And the most awful thing was…I wanted so badly to talk to Kat about him.
God, I fucking missed her. And a part of me still hoped this was one big joke, one long nightmare I could wake up from. Kat would be there, sitting on her bed, and I would tell her all about it. We’d make jokes, and she’d say something like you can’t get rid of me that easily. She would laugh and tell me how stupid I was being.
But those thoughts were only delusions in my head.
In a parallel universe, another Kat was alive. Maybe parallel-Audra stopped her from going to the party. Maybe that version of myself demanded Kat was required to stay in and mope with me, as per our friendship agreement.
This possibility tore through my chest like a rocket, sending waves of pain that hurt so much, I wanted to pass out just to feel relief.
Mom wrapped her arm around my shoulder and rubbed it, making me feel ten years old, but I didn’t mind because I was too sad to care.
Kat had said she expected dozens of people to show up to her funeral—she’d been right. The seats were filling up, and there had to be at least fifty people in attendance. She’d always been popular. Everyone liked her—okay, not entirely true. She knew how to be a bitch, and she pissed a few people off along the way. But all in all, Kat was a good person. Easy to like. Easy to miss.
“Honey,” Mom whispered, moving her arm.
“Hmm?” I blinked at her through the fog in my vision.
She nodded behind me. I swiveled in the seat, expecting to see someone I knew—a high school friend maybe. But when I looked up, it wasn’t someone I’d shared a lunch period with or gone to a volleyball game with.
“Jake.” It was the first real word I’d spoken in over an hour.
He wore a pair of simple black pants with a button-up black shirt. Hands stuck into his pockets, he pulled his lips upward halfheartedly. “Hey. Is this seat open?”
I looked at the empty seat beside me and nodded.
Without saying anything else, Jake sat and gave me a sideways glance.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered, trying to keep my voice steady.
“I thought you might need a friend.”
I clasped the unused tissue tighter. “I really hate funerals.”
His lopsided smile sent shivers through my deadened heart.
Jake leaned closer. “I like the music. Those funerals where they opt not to play anything over the speaker system? They’re so quiet. It’s like you have to tiptoe around, making sure you don’t wake the dead.”
If it were a different day, I would’ve agreed.
“I can’t go back in time and go to Emily’s, but…if I can be here for you and for your friend, maybe I can somehow…redeem myself for not being there when I should’ve been.”
“You drove forty-five minutes to attend the funeral of a girl you met once. In a doorway.”
His hand found mine, warm and so much bigger. Interlocking our fingers, he said, “I hope it’s coming across as sweet, rather than stalkerish.”
I wanted to laugh for the first time that day, but I wasn’t quite there yet. “The former.”
Squeezing my hand, he leaned over and kissed my forehead. I sucked in air and turned to look at him, but his gaze shifted to the pew in front of us. His presence settled the part of me that had vibrated around all day like a shrieking alarm clock unwilling to shut up, and I could finally breathe again.
The preacher or priest—or whichever—started talking. I never could keep them straight. “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”
I tried not to listen to everything he said. Sometimes it got to be too much, and I wanted to scream from all the bottled sobs. Jake’s hand never left mine as the service continued.
“The truth is,” the man addressing the crowd said, “you will grieve forever.”
Maybe he could’ve lied to us instead?
“You will never be able to replace what your heart lost. You will be broken, but you will mend. You’ll never recover from your loss, but your heart will be repaired. You’ll never be the same afterward. But why would you want to be?”
He continued with a quote by Epicurus, an ancient Greek philosopher. “’Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?’”
I was never afraid of death—of dying.
I was never afraid of my death.
That day, when Kat and I talked about our funerals, she’d said, “If I die first, you’re going to give my eulogy, right?”
“No way,” I’d said immediately. “I’d burst into tears. It would be awful to watch. You wouldn’t want me defiling your memory like that.”
“Oh please. Who else is going to stand up there and tell everyone how awesome I was?”
“Your future husband?” I’d suggested, throwing popcorn at her head. “Your son or daughter? Someone who has better public speaking skills than me?”
That had earned me an eye roll. “I don’t care who else is in my future. They won’t be able to say they knew me when. Not like you. You have to promise you’ll give my eulogy if I die first. And make it epic. I don’t care if you cry. In fact, I hope you cry.”
I’d made her a promise. I had no choice but to stand in front of all these people—most of whom I knew—and give them the eulogy Kat would’ve wanted.
“Kat and I met in the fourth grade,” I said, after giving myself instructions on how to breathe. In. Out. Slower. In. Out. In. Out. “We were making turkeys out of construction paper for a project and while I wasn’t looking, she glued all of my pieces together in the wrong spots. She’d pretty much ruined it. And when I asked her why she did it…she looked at me with the biggest, saddest eyes and said, ‘Your pieces were better than mine.’ And then she started crying.” In. Out. “I can’t tell you why I bought that line of crap, but I did.” I laughed hoarsely to myself, looking at the wooden beams running across the ceiling. Kat had always been good at using the puppy dog look to get out of things, even back then.
“From that moment on, we were inseparable,” I said, still looking up, still trying to keep my shit together. “It was almost like we had ESP, the way we understood each other, the way we were always connected. And I…” I lowered my chin. Squeezed my eyes shut. Ignored the pounding of my heart.
I was supposed to die first—before everyone I knew, everyone I loved. Those were the cards life had given me. Then fate was altered, leaving an invisible hole in my heart more catastrophic than the one I’d been born with.
I opened my eyes and looked out at the people, over the tops of their heads. “And…she would be really pissed off if she knew I said this but…there’s not a thing in this world I wouldn’t give to trade places with her.”
My gaze found Jake, but when it did, he dropped his head, lowered his eyes, despair crumpling his beautiful features.
And I cried.
Chapter Nineteen
“Do you want to get a coffee or something?” Jake asked after the funeral was over.
Despite everything, the thought of something as simple as coffee with Jake still did stupid things to my heart. “I would, but I’m going over to my parents’ for dinner.”
Mom’s voice interrupted from behind us. “You’re more than welcome to invite him, honey.”
I fixed my face into flat lines as soon as she said it, hoping I wouldn’t blush like a ten-year-old caught playing with her mother’s makeup. “Uh,” I sputtered, watching Jake’s lips curve into a smile. I understood that particular smile—he was laughing at me. Oh man. “Yeah, I mean, you could come over—if you wanted, but it’s totally cool if you don’t.”
Mom, what the hell are you doing? God, I hoped my mental signals were getting through. Jake and I aren’t even dating. He does not want to come over for dinner.
But my ESP only ever worked with Kat.
“Would you like to come over, Jake?” Mom asked him directly this time, bypassing me.
He’d lo
st most of his smile. Ha! See how that spotlight feels? Not so good.
“Well, if no one is going to object, let’s get going,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’ll see you both there.” And she disappeared into the thinning crowd.
“What did you do?” I asked him.
“Me?” His brows pulled together. “You’re related to her. It was your responsibility to tell her no.”
“Did you just make that up?”
“’Course not.”
I eyed him. “Uh-huh. You’re wrong, though. You were supposed to say you were busy. Thanks, but I have to go feed my bunny. You know, something like that.”
“How is that better?” Jake asked.
“Or, ooh, you have pet snails. You have to feed your pet snails.”
“How is that better?”
I shrugged. “Snails are low maintenance. They fit you.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
I nodded and broke away to say my good-byes. I kept it to Kat’s immediate family. Five minutes to say good-bye and try not to cry anymore. Smile. Try to be happy. It was hard enough not to run from the room, knowing fresh air and relief were on the other side of that door.
Jake and I didn’t talk as we climbed into his truck and headed to my parents’ house. The ride was short, and when we were coming up on their street I said, “Most dudes would’ve bailed. Like, immediately.” Maybe even boyfriends. “You want to have dinner with my parents, don’t you?” I shifted my body sideways, pinning him with a look.
“I wouldn’t go that far.” He glanced away from the road.
“Turn right up here. Why else would you agree to this?”
“Maybe I’m hoping your mom will pull out the baby pictures.”
Oh, she wouldn’t do that, she—
She would.
I untied my hair and retied it, just for something to do with my hands as we pulled into the driveway. My parents had never met any of my boyfriends—although I only had one that counted.
But Jake wasn’t my boyfriend.
“Am I smiling too much again?”
“Huh?” I turned at Jake’s question.
“You look nervous. Is it my smiling?” There was no trace of a smile to be found.
I stared, confused for a few beats—and then began laughing—a frenzied sound that was thick with sadness.
His lips strained to one side, considering. He said, “Better,” and climbed out of the truck.
I’d sat at this dinner table so many times, but never with a guy who I wished more than anything would kiss me again. Adding in the fact that we just returned from my best friend’s funeral—it was awkward, to say the least.
Dinner with the parents always sounded terrible to me. All that small talk? All those interview-type questions? No, thank you. I’d rather drive a drill through my eye.
But Jake responded to every one of Mom’s and Dad’s questions like it didn’t bother him. Granted, they kept their questions to school and work and campus—but how did it not bother him that this was so weird?
Jake didn’t like talking to people. Sometimes he didn’t even like talking to me.
“Honey, is something wrong?” Mom asked.
I blinked up from my vacant stare at the peas on my plate. “What? No.” I glanced at Jake, who smirked.
This made no sense.
“I’m good,” I said, putting on a smile.
After dinner, Mom insisted Jake and I didn’t need to help clean up, so we went out to the back porch.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked him after shutting the sliding glass door.
“The food was good.” He smiled.
I buttoned my coat and stuck my hands into my pockets to protect them from the wind. “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“Family dinners don’t seem like your kind of thing.”
He chuckled and dragged one foot against the wood. “You remember my theory about people showing up late?”
“I don’t know if I’d call that a theory, but I remember.”
“I have another theory.”
“Oh?” I stepped off the patio onto the grass, motioning for him to follow.
“I think people have no choice but to be themselves when they’re around their parents,” he said, catching up to me. “You can’t hide who you are.”
I eyed him. “So you thought I was lying to you about who I am?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Okay. Say I believe you. Did your theory prove anything?”
Jake turned away from me, but not before I saw his smile. “It did.”
I stopped walking, unwilling to go farther until he spit it out already. “What did it prove?”
Dead leaves crackled beneath his feet when he turned back to me. “Smiling isn’t the only thing that makes you nervous.”
“Uh-huh. Glad your experiment worked out for you.”
“So am I.”
What would meeting his parents prove? Anything?
I continued toward the tree house at the back of the property. Jake kept pace beside me.
I shoved the old tree house door open. The wood creaked, showing its old age, and I stepped inside. “My dad was disappointed they never had a boy, I think. He built me this tree house when I was eight. But it was originally up in the air. You had to walk up a few steps to get to it, and I was scared of heights. I may have cried once or twice. So he ended up taking it down and rebuilding it directly on the grass.”
Jake trailed me inside the small structure. Two wooden stools sat inside next to the simple square window.
“Kat and I practically lived in here,” I said, running my hand over the roughened wood. It was our live-in Barbie Dreamhouse, minus the dream. The dreams only existed in our heads.
“Are you still afraid of heights?” he asked, leaning against the planks that formed the walls.
I shrugged, biting on my lower lip. The only reason I got over most of that fear was because Kat never had it, and I thought she was brave. I’d wanted to be brave, too. “Maybe a little.”
I stared out the window at the thinning trees, thinking of the days Kat and I spent in the tree house until Jake spoke, interrupting my reminiscing.
“What’s this?”
He pointed at an engraving of the letters KAAA in one of the wood planks. Kat and I did that one night when we were fifteen, right after Billy Jacobson broke up with her and we decided we didn’t need boys. “K, triple A,” I said. “Kat and Audra Always. It was our thing.” BFF was too common, too boring. “K, triple A” had a nice ring to it.
“Creative.” Jake smiled, but after another moment it disappeared as if it hadn’t existed at all. “I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like.”
“What?”
“Having a childhood where a tree house was a possibility.”
I stared at him, but he kept watching the chair like it might do a trick. My fingers itched to reach out to him again, but I couldn’t. And that didn’t make me brave. It made me a coward.
“You were lucky,” he said, taking a seat.
“Maybe,” I whispered.
He finally looked up, his eyes wide but dark, lips stretched but open. “All I ever wanted to do was run away. Did you ever feel like that?”
My pounding heart pumped cold blood through my veins.
“I thought about it all the time. Dreamed about it. Almost did it, even.” His gaze dropped, and he shook his head. Maybe he was wondering if he should take down the invisible wall he kept between us. “I wanted to run away and then be able to come back…come back and save them.”
I sucked in the stale, frigid oxygen, but there wasn’t enough air in the tiny tree house anymore.
Jake stood, his voice almost inaudible now. “I wanted to save them. My sister and my mom. But I didn’t.”
I took a step forward, still trying to breathe. “You can’t save everyone.”
“I didn’t want to save everyone.”
“I only wanted to save them.”
Long moments went by. My frantic heartbeat had become a typical thing for me, and soon enough, not being able to breathe would be a typical thing, too.
“If you’re to blame,” I said. “If it’s your fault she’s dead…then it’s my fault Kat is dead. So unless you’re going to tell me that’s true—”
“It’s not the same thing, Audra.”
“Yes, it is. If you don’t want me blaming myself for something I couldn’t have prevented, then you’d better not do the same thing.”
He twisted his jaw, eyed me, and stayed silent.
“You know I’m right,” I said, whispering now. “It’s not your fault. It’s not…not my fault either.” Saying the words out loud didn’t make me believe them. My voice cracked with the lie, and my heart pulsed with the longing to trust my own words.
Jake’s chest rose and fell quickly. Guess I wasn’t the only one not getting enough oxygen. “I want to believe that.”
Ignoring the pounding in my head and the enormous urge to break down and cry, I hugged him, wrapping my arms tightly around his back. Breathing in his clean, fresh scent, I memorized the way it felt to be in his arms, because I always had this aching feeling it would be the last time. I whispered against the soft material of his shirt, “Me, too.”
With his arms still wrapped around my waist, I looked up. His face was haloed by the porch lights streaming through the tree house window. I started to inch back, but his hands pressed against my hips, urging me to stay.
Our mouths collided, and the air between us hummed electric. This kiss was slower than our first. Different somehow. My pulse jumped, a brightness flashed behind my eyes, and my beloved tree house fell away. Everything fell away. It was just me and Jake. His lips and mine. And for a moment, while his tongue explored my mouth and his fingers grazed my lower back, my pain ceased to matter. Nothing mattered aside from the warmth buzzing through my veins and the quick beating of my heart.
I never knew a kiss could do that—make your heart sing. But then, I never knew a heart could sing, either.
The Heartbeat Hypothesis Page 15
