How to Break a Heart (24 page)

“Oh, sorry!” I say too quickly. I try to chew daintily.

“It’s okay,” he says.

“Um, I’ll be back,” I say again, and once more scurry off to the bathroom building.

Thad answers the phone already laughing. “Dude, he’s going to think you have the runs or something.”

“Stop,” I say, cringing.
Dear god, let’s hope not
. “Listen, he tried to feed me!”

He says, in a maybe-British accent. “
Isn’t that what
lovahs
do? Share their food?
” And then he laughs.

I sigh.

“Be careful what you wish for, Collins,” he says.

“Okay, you’re helpful. Bye!” I say, and hang up.

I walk back to our blanket, not feeling confident at all. But when I get there, he is leaning back on his elbows, smiling at me. He sweeps his sandy-blond hair off his forehead, and it hits me like a brick in the stomach how gorgeous he is, despite his tiny ears. He holds his hand out in my direction, and I feel myself sail toward him, swept by the wind closer and closer still. I am Rose on the deck of the
Titanic
, the wind rippling through my hair.
I am alive!

And I am facedown on the blanket, my arms spread wide.

“You, uh, okay?”

I roll over, feeling like an idiot. “Yep.”

But then a bird chirps nearby. He looks toward the tree. “You hear that?” he asks.

“Uh, yes.” I sit up slightly and lean back on my elbows, like he’s doing. I smile a little. “It’s nice.” And then, through a wide clearing in the trees, I see the sky. I think I even see a heart-shaped cloud in the making. For the first time since we’ve gotten here, I take a big breath in. Now
this
is romantic. Now
this
is what lovers do. Maybe we don’t actually have to talk at all. Maybe we just have to
enjoy
. It’s no less of a verb, is it?

I stare into his deep blue eyes, taking in the lighter blue flecks, watching the pupils respond to the shift in clouds, feeling like after all the worry about talk, words don’t even matter anymore. And then he says my name.

He smiles at me. Then he looks down and clears his throat. “Mabry, I wanted to—”

Buzz.
It’s my phone. My stupid, stupid phone.

Sirina.

“Do you need to get that?” he asks.

“No,” I say, but that doesn’t feel right, so I hit the answer button anyway. “Hi,” I say.

“Hey. Guess what?”

“What? ’Cause I’m actually out with Nick.”

“Oh, right! Can you call me the minute you’re done?”

“Yesss,”
I hiss into the phone.

“Okay, hurry up,” she says.

“Okay,”
I say. I don’t wait for the good-byes.

“Sorry. You were saying?”

“Yeah,” he says. He smiles and picks at a thread in the blanket. He clears his throat. “I wanted to tell you something.”

Tell. Not ask. Can you just
tell
someone you want them to go to the Cotillion with you? It’s a bit rude. But maybe he just needs me that much.
Come with me, my dear Mabry, to the Cotillion. I will likely die if you don’t.

Okay, it makes sense now.

He sits up and takes a breath. He looks at me with a pained expression on his face.

“What?” I say with a new urgency.

He sighs and shakes his head, looking away again.

“Nick?”

“I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“About the thing with my mom,” he says. “Her calling you that day and,
well
, you know.”

Oh.
Ooooh.

“It’s just that she kept telling all her friends I had a girlfriend, and it just got embarrassing. So I told her that I was going to break up with you, you know, just to get her off my back, and when I didn’t, she thought she was doing me some sort of favor.”

I can’t help but feel thrilled. “So you
didn’t
want to break up with me?”

“I mean, not, like, totally break up. But you were kind of intense, you know. You’re different now,” he says. He goes back to picking a thread in the blanket.

I am struck again with not knowing what to say, and somehow asking his middle name doesn’t seem to be the thing to do.

He looks at me. I guess I have a weird look on my face, because his eyes go wide, and he says, “But I mean that in a good way! I
like
it. I like
you
. A lot.”

An entirely different expression takes over his face. A soft one. Dare I say, a
loving
one? Well, definitely a
me too
one. And then he says, “The reason I said green? When you asked me my favorite color?”

“Uh-huh?”

“It was blue until today.”

“It was?”

“Yeah. But green is the color of your eyes. So that’s my favorite color now.”

A sigh escapes me. My heart does a little leap, and slips—at last—soundlessly into the sweet, syrupy pool of love.

Nick looks up. “Great,” he says. “Storm clouds.”

My phone buzzes again.

“Four words,” Sirina says when I grudgingly pick it up. “I have an idea. Bring Nick back to your house, and I’ll meet you guys there.”

She’s gone over her quota, but I can’t help but be intrigued. “You want me to bring Nick?”
Is it possible that she’s somehow seen the light of our love? That she’ll give us her blessing?

“Yeah. I need him to do something for us. It’s about the YoJo.”

So no blessing after all.

“So can you guys hurry?” she asks.
The gall of her!

Even though I’m not ready for this date to end, I think of our little snit-snot thing the other day and don’t want a repeat of that. Plus, that heart-shaped cloud is starting to sprinkle rain, which is only good for worms. So I tell her, “Hold your horses, would you? We’re heading back now.”

Nick walks back to my house with me. Sirina’s already there when we arrive, playing
Madden
with Aaron. There’s a plate of nuked hot dogs sitting between them, bunless monstrosities that are bulging in weird spots. Hunter is resting his head on the couch, his big, begging eyes focused on the deformed hot dogs.

“Look at you, Martha ‘A-Bag’ Stewart,” I say to my brother.

“Hey, loser”—my brother says this in an upbeat way that makes it sound almost like a compliment. His eyes shift briefly from the screen to Nick—“and friend. Want a dog?”

“No, thanks. We just ate,” Nick says.

“I’m not talking about the
hot dogs
,” he says. “I’m talking about Sirina here.
Woof, woof!
”

Sirina wallops A-Bag in the face with a decorative pillow at a crucial point for A-Bag. He loses the game and practically cries about it. Sirina gets up to meet us in the foyer, and Hunter, as usual, follows.

“You’re not going to believe it,” she says to me and Nick. “I found something that might help us crack this case. A sketch artist!”

“What? How?” I ask.

“My dad’s friend used to work with the police department. He said he’ll do a sketch if Nick will meet with him. What do you think, Nick. Will you?”

He looks a little nervous. “What do I have to do?”

“Just tell him what you saw,” she says.

“But I already told Mabry what I saw. I didn’t get a great look,” he says. He turns to me. “You know that.”

“Don’t worry, Nick,” Sirina says. “Some of it’s like multiple choice. He’ll show you different features and you can tell him if it matches what you remember.”

He shrugs. “Okay, I guess.”

“It won’t be perfect,” Sirina says, “But it’ll be something. Which is better than nada. Which is kind of what we have. A whole lotta nada.” She smiles at him a little bit, and I find myself smiling pretty big. I’m happy to see
her
happy. It’s like that seesaw is finally balanced.

Nick’s mom pulls up in the driveway. “Thanks, Nick,” I say. “I had fun.”

And he meets my eyes, and holds my gaze. And then he says, without looking away, something that makes my heart get back on that hot-air balloon.

He says, “Me too.”

A
urelio is still in the desert. It has been
treinta y un días
—thirty-one days. His skin is dark, his hair is long, and he can barely crawl. The credits roll over a still shot of him lying facedown in the sand.

Thad’s phone buzzes. He turns off the TV and answers it. He hears the
La Vida Rica
theme song in the background. Mabry must have been watching, too.

“Hey, Salsa Breath,” he says.

“Hey, Cheese Face,” she answers.

“How was it?”

“How was what?”

“The show. I can hear the music.”

“Oh,” she says. “Stressful. I don’t think Aurelio’s going to make it.”

“Seriously,” Thad says. “I mean, can someone even survive thirty-one days with no water?”

“Well, I think he drinks from cactuses sometimes. I mean, he’s got to if—” She stops herself. “Wait a second. You’re still watching it?”

“I don’t watch it—I just sometimes turn on the TV, and there Aurelio is. So sometimes we just coexist.” It’s not too much of a stretch. It’s not like he watches it like she does. He sometimes needs a laugh. “Anyway, what do you need?”

“I’m calling to tell you I think we’re getting close,” Mabry says. “Nick just texted to ask me what my favorite flower is.”

That’s easy
. “Roses!” Thad says. “Red, of course.”

She huffs into the phone, and then says, “No, you’re wrong.
Yellow
.”

“You’re lying,” Thad says.

“Okay, whatever. So red roses
are
my favorite.
Sor
-ry!”

“Dude.” He feels a laugh bubble up. “You can’t tell him that. Just cross off any flower you can get at 7-Eleven. You gotta make him work a little harder than that.”

“So what should I say?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I’m not a girl. I don’t do flowers.”

“Orchids?”

“I don’t know. Can you get them at the same place you can buy a Ding Dong?” Thad asks.

“Probably not?” It’s a statement, but she sounds unsure.

“How about this?” he says. “If I’ve heard of it, it’s too easy. Scratch it off your list. And I’ve heard of orchids.”

He listens to her breathing, thinking. Finally, she asks, “How about oleander?”

He makes a buzzing sound like
eeeeeeh
and says, “My great-aunt was named Oleander. I just didn’t know it was a flower. But that would still be a no.”

“Mums?”

“Uh, definitely no.” He remembers mums. Mums are a hospital flower. “No mums. Trust me. Bad choice.”

“What about gladiola?”

“Everyone’s heard of that. Too easy,” Thad tells her.

“Everyone
hasn’t
heard of that,” Mabry argues.

“Okay, well,
I
have.”

“How have
you
heard of a gladiola?”

“I don’t know. There’s like a Febreze spray of it or something.” Thad bites his lip to keep from laughing. He’s glad she can’t see him.

There’s another pause. For a second, he wonders if they’ve been disconnected. Then she asks, “Jerothium?”

Even though he’s never heard of it, he says, “Would you like a Slurpee with that?”

“Are you
kidding
me?” Now she’s laughing. “Jerothium’s not even
real
! I made it up!”

“Oh,” he says quietly. Then he rips into a laugh. “Okay, sorry.”

“What is your
deal
?” Mabry asks. “Why do you want me to make it so hard for him?”

“I just don’t want you to be so predictable,” he tells her. It’s an excuse, but it’s still true.

“You’re the predictable one,” she says. “I bet you’re going to sit around all night eating Cheetos in your underwear. No, wait—
Funyuns
!”

“Yeah, I wish, okay?”

“Well,” she says with a curious tone in her voice, “what
are
you going to be doing?”

“Ha! Having to go. See you tomorrow,” he says.

“Thad? About tomorrow, want to meet over here? My house or something?”

“Nope. I gotta go.”

But she keeps at it. “Don’t you ever get tired of the mall?”

What’s there to get tired of? The easiness of it? The frivolousness? Come on. Everything about it is optional. It’s hard to think much about life and death when you’re deciding between bean dip and guacamole. Peppermint gum or spearmint. Black shoelaces or red. But she won’t understand that, and he doesn’t want to explain it anyway, so he pretends not to have heard her, and hangs up.