Zephyr: It’s a race down Cooper’s Hill. There’s danger, intrigue, steep hills, stones, and sharp objects. The speed of the cheese is harrowing at best.
Me: The speed of the cheese? I thought you were eating the cheese.
Zephyr: No. I’m rolling the cheese. It’s a cheese-rolling race, and it’s highly competitive.
A laughter-infused snort escapes my lips, and it takes a moment to gather my bearings.
Me: I’m dying over here.
Zephyr: I hope not. Who will celebrate my victory when I become the cheese champion?
Me: Stoppp. I can’t stop laughing. What do you even win?
Zephyr: I’m not sure. Google hasn’t told me that yet. But I really hope it’s cheese because I’m suddenly crazy hungry.
My smile is so wide, my cheeks ache.
Me: That was great. I feel better about my inadequate life now.
Zephyr: I’m here to help.
Nibbling my lip, I debate my next reply. While I enjoy our light and witty conversations, part of me is craving more. I promised I wouldn’t ask him anything personal, but…
Me: Hey. Can I ask you something?
There’s a brief pause that has me fidgeting beneath Nana’s lime green quilt.
Zephyr: I never understood that question. Can you? Obviously. Will I answer to your heart’s desire? Inconclusive.
Me: Fine… I’ll ask, but no pressure to answer. I just wanted to know… how is your new heart? What’s it like?
I wait.
I wait some more.
Anxiety surges inside me, and I wonder if he’ll ever respond.
Shit.
Maybe I crossed a line.
“Did you want dessert?”
Shutting off my phone, I sit upright on the couch, watching Mom approach from the kitchen. “Oh, no thanks. I was actually going to head out. I’m drowning in my own desserts at home.”
That’s code for: It’s hard to be here. Conversations are difficult. Sitting in this living room without him makes me want to jump off the roof.
But I can’t tell her any of that, so I just smile my farewell.
I’m good at that.
I’m sitting in park, waiting for a freight train to pass through, when I notice my phone light up from the passenger’s seat. Thinking it might be Zephyr, a little zing of anticipation shoots through me and I snatch it up, checking my notifications.
Only, it’s not Zephyr.
My stomach drops when the name stares back at me: Eleanor March.
Charlie’s mother.
I haven’t spoken to Charlie’s mother since the funeral. Her heartbreaking wails still rattle my eardrums whenever it’s too quiet. I still see her swollen, lifeless eyes whenever I close mine. Sometimes I feel her stiff embrace as I collapsed into her arms in front of his casket, ambushing her with my grief and despair, soaking her dress with a cataclysm of tears.
And I still feel the way my skin prickled with goosebumps and dissolution when she let me go.
She let me go.
I needed her then; I needed her more than I needed air. Eleanor March was my final link to the biggest piece of my heart, and I think that’s why I never made any progress in my healing. Losing her was like losing Charlie all over again.
Every day that she shut me out was just another day he died.
My hands begin to quake as a torrent of rainfall blurs my windshield, the wipers hardly able to keep up. I open her text message, my throat burning, my ribs aching with the weight of my heart.
Eleanor: You’re a wicked girl
I blink, and then I blink again. I’m having trouble processing the four words glaring back at me. I don’t understand what they mean. Did she text the wrong person?
No.
No, these words are meant for me.
She hates me.
She hates me.
A sob pours out of me, and I don’t even notice the train has passed, even when cars begin to honk from behind me, demanding I move. But they don’t know that I’m frozen, suspended in disbelief, so I just reread her message over and over again, crying harder, sinking further into darkness and self-loathing.
I’m a wicked girl.
Horns blare, people yell through their windows, cars swerve around me, but the only thing that registers is my cell phone vibrating in my grip when her name lights up the face.
She’s calling me.
And I know I’m in no state to answer. I’m parked in the middle of a rainy highway at nine P.M. with vomit in my throat and ice in my lungs, but I answer anyway, because emotion is always mightier than logic.
“H-Hello?”
My voice is a pathetic quiver, and Eleanor’s is slurred and spiteful. Her hate rings out through my Bluetooth and buries me alive. “I wish it were you,” she rasps.
I clasp a hand over my mouth to keep the sobs from pouring out, but all they do is erupt inside me, turning everything to ash. “Me, too,” I croak.
Me, too.
She’s drunk—I think she’s drunk, but I’m not sure if she’s intoxicated from alcohol or grief. Eleanor lets out a painful moan, then goes quiet for a beat before repeating, “Oh, how I wish it were you.”
Her confession blankets me in heartache, so I curl up and lay my head. “Why are you saying this? What did I do?”
“You stole from me, Melody, and I hate you for it.”
I sniffle and hiccup, trying to understand, trying to comprehend why she feels this way.
My relationship with Charlie’s mother was always strong—or so I thought. She made me feel warm and welcome, just like her son had. But something changed that day, the day the sun died, and everything shifted. I felt her animosity towards me. I felt her blame like I felt his loss.
It was all-consuming.
I just never understood why. It wasn’t my fault. It was a horrible, unfair accident that debilitated me just as much as it destroyed her, but it wasn’t my fault, and I would take Charlie’s place in a heartbeat if I could.
God, I wish I could.
I’m about to counter her words, tell her that makes no sense, insist that I did nothing wrong… but all I can do is mutter a weak, “I’m sorry.”
There’s a prolonged pause, riddled with so much left unsaid. So much baggage and loss and irreparable damage. So many things I wish she would say. But she only whispers, “So am I.”
And then the line goes dead.
I sit there for a moment, staring out through the rain laden window, listening to the wiper blades squeak against the glass. My throat feels raw, my skin crawling with penitence.
Am I responsible?
Am I to blame for Charlie’s death?
I chose the restaurant that night. I chose the time. I chose to stay for dessert, even though Charlie was eager to get home and celebrate in the privacy of our own bedroom.
I didn’t run fast enough. I didn’t scream loud enough.
Maybe I didn’t give him enough reason to hold on.
I decide to mull over my impossible regret at a local dive bar a mile up the road, sucking down shots of tequila as if they might fill the empty holes inside of me. They don’t, of course, but they do numb the pain, and that’s a start.
Hobbling off the bar stool over an hour later, I teeter on both feet, slinging my purse strap across my shoulder.
The bartender eyes me warily, swiping up the cash I left for her. “You have a ride, right?”
I blink, her question registering like slush.
She leans forward on her arms. “Do you have a ride home, honey? Want me to call an Uber?”
“I, um…” I shake my head, and the action prompts little stars to dance behind my eyes. “I have a ride. Thanks.”
Not waiting for her reply, I traipse out of the bar, swaying as I push through the doors and head out into the rain. I slip into the driver’s seat of my Camry, trying to find the keyhole and missing multiple times. My brain is foggy, my movements sluggish.
This is stupid. Call an Uber.
Hesitation seizes me, and I close my eyes.
Stupid or not, I do it anyway, because the alcohol and anguish are screaming at me to drive, telling me that nothing fucking matters.
Nothing. Fucking. Matters.
I step on the gas and peel out of the parking lot, tires and heart screeching in my ears. My vision is blurred by the downpour and pool of tears coating my eyes, headlights resembling little lightsabers as they zoom past me. Grasping for a semblance of reason, I jerk the steering wheel onto a desolate dirt road and take the long way home in an effort to stay away from other vehicles. It’s just me and my sadness now, fighting off rainclouds and regret.
As I speed down the deserted road, gravel kicks up, clanking against steel, and a tall tree comes into a view a quarter-mile up. It’s big and solid. The impact would be devastating.
It probably wouldn’t even hurt.
My shoe pushes on the gas pedal, the engine revving and careening towards the tree.
You’re a wicked girl.
I hate you.
I wish it were you.
Her cruel words push me forward, and I scream out, loud, hysterical, desperate, gaining speed, getting closer…
And then I feel a shift. My thoughts mutate into something else.
I can almost make out an orchestra of violins playing in the distance.
I feel water lap at my skin as I dance in the murky lake.
I hear my father’s laughter rumble through me as Unchained Melody sings through the record player.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I slam on the brake so hard, the car spins out, tires squealing out of control, until I come to an abrupt stop, half-stuck in a muddy ditch.
I’m not ready.
I’m not ready.
I’m not ready.
My frantic breaths mingle with the sound of rain against glass, and I feel a breakdown crawling up my throat, ready to combust.
So, I do what I’ve been trained to do.
I call Amelia. I reach out to my Lifeline.
My fingers are violently shaking as I scroll through my contacts, eyes stinging with hot tears. I’m weeping, wilting, as I call her number over and over again.
Straight to voicemail.
No.
An ugly cry tears through me, frustration mixing with fiery rage, and I think about contacting my parents.
West. Leah.
Zephyr.
But… God, I can’t. I can’t let them know how broken I still am. I can’t let them see me like this, so pathetic and lost, so stripped down to almost nothing.
Just cowardice and bare bones.
Heaving in another rattled breath, I keep scrolling through my contacts until I settle on his name. My thumb hovers over the six letters that are bleeding together through my tequila haze and near-death adrenaline spike. But it’s the combination of those things that has me doing the unthinkable. I click his name.
It rings. And rings. And rings.
And then…
“Hello?”
There’s a familiar annoyance in his tone, gruff and gritty, and it quiets me somehow. My angry tears fade into whimpers, my breath hitching as I try to catch it.
“Melody?”
It occurs to me that he’s never said my name before. He’s never properly addressed me, and I’m not sure what that means, or why it even matters. I swallow down a dry lump and force out, “Amelia didn’t answer.”
A few silent beats go by, and I wonder what he’s thinking—what he’s piecing together from my elusive response. I’m about to explain, to let him know I’m reaching out, to tell him how pathetic and wilting I truly am, but his long sigh filters through the Bluetooth.
He understands.
He knows.
“Text me your location.”
—TWELVE—
I trudge through heavy sheets of rain, my shoes sinking into the mud like quicksand.
Motherfuck.
Why am I here? Why the hell did I even answer my phone?
Melody’s number was saved into my contacts from our string of messages about her bathroom reno that I completed. When her name flashed across my screen as I was finally responding to Magnolia after hours of stalling—because fuck talking about my damn heart—something in me felt compelled to pick up.
“Amelia didn’t answer.”
Jesus Christ.
I’m pretty sure rage is what’s dragging me towards her stalled car in the middle of this fucking monsoon, soaking wet and ready to blow a fuse. Her silhouette is visible through the drenched glass, her fingers curled around the steering wheel, head bowed.
I pound my fist against the window when I approach, causing her to nearly hit the ceiling. Melody clasps both hands over her heart, scared shitless, then finally pushes the door open.
“Get out of the fucking car,” I order, watching her red, puffy eyes slowly roll up to me. “Now.”
Her gulp is almost audible as her throat bobs and two shaky legs step out. “I’m sorry.”
I don’t want her apology. I just want her to move faster.
Snatching her wrist, I pull her to her feet and yank her away from the car. She squeaks, then stumbles toward me… and it’s then that I smell it.
She reeks of fucking liquor.
I drop her arm. “Are you drunk?”
Melody refuses to make eye contact with me, and instead, dips her chin and wraps her arms around herself like a security blanket, shivering as the rain floods her. “This is a mess.” She looks up at the sky, letting the rain douse her face as she releases a pained breath. “I’m a mess.”
She wobbles and sways, talking to me but looking to the stars for answers. I grit my teeth. “You’re an idiot.”
This gets her attention. Melody whips her head towards me, eyes narrowing with disdain. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“You’re an asshole,” she spits out, all venom and vitriol.
“Maybe. But I’d rather be an asshole than an idiot.”
Two shaky hands plant against my chest, and she shoves me backwards, her cheeks flushed. “Go home, Parker. I can’t believe I called you.”
She storms away, feet splashing in mud puddles as she heads toward the hood of the car. I follow, still instigating. Still poking. “Yeah, not too smart of you. Then again, I don’t expect much from someone who gets behind the wheel shitfaced.”
“Please leave.”
“I’m already here,” I say, trailing her. “Trust me, the last thing I wanted to do tonight was play therapist to little miss sunshine. Poor you, right? Poor you with all of your support and fucking cheerleaders. Friends, family, strangers, all flocking to the sun. It must be such a burden.”
“I’m not the sun. I’m just a shadow,” she grits out over her shoulder. “You don’t know a thing about me.”
“So, enlighten me. I can’t wait to hear this. I’m shaking in my sopping fucking boots.”
“Stop!” Melody spins in place, visibly shaking, wet clothes clinging to her. “This is the last thing I need right now.”
“Is it?”
“Yes!” she shrieks, swiping a soaked piece of hair from her forehead. “Just get the hell away from me, Parker.”
I move in closer. “No.”
“You’re a bully.”
“Keep going,” I press.
Melody raises her hands to shove me away from her again, but I catch her by the wrists. She growls in protest, trying to wriggle free. “You’re the opposite of me,” she continues, her anger spewing out in waves. “You’re cruel and hateful. Cold. You don’t smile. You don’t laugh.”
“Keep going.”
She squirms against me, still trying to free her wrists. “You disgust me.”
“Keep going, Melody. Get mad. Let it out.”
“I—” Her words break off, and she goes still, relaxing in my grip, and I’m pretty sure she’s crying, but her face is streaked in raindrops, so it’s hard to say for sure. “I… I’m not okay.”
I sta
re at her. I stare at the way little water droplets stall on her upper lip and just dangle there, almost floating, before her tongue slips out to lick them away. My eyes lift up to hers, green on green, and I can see a shift—the anger morphs into something softer. Acceptance, maybe. Possibly a revelation. “Keep going.”
Fuck, I hate the way my voice cracks. And I really hate the way my fingers feel curled around her, my large palms swallowing up her tiny wrists. Delicate and breakable. She doesn’t stand a chance against my iron and steel.
I let her go, my feet stepping back, but my gaze still hard and leveled with hers.
Melody’s arms fall to her sides, a sound escaping her, piercing through the heavy rainfall. A laugh, a cry, a penance—its origin is unknown. “I’m not okay,” she repeats, and a roll of thunder follows. “I’m still there.”
“Where?” I make her say it. I make her talk.
“On that street.”
“What street?”
Her gaze cuts away, landing just above my shoulder as her thoughts drift. “With Charlie.”
Charlie. Her husband.
Magnolia also lost her husband, and I wonder if they grieve the same. I’m not familiar with that kind of grief, so I’m not sure if there are different types, different levels. All I know is that I’m envious of both of them in this moment. I’m goddamn jealous of their loss.
To lose is to have loved.
It’s when we have nothing left to lose that we truly know suffering.
Melody runs both hands through her hair, smoothing back the wet strands. She’s illuminated by the headlights of her car and the glow of the moon, shadows carved into all of her curves and crevices. Laying claim to her darker parts. “He fucking left me here alone to sift through the debris of everything we had together. And I’m not okay with that. I’m not okay with his mother calling me wicked and blaming me for his death when I was a victim, too. I’m not okay with the color of the living room because he picked it out, and every time I stare at those rust-colored walls, I cry. I’m not okay with sleeping alone, or mowing the lawn, or peach pie. I’m not okay with that look my mother gets when I zone out of a conversation because I thought I heard his laugh.”
The Wrong Heart Page 9