Three Sides of a Heart

by Natalie C. Parker

  “I’m mediocre at everything,” he once told me at a party.

  We were sitting on the back stoop of the house, and I knew I should be inside, looking for Jacob. Instead, I was drinking canned beer with my best friend’s brother.

  “You are not,” I said, leaning back on my elbows.

  “Tell me one thing I’m the best at.” Bobby took a long swig from his beer. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he gulped down nearly half of the can in one drink.

  I hesitated.

  “See?” he said, nudging me. “You can’t think of anything. Mediocre. At everything besides drinking.”

  He threw back the rest of his beer.

  And I wasn’t brave enough to tell him that I hadn’t paused for the reason he’d thought. It’s just that I wasn’t sure how to tell him he was really good at being Bobby, and that was good enough for me.

  Dinner at their house isn’t so bad tonight. Maybe everyone is on their best behavior because he just got back a few days ago. The worst was when Bobby would come to dinner drunk and everyone could tell but no one would say anything. He picked a lot of fights, and his parents couldn’t always keep their cool. Edwina straight up ignored him on those evenings, even the time he screamed across the table that she was a fucking bitch.

  One thing I like about eating with Edwina’s family is that it doesn’t occur to them that I’m supposed to be avoiding certain foods. I put on muscle easily, but I’m still small, so nobody thinks I need to watch my weight. Dad is so obsessed with me staying in optimal shape that it’s usually easier to just eat what he suggests. It’s not like it’s bad food; just boring. But my mouth waters at the smell of the lasagna that Mr. Neeley places in the center of the table, and I’m already thinking about having seconds before he’s served the first helping.

  After dinner, Edwina shows me a sneak preview of next month’s lit mag. She pushes her red-framed glasses up her nose as she scrolls down the layout on her computer screen. Edwina generally dresses like an art teacher—all bright colors and big patterns and prints that don’t necessarily go together but look amazing against her dark skin. It’s the opposite of what has basically become my uniform: a plain T-shirt, long or short sleeved depending on the weather, but mostly short sleeved because we live in L.A.; dark jeans; and running shoes. Edwina always says I’m wasting my fashion potential, as if I am the sort of person who likes to call attention to herself.

  “We still need submissions for our environmental issue,” she says pointedly.

  “E, stop trying to recruit me.” I lie back on her bed and close my eyes. “Writing papers for school is bad enough.”

  “That’s not creative writing,” she says. “And you should kick ass at environmental topics. Hello, your mom?”

  “Sure, I’ll just whip up a haiku about her firm suing the shit out of an oil company.”

  Edwina sighs, but I know without looking that she’s only doing so to cover up her smile. My eyes are still closed, and I’m so full from my plateful of pasta and cheese that I start to drift off. When Edwina speaks again, it takes me a moment to catch up.

  “Wait, what?” I say.

  She sighs again, but this one is heavier. Longer. She’s quiet for a moment, then: “Does it make me a horrible person if I say I wish he hadn’t come back?”

  I keep my eyes closed. I don’t answer her right away. Edwina knows how I feel about Bobby. She used to tease me about him when we were younger, but we haven’t talked about it in a while. Not since Jacob and I got together. I think a part of her believes that it was a schoolgirl crush and I’m over him. She doesn’t understand that my feelings are real.

  “You’re not a horrible person.” I sit up and look at her. She’s staring at her computer, but I know she’s not seeing what’s on the screen. “You’re just being honest.”

  “Yeah, but people use that as an excuse to be a bitch.” She meets my eye. “I don’t want to be a bitch. But he was really mean to me before he left. For a long time. And now he’s sober and we’re just supposed to forget how he treated us?”

  “He didn’t mean it, E.”

  “Really?” She takes a shuddery breath. “Don’t people say what they actually feel when they’re drinking?”

  “E . . .” I trail off because I don’t know what to say. She’s right. I cringed my way through more than one of Bobby’s bad nights at the dinner table, but I guess a part of me hoped that once Edwina realized what was really going on with him, she’d forgive him for the awful things he said. That maybe his problem with alcohol would trump his vicious outbursts . . . even if he did mean what he was saying.

  “He was never mean to you. Not around me,” she says.

  I sweep my box braids up in one hand and let them fall down around my shoulders. I don’t know what to say to that, because she’s right. Bobby has never said a mean word to me, not even at his drunkest.

  I stay for another half hour, but it’s not the same. I pretend to be overly interested in Edwina’s short story, and she pretends not to notice how hard I’m trying. She once told me that I always seemed to take Bobby’s side, even when he was at his worst. She didn’t sound mad at me then, just sad.

  Now she looks closed off. Like even though we’re best friends, there’s a part of her she can’t share with me. Like if it came down to choosing between the two of them, she knows Bobby would come first.

  I’m halfway down the walk before the front door of the Neeleys’ house opens and I hear my name.

  “Wait up,” Bobby says. “I’ll walk you home.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I say, turning around. I only live three blocks away, and it’s not too late.

  But now he’s standing next to me, and we fall into step together. When he was gone, sometimes I worried I would forget how he looked. Bobby hates being in pictures, so pretty much all I had was my yearbook. But I didn’t like looking at his posed photograph, with the stiff, unsmiling face. It turned out I didn’t need to. I’d never forget him. I memorized every line and curve of his face years ago, along with his strong jaw and the coppery brown of his skin.

  The night is cool and crisp, and even though the moon is partly shielded by clouds, it feels like a perfect February night in Los Angeles.

  “I know Edwina hates that I’m back,” he says, digging his hands deep into the front pocket of his hoodie. “I’m honestly not sure my parents feel any different. And that just makes me want a drink. Or ten.”

  He doesn’t look at me, so I don’t look at him either.

  “Have you called your sponsor?” Edwina told me he has one, but I immediately wish I hadn’t said anything. That’s not something she should be telling people. He should have told me first, or I shouldn’t know at all.

  “No. It’s still weird. Calling myself an alcoholic. Feels like I’m talking about someone else.”

  This is a conversation for sitting down and looking straight into each other’s faces, not one to be had on the go. But we keep trucking along down the street, so quickly it feels like we’re seconds away from breaking into a run.

  “Well, I won’t let you have a drink.”

  Of course I felt guilty when I found out his parents were shipping him off to rehab. I thought about all the times I’d heard him slurring his words and seen him stumbling around and when I’d been drinking right next to him, knowing he’d had too much. But that wasn’t just Bobby, that could be nearly anyone at a party on any given weekend. I hadn’t known what was just a good time and when I should have been concerned, because Bobby’s life didn’t visibly fall apart. He still went to school and he still showed up to dinner each night; it only became an issue when people started smelling liquor on him during the day.

  “I know I’m an alcoholic,” he says, slowing down his pace just a bit. “But I hate the way that word makes people look at me. My parents don’t say it. They won’t even say AA.”

  Edwina told me when he was gone that she doesn’t think it’s a disease—just a weakness. Their paren
ts feel the same way.

  “My sponsor is cool, but he’s this old white dude and . . . he’s been where I was . . . where I am, but it feels like he doesn’t know. What it’s like to be me.” Bobby stops in front of a house surrounded by clean-cut hedges with an arched wooden door in the middle that leads to the front yard. “Sometimes I think my parents are more worried about how it looks instead of how I’m doing. Like I’ve shamed our entire race.”

  This isn’t news to me. I’ve spent more than one dinner at their house where the conversation turns, at length, to all the ways black people are failing black people. I’ll never forget the deadly look their father shot Bobby when he brought up the fact that maybe he should examine how the systems set up in this country fail us instead.

  “Well, you haven’t,” I say, wanting to touch him—hold his hand, hug him—but knowing I shouldn’t. Even if he doesn’t want me like I want him, it would be disrespectful to Jacob. “You got help, like they wanted. You haven’t had a drink in three months.”

  “Three months, six days, and two hours.” He sighs. “Do you ever just want to get the fuck out of here?”

  “L.A.?” I look around at the manicured lawns and hear the song of the crickets and feel the cool breeze that rustles the tree leaves and floats over my face. “I don’t know, it’s not so bad. Maybe not as pretty as Santa Barbara—”

  I stop. I shouldn’t be so flippant about his rehab.

  But Bobby shakes his head and pushes down his hood, running a hand over the top of his tightly packed curls. “Not like that, just, like . . . do you ever want to start a new life?”

  I swallow hard, trying not to think about the fact that it sounds like he’s leaving again. How he’ll be eighteen in a couple of months and soon his parents will have no say in anything he does.

  “I don’t know.” I haven’t thought about that, not really. But I don’t want him to feel more alone than he already does.

  He doesn’t say anything else about it. We spend the rest of our walk in silence. It’s not uncomfortable, and I wonder what he’s thinking, but I don’t want to break the easy way we have of being around each other.

  When we get to my house, the porch light is on. Dad’s car is in the driveway, but the space behind it, where Mom parks hers, is still empty.

  “I’d invite you in,” I say, “but . . .”

  “Yeah, it’s getting late. I just wanted to make sure you got home okay.” Bobby gives me a tight smile.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m gonna call Ray. My sponsor,” he says in response to my confused look.

  “Oh. Well . . . you know you can call me if you need anything, right? Anytime.”

  “Yeah.” Bobby nods, and his smile loosens. Grows a little wider for me. “Night, Mavis.”

  He stands at the curb and watches me. While I walk to the porch and get out my key and turn it in the lock. He watches until I’m safely inside.

  The next night, Jacob comes over to do homework. My dad is at some coaches’ meeting and Mom has another late night at the office, so Jacob brings over dinner from the burger stand we like on Fairfax.

  It surprised me how easily I slipped into the we with Jacob. He was my first everything: crush who liked me back and did something about it. Kiss. Sex. I noticed him the first week of track practice our freshman year, just like anyone else who’s attracted to guys. He’s objectively good-looking, with thick honey-blond hair and dark green eyes and a smile that lights up the entire school and is almost always meant for me.

  I think what surprised me the most about Jacob is how comfortable I am around him. I never assumed I would feel so relaxed with any guy but Bobby. I don’t like to think about it too much—I don’t feel for him what I feel for Bobby, but I’ve given more of myself to Jacob. Physically, of course, but I’m honest with him in a way that I’m not with Bobby. Maybe because I know Jacob can handle it, because he has a family that loves and respects him and believes he’s a good person.

  I’m still eating by the time Jacob finishes his cheeseburger and fries. He steals one of my tater tots and swipes it through the dollop of ketchup on my plate.

  “Your food okay?” He gestures to my mostly uneaten burger on the coffee table. We’re sitting on the floor, in front of the couch.

  “It’s good, I’m just . . . I don’t know.” It seems like a waste, to not finish my burger when I know I’d get a huge lecture from Dad if he were here to see it. I should at least be able to enjoy my secret rebellion.

  “Nervous about the meet? I watched you today at practice. You looked fucking awesome.”

  “Yeah? Tell that to my dad. He thinks . . .”

  “What?” Jacob brushes his hands on his jeans, still looking at me.

  “Nothing.”

  “Mavis, it’s not nothing. Come on. It’s me. What’s up?”

  I take a deep breath. “Sometimes . . . I just think maybe I’ll never be good enough for him. I felt like I had a good practice too. One of my best in a while. Then he said my touchdown time had improved on the fourth hurdle, but I’m still slow off the block.”

  “Well . . .” Jacob sighs. “You know he pushes us because he cares.”

  “I live with him,” I say. “I’ve heard that more than anyone.”

  “Fair enough.” He hesitates. “Sometimes I’m jealous of you.”

  “Of me?”

  “Yeah. You and your dad. He really does care about you.”

  I push my plate across the coffee table and bring my knees up to my chest. “Your dads care about you.”

  “Yeah, they’re great. But I feel like I don’t have anything in common with them.” Jacob pushes his hair out of his eyes. “They think sports are a school thing. They’d probably get it if I wanted to run in college, but it’ll never be a career to them. And your dad—”

  “My dad will be severely disappointed if I don’t make it to the Olympics,” I say flatly.

  Dad doesn’t talk about it often, but he was close to getting there himself. He tore his ACL during the trials and that was it for him. It’s so clichéd, him wanting me to succeed where he couldn’t; coaching because he never went pro.

  “You’re gonna get there, Mavis.” Jacob puts his hand on my knee and gently rubs. “It’s not even a question.”

  Jacob believes in me the way I believe in Bobby. He always thinks the best of me, and sometimes I wonder if I deserve it. Then sometimes, when I start feeling too bad about how much more he likes me than I like him, I let myself wonder if he really likes me for me or if it’s because I am good enough to get to the Olympics. Or because I’m the coach’s daughter.

  So I kiss him. His lips are soft and sweet as ever. Familiar. And maybe, if I keep myself busy with him, my mind will stop going to places it shouldn’t.

  Maybe then I won’t keep thinking about what Bobby said. About leaving.

  I’m walking through the hall by myself, on my way to the cafeteria to meet Edwina and Jacob, when someone gently grabs my arm from behind. I stop, and before I even turn around, I know it’s Bobby.

  “I’m taking the afternoon off,” he says. “Come with me.”

  “I seriously can’t.” I look down at my feet and then at him. His eyes are so deep, deep brown; so intense that I’m afraid to keep meeting his gaze. I feel like they’re going to convince me to do something I shouldn’t.

  I thought I might feel differently about him when he was away. I wrote to him once, but he didn’t reply. I didn’t expect him to, and I took that as a sign. That I was meant to be with Jacob. That whatever I’d felt about Bobby before he was gone would simply fade into nothing in his absence. I didn’t think it would come back like this. Stronger. Harder to ignore.

  “We’ll just drive around. I’ll have you back by your next class. Promise.”

  I don’t say yes, but I don’t protest, either. And whatever he sees in my eyes makes him take my arm, lead me away. He knows the door we should use to avoid being seen on the way to the park
ing lot. I stare straight ahead, afraid that whatever spell I’m under will break if I look anywhere else. I’m terrified that I will look up and see Edwina. Or Jacob. Or, maybe even worse, my father.

  But suddenly, I’m not terrified of getting in trouble. I’m with Bobby. His fearlessness makes me feel stronger, even if I know he’s no stranger to the consequences of his actions.

  His car is clean inside, but a bunch of empty soda cans litter the floor, and I’ve never seen him smoke, but it smells vaguely of cigarettes. Maybe a new habit he picked up in rehab? I don’t ask.

  “Where should we go?” He’s pulling out of the space before I’ve buckled my seat belt. He may be brave enough to sneak out, but he’s not stupid. We still need to get the hell out of here before someone sees us.

  “I don’t know.”

  I stare down at my lap. Would I do this with Jacob? Or would I tell him he’s crazy, that there’s no way we could pull it off, that we should just go to the cafeteria before all the good greens are gone from the salad bar?

  “Burritos?”

  I say yes immediately. Even though I know it will sit heavy in my stomach for the rest of the afternoon, maybe until dinnertime. Even though I’ve been eating like shit this week—lasagna and burgers and now this. I’m really going to have to step it up at practice. The meet is only a few days away.

  Bobby doesn’t say much, and that makes people nervous, to never know what he’s thinking. But I’ve only ever felt comforted by that silence. It feels thoughtful. And so it’s not weird to me at all that we don’t really talk until we’re halfway through our lunch.

  “It’s claustrophobic here.” Bobby dumps more salsa over his chicken burrito.

  “In this place?” I look around. We missed the big lunch rush. We’re practically the only people in here.

  “No, I mean . . . being back. Here. My life.”

  He takes an enormous bite and chews for what seems like forever. I wait. And when he’s done, I blurt, “Are you leaving?”

  He shrugs. “Thinking about it.”

  I exhale. “Where will you go?”

  “Dunno. Maybe somewhere up north.”