The Book of Love (5 page)

The next day Lucy woke up queasy and anxious. She felt like he was so far away already, almost as though he was someone she’d imagined or made up. It was impossible to believe it had only been two days since she’d been kissing him good-bye. She’d reread every text message he’d ever sent her, and then she’d looked up the weather where he was in Colorado just to try and feel closer to him. When she saw that there was a tornado warning that day she’d felt worried for him but also weirdly relieved, because this gave her a good excuse to call him again. Somehow at the time it hadn’t occurred to her how wrong it was that she felt like she needed an “excuse” to call her own boyfriend.

“Um . . . yeah, that was the night.”

“Was she there when we talked on the phone?”

He nodded. He looked guilty. “I didn’t pick up at first because it felt weird to while she was there, even though nothing had happened or anything. I just thought it would be awkward to try to explain it.”

“To me or to her?”

Alex reached up and scratched the back of his neck. “Both, I guess. I was going to just try you back later, but you called and called. . . .” Lucy felt a prickling embarrassment for that other Lucy, the one who kept hitting the little green phone icon, four times in a row in fact, somehow unable to stop herself. She had had this strange and crazy jolt of worry when she couldn’t reach him the first time. It wasn’t because of the storm, even—the news said it was very mild. But rather this absurd and ridiculous feeling she couldn’t shake, that somehow in between when she’d last spoken to him and then, he simply stopped existing.

Ahead of time she’d written out a little list of things they might talk about—a very cute and friendly three-legged dog she’d seen on her street, the movie she’d gone to about mountain climbing (which she only went to because Alex liked it), and hey, by the way, what exactly did he think of hedgehogs as pets?

When he’d finally picked up, she’d felt her body flood with relief. But things got awkward quickly. Their “hey”s and “how are you”s overlapped and kept overlapping, and she could barely hear him anyway over the sound of the rain. The call was short. She hadn’t even gotten to bring up a single item on her list before he said, “Well, I won’t keep you.” Even though that was all she’d ever wanted.

She vowed that she’d let him call her next time. And so she devoted herself to taking pictures, to sending him presents, to waiting to hear from him. And wait she did. He texted every few days and sent an email here and there. Deep down she knew something was wrong, but she so didn’t want to believe it that she spent the entire summer trying to convince herself not to trust herself. It was an exhausting mistake.

“After you and I hung up was the first time we kissed,” Alex said. And she could tell by the rasp in his voice and the look in his eyes that Lucy’s presence was now completely irrelevant to this conversation. He just wanted to hear himself talk.

“So what’s she like?” Lucy said.

“She’s like . . . she’s just not like anyone else,” Alex said. “She’s completely fearless and spontaneous and crazy. When I asked her to come and visit me, she just hopped on a plane like it was nothing.”

“She’s here now?”

Alex nodded.

“Staying at your parents’ house?”

Alex shook his head, then looked embarrassed. “No, at a hotel. I’m paying for it, though. She asked me to find one for her when I asked her to come. I was excited about it. I thought it was just so that we’d have a place to be alone to . . .” He trailed off.

“Have sex?” Lucy finished. She’d assumed they had already done it, that he had lost his virginity to her, both from the way he’d acted when he got back and from that picture she found. Still, it was weird to hear herself say it, to hear herself say it and have almost no feeling about it at all.

“Um . . . yeah,” he said. “I guess.” He turned away. “But I think she just wanted somewhere else to go so that she wouldn’t have to stay with me after she dumped me.”

“Hmm,” Lucy said. “Weird.” She did not like the way that she sounded now, so pinched, and sharp, and mean. She did not like the tiny smile she felt playing on her lips.

Alex looked so sad.

Lucy took a breath. Heartbreaker or not, she was still a human being. And the human response to someone’s suffering should never be
joy
, no matter how much of a jerk that someone might be. “It’s too bad that happened to you,” she said gently. “Having a broken heart sucks.”

“Thank you,” Alex said. And then tipped his head, as though something had just occurred to him. “Hey, so I was giving you space before because I thought I should or whatever, but you’re clearly okay so . . . does that mean we can be friends now?”

Lucy paused. “Sure,” she said. “Of course we can.” But she didn’t mean it.

Lucy walked back to the photo closet, went to her cubbyhole, and took out her contact sheets of the pictures she’d taken over the summer. She hadn’t even glanced at them in weeks, not since she’d become a Heartbreaker. How funny to look back and see the world through the eyes of the girl she used to be. The pictures she took now jumped out and grabbed you. These old ones whispered your name over and over until you noticed.

She stared down at the row of tiny photos. In the center of the page was one of Tristan in profile, playing harmonica in his car as the sun went down. Lucy
remembered that day, how the two of them had sat there, their feet up on the dash, eating Popsicles until it was black outside. What was special about the photo wasn’t the composition or the lighting or any of that crap—what stood out was the look on Tristan’s face, in his eyes. There was just so much of
him
in there—his sweet, funny, smart, weird self. She hadn’t known why she was taking the photo at the time, just that something in her gut told her to.

She looked up at Alex, who’d just emerged from the darkroom carrying a close-up of a crying eye. His eye. He held up the print, and rubbed his chin, like he was deep in thought about it. Then he glanced at Mr. Wexler, backed up toward his desk, and let out a cough. When Mr. Wexler didn’t look up, he coughed louder. It was so obvious what Alex was doing that Lucy almost had to laugh—he was trying to get Mr. Wexler to notice his picture so he’d call the class over to discuss how great it was. Mr. Wexler had done it a few times for Lucy’s photos, and Alex always looked so surprised, so shocked, that the compliment had been given to her and not him.

Lucy rolled her eyes and turned away. Perhaps he was the same old Alex after all.

Sometimes the world just made no sense. How was it possible that she’d fallen in love with this idiot—that she’d pined away for him, given him her heart, and let him break it? Yet
she’d
broken the heart of her best friend, the best person she’d ever known. It was completely wrong.

What mattered now was only this: Could she fix it?

There may be one tiny little chance,
Gil had said.

Lucy just hoped it was enough.

Seven

G
illy, Rowan says he’s buying you a ticket to visit him in Australia,” Olivia said, reading from Gil’s phone.

“Well, that’s sweet,” said Gil.

“Wonder if you can cash it in for the miles?” Liza said with a smirk.

It was later, school had just ended, and the four girls were sitting in Olivia’s car, going through the day’s collection of texts from flirting, lovesick, and heartbroken boys.

Lucy looked down at Liza’s phone. “Jeremiah says he baked you cookies, although based on this photograph, I’m not entirely sure it would be advisable to eat them.”

Liza let out a snicker, then stared at Olivia’s phone. “Rick grafittied ‘I love Olivia’ on a bathroom wall somewhere in
Canada.
Ooooh,
that naughty boy is committing
crimes
for you, Livvy.”

Olivia shook her head. “Well, Aiden wants to know when Gilly’s coming over to pick up the present he got her.” Olivia reached back with the phone open. On the screen was a picture of a guy with a bow stuck to the top of his head.

“Tim says he can’t wait to stare into your beautiful green eyes again,” Lucy said. “And Craig S says you’re hot.”

Liza snorted. “Well, at least one of them’s observant.”

Olivia’s phone buzzed. “Olivia, it’s from Pete,” Liza said. She cleared her throat and in a terrible British accent read, “‘I had a dream about you last night, love. And yes,
that
kind of dream. I promise to tell you all about it later if you promise to act it out in person next time I see you. Also, when are you going to break my heart already, O-livia? I’ve been ready for ages, you know.’” Liza turned. “Okay, fine, I added that last part myself. But seriously. When are you going to do it?”

Olivia shrugged. “What does it matter? It’s not like we’re lacking in tears.”

“I have one more for Lucy,” Gil said. “From Colin.”

At the sound of his name, Lucy’s stomach clenched.

Liza smirked in the rearview. “What did you do to him, little Lulu? The boy has got it bad.” She sounded impressed. But Lucy felt terrible.

It had been surprisingly easy to make Colin fall in love with her because Lucy naturally understood him—he was just like she used to be. That, plus the bit of illicit extra magic that Olivia had slipped to her in the middle of the
night, meant his love still burned bright even after more than six weeks of trying to painlessly defuse it.

“What does it say, Gilly?” Liza asked.

“Colin wants to know how you’re doing and if you’re okay, because he hasn’t heart back from you in a while. And he would still love to take you for that ice cream if you’re up for it. Then he sent another one saying sorry he meant ‘heard’ back, not ‘heart’ back. And then he wrote ‘haha’ in all caps.”

“Oh,” said Lucy. She winced. She recognized that tone, that anxious-slightly-desperate-trying-to-sound-casual-but-not-feeling-casual-at-all tone. She couldn’t count how many similar messages she’d sent Alex.

“You do realize you can’t just hide until he stops loving you, right?” Liza said.

“I know,” Lucy said. But the truth was, she’d been hoping exactly that.

“Well, of course she
could
,” Olivia said. “But it would be kind of mean, wouldn’t it? To let him dangle like that?”

“Yeah, set him free, Lulu,” Liza said with a smirk.

This was the part of being a Heartbreaker that Lucy was in denial about, that she felt quite certain she would not be able to do: the actual heartbreaking.

Lucy swallowed hard. She imagined Colin’s face, and the way he stared at her the last time she saw him the day before she became a Heartbreaker—he was full of such sweet unassuming, earnest love.

For a moment the car was silent, and Lucy wondered if she was the only one with a ball of guilt slowly growing in her belly. She was pretty sure she was.

The silence was only broken by the tinkly bell of Gil’s phone ringing. “Gilly-bean,” Olivia said. “Someone named Shay is calling you.” She tossed the phone behind her into Gil’s lap. Gil hit
IGNORE
.

“Who’s Shay?” said Liza. “Is that the Scottish one?”

Gil shrugged and then grinned. “Oh, who can even keep track anymore?” And she laughed. The rest of them laughed right along with her.

A few minutes later they pulled up in front of a small blue house. The paint was peeling, and it looked like the lawn hadn’t been mowed in a month. The front walkway was lined with flower bushes half-overgrown, half-dead.

Liza opened the car door. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“We’ll come up with you,” said Olivia.

“You don’t need to do that.” Liza shook her head. “Seriously.”

“Look,” Olivia said. “We’re not letting you deal with it alone.” And with that she got out of the car and shut the door behind her.

Liza took a breath and then turned to face Lucy. “My mom is really messed up,” she said quickly. “So please ignore whatever batshit thing she says. I just need to make sure she is not facedown in a pool of her own vomit because her job called and she didn’t make it in today.” Lucy had never heard Liza like this before—she sounded kind of ashamed. And just the littlest bit scared.

Lucy nodded and looked down at her lap. Gil had already told her about Liza’s mom—about how she was a Glass Heart, which meant that her heart broke all the time, and
every time it broke, it shattered. But Liza pretty much never talked about her.

Liza opened the front door and they followed her inside the house. “Mom, I’m here,” she called out.

There was no answer, just the sound of the TV. They walked slowly. “I brought my friends, so please do not be drunk and naked. Hello?”

“Lizzie?” There was a quiet muffled voice coming from the bedroom. Liza pushed through the door into a dimly lit room.

There was a chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling, five of its six bulbs burnt out. There was a stained white carpet and in the center of it a large four-poster bed covered in a tangle of twisted sheets and blankets. The floor was littered with crumpled tissues and empty Diet Coke cans.

Liza went to the window and pulled open the curtains. “Damn, Mom,” she said. Sunlight streamed in. Sitting on the bed was a woman in her mid-forties, wearing a pink-flowered silk robe, her hair pulled back into a sloppy bun, eyes ringed in red. Even in this state, she was gorgeous. She held a phone up and pointed to a photo of herself in a liquid gold dress, fully made-up, laughing, holding on to the arm of a rather ordinary-looking man.