound, a fake, hollow laugh, but despite its lack of humor, she chuckled loudly, wiping the tears that fell to her cheeks. “How am I?” she said after a long moment. “I have no words, Alex. I’m shocked. I’m upset. I’m scared. I’m nervous. I’m hurt and I’m so incredibly, incredibly sad that it’s hard to find the right words. That’s how I am. Even now, after all these years, that’s how I am.”

  I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about,” she cut me off. “Nothing.”

  “I should never have left you…”

  “You were young. I was falling apart. We were both grieving. We were both confused and scared. You did nothing wrong by leaving.”

  I stared at the ground. Her words were meant to comfort me, to make it okay that I left, but they did the complete opposite. They reminded me of my weakness. They reminded me that in her moment of need, our moment of need, I ran. I packed up and I left. I joined the army and traveled as far away from Gillian and the whole situation as I could. I traveled to hell and it still wasn’t far enough away to forget.

  “I guess I thought you would be better off without me,” I said. “You know, if I wasn’t there then your relationship with your parents could get back on track.”

  “My parents.” She snorted. “My dad. You really think I would have anything to do with my dad after what he did?”

  “He was just trying to protect you.”

  “He murdered my baby,” she said, her voice sharp, so sharp that I flinched at the harshness and the truth in her words. “He murdered our baby.”

  We were both silent. Thoughtful. Thinking of the life we’d both lost, the little part of me and the little part of her that was completely and utterly innocent and perfect and yet had been caught up in the hostilities between my family and Alex’s.

  “Gillian—”

  “Where have you been?” she asked suddenly, pushing past me and heading further into the house. “I heard you’d joined the army.”

  “I had. I did. Spent eight years serving overseas, eight years trying to forget.”

  She stared at me. “And did you?”

  “No. I never did.”

  She drew a breath and stared at her feet for the longest moment. When she looked back up, her eyes were filled with tears. “Alex…”

  “I go by Joe now,” I told her, “Joseph Spalding.”

  “Your middle name and your mother’s name.”

  I shrugged. “I wanted to put some distance between myself and my family. Didn’t ever want them to find me again.”

  I wanted to tell her more. Tell her that I hadn’t seen my dad and my brothers since the day I left town and signed up. I wanted to tell her that I had left them all behind. That I was no longer a part of that family, that I’d been working all this time to make myself somehow worthy for her, for her family, only to realize that I would never be. I’d spent all those years running and I would run no more. Now it was time to return to the world of the living, albeit in baby steps, but I was determined.

  “Oh.” She frowned and looked like she wanted to say more before she changed the subject. “So, you ended up here.”

  I nodded and couldn’t help the smile that came over my lips at the irony. Of all the towns, in all the states in this massive country of ours, I’d chosen the same town as she had to start over in. I couldn’t even say for sure what had made me unpack my duffle bag here, what had made me rent an apartment for the first time in eight years, and buy a toaster and a coffee machine. There was something about it, something about the streets lined with magnolia trees, the quaint stores, the smiles on the residents’ face as they walked down the main street. I knew I’d wanted to live here before I even realized, and then I saw the tattoo studio, and it felt like I was meant to be here.

  “I can leave,” I said suddenly without even thinking. “I mean, if this is
going to be awkward for you I can and I will leave.”

  She peeked up at me from under her lashes. “Where would you go?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Gillian looked to be considering the idea, which made my heart sink. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t even want to leave her.

  “No. You don’t have to leave,” she said eventually. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

  I glanced around her house now, taking in the simple furnishings, how tidy and homely it was. The walls were adorned with painted canvases that I knew she’d done. I wandered over to them. “Yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Beautiful,” I murmured, examining the first one. It was of a pair of hands, an old woman and a young child. She’d painted them in strong bold brush strokes, the colors bright and colorful. What would otherwise be a poignant image was somehow made joyous and hopeful by her use of color. But that was Gillian for you. Always full of hope and joy. Or at least she had been. Once upon a time.

  Chapter Seven

  Gillian

  It was surreal to see Alex —Joe—in my house. Standing in my living room, his massive frame dominating the small space and overwhelming me. How many times had I dreamed of this moment? How many times in the past ten years had I imagined seeing Alex again, hearing his voice, feeling his arms around me, crushing my head to his chest and inhaling deeply? How many times had I woken up in the middle of the night breathless, hot, and achy with need only to reach for him and find the bed beside me cold and empty?

  Now he was examining my art, moving from the hands to the empty basket. Most of my furniture was white, and I kept things simple, the only signs of color in my house coming in the form of my artwork. In the back, the bright sunny studio which I’d added to the house only last year was where I spent my weekends.