Brave Hearts

by Nicole Falls

  Brave Hearts

  Nicole Falls

  Copyright © 2018 Nicole Falls

  Cover art by Voldemort

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real locations, people, or events is coincidental, and unintentional.

  Now…

  February 10, 2018

  “All right, so I have a question,” Noelle said suddenly, as we sat around finishing up brunch at my house.

  We’d been off track for a minute, but now my sisters and I were working to get our groove back. We’d fallen off of our regular gatherings and traditions after the death of our father a few years ago, but we recently made a renewed effort to get back to basics. We had resolved to gathering in person, on a monthly basis at the least. We also rededicated ourselves to spending our birthdays together, which is why we were all gathered today—for my birthday. Our tradition was to spend the first half of the day with just us Holliday girls, then the rest of the day as we saw fit. Noelle had been uncharacteristically quiet all morning as the rest of us laughed, joked, and talked cold cash shit about a variety of subjects.

  “What’s your question, No?” I asked, clearing the dishes from the table, “Wait, will this question require more wine?”

  “It’s Noelle, sis…it’ll definitely require more wine,” Juniper quipped.

  Noelle rolled her eyes, but also gave me a short nod, indicating that I should grab the last bottle of prosecco that Francisco had left chilling for us before he vacated the premises this morning. Instead of spending the first half of my actual birth date with my sisters, we were gathering the Saturday before my birthday. My husband planned an anniversary getaway for us that would have us out of the country and in his native land of Costa Rica on my actual date of birth. It had been quite some time since he had been home and he wanted to share where he spent most of his formative years with me. We were going to be spending ten days between the capital city, San José, the cloud forest, and beaches and I couldn’t wait to experience it with a native Tico.

  Walking back into the room with the ladies, I uncorked the prosecco, refilled everyone’s glasses and sat down next to Noelle. “Ok, chica, spill it. What’s your question?”

  “Well it’s one I think I know the answer to, but I wanted to get you guys’ take on it, too,” she said, pausing briefly before continuing, “I’ve just…I’ve been thinking a lot about this…thing with Jay and how quickly it has seemingly progressed and…I…do you all think we’re doing too much too fast?”

  Ginger immediately snorted in laughter, “Too fast? Girl, you and that boy have been doing this dance for damn near twenty years. Took y’all long enough to finally give up the ghost and get to the good part with one another sooner rather than later. Too fast…tuh!”

  “Well, everyone can’t meet the love of their life in fifth grade and live by a meticulous life plan that ensures that whether or not you’re the love of his life, you will end up together,” Juju piped up.

  “Yikes!” Noelle exclaimed.

  “Flag on the play!” Ginger shouted, “Damn, next time warn me you’re going in!”

  “You know I just calls it like I sees it,” Juju shrugged.

  I laughed as Juniper and Ginger continued to snipe back and forth. Once those two got going it was pretty much curtains for anyone else getting a word in edgewise. Noelle managed to wrangle the two of them under control and turned her question on me. I took a few moments to carefully consider my answer before weighing in. One look at Noelle told me that she was seeking a genuine answer and didn’t wanna fall back into the tailspin of ridiculousness caused by Ginger and Juniper.

  “What’s too fast? Do you feel like Jay is rushing you in any way? Are you on some time crunch to meet a certain relationship goal? Or are you just enjoying the time y’all have to spend together, which is blessedly frequent? You might be overthinking this one, NoNo.”

  “And of course, you would say time means nothing. You the one who fell in love with and married her husband over the course of five days!” Juju chimed in.

  “One—Juniper, you mind everyone’s business but your own. And B—I didn’t say time means nothing. Time means everything. But I think Noelle is going full Noelle here instead of letting nature take its course.”

  “Going full Noelle?” my big sister asked, an eyebrow arched.

  “Mmmmhmmm, you know. Trying to see how it all plays out, counting it out before it begins. Typical defeatist Noelle action,” Ginger interjected.

  “Not exactly what I meant,” I said, quickly, “Goddamn, do you and Juju both need to get laid? Y’all are on one today. I meant, Noelle, that you need to just relax, boo. Didn’t mommy always say, you know when you know? Whether it’s been five minutes or five weeks, you and Jay’s relationship is progressing how you and Jay’s relationship is meant to progress. You gotta roll with it.”

  “Juniper does make a salient point about your relationship with time though, my good sis,” Noelle replied, laughing, “Of course you don’t think we’re moving too fast. We should be on our third child by you and Frankie’s schedule.”

  “What is this you guys’ fifteen-year anniversary in Frankie and Lolo time? What’s the traditional gift to give after fifteen years of marriage, guys? Gotta make sure I get to the store before they take off to the Amazon tomorrow,” Juniper crowed.

  “Oh forget you both,” I replied, laughing, “We are not going to the Amazon, you jackass. We’re going to Central America, Costa Rica to be exact.”

  “Yeah, well you just be sure he can get back over the border, sis. We don’t need more green card issues,” Ginger piped up.

  “More? As in there were former?” Noelle asked, “Is everything okay, Lolo? For real.”

  “Yes, everything is fine,” I gritted out, fixing a tight glare on Ginger who was now busying herself with inspecting the tablecloth instead of making eye contact with me.

  “Yeah, everything is fine…now,” Ginger mumbled.

  “Are you fucking kidding me with this Gigi? You really wanna do this now?”

  “I mean…there has to be a statute of limitations on the shit and besides, y’all are like in love for real now, so there’s no reason to keep the story on the hush from these two any longer.”

  I sputtered in disbelief. Mainly because Gigi and I had always been thick as thieves and I told her about my…situation…a few years ago only because she promised she’d take it to the grave. Outside of myself, my husband and one of his friends, she was the only one who knew that our courtship and subsequent nuptials weren’t exactly the whirlwind romance everyone thought it was.

  “Valora,” Noelle started, carefully, “What is Ginger talking about? Statute of limitations?”

  “Yooooo…” Juju started before breaking down into giggles, “Y’all went full on Sandy Bullock and Not Disney White Boy Ryan. Oh my goooooood!”

  At the rest of our blank stares, Juniper shook her head. “Don’t y’all heffas watch fine cinema? Are you not familiar with a little film called The Proposal? In which our main characters find themselves in a little predicament that calls for a green card marriage.”

  “Wait…” Noelle started.

  I put my head down for a moment, knowing this was going to go down a road that I was not even prepared for this day to travel down. Taking a deep breath, I raised my gaze to my sisters once again and started, “Well, ok, see what had happened was…”

  Then...

  Wednesday, February 6, 2013

  "You ready? I don't even know why I asked, of course you're ready for me, baby."

  I looked up
to see a handsome cinnamon skinned face with a curly mass of long dark hair grinning down on me. Sitting up a bit straighter, I stretched my lower back out and rolled my neck before responding. I'd been hunched over viewing contact sheets, poring over yet another photoset, trying to select the right images. A quick glance at the clock showed me that it was half past noon, the exact time I'd told Frankie that I would be ready for our twice weekly lunch date. We ate together every Monday and Wednesday...sometimes more often if whatever projects we were working on permitted the time. Our standard was always at least twice weekly though.

  "Let's roll," I said, pushing back from my chair and grabbing my coat.

  Before I had a good grip on it, my coat was taken from my hands and I was directed to turn around as he held it out for me to slide right on in.

  "You know don't have to do that every time, right?" I asked.

  "You let me worry about what it is that I need to do, okay, Valora?" Frankie responded, cheekily.

  I tried valiantly not to let the effect of the way Frankie said my name show outwardly, but felt my skin growing warm in spite of my useless attempt at self-control. I just couldn't help it. The combination of his slightly fading accent and my name sounding like the most delicious treat coming from his lips always did something to me.

  "The usual?" I asked, leading the way to the elevators.

  "Yes! You know it, baby," Frankie replied, enthusiastically.

  Our standing lunch date was enacted pretty much from when we both began working for Tempo, a music magazine on par with Rolling Stone. We were hired within weeks of one another, found ourselves paired together quite often—he a writer; me a shutterbug, so it was a natural occurrence. In the colder months, we holed up in Cosi, a soup and sandwich shop that was steps away from our office building. Over lunch we would talk about office gossip, gripe about the ridiculousness of our respective bosses, and I'd tease Frankie about his bae of the week. And there was always one for me to tease him about.

  With his smooth cinnamon skin, sensually full lips, and hair that begged to be shorn from his head and put onto a weft, Francisco Mora was mega fine. And he knew it, too. Not in a conceited sort of way, but he definitely leaned on his good looks when they could be leveraged toward his advantage. For a less determined woman, he would be a distraction, but to me he was just my criminally handsome pain in the rear. His lofty ideas of the imagery he wanted to accompany the words he crafted put me at odds with my boss. Most often because I was drawn to the abstract, out of this world visions that he had in his head, but my boss, Kate, was more of a traditionalist who bucked against the changing tides of photography.

  Kate balked at the idea of fusing “special effects”, her term for Photoshop with classic film techniques. Her old ass needed to let go of her, “film is the only pure essence of photographic brilliance” mantra and move into the twenty-first century. Hell, the only reason she was still employed at our magazine, according to the rumor mill, was because she was a masthead founder who refused to be ousted. I don’t know whose balls she had in that ever-present fanny pack that she wore, but one thing was for certain, her persnickety nature was going to drive me insane.

  “Valora, are you listening?” Francisco asked, drawing my attention back to the present moment.

  I’d drifted off just that quickly, letting my annoyance with Kate trickle over into one of the brief moments during my working day where she shouldn’t have been more than a passing thought.

  “I’m sorry, Frankie, I zoned out. What were you saying?”

  “Oh, nothing important. Just rambling about Kyle’s incompetent ass once again.”

  Kyle was Frankie’s Kate…only made worse by the fact that he was the byproduct of nepotism—given the title of editor simply for having a rich uncle, with zero journalistic experience or integrity.

  “You know we really gotta get the fuck outta here, right? Your talent supersedes this place and mine? Shit…it’s catastrophically underrated out here.”

  Frankie’s full mouth broke into a grin, “Catastrophically, eh?”

  “Hell yeah. Made your fine ass look even better in those headshots a few weeks ago, you can’t deny that?”

  Frankie said nothing in return, just offered a smirk as he ran one of his hands through his already heavily tousled curls. Our eyes met and held for a moment past me being comfortable, so I turned my attention toward my half salad and soup like the combo was the most interesting thing in the world.

  “You mustn’t always do that, Valora,” Frankie mused.

  “Do what?”

  “Back down from a challenge. How else will you finally know when you’ve met your match? If you cannot look him in the eye…”

  Here we go, a-fucking-gain. I sighed and rolled my eyes. Frankie and I were four years apart, with him as the elder who took his role very seriously. Once he learned that I was raised in a house of sisters, he took it upon himself to teach me what I truly needed to find myself a man. Never mind that I had no time to even be thinking about men as I was working to build my empire. Men were a dime a dozen; and I had more than a few numbers in my little bronze book who I could call when I needed an itch scratched. Frankie was insistent on these lessons anyway…and since he was one of very few allies at work, I humored him.

  “Ah, yes, sensei. Anything else?” I asked, sarcasm dripping from my words.

  “One day you will be grateful for these lessons, Valora.”

  “Hey! Speaking of lessons, you’ve been slacking, dude! What happened to my Spanish lessons? Every time you roll the r in my name, I get jealous. Teach me how to move my tongue like that, man! That’s the only lessons I want from you.”

  A flash of something passed in Frankie’s eyes, then left as quickly as it’d appeared.

  “Ah, but that is not something I am sure I can teach. The language, yes. All of that other…” Frankie trailed off with an unsure movement of his head and shoulders, “That comes with practice.”

  "So, let's practice!"

  A beat passed before I realized how that sounded. Frankie just sat mute, a bemused expression taking over his features before that eventually gave way toward raucous laughter. A laughter so contagious that I couldn't help but join in myself. The few folks who were in the restaurant gave us stares as we kept that up for damn near five minutes—both fighting valiantly, but unable to regain our composure

  "And someone thinks she doesn't need the lessons I offer freely," Frankie tsked.

  "Oh shut up! Hey, what do you have going on this weekend? I'm booked to shoot a show this weekend—Saturday night, a group named indie kids on the come up. You wanna be my plus one?"

  "Can I let you know by Friday afternoon? A friend from college is supposed to be visiting this weekend and--"

  Never missing a chance to mess with Frankie, I cut him off, "Oh, no big if you can't. Wouldn't want you to disappoint a special friend on my account."

  "What is that phrase you Americans have about assuming, Valora? He is not that kind of special, just someone I owe a great deal of debt to for how he and his family embraced my orphaned ass during holiday breaks in undergrad," Frankie smirked.

  "Whatever," I said, flicking up my wrist to check the time, “Just let me know about Friday by the time we leave work at the latest so I can get your name on the list. Come on, I've gotta get back. I have a meeting with Kate at one thirty and you know how she is..."

  Frankie pitched his voice about three octaves higher and trilled, "It is thirty seconds after the hour, Valora. It would behoove you to be on time."

  That sent us into another round of laughter as we collected and discarded our trash before hustling back over to the office. I ended up not seeing Frankie at all for the rest of the work day, which was unusual because he usually made his way to my workspace between three and five times a day. He did mention that friend coming into town, however, so maybe he had to rush out of here to retrieve him from the airport or something. It was probably for the best that Frankie was otherwise engage
d, as I needed to spend this evening getting shit together for Aperture, my budding freelance photography company.

  My baby sister Juniper was working on getting my website together and needed me to pick the images that I wanted to feature in my portfolio. She had requested that I pick the images and upload them to our shared cloud storage account more than a week ago, but I'd been dragging my feet about it. As much as I wanted to break out on my own, the logical part of my brain refused to give way to the much smaller caution to the wind side of my brain. So, I procrastinated on actually working to being able to do Aperture full-time. Tonight, though, I would focus and get everything done so I didn’t have to hear Juju’s whining about how I never respected her deadlines. Never mind the fact that she’s a self-taught kid who’s doing this on the side for extra money. And she refused to give me a discount. She could wait.

  Friday, February 8, 2013

  Thursday came and went with no word from Frankie. We were halfway through Friday and I hadn’t heard from him once. I pulled out my phone and fired off a quick text.

  Damn, one of your hoes put it on you so bad you called off two days in a row?

  I waited a few minutes, phone in hand to see if he would reply, but radio silence. Whatever was going on, I hoped that he was all right and would reach out soon if he wasn’t. Frankie had become, in a rather quick manner, one of the most consistent parts of my life. And consistency was a thing I valued above most other things because inconsistency almost always undoubtedly led to heartbreak. Not that Frankie was in a position to break my heart in any way, I was just a little worried about my buddy.

  The rest of my work day passed with no word from Frankie still, so I decided to take a little detour on the way home and stopped by his place. I probably should have called first, but meh…he’ll be all right. I just wanted to be sure that he was not directly in any harm’s path. It’s very unlike him to miss work and not let me know. I just needed to lay eyes on him and see that he was all good. The concierge recognized me immediately once I stepped into the lobby and waved me over to his desk.