The Anatomical Shape of a Heart (24 page)

Exaggerate? Exaggerating was saying you ate a whole sleeve of Girl Scout cookies when you really ate only half. But I couldn't get into it with Heath, because he asked me how I'd tracked it down. Because of the way he was grilling me about it, I didn't feel like revealing my meeting with Dad. So I just said I was poking around and found it online.

“Just drop it, Bex,” Heath told me. “Even if Mom exaggerated about the cabaret, Dad cheated on her and left all of us. We don't have a father. Big deal. It's just life.”

He was probably right.

Ms. Lopez checked in on me after our last rush of customers for the night. “Hanging in there? Feet sore?”

“I should've bought some of those inserts you told me about,” I said, stretching my neck side to side.

“No, you should've told Mary to stop dumping her shifts on you.” She clicked the top of a ladybug pen and clipped it to her apron. “Did you miss your anatomy drawing session tonight? How is that going?”

“I missed it, but it's okay. I'm almost finished. The one good thing about doing a million sketches before I decided on the right angle is that I've got it down perfect now. One more session for the final details and I'll be done.”

“Just in time for the art contest?”

“A week to spare,” I said with a smile. I was feeling a lot better about it, especially after my last drawing session, during which a group of med students came over to my end of the lab to check out my illustrations of Minnie. They acted impressed. Like,
really
impressed.

I was going to win that damn contest. That scholarship money was mine. As long as I kept my head down and didn't let any emotional family weirdness distract me. Which wasn't easy.

“Hey,” I said. “Can I ask you something about Joy?” She was Ms. Lopez's daughter.

“Sure.”

“Would you ever lie to her about something big? Like if, let's say, your mother stole money from you—”

“My mother? She's deeply religious. She would never steal.”

“Let's just say she did, and let's say you were hurt by it and worried that she might be a bad influence on Joy. Would you lie to Joy and tell her that her grandmother was worse than she really was, just to discourage Joy from having anything to do with her?”

“Did you steal staples from the storeroom? I thought it was someone from the new janitorial service.”

I groaned. “No, I didn't take any staples. Why would I need—” I shook my head in frustration. “It doesn't have to be stealing. Maybe your mother's got a violent temper—”

Ms. Lopez made a little anguished noise.

“I'm just trying to say, is there any reason you'd tell Joy a lie or an exaggeration about someone in your family because you thought it was the right thing for your daughter?”

Ms. Lopez stared down at me through narrowed eyes. “I would do anything to keep Joy safe and happy.”

“So the answer is yes?”

“Why don't you ask your own mother the same question?” she said, pointing one perfect, glossy red nail in my direction as she strolled away from the register with a knowing glance.

Dammit.

What good would it do me to mend things with Dad anyway? Would it magically make me all better? And how did I expect to even try? Would I sneak around, meeting him and his little Suzi-Q for lunch on the weekends? Because no way in hell would Mom ever let me go see him with her blessing. And if she found out I'd been seeing him behind her back, it would wreck her.

It would tear my mom and me apart.

And Dad wasn't worth that risk, because she was there and he wasn't. She'd stayed and he hadn't. And that was that.

A half hour before my double shift ended, I was counting my register till in the office when I got a text from Jack:
Is Nurse Katherine working a night shift tomorrow?

I replied:
Think so. Why?

He texted:
My parents are leaving for Sacramento tomorrow afternoon and they won't be back until noon the next day.

I reread the text several times. What was he saying? Was he … did he mean…? Maybe it was just an opportunity for us to spend time alone, nothing more. Did I want there to be something more? I would've answered, “God, yes,” to that question five minutes earlier, but now that he was putting it out there (was he?), my nerves twanged.

When I didn't reply right away, he texted again:
Do *you* work tomorrow?

Setting down a stack of twenties, I leaned over my till to squint at the schedule tacked to the bulletin board. I'd just worked a double for Mary, so she could damn well return the favor. I texted:
I don't now
.

Jack's reply came a couple of minutes later:
I can pick you up any time after 4 p.m.

 

 

“I pointed the cameras up the street,” Jack said when he saw me eyeing the one over the Vincents' side gate the following night. “Just don't step past the edge of the fence and you're golden.”

“You take sneaking to a whole new level.”

“If your father was king of the city, you would, too.”

Since I had to wait for Mom to leave for her graveyard shift before I could escape with Jack, it was right at 8:00 p.m. and still light outside. “Your neighbor's watching us.”

Jack waved and mumbled “nosy bastard” under his breath. “Let's go in through the front door so it doesn't look like we're doing anything wrong.”

“Are we?” I asked. Because it was all I could think about since he'd asked me over—doing wrong things with him. And when he sent me his standard good night text last night, I was doing more than thinking. I considered texting him back with an explicit description but lost my nerve. Now I sort of wish I had, because maybe I'd have a better idea of his intentions tonight. The ride over here gave me no clue; we just chatted about work (boring) and how Jillian was doing (pretty good) and why his parents were in Sacramento (a fund-raising dinner for education). We didn't even kiss.

“Are we doing anything wrong?” he repeated thoughtfully. He was having trouble getting the key in the lock. He showed me his shaky hand and laughed at himself. “I guess that means a part of me must hope so. That milkmaid thing is sexy as hell, by the way.”

It was the most flattering of my braid repertoire. I kept the plaits loose and pulled out a few wisps to for a natural and romantic look. Knowing he liked them made heat flash through me. “I feel like there's a good joke here about the farmer's daughter, but I'm too anxious to think of one,” I admitted.

“Let's just … uh, get inside before Mr. Martinez marshals the rest of the neighborhood watch.”

He finally got the front door open. I stepped inside and looked around while he locked up behind us. We stood on dark wood floors in a foyer. Buttery-gold walls were loaded with large paintings in gilded frames. A modern wooden staircase shot up through the floors, dominating the narrow space, and because it was open, I could peer through at the floors above and below. Beyond the staircase was a living room with a fireplace and a wall of windows that looked over the decks in the back. We were on the second story, and I spied the roof of Jack's guesthouse bedroom at the far corner of the yard.

“My mom collects art,” he said as I stared up a painting of a crazy-colored chair. “Mostly California artists. She really digs old chairs.”

“Yes, I can see that,” I said diplomatically, spotting other chair paintings further into the home.

“It's kooky, I know. I'll give you the VIP tour. You'll see more chairs than you ever dreamed possible.”

He started at the kitchen, which wasn't much bigger than ours but gleamed with top-of-the-line appliances, polished marble, and custom cabinetry. The floating wooden bridge I'd seen on the Fourth of July connected to a back door there. “We used to have a lot of cocktail parties on the deck,” Jack noted.

Used to. He didn't comment on what had happened in this kitchen to put an end to those parties, but I couldn't help staging it in my head, wondering if I was standing where Jillian had stabbed her mom. We breezed through the living room and headed downstairs, which was basically one big open room divided into smaller areas: an entertainment area for watching movies, another fireplace lounge, a bar, lots of the chairs he promised (along with more paintings of chairs), and a billiards table. “No one even knows how to play pool,” Jack admitted.

I gestured to a receiver behind a built-in glass cabinet. “That's some stereo.”

“Music can be piped into the room of your choice, or all of them. Dad uses it for parties, so music can stream through the entire house. He has an old record collection and the turntable there.”

“Gee, the mayor's a hipster. Who knew?”

“Yeaaaah,
no.
He likes the Eagles.”

I laughed. “My mom still thinks Depeche Mode is cutting edge.”

“How about radio instead? Pick a decade.” He flipped channels featuring songs from the 1940s to the 1990s. We settled on the 1950s, partly because “Heartbreak Hotel” was playing, and I reached up and ran my fingers through Jack's Elvis hair. “Do you sing, too?” I teased.

“Not outside a shower,” he said, capturing my wrists and pulling my hands to his chest. “Hope you don't have dreams of a poetic, guitar-playing boyfriend who writes you bad love songs, because I am terrible at all that.”

“Do you even know me at all? I like anatomical hearts, not valentines.”

He glanced down at my heart … or at my cleavage—hard to tell which. I was wearing a black shirt that usually tilted off one shoulder, but because I still had my jacket on, the “tilt” had shifted to the front and revealed more than I'd intended. Or just the right amount.

I felt a little self-conscious, so I pulled away and strolled around the room. I spotted a door in a darkened corner. Wrong thing.

“Before you ask, that's the door to the basement, and, no, I won't go down there. Like, ever again.”

Crap. “I don't blame you.”

He absently scratched the side of his neck. “To be honest, I don't like being down here on this floor, either.”

I nodded, not knowing what to say. But he didn't linger on the memory. He just smiled softly and hooked his pinky around mine. “Let's go upstairs. There's something I want to show you.”

Backtracking up the big staircase, we headed to the top floor, music following us all the way up. Four bedrooms were clustered around his father's office, which was one of those messy-neat rooms, with small stacks of paper and file folders everywhere. “It looks like someone cleans around the piles,” I said, smiling at the vacuum-cleaner ruts still visible in the rug.

“Mrs. Weiser, every other morning on weekdays. She's our maid. She doesn't come when my parents are out of town.”

Ooh-la-la
, a maid. Must be nice. It took me several seconds to realize he was assuring me we were alone, and that made my stomach do a few cartwheels.

He led me up a tiny spiral staircase in the corner of the office. We emerged into a renovated attic space. White walls covered the underside of a pitched roof, making an upside-down V. Short bookshelves lined the sides. The only pieces of furniture were a small stuffed chair and a reading lamp. A light blue rug covered most of the wood floor.

The back of the room contained a porthole window that overlooked the decks, but it was the front wall that drew all my attention. It was made of glass, and two doors in the middle pushed out and folded back on themselves to open up the room onto a small balcony, where a waist-high wall of glass separated us from a stunning view of the city.

Cool night air rushed through the open doorway as we stepped out onto the balcony. The tree-lined hill of Parnassus sloped to the left (and beyond that, my neighborhood). Buena Vista Park sat to our right, and the heart of San Francisco lay before us. Darkening streets slanted toward a pink sunset. We weren't high enough to see the Bay in the distance, but it was a million-dollar view nonetheless.

We sat down side by side on the edge of the rug, legs stretching onto the balcony, and looked through the glass wall.

“Cool, right?” Jack asked. “It's the best part of the house. Jillian and I used to come out here and sail paper airplanes over the rooftops.”

Minutes passed while we listened to music and watched streetlights twinkle to life under the rolling fog. I must've gotten a little too relaxed, because when he finally spoke, it startled me. “I want to know why it was so bad for you when you and that Howard Hooper guy dated.”

“I told you. He was a jerk.”

“No, I mean the sex,” he clarified. “I need to know what he did wrong so I don't make the same mistake.”

25

My cheeks caught fire, so I didn't look at him. I just said, “Oh.”

“What if it's bad between us, too? You might end up hating me.”

“That's not going to happen. But if you're worried,” I said carefully, “we don't have to … I mean, I'm not expecting anything from you.”

He looked alarmed. “You don't expect anything from me, as in you expect it to be the same?”

“No! I meant … ugh.” I drew my knees to my chest and hugged them. “I meant, if you're not ready, it's fine.”

“Oh, I'm ready,” he said so confidently, it made my chest feel warm. “I just want to know what went wrong. Like, specifically.”

“Specifically?”

“If we can't talk about it, how can we do it?” He had a point. “Why was it bad?”

I sighed. “For starters, it was always in the car.”

“Which was cramped?” he guessed.

Fine. He really wanted to know? I'd tell him everything. “It felt cheap. Like he couldn't be bothered to try harder. And either there was a seat belt buckle poking my rib or my head was bumping against the roof of the car—which, after I broke up with him, he apparently told some of his friends in English class about. Because a couple of them started making jokes to me, like ‘Your head bruised up today, Morticia?' Or they'd pound on their desks and say ‘What's that sound? It's Morticia's head hitting the roof of the car.'”