“You had that coming,” Victor says with a chuckle.
“Are you regretting moving to the big apple?” I ask Jenson, as I fold my legs underneath me.
“Nope. Most of the time I like it, but I miss home . . . and I have stuff I need to take care of here.”
I sink back into the couch and think about this scenario, wondering if this is what it would be like if Oliver and I were really dating. Would we hang out with my brother and their friends? Would it be awkward? Would we sit across the room from each other because he’s too scared of his best friend and what he would have to say about our relationship? My shoulders slump at the thought. I look up when I feel Oliver’s eyes on me, and smile when he taps the spot beside him on the couch. Finally, against my better judgment, or maybe because of it, I stand and sit beside him, snatching the huge Forty-Niners throw draped over the couch to bring with me.
“I missed you today,” he whispers as soon as my ass touches the couch. I try to hide my smile with the throw I’m adjusting, but fail when he speaks up again, louder this time. “Are we sharing that? It’s cold as hell in here.”
“Sure.”
“It’s not cold,” Jenson says, raising his eyebrows at us.
“We’re sitting right under the air vent,” Oliver says, nodding up. I bring my knees up so that they’re touching the side of his leg, and he scoots closer to me, pulling my knees so they’re completely on his lap. He leaves his hand there, running his palm over my thighs, making me visibly shiver with the movement. Our eyes meet at the same time and my stomach dips because I know that look. I know in an instant that his gaze will drop from my eyes to my lips, and then he’ll lick his slowly, while my heart begins to thunder in my ears. The moment drowns out the game, and Victor and Jenson’s shouts at whatever play Frank Gore made or missed. It doesn’t matter to me either way, because the only game I want to play involves the long fingers that are inching up my thigh, and the lips that part as I near them.
A loud cough snaps us into reality, and we practically jump away from each other to look at Jenson, who’s shooting us a what the fuck are you doing look.
“You all right?” Victor asks, tearing his eyes from the TV to look at him.
“Yeah, sure. Beer went down the wrong pipe.”
Vic shakes his head and pops open another can. “Hey, Bean, you heard anything from those practices?”
“I go for an interview at the end of the week,” he replies.
“San Fran?” Jenson asks.
“Yeah.”
“Damn. Won’t you miss being home again?”
I really try not to look at him when he answers. I try not to focus my peripheral vision on the way he shrugs his shoulders, or the way his hands move in a motion that says he’s fine either way. I try not to let that pierce a hole in my heart, but it happens anyway. All of it does. We’ve talked about his job and the fact that there aren’t too many openings here in his field right now. It doesn’t lessen the blow that he’s been looking at places that are far away from here when our relationship is finally on the right foot for once. That is, until his job is mentioned and his natural ambition takes over, squashing it all. As usual.
“Home is where you make it,” he says.
I close my eyes and stand up, dropping the throw and going around the couch to leave the room. “I’m going to . . .” My voice trails off, and I just keep walking when I can’t think of an excuse. I stop by the kitchen to grab a bottle of water, and as I’m closing the refrigerator, Oliver steps in.
“You’re mad,” he whispers.
I sigh. “Yes, I’m mad, genius!”
He’s looking at me as if the answer may be written somewhere on my face, and that’s when I realize that he really doesn’t get it. He really doesn’t understand how the possibility of a job in San Francisco would affect me.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the interviews?” I whisper-shout. When he doesn’t respond, I shake my head. “I can’t do this right now. I promised my mom I would go help her with some things. I have to go.”
“You can’t leave in the middle of this,” he says, turning me to face him and ducking his head to look me in the eyes. “I haven’t even interviewed yet, Elle. It’s not like I got a job over there.”
“But you will.”
“I may not, babe,” he says, his voice a rasp against my ear.
“You will,” I say, feeling tears prick my eyes. “You will, because you’re smart and you’re a hard worker, and you graduated with a damn near perfect GPA, and any practice would be lucky to have you. You told me you couldn’t compete with a ghost. Well, I can’t compete with your job.” I pull away from him.
“You’re not,” Oliver says, just as Victor walks into the kitchen and bumps into me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“Just talking about life,” Oliver chimes in.
“I’m going out. I won’t be back tonight,” I respond, as I head toward the door.
Victor whistles. “Damn, three nights in a row? Do I get to meet the bastard any time soon? Did you tell him your brother is a lawyer, has a gun, and knows a lot of people in law enforcement?”
“I’m going to Mom’s house, doofus,” I say, shaking my head. I look behind him when he moves toward the refrigerator, and catch Oliver’s eyes.
“We need to talk,” he mouths. I nod in agreement and signal him to call me before I turn to leave.
An hour and 100 holiday cards folded and put in envelopes later, I go upstairs to check my phone. Seeing a missed call from Oliver, I call him back.
“Where are you?” he asks after the phone rings once.
“My parents.”
“I’m on my way.”
“What? No,” I say, looking around at the mess I managed to make in less than ten minutes of being in my old room.
“Leave your window unlocked.”
“Oliver! We’re not teenagers. How are you going to climb a tree?”
“Are you calling me old?” he asks, and I can hear the smile in his voice.
“If the shoe fits.”
“It doesn’t,” he says in a little growl that makes me laugh, despite myself.
“Are you saying you have small feet?”
“Are you telling me you need me to remind you that I don’t?”
Somehow, I manage a laugh over my stuttering heart. “Fine. I’ll leave the window unlocked.”
What feels like hours later, Oliver climbs into my window and settles in beside me in bed, pulling me so that my back is to his chest.
“You took forever,” I whisper.
“I took ten minutes.”
“It seemed like forever.”
“It always does when I’m not with you,” he murmurs, pulling me into him.
“You said you couldn’t compete against my job,” he says against my neck. “And I agree. Is that the only part you can’t do?”
I breathe out loudly. “That and the part where we have an amazing weekend together, and then you leave me. I don’t have it in me to let you in completely and then lose you. But I did, Oliver. I let you in completely this time, despite my reservations,” I respond, closing my eyes.
It seems like we’ve done this song and dance a million times before. Yet, here we are, and I realize that I’d rather let history repeat itself because the other option—the one where I live life without the way he makes me feel when I’m with him—seems like it’s missing everything I need. If this is love . . . real love . . . like I’ve always thought, it’s nothing more than a vicious game of Russian roulette. The gun clicks when it comes to you, and you cringe in anticipation that this may just be the last breath you take, but then it continues on, until the next round . . . and the next. Then there’s that one time when it clicks and hits you, and you just can’t walk away.
“And I’m thankful for that, Estelle. I really am.” He exhales. “I wish I had all the answers. I wish I knew what tomorrow w
ould bring, so that this wouldn’t be so difficult.”
“I don’t care what it will bring, Oliver.”
“You do, Elle. You can lie to yourself and say you don’t, and that you just want to have fun and take what you can when you can, but you do care.”
I pause. “You date women and never get involved in anything serious. All my brother talks about is how easy it is for you to walk away, and how little you care when they do, so why do you care when it comes to me?”
He drops a kiss on my shoulder and settles his face into my neck. “If I get offered a job I want, I’ll tell you, and we can figure out what to do together, okay? I don’t climb into windows, Elle. I don’t do chasing. I don’t go out of my way to explain my decisions to women I date. If they don’t like something about me, they’re free to go, as am I. I think the fact that I’m here right now says a lot.”
“I know it does,” I whisper.
“So you believe me when I tell you that I care?” he murmurs against the back of my shoulder.
“I do believe you, and I don’t want you worried about me when you go up there next week.” I doubt he would be worried about me. When he gets his game face on, he does a good job at tuning everything else out, but I figure I should say the words out loud anyway. I feel myself begin to pull back, gathering the scattered notions of hope I’ve been putting into this thing between us.
He lets out a heavy sigh and wraps his legs over mine, his face in my neck, and his arms around my middle . . . and that’s how we spend the night. But even though I’m wrapped up in my favorite little nook, I get little sleep. The only thing I can think about is how I’m in too deep, as usual, and I know I won’t make it out unscathed.
Days later, when I walk into the hospital, I spot Oliver from afar talking to one of the doctors—a man I’ve seen, but don’t know. I don’t catch his eye before I slip into the art room, and I prefer it that way. I told myself I wouldn’t lose my head over this man, even if I never got it back from him to begin with. Still, with the talk of his interviews, I need to keep taking this one day at a time. The last time we were together, when he left my parents’ house at the break of dawn, I told him we needed to slow down. I’ve dodged the calls he’s made my way, although there haven’t been many of them. I heard through the grapevine (or really, Mae), that he’s been working non-stop these past couple of days, so I know he hasn’t had much down time.
In the art room, I lay newspaper over the long table and place transparent, empty boxes by each setting. In the boxes, I place different glass pieces, all colorful and pretty, and then put a mallet beside each box. When the kids come in with their nurse for the day (today it’s Tara), I welcome each of them and signal to the seats. Oliver walks in shortly after, shooting a lingering smile and a wink my way. He approaches Danny and checks the chart that hangs from his oxygen pump.
“Don’t tell me we’re going to break these things,” Mae says.
“Holy shit, we’re going to break things!” Mike shouts, doing a fist pump in the air.
Tara, Oliver and I laugh and shake our heads at his excitement.
“You may want to put the mallet down for now, Thor,” I say, raising an eyebrow at Mike, who smiles widely.
“Thor, huh?” he says. I roll my eyes.
“Remember the rules.”
“I don’t really like rules,” he says, and I laugh, looking at Oliver. I expect to find him laughing, but instead, he is glaring at Mike, which makes the entire thing even more comical.
“Anyway, to answer your question, yes, we are going to break things today.”
“But . . . a dolphin?” Mae says, bringing up the glass dolphin in her box. “And a surfboard?”
I smile and nod. “They’re just things.”
“Pretty things.”
“Well, we’re going to make something even prettier with them. Besides, if you notice, they’re all a little broken,” I say, pointing at the dolphin missing a tail and the chip in the surfboard.
I don’t notice when Oliver steps out of the room, but when I glance up at the sound of the door closing behind him, we’re already well underway with the project. We’re able to make very small versions of the heart, although all of them look more like a ball, but the kids are excited about them nonetheless.
“Now I have to take them home to bake them,” I say.
“Bake them?” Danny asks.
“Yeah, they have to bake, then dry, and then they’ll be done. Do you want to make them into key chains or just leave them as is?”
“Key chains!” Mae says.
Mike furrows his eyebrows at her. “We don’t even drive.”
She smiles. “Speak for yourself. I’ll be driving soon.”
“Fine. I’ll take a key chain,” Mike mumbles.
They start heading out, and while I’m cleaning up, the door re-opens and Jen walks in with a guy in a suit.
“Hey! I’m so glad I caught you,” she says, smiling. “This is Chris. He’s the head of my department, and the reason your project got the green light.”
I step back, a little stunned, because Chris looks like he’s about my age, so I’m surprised he’s in a position above Jen’s.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” I say, wiping my hands over the now dirty apron I have on. “Sorry, I’m kind of . . . dirty right now.” I let out a small, nervous laugh.
Jen smiles. “Hey, at least nobody can say you weren’t working . . .” She looks around and gasps when she sees what we were making. “You guys made these today? They’re beautiful.”
“They’re not set yet, so I have to take them home,” I say, hoping she catches the caution in my voice and doesn’t try to pick them up. Thankfully, she just looks at them in amazement, which makes me smile brighter.
“I love what you’ve done with the place, Estelle. Everybody does, actually. The rooms, the hallways . . . it doesn’t feel like a hospital anymore,” Chris says, turning his attention to me.
Jen looks down at her watch. “I’m so sorry to step out, but I have a meeting with a vendor.” She looks at Chris, who smiles and nods her away. When she leaves and the door closes, I start feeling a little awkward just standing there with this guy in a suit, and I don’t know what else to say. He’s looking around though, so I don’t feel weird for too long. I wash my hands and take off my apron, kind of bouncing from one foot to the other, before heading toward the door. He opens it for me, and we walk out together.
“How long were you thinking of continuing the program?” he asks.
“Honestly? I hadn’t thought about it. I figured Jen would tell me to stop when I wasn’t wanted anymore,” I say with a smile.
“Well, that’s why I wanted to meet you, actually,” he says, stopping when we get to the nurses’ station, which has been moved back over since this part of the hospital is open again.
“Because you want me to stop coming?” I ask slowly. I wouldn’t take it personally if he said no, because I knew this was temporary to begin with, but I definitely need to see this project through. I gear myself up to tell him that while I wait for his response.
Chris frowns and looks behind him at nurses chattering and turns to me again. “Do you think we can go somewhere and talk?”
“Sure. Your office?”
“Actually,” he says, cringing a little and looking sheepish. “Would you mind if we go down to the food court? I kind of missed lunch . . . again.”
I laugh. “Not at all.”
On our way down, Chris tells me that although he started working in the hospital while he was in college, he moved up to a higher position when he graduated, and even higher once he got his Masters.
“What do you do when you’re not here?” he asks, when he gets a tray of food and meets me at the table.
“Make art,” I say, and smile when he nods, as if making art is a hobby. “I also have an after school program for kids who have no place to go.”
“Wow. You must really like kids,” he says, wiping his mouth.
/>
“I guess I do.”
“Do you have a lot of siblings?”
“Just one. Older brother, but we had a house full of boys growing up, so I guess I might as well say that I’m the youngest of four,” I say with a laugh. I look away as he eats and spot Oliver sitting in a table on the opposite side of the room. He’s with the same doctor guy I saw him talking to earlier. I don’t know how I hadn’t spotted him, but from the way he’s looking at me, it seems as if he saw me a while ago. I tuck my hands into my purse to fish out my phone, and notice I have one missed call and two text messages.
“I know what that’s like, sort of. I have two younger brothers,” Chris says. I make a sound letting him know I heard him as I sort through my messages.
Did you leave?
Never mind. Just saw you.
I frown.
“Everything okay?” Chris asks.
I bring my eyes to him. “Yeah, sure. So what did you want to tell me about the program?” I ask, as I type a message.
Just saw you too.
“I was wondering if you could keep coming. The program was kind of dull when the last lady was running it. I think maybe the kids couldn’t relate with her since she was older and more strict, and quite frankly, her art wasn’t as nice,” he says, smiling.
“Was she responsible for the fish on the wall?” I ask.
“You have no idea how bad I wanted to cover those walls up myself.”
I laugh at the horrified look on his face. “And here I thought nobody in the hospital had good taste.”
“My taste is perfect. Anyway, so maybe once a week? Would that work for you? We’d love to keep you here twice a week, but I’m not sure the board would be willing to pay for that.”
The mention of pay surprises me. “I didn’t really sign up for this to get compensated.”
Kaleidoscope Hearts Page 22