Love? Maybe.

by Heather Hepler

  “Piper,” he says, finally turning to look at me. “It wasn’t just tonight. It’s all the time. Since my mom left, he can’t sleep. He can’t eat. He barely paints. It’s like living with a ghost.”

  “I didn’t know—You didn’t tell me.” I stare out into the night in frustration. “How can I help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on?”

  “I didn’t ask for your help,” Charlie says. The darkness makes it impossible to see his face. He takes a deep breath. “Anyway, I’m fine, Piper. You worry too much.”

  “Charlie, why are you doing this?” I ask. “Why are you pushing me away?”

  Charlie laughs, but it’s hard and sharp, like broken glass. “That’s pretty funny coming from you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask. I shove my hands into the pocket of my sweatshirt.

  “You are the queen of pushing people away. Beau, your friends, pretty much every guy you’ve ever dated.” He pauses. “And me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You do, Piper.” He says it softly.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” I say. I turn to go back inside, but his voice stops me.

  “I know you better than you think,” Charlie says. I turn and stare at him. “I know your heart is still broken from when your dad took off. I know you pretend you’re mad at Beau because he left your mom, but you’re just as mad that he left you.”

  I breathe in and out.

  “I know the few times you’ve dated anyone, they’re guys who will never even come close to understanding you. And even then you still figure out a way to dump them before they can get to know you.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “I know that you want someone to love you, but you’re afraid to love them back.”

  “You don’t know anything,” I say. My cheeks are hot and my hands are shaking. “Just leave me alone.” I inch back down toward my window.

  “Piper, stop pushing me away,” Charlie says.

  “Or what?” I ask. “Or you’ll go away?” I turn and stare at him, daring him to disagree.

  He shakes his head. “I was just going to say that when you push me away, it hurts.” I climb back through my window and shut it behind me. I change my pajama pants, leaving the damp ones balled on the floor. I get into my bed and stare at my ceiling. I don’t hear anything for a long time, but finally I hear Charlie stand up and go back inside. I’m not sure what scares me more, the fact that he waited out there so long to see if I’d come back out or the fact that he finally gave up and went inside.

  I did finally fall asleep, but it wasn’t nearly enough. I’m still exhausted. I pretty much half slept through all of my classes, which can’t be good for my GPA. I saw Ben Donovan twice in the halls, but he just sort of half waved at me and scooted away, making me think: I am now the girl who made Ben Donovan have the worst date of his life. The rest of Wednesday rolls right into Thursday with too much work, too little sleep, and silence from Charlie. By the time the final bell rings on Thursday, I’m ready to drop, but I stop by Jan’s hoping he’ll send me home. Unfortunately, he’s so busy that I have to stay.

  Jeremy and I fill the empty jars with jelly beans and gummy bears and peppermints. He tells me about the auction and about how happy Jillian’s mom was with the turnout, despite the bad weather. I ask him if it was weird for him to see Jillian and Charlie hanging out at the Umlaut thing.

  “Did you take your stupid pills this morning?” Jeremy asks me.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask. Jeremy shakes his head and walks away from me. Jan comes out of the kitchen, wiping his hands with a towel. He looks nearly as tired as I feel. Ever since the Food Network vans left, the store’s been mobbed.

  “I just can’t keep up,” he says. “I can’t make enough candy to keep the cases full. We’re out of nearly everything.”

  “Welcome to the big time,” I say, funneling Consternation Hearts into a new box. I close the flap and start on the next one. “Good thing you’re expanding,” I say.

  “What?” Jan asks. He’s staring at the menu board, trying to figure out what to erase. “Oh yeah, that.”

  “I saw that they took the For Lease sign out of the window.” Jan nods and wipes “Bacon Truffles” off the board. Jeremy has been churning them out, but people keep buying them faster than he can make them.

  The door to the shop bumps open. It’s Jillian. “Hey,” I say.

  “Hi, Piper.” She seems nervous and weird. And I wonder if she’s worried about seeing Jeremy, but when he walks through the door from the kitchen it isn’t weird at all. Apparently she’s only weird with me. Great. I keep filling boxes of candy hearts, one after the next like I’m some sort of machine. When I run out of candy, I go back to the kitchen to get another case. Jillian, Jan, and Jeremy are all standing around the island, talking, but they get quiet when I walk in. I just head past them and grab another bin and push back through the door to the shop. I keep filling boxes in between customers, filling until all of the hearts are gone.

  A woman in a red hat comes in with one of our bags in her hand. “Hi,” she says. “I bought these a little while ago.” I nod, wondering if I look stupid or something. I was the one who waited on her less than an hour ago. “Anyway, I was talking to one of my girlfriends over coffee. You know at that little shop down on the corner.” I have to resist the impulse to make the hurry-up-with-the-story motion that Jeremy always makes. “I wanted to show her how clever your candies are.” She pauses.

  “Well, thank you,” I say.

  She looks at me for a moment. “Well the thing is… and I’m sure it was just an oversight… there wasn’t any silver heart in there. And see… I checked all of them and none of them has one.” Jan comes out of the kitchen with a big tray of truffles in his hands. He puts them on the counter beside me and smiles at the woman before starting to refill the case. I look back at the woman, who is just standing there looking at me and waiting.

  “What?” I begin. “I mean, I’m sorry, but I—” Okay maybe I am stupid. I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “It’s no problem,” the woman says. “Maybe you could just give me the silver hearts. I can put them in the boxes myself.”

  “I just—”

  “Of course,” Jan says. He reaches under the counter for a cellophane bag. He opens a box under the counter and pours a handful of silver fortune hearts into the bag. He twists the top closed and hands it to her. “I’m very sorry,” he says. “Here.” He grabs another bag and drops two of his mood ring pops into it. “On the house.” She’s so happy with Jan that she just starts babbling all kinds of things at him. I sigh and walk back toward the kitchen to return the now-empty bin. Jeremy and Jillian are standing close together. She’s saying something softly to him and he’s rubbing her arm. When they see me, they both seem guilty. I just walk past them without saying anything. Maybe I did take my stupid pills this morning, because suddenly the entire world seems way too hard to understand.

  I walk back into the front of the shop. Jan stops fiddling with the boxes of Consternation Hearts and looks up at me. He looks guilty too. “Okay, I’m sorry if I’m a little slow today, but what was that woman talking about?” Jan starts to say something, then stops and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Arrrghhh,” I say, walking back around the counter and out into the café. I poke at the jukebox and the arm reaches in and selects one of the records from the row. (Yes, it’s one of those jukeboxes and yes, it’s worth a kazillion dollars, not that Jan would ever think of selling it.) “Moondance” comes spilling out of the speakers. Jan walks up beside me and looks in at the record spinning. “You going to tell me what’s going on?” I ask.

  He sighs again. “Which part?”

  I laugh. “There are multiple parts?”

  Jan laughs too. “Yeah, but I can’t tell you all.”

  “Of course you can’t, Yoda. You’re about to tell me that some things I have to find out on my own.”

/>   Jan laughs again. “No, it’s just that some parts aren’t mine to tell.”

  “Could you be more vague?” I ask. Jan elbows me. “Just start with the red hat woman.”

  Jan adjusts his glasses and turns away from the jukebox. He leans back against it. I do the same. “I guess it’s what I told you before, Piper. I just can’t be that cynical about love. And I don’t want you to be either.” He pauses and pulls his glasses off and polishes them with the hem of his shirt. He puts his glasses back on and looks at me. “I just wanted to give people a little hope,” he says.

  “So you added one of your fortune hearts.”

  He nods. “I made them special for your Consternation Hearts.”

  “What do they say?” I ask.

  He sighs. “The outside has ‘Hope’ printed on it and the inside says ‘Believe in Love.’”

  “Do you?” I ask. “Do you believe in love?”

  Jan readjusts his glasses, stalling. “Piper, I was married for a long time to a woman I loved very much. Then I messed it up. I mean, it wasn’t all my fault, but a lot of it was. You know?” I nod. I don’t know, but I can imagine. “It took me a long time to forgive myself for all of that. A long time to believe in much of anything anymore. But you know what brought me back?” I shake my head. “Love.”

  “Love?” I ask.

  He nods. “Powerful stuff.”

  “Whose love?” I ask.

  “Well, my daughter’s for one. My love for her and her love for me. And my ex-wife’s. She’s shown me a lot of grace over the years. Some good friends. Some great kids that seem to like hanging out with an old guy like me for reasons I can’t begin to guess.” He smiles over at me again. “See, the thing is Piper, it’s really the only thing that’s worth living for.”

  “Love,” I say.

  “Yep,” he says. “How’s that for Yoda?” I shrug. He takes a deep breath. “People are going to fail you in life. Sometimes in little ways. Sometimes in big ways.”

  “That’s not exactly hopeful,” I say.

  “And you’re going to fail others.”

  “Again, not that hopeful.”

  “Real love isn’t bothered by that.” He smiles at me. “When you really love someone, you see all their mess and their brokenness and you love them anyway. In fact, seeing all of that sort of makes you love them more.”

  I sigh and try to put words to a question that’s been floating around inside my head for a long time. “What if you do that? What if you show someone who you really are and they don’t love you? Or worse, they turn away like you’re too ugly to love?”

  Jan looks over at me. “I know you aren’t talking about Piper Paisley. She is definitely not too ugly to love. She has all kinds of people who love her.”

  I sigh and shake my head. “Not everyone.”

  “Well, no,” Jan says. “I mean, you can’t make someone love you. Some people just don’t have it in them or they don’t want to. Some people are more interested in protecting themselves than in loving people.” I nod. “And I don’t blame them. I mean, hearts are delicate things.”

  “They are,” I say.

  “But they are also amazingly resilient,” Jan says. I nod, thinking of my mother and Claire and now Jan. “So, that’s it,” he says. “Lecture over.” He pushes away from the jukebox. “So what about you, Piper?”

  “What about me what?” I ask.

  “Will you at least think about what I said?” I nod. “Then my work here is done.” He looks around at the shop. “Man, there is a lot of work to do,” he says, laughing. I stay there, leaning against the jukebox. Maybe Jeremy’s right. Maybe I’m not all that smart. It’s like the whole time I’ve been focusing on my own brokenness, I’ve missed a very important fact. Everyone’s broken. My mom, Beau, Jan, Charlie’s dad. I think of the phone call I need to make. Even Jack.

  The bells on the front door jingle. I look up and see Ben Donovan coming through the door. He looks around the shop for a moment, and then his eyes settle on me.

  “Hey,” he says. I smile at him. “Can I talk to you?” I nod and push away from the jukebox. I follow him outside where we sit at one of the tables. He looks past me for a moment then right at me. “Listen,” he says. “I didn’t want to just leave things between us like they were. All—”

  “Weird?” I ask. He nods. “Ben,” I say, aware that this is the first time I’ve ever said his first name by itself. “We’re good.” He smiles at me.

  “Friends?” he asks.

  “Only if you mean it.”

  “Paisley, I would be crazy to not want to be friends with you. You are one very interesting girl.”

  “I choose to take that as a compliment,” I say, laughing. I see Charlie’s car pulling into the lot, then him climbing out. He sees me sitting there and pauses, but then keeps walking toward us. He nods at Ben when he walks past, but barely acknowledges me. He walks into Jan’s shop, letting the door whoosh shut behind him.

  “So we’re good?” Ben asks.

  “Definitely,” I say. Ben stands up and pulls his sunglasses out of his pocket and puts them on.

  “I’ll see you at the meet tomorrow,” he says. He starts walking toward his car, which is parked at the other end of the lot past Charlie’s.

  “Wait!” I say. “Are you the one who’s been putting stuff in my locker?”

  “What are you talking about?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  He smiles and shakes his head at me. “Hey, try not to puke in the pool during the meet. Okay?” I start laughing. I watch him climb into his car and pull out. I am now the girl who is friends with Ben Donovan. My phone moos in my pocket and I pull it out. There’s a text from my mother.

  Jack called again.

  I love u—M

  Below there is a number, which I assume is Jack’s. I take a deep breath. Might as well, I think. I dial the number, remembering what my mother said about the octopus. A woman answers. I ask if I can talk to Jack. She asks who’s calling. When I tell her, she gets quiet, and then she tells me to hang on. I look at the clouds drifting overhead as I wait.

  “Hello?” It’s my father. I take a deep breath.

  “Hi,” I say. “It’s Piper. Mom said you wanted to talk to me.”

  Jack clears his throat. I hear a woman laughing in the background and then the sound of at least two kids laughing with her. “I appreciate you calling.” It sounds so formal, like we don’t even know each other, which I guess we don’t. He’s quiet for a long time. “Piper—I don’t know how to exactly—” He pauses. “Listen,” he says finally. “I’ve been a really terrible father to you.” I resist the urge to say anything. I mean, what can I say? “I was hoping—” He gets quiet for a long moment. “I mean, only if you want to—” He laughs a little. A nervous habit we share. “Piper, what I mean to say is I’d like to know you.”

  “Why now?” I ask. I’m not angry. Just confused.

  Jack sighs. “I guess I finally just got up the courage to ask.”

  “I need to think about it,” I say.

  “Of course,” he says. I hear the sadness in his voice. “I just wanted you to know I’m here if you—” He breaks off again. Neither one of us says anything for several moments. Then he breaks the silence. “Maybe we’ll talk soon,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. I put on my sunglasses because I can feel the tears coming. “I should go,” I say, finally. I listen to him say good-bye and then the click of him hanging up.

  Instead of holding back the tears like I’ve done so many times before, I just let them fall. Big fat tears that hit the top of the stone table, making wet patches. I hear the door to Jan’s open and I look up. Charlie stands there looking at me. He starts to say something, but I just shake my head. I can’t really deal with anything else at this very moment. I stand up and walk away from him toward the end of the block, where I turn the corner. I stop and lean against the stone wall, just feeling the cool rocks on my back. I cry until the tears final
ly stop, like I’ve just run out. I stand there for a while longer before I walk back around the corner and toward Jan’s. Where Charlie’s car was parked is a big red Hummer. I walk into Jan’s. He’s standing at the counter talking on his cell.

  “She’s here,” he says. “I will.” He clicks his phone shut. “Your mom,” he says, putting it on the counter. “She was worried.” I nod. “You okay?” he asks.

  I take a deep breath. “I think so,” I say.

  Jan looks at me for a long moment. Then he smiles at me and claps his hands. “Well, good. Because there’s a lot of work to do and I need the help.”

  “That’s why you pay me the big bucks,” I say. This makes him laugh. And when Jan’s laughing you can’t help but laugh too.