The Heartbeat Hypothesis

by Lindsey Frydman

  Considering I was alive thanks to Emily, I felt desperate to know what he was unwilling to tell me. The truth about what happened to her followed Jake around like an unsettling ghost. It was the reason for the aura of despair that encased him, the cause of his consistent sorrow. And I wanted to change it, take it away, and replace it with something brighter.

  But I didn’t know how.

  A wave of dark clouds inched across the sky, further darkening the surroundings. My gaze found the tips of flames flickering in the blackness. I still couldn’t see Jake from my spot in the truck bed, but I’d probably find him near the fire.

  What if he wasn’t there? The thought attacked my brain and sent a wave of panic through my chest.

  Calm down. You’re sitting in his truck, where the hell could he have gone?

  Okay, he was pissed.

  Maybe I was an idiot after all.

  Dammit.

  I should go say something.

  But what? My mouth was what got us into this argument, and anything I said or did wouldn’t help.

  Maybe you should stop bringing up his sister—you know, the one he is obviously still grieving over.

  But he said it was nice.

  People always said girls were complicated—always sending confusing mixed signals, but in reality, I think that was all people.

  I didn’t understand Jake, and maybe I needed to accept that. But I understood he was angry, and it was absolutely my fault. He didn’t owe me an explanation. He didn’t owe me anything.

  Shoving the blankets out of the way, I got to my feet, scanning the surrounding area. In every direction—aside from the fire—all I saw was blackness and even darker shadows. I hopped off the bed and shuffled toward the flames, glad for the added warmth as I got closer. Jake sat in one of the two chairs, his back facing me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He didn’t turn around, or look up, or appear to have heard me at all. He was leaning forward, elbows on knees, and his hair was all tufted up from running his hands through it.

  Slowly, I moved to the other seat and sat, trying not to stare. But when I finally looked over, I saw the highlighted half of his face, and a glistening streak that looked a lot like a tear.

  Jake was crying. Or he had been.

  It did something funny to my heartstrings, knowing Jake hurt that much.

  I’d never lost anyone close to me. I could only pretend to imagine how losing someone like a sister would hurt. And I could only imagine having a sister in the first place.

  Jake glanced my way. “We need to put more wood on the fire to keep it going.”

  I frowned.

  He stood and avoided eye contact as he walked around the campfire, picking up pieces of wood. I tried to read his body language—the way he walked and moved his legs. But it didn’t give anything away. He appeared the same as he usually did—casual, calm, relaxed. But knowing there had been tears on his cheeks only moments before, I knew Jake was not the same. He was not okay.

  And all I wanted to do was fix it, fix him—his pain. But I couldn’t because like he said, I couldn’t raise the dead, couldn’t bring her back, and that was the only thing that might undo his aching.

  He tossed a few logs into the fire and poked around with a stick. Staring at the flames, he reached into his jeans pocket and pulled something out. He took the thin white stick and shoved it between his lips.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said, trying to sound indifferent.

  He flicked a lighter that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and lit the tip of the cigarette until it burned red. “I’ve been trying to quit for a few months now. It’s not going that well.”

  As he inhaled his cigarette, I rubbed my palms together and tried not to tap my foot against the ground.

  “What do you want from me?” Jake asked after a few minutes of listening to nothing but the crackling flames. He’d said it softly so he didn’t sound angry.

  But that selection of words didn’t sit well in the place between my lungs.

  “I don’t want anything.” My voice sounded weak, strained. “I mean, the photographs, I want those.”

  He stared at me, not saying anything until he’d hit the last of his cigarette and tossed it into the fire. “You must want something. Everyone wants something.”

  I almost said that wasn’t true but stopped myself, because maybe it was. Aside from the photographs and the piano lessons, I wanted Jake to like me, and not in just a more-than-friends way. I didn’t want him to look at me and see only the absence of his sister. I wanted him to say more things like I’m glad you’re here.

  “Seriously, what do you want?” His lips twitched, but any signs of amusement quickly faded.

  I licked my lips, swallowed against the lump in my throat. I want to help you, heal you, fix you. “I want to know you…want to be your friend.”

  One of Jake’s shoulders lifted in a halfhearted shrug. His hair, tinted orange from the fire, shifted across his forehead. His lips parted, but he decided against saying whatever was on his mind and looked down at the grass.

  “I’m sorry I was an asshat before,” I said, standing so I could fend off the chill taking hold of my body. “You don’t have to tell me anything. And I already told you, the piano lessons aren’t necessary.”

  “I want to know you, too, like I said before at the party. And I enjoy spending time with you. That’s why I offered the lessons. What I don’t get”—an uneasy pause—“is why you like hanging out with me?”

  So many reasons.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, crossing my arms. “That’s a question you shouldn’t have to ask. Why do you like hanging out with me? I’m sure we have the same reasons.”

  His voice dropped to merely a whisper. “I doubt our reasons are the same.”

  A shiver raised goose bumps across my neck, even though the heat from the fire burned my cheeks and ears. “If this is about what I said before—for pushing the issue—I really am so, so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I—”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  He shook his head, simultaneously running a hand through his hair, pulling on the golden strands like they were burning his scalp. For a moment, I half expected him to scream. But he didn’t. Instead, he relaxed his hands, dropping them to his sides, and let out a slow breath. His voice regained its calm nature when he finally spoke. “Look, I overreacted. There’s just some things I don’t like talking about.”

  I couldn’t keep pushing him to talk without pushing him away. There was a fine line I needed to learn how to walk. Jake wasn’t an open book, no matter how much I wanted him to be.

  The two-person tent looked way bigger from the outside. Now, lying next to Jake, wrapped up in my own sleeping bag, it felt ten times too small.

  A faint glow from the dying fire acted as a perfect nightlight, but without the additional warmth, one wimpy sleeping bag wasn’t enough to fend off the evening chill. And even though it was well past 1:00 a.m., sleep remained out of my reach.

  “Are you sleeping?” I whispered into the dark.

  “No,” he whispered back. “Are you?”

  I stifled a laugh and rolled onto my side, sleeping bag crinkling as I did. The firelight allowed me to make out the curve of his jaw and his upturned lips in the dark.

  “Can I confess something?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “I think maybe…I don’t like camping.”

  Jake chuckled, letting his head fall to the side. “What’s not to like?”

  “For one, it’s cold. A lot colder than I expected. And the ground? It’s not exactly a great makeshift bed. Oh, and I keep thinking about bugs…and bears.”

  He sat up, unzipping his sleeping bag and shoving it down. Still chuckling, he reached his arm across me. “Here. Put this on.”

  I eyed the sweatshirt he pulled from the front of the tent. “Aren’t you cold in your T-shi
rt?”

  “Nope.”

  So I did what he said, unzipping my own bag so I could move my arms, and the material of the dark gray hoodie was soft, warm, and wonderful. “Thank you.”

  “No thanks necessary.” His voice was soft and half a whisper.

  Jake leaned back onto his pillow, and I stayed upright, pulling the sleeves of the sweatshirt over my hands, fingering the comfortable material. Glancing up through the skylight, I tried to see the stars, but clouds had rolled in, and there was nothing to see but blacks and grays.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “Still thinking about bears?”

  I smiled at the darkness before twisting my head. “Uh, yes.”

  With a gentle laugh, Jake wrapped one arm around my back, guiding me down toward him. My heart skipped around, and I sucked in a breath, holding the air in my lungs—as if that would help. But when my head lay against his firm, warm chest, I breathed out, relaxing my muscles one by one, slowly sinking into him. Forget skipping, my heart was thumping like it had something to prove.

  His fingers brushed hair from my cheek and continued down my neck, igniting my skin. Suddenly, it wasn’t so cold anymore. The warmth of his hand seeped through the hoodie as he slowly rubbed up and down my arm.

  Maybe this meant he’d forgiven me.

  Once silence consumed the small space, I was left deciphering our intertwined heartbeats. His thundered beneath my ear, and mine pulsed throughout my entire body. I squeezed my eyes shut. Breathed in slowly. Once. Twice. Five times. “Jake?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What’s your tattoo of?”

  His chest rose and fell, but his laugh was soundless. “Ah. It’s a hummingbird.”

  I craned my neck, and in the dark, his eyes were nearly black—and only inches away. “Does it mean anything?”

  “Everything means something,” he murmured, a faint smile pulling on his lips.

  That wasn’t much of an answer, so I said nothing and chose to lay my head back down. Either he would tell me, or he wouldn’t. Think I’d learned my lesson about pushing him to talk.

  We lay there for what felt like hours, but surely wasn’t. I found a perfect spot against Jake’s chest, with his arm wrapped around me, his hand still rubbing my arm in a slow rhythm.

  “The hummingbird was Emily’s spirit animal,” he said, breaking the long-standing quiet. “Whatever a spirit animal is… She said something about how those birds can fly backward and that they represent joy and lightness. So, I don’t know…the tattoo was my tribute to her, I guess.”

  “That’s…adorable.”

  He chuckled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” And then he kissed the top of my head softly. Quickly. Gently.

  My body buzzed with warmth.

  “I have a confession to make, too,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  Beneath my head, his chest rose with a slow inhale. “When I agreed to do this…I thought it would be really easy, you know? Taking pictures with a pretty girl.” He made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You’re living proof of something good that came from my sister’s death, and I thought that would be easy to deal with.”

  “But…it hasn’t been?” I wanted to look at his face, but I didn’t want him to see the way my face crumpled in confusion, so I kept my ear against his chest, listening to the lub-dub of his heart.

  He cleared his throat. “No.”

  Jake didn’t elaborate, but he also didn’t let go of me. He didn’t push me away. Physically, at least.

  Questions burned on the tip of my tongue. I was the living, breathing, in-his-face thing that reminded him of Emily, and he didn’t have to explain his pain to me.

  But God, I wished he would.

  Chapter Nine

  A week later, I drove home to visit with my mom, and the first thing I did was show her my done-it list. Jake had finally emailed the photograph from our camping trip, and it was my favorite so far. In it, I was pulling a marshmallow off a stick, white goo dripping down my fingers, wearing a silly grin. The sun had fallen, but the sky was still a bright shade of blue with the faintest hints of pink swirling within it, giving it a fantastical feel. Like we truly were in a different universe, and not merely forty miles outside Fort Collins.

  He’d also sent me a shot of my not-quite-purple hair. This one was a close-up, the back of my head the only thing in focus. The background was green and blue, but too blurred to decipher. Were those trees in the background, or were they cars? I wasn’t sure what day that image was from, but it didn’t matter. He could make the ordinary appear magical, and his talent was incredible. No wonder he was Emily’s favorite photographer.

  “Do you hate it?” I asked Mom, pulling on my hair.

  “I think it looks lovely.”

  I laughed and sat down at the granite breakfast bar, grabbing my phone, scrolling through my Tumblr posts. After staring at the images for far too long, I sighed and set the phone down.

  The camping session with Jake had left me questioning everything. Mainly: Were we more than friends? We had to be friends in order to be anything more, but what did that even mean—to be someone’s friend?

  And also—I guess because I was weird—I looked up the definition. As if knowing what Merriam-Webster said would give me a final answer. But the definition was this: one attached to another by affection or esteem. Also: one that is not hostile.

  So by Merriam-Webster’s definition, Jake Cavanaugh and I, Audra Madison, were possibly friends.

  “Mom, I still don’t like green beans,” I said as she tried to spoon some onto my plate next to the fish she’d made for lunch. “Being at college for eight weeks hasn’t changed me.”

  She laughed, shaking her head. “Have you been eating anything decent?”

  I took my plate to the table and sat down, pulling one leg up and under the other. “Do Twizzlers count?”

  She sent me a look from over her dark-framed glasses, one that used to make me cower. Now it made me laugh.

  “I’m only kidding,” I said. “I eat just fine. Don’t worry.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about that.”

  I could’ve been wrong, but I might’ve seen my mom roll her eyes for the first time in like, well—ever.

  “How’s Kat?” she asked after sitting next to me.

  “Good. Kat being Kat. She’s having fun and drinking way too much coffee. Oh, and she’s considering going back to using her full name.”

  Mom brushed loose strands of dark hair back toward her neat bun, tipping her head with interest. “Why is she considering that?”

  “I think I gave her the idea that Katarina would be an awesome superhero-esque name to wear on a nursing badge.”

  She laughed, waving her fork. “That girl is never going to get her parents to start calling her Katarina again.”

  Mom was right. It took them a whole year before they finally obliged her request.

  I went on and on about how great our living together in the dorms was. It was everything I’d imagined it would be, everything we’d envisioned since we started talking about being roommates six months after the transplant. My phone beeped a minute later, and I said, “Speak of the devil. She always knows when I’m talking about her.”

  But it wasn’t Kat who’d texted me.

  Jake: Do you want to hang out tonight?

  Jake wanted to hang out.

  Since when did he start texting me saying he wanted to hang out?

  “Something wrong?”

  I blinked up at Mom. “Oh. No. Nothing’s wrong. She wrote a confusing text message. Was trying to decipher it.” I added a smile, attempting to cover up my lie. Telling Mom about Jake meant explaining something I wasn’t sure I understood myself.

  Me: OK.

  I did want to spend more time with him, even if doing so meant suffering through another Jake puzzle that would never be solved.

  But I could solve the friends/more than friends dilemma. Maybe.

  My phone beeped
again, vibrating against the tabletop.

  Jake: My place? I’ll make pizza.

  Wait.

  I couldn’t do that.

  “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” Mom asked, concern evident in her tone. “You look a little pale. Are you feeling sick? You have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, but maybe we should—”

  “No. No. I’m fine.”

  You spent an entire night in the woods with the guy. You fell asleep on his chest. How is hanging out at his place any worse?

  It wasn’t any different—but I felt different and couldn’t pinpoint exactly how. The thumping going on in my chest was unnecessary. It was just two friends hanging out, sharing pizza.

  After lunch, I drove the forty-minutes back to campus and met Kat for coffee in the rec center. This place was nicer than Pete’s Coffee Shop: bright orange walls, glossy flooring, and colorful artwork hanging overtop the line of round tables. But it was simply named the Coffee Place. Now that was clichéd.

  “It’s not a date,” I said as we sat down at our favorite spot. Outside was always better—unless it rained. Then we’d stay inside and stare longingly out the window.

  “Any guy who invites you over to watch a movie has more than platonic intentions.” She said it the way a schoolteacher would. Thanks for participating, but you’re wrong.

  “He didn’t say anything about a movie. He said pizza. Those aren’t the same.”

  “Whatever, girl. They may as well be, so keep this in mind when you’re there and he’s trying to lay the moves on you.”

  I glared at her. “Maybe I’ll be the one laying moves on him.”

  Her eyes widened briefly—surprised—then she laughed. “I’d pay to see that.”

  She was right; I didn’t have moves. “So how’s Matt?” I said, changing the subject, shifting the coffee between my palms.

  I only remembered the name of the guy Kat had been seeing lately because of their terrible name combo. I mean…Kat and Matt? How freaking weird. But she seemed to be okay with it.

  “He’s great,” she said with a familiar grin, settling into the gray seat. “Actually. For once, I think I really like him.”

  I laughed. “What, you don’t like the other guys you go out with?” I gave it a month until she got bored with this one.