The Heartbeat Hypothesis

by Lindsey Frydman

  I stared at the shiny metal bracelet, a stark contrast from my pale skin. “Thank you.”

  “If you ever need anything, let me know. I’m from Ohio, so I haven’t made many friends yet since moving here for school. And my classes this quarter are easy, so I’ve got plenty of free time.”

  Pain ripped through my chest, and tears threatened to fall. I didn’t deserve her smile. Her words. My heart. My life.

  …

  On the drive from the hospital to my parents’ house, Mom stayed silent, allowing the devastating thoughts to consume my soul.

  “Mom,” I said when she opened the door. After that, I started crying and words fell to pieces from there.

  She sat me down on the dark purple couch—the same way Jake did after Kat died. And then she asked what she did when I started sobbing more.

  It was ugly.

  But I finally stopped sniffling. Maybe I’d officially run out of tears.

  I told her everything. Seriously, pretty much every single detail of what happened with Jake.

  “Honey, you can’t honestly believe you’re responsible for what happened to that family,” she said, rubbing her hand across my back.

  “How can you see it that way?”

  “That family… Whatever chain of events took place that led to this, it started long before you came around. It wasn’t something you could change. And sad as it is, it would’ve still happened regardless. You don’t factor into the equation.”

  “But you don’t know.” I wiped fingers across my wet cheeks. “You don’t know it still would’ve happened if not for me.”

  If I hadn’t opened my mouth and made Dana interested in talking to the Cavanaughs, maybe Jake wouldn’t have beaten his father half to death. Maybe then his mother wouldn’t have set their house on fire.

  “Honey, listen to me. It’s not your fault. You have to believe that.”

  I laid my head back against the cool leather couch. “Why do I have to believe that?”

  “Because I’m your mother. I’m never wrong.”

  I thought it was impossible, but I laughed. For only a second. “But Jake…he hates me. And that is my fault.”

  She didn’t have a quick reply for that.

  “I doubt he hates you.”

  Why did all moms think that simply saying something made it instantly true? “You’re only trying to make me feel better.”

  “‘Hate’ is a serious word, Audra. I sincerely doubt he hates you.”

  I stared at the black TV screen, lips pressed together. She didn’t know, didn’t understand. Jake hated me. And that was that.

  “I’m going to drop out of school,” I said.

  Mom shifted, the leather squeaking beneath her. “Are you sure that’s what you really want?”

  “I might as well. I don’t know anyone there.” Who doesn’t hate me. “Kat isn’t there and…I don’t know why I should even go to school when I don’t have any idea what I want to do. All being on campus does is make me think of Kat. And Jake. I don’t know if I can do it.”

  Her hand squeezed my shoulder gently. “What about that girl from your class? The one who was at the hospital with you?”

  “She just happened to be there when I passed out. A bit of luck and coincidence.”

  Mom’s narrowed eyes said she knew it was bullshit.

  “If you really don’t want to go to school at CSU anymore, you don’t have to. But will you at least give it until the end of the quarter to decide?”

  “I guess…I can probably do that.”

  “Good. I know you’ve had a lot going on. Losing Kat’s been hard on you. And honey, love is always going to be hard. But I also know you’re a tough girl. You’ll get through this just fine.”

  I didn’t want to be tough anymore.

  “Why don’t you try thinking about it like this…”

  I turned my gaze on her, curious to hear what crazy idea she’d pulled out of the sky.

  “Jake lives by campus, too. And if he really does have no friends, like you say, then now he has no friends and no family. He’s much more alone than you are.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

  She smiled halfheartedly. “The only person he has is you. And maybe you should take advantage of that, if you still want him around.”

  “Mom, I looked through his box of personal things when he wasn’t around. I went to that memorial knowing he wouldn’t want me going. I was trying to help him, and I only lied to him and hurt him. Jake doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

  The wrinkles on her face deepened when she gave me a look I knew well. “You didn’t do any of those things out of the meanness of your heart. I think if you give it time, he’ll see that. He’ll forgive you.”

  The words sounded nice, but I didn’t believe them.

  “You should give yourself some time, too. Focus on something else for now. What about the rest of that list you’re re-creating?”

  Maybe I can curl up under a blanket and sleep off this feeling for a few years. “That’s the whole reason for this…” “Mess” seemed like such an understatement.

  “Honoring that girl is a good thing. You shouldn’t stop because things got hard and something went wrong along the way. It’s still a good thing.” She put a hand on my head and brushed my hair back. “Finish the list. You’ll regret it one day if you don’t.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, tears rolling down my cheeks again. “Any of it. Why Kat? It’s not fair… Why her? It hurts so fucking much all the time. And Jake…I cared about him. Both of them. They’re both gone. What was the point? All of that for what? All this pain?”

  Mom continued stroking my hair, a sympathetic smile pulling at her lips. “Sometimes grief is the price you pay for love.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Maybe Mom was right—about some things—and I needed to finish the list. I could do the rest by myself. Including the pink graffiti.

  Before I’d left to go back to school, Mom suggested I write my feelings down. She thought it’d be therapeutic, and at this point, I would’ve tried anything to make any part of me feel better.

  Back in my dorm, I pulled out a few sheets of notebook paper and spent a solid ten minutes doing nothing but chewing my bottom lip.

  My first two attempts were angry scribblings on a sheet of paper. I crumpled my notes and threw them away. They only consisted of fuming remarks and snarky comments.

  For my third attempt, I tried to funnel my inner optimist. The words were slower coming out, but they made their way onto the paper.

  The thing I’ve learned about life—it isn’t about facing your fears. Well, it’s that, too, but it’s not solely that (or even mainly that). Of course you should want to conquer your fears, be better than them, better than what terrifies you to the center of your being.

  But life is about living.

  We don’t have a guaranteed future, a promised tomorrow. Maybe tonight will be the night our broken heart decides to stop beating for good, and we won’t be lucky enough to have a new one put in its place. What then? What if tomorrow never comes?

  Then all of those unspoken words, unlived dreams, and unconquered fears disappear. Poof. Just like that. Gone in an instant.

  And the past? Well, we both always have it and simultaneously don’t have it. It’s gone, too, just like our could’ve, would’ve, should’ve things. But it’s always there because once you’ve lived something, you can never forget it. You can never forget the pain of crashing your bike and needing eight stitches in your chin. You won’t forget how someone’s careless words speared your heart, crushed your soul. You’ll carry all the things that’ve ever happened around with you until the day your too-fragile heart beats its last beat and you cease to exist.

  So life is about the in-between. Between the beginning and the end, between the past and the future.

  It’s about the now.

  What I’d written may have been optimistic and full of sunshine an
d daisies, but it didn’t make me feel a damn bit better. I stared down at my handwriting, reading over the words again and again. I’d written them, created them, and I wanted to believe them, but couldn’t.

  I scribbled a PS at the end.

  Pain can’t last forever. It just can’t.

  I folded the piece of paper and stuck it in a drawer. Therapeutic, my ass.

  Poising my pen over a new sheet of paper, I hoped inspiration would hit me. When it didn’t, I turned on music and set my playlist to shuffle. After three songs of mindless pen-tapping and staring at the blank paper, I had an idea.

  I scribbled out uncensored words. One after the other. A few minutes later, I folded the note I’d written and before I could lose my nerve, pulled on my shoes and headed to Jake’s. I wasn’t going to ask him anything, I was simply going to tell him.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Two days passed since I’d left the note under Jake’s apartment door and before he showed up at my dorm.

  “Jake,” I said, wondering if maybe this was a dream, because in every reality I knew, he hated me.

  He stared, hands shoved into pockets as always, expression unreadable.

  I never thought I’d get to see his face again.

  “Do you…want to come in?” I asked when he still didn’t speak.

  I shifted out of the way. He hesitated, but finally stepped inside, looking around the room.

  “Jake.” I waited for him to turn.

  “Why did you do it?” His back was still facing me. “Why did you talk to them about Emily? Why couldn’t you leave it alone?”

  His voice was different—or maybe it had just been so long. “I thought you wanted to know what really happened to Emily.”

  Jake spun around, took a quick step forward. “No. You wanted to know what really happened.”

  “For you. I thought if you knew the truth, you could find some peace. I care about you, about what happens to you and how you feel. I only ever wanted to help you. Not hurt you.”

  I only ever wanted to be worthy of Emily’s heart.

  Light strands of hair fell across his brow when he spun. The I-need-a-haircut look always suited him. “I also told you not to care, because I wasn’t good for anything.”

  “But you are, Jake.” I strode forward, wanting to touch him, knowing I shouldn’t. “You’re good for lots of things.”

  “Like what?”

  I tried to imagine what advice Kat would give—because I surely would’ve asked for it by now. She was always better with things like this. She knew how to be honest, how to say what needed to be said.

  I managed a steadying breath. “You’re…you’re a good person. You can play the piano—teach the piano. You make this beautiful art that I wish the entire world could see. You make me so…happy, and it breaks my heart that I hurt you like I did.” I swallowed, needing a moment to keep my voice from cracking.

  I tried to be as straightforward as possible, to not worry about appearing desperate. I was desperate, and I didn’t want to pretend not to care.

  “I should have told you how much you meant to me sooner,” I said, blinking at the ceiling. “And I shouldn’t have gone to the memorial, shouldn’t have talked to them about Emily.” I could’ve, should’ve done so many things differently. “I’m sorry. And I wish it was enough. Enough to matter. Enough to change what happened.”

  His lips stayed pressed into one thin line, but his eyes softened, and then they shut. He scrubbed a hand over his face, through his hair, and then looked at me again, not saying a word. I shoved away my hurt feelings from his lack of response. He didn’t know what to say—I could understand that.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “For everything. For going behind your back, for what happened to your parents. For keeping things from you.” My heart thumped against my rib cage. “For finding your journal in the box under the coffee table. I flipped through it, read some of it, and I don’t know why and—and I’m so sorry.” I turned my head, fought against the stinging in my eyes. It was a pointless fight. The tears would win. They always did.

  “You…looked through that box? I would’ve never known.”

  “I know.” But the guilt consumed me, and if I was trying to be honest, he needed to know. “I don’t blame you for hating me. I’m sorry it was all for nothing.”

  Jake heaved a sigh, shook his head once.

  The silence grew to be too much. “How are you doing?” It was a stupid, pointless question I immediately wished I hadn’t asked.

  But he answered it. “This is going to sound horrible, I think, but I’m a little relieved. Now that they’re dead.”

  His words sent tingles racing along my arms. “What do you mean?”

  “Now…none of it matters. Not if my parents were to blame for Emily’s death. Or what they did to me—to us. I never knew what happened to Emily. Not for sure. And now I never will. It’s a finality I can’t ignore. So maybe the truth is overrated. Something about that is…peaceful to me.”

  I rubbed my fingers across my chest, feeling my wild heartbeat pounding beneath my skin. “Peaceful sounds nice.”

  He smiled for the first time since he’d walked in the door. “It is. Even if it makes you look at me like that.”

  “I am not—”

  “You make it so easy,” he said with a short laugh.

  “Wait.” We were joking around like it was old times and everything was fine, and I hadn’t destroyed all that we shared? “You’re really okay?”

  It didn’t seem possible that a guy could lose his parents by murder-suicide and be fine a few weeks later.

  Maybe I was biased because I would never be okay if that happened to my parents—but his parents were not the same people. They had different lives, destined to live out different fates, or whatever. Maybe Jake truly could find peace in their deaths. Maybe for him, it could all be over, allowing him to move on.

  He shook his head, and all the laughter disappeared from his face. “I’m better. I think okay would be a lie. And I still don’t want to lie to you.”

  I breathed in—a raspy, painful act. Tried to smile. “I’m glad you’re better.”

  Jake shoved his hands into his pockets. “That was you, the day in the quad. The ambulance and paramedics.”

  His reminder of my bathroom shutdown warmed my cheeks. “How did you know that?” There were thousands of other students who could’ve been in need of an emergency response team.

  “I was on campus. Sirens and paramedics with stretchers aren’t something you see every day. I’m not immune to the ‘train wreck you can’t look away from’ effect.” His lips quirked. “And spectators like to talk. I heard ‘heart transplant recipient’ thrown around. There can’t be more than one of you at CSU.”

  So, great. I was a train wreck.

  He angled his head with a pained stare. “Seriously, though, how are you?”

  I looked down, hugging my elbows. Digging my nails into my skin, I squeezed my eyes closed. Breathed in once. Twice. “My heart biopsy came back clean. They changed my medication a bit. I haven’t felt like throwing up or passing out in a few weeks. And I may have made a friend out of the girl who called 911. So I guess that means I’m good.”

  When I returned my gaze to Jake, his eyebrows pinched together. “I wanted to call you. Almost did a few times. Wanted to see if you were okay. But I couldn’t figure out what to say, so I didn’t.” He pulled one hand free and rubbed it across the back of his neck. “I’ve missed you.”

  My heart stuttered, warmth spreading through my aching chest. “Thought you said you didn’t want to lie to me? There’s no way you— Don’t you hate me?”

  All the parent pep talks and handwritten letters in the world couldn’t convince me otherwise.

  His eyes cast downward. “I stopped getting close to people because I didn’t want them to have to deal with my shit. It’s my fault that my shit became yours.” He paused, looking up again. “I shouldn’t have expected you not t
o care. And I’m sorry I made you think this was your fault. I’m sorry I told you it was. None of this was your fault. That day…if you hadn’t shown up, I would have killed him.”

  Jake stepped closer, a serious look in his eyes—one that sent a shiver through my fingertips.

  “But—”

  “I would have killed him, and I would’ve had to live with that my entire life. I don’t know if I could’ve forgiven myself.”

  I shook my head, still unconvinced. “You ignored all my calls, all my texts. I thought—I don’t understand how you don’t hate me, because even if that’s true, they’re still…dead.”

  No crying. Not today.

  His fingers pressed into my shoulders, his head dipping to level with mine. “Not because of you. And not because of me. You did nothing but make my life better. I didn’t even deserve it.” His hands ran down my arms until his fingers met mine, filling the empty spaces between them. “I couldn’t have saved Emily no matter what happened to her. Same way I couldn’t save my mom, like you couldn’t save Kat.”

  Pressure built up behind my eyes, but I blinked fiercely, begging the tears to stay away. Jake was touching me, and a handful of minutes ago, I thought I’d never see him again. I was waiting for the floor to be whipped out from under me. There was a catch, right? Jake couldn’t really be here, really be touching me and telling me it wasn’t my fault.

  And then he dropped his hands away and there it was—the beginning of the end.

  Instead of leaving, like I expected, he pulled something from his pocket and held it out to me.

  I took the folded piece of paper and quickly recognized it as the note I’d written and shoved under his door. My scribbly handwriting came into view as I opened it.

  If you let me, I could love you.

  I think maybe, even if you didn’t let me, I could still love you.

  I think maybe I already do.

  When I looked up he whispered, “I’m really bad with words, so…”

  So he kissed me.

  Warm hands found my cheeks. His lips pressed against mine. My heart went cliff-diving into a different universe, and it was the kind of kiss that made me believe maybe Jake could love me, too.