His Frozen Heart

by Nancy Straight

  Gripping his arm draped over me, I answered, “Me, too.”

  Chapter 21

  Friday morning I again awoke to an empty bed. . . a little disappointed. I had hoped to see his happy heart tattoo first thing this morning. Dave continued to surprise me. How could I have ever believed I knew him? I hadn’t known him at all.

  Dave was confident, attractive, he finally had conversational skills, and judging from this place, he must be a savvy businessman. What had happened? The Dave I thought I knew didn’t make eye contact, wouldn’t speak unless he was answering someone’s question, and had never been the poster child for Tide.

  Had he watched one of those, “You can do it” infomercials on television? Taken a Dale Carnegie seminar? People change. Everyone matures, but nothing like the change I had witnessed in Dave. It was almost as if he had gone through a finishing school or was abducted by aliens. I liked him before, but I liked him because he had done me a favor by restoring my car. The more I learned about him while I was in high school, the more I felt sorry for him. The truth was, the feelings I had for Dave right now were nothing like how I felt before. I no longer thought of him as a wounded puppy I could try to save.

  Dave was a catch – a real catch. Lots of guys I had met in college had been okay, but the few I had dated were so consumed with their own lives, I felt as if I had been intruding. Time with me had been squeezed in between football games or road trips with their friends. I had gotten semi-serious with a couple of them, well, maybe not serious, but exclusive. None ever broke my heart because I didn’t care about any of them enough for their departure from my life to be more than a blip on a screen. There was one other major difference between Dave and everybody else, too – my eyes couldn’t get enough of him.

  I snuggled back into the sheets that still retained his scent. My eyes closed as I escaped into a fantasy where it wasn’t just his bare chest I was snuggled up against. The candles had been a nice touch last night. The way the flickering light danced across his skin and accentuated the crevice of each ridge on his muscular arms and chest, it was beyond a turn-on – nothing short of erotic.

  Breaking myself out of my own little world, I sat up in bed and stretched my arms, letting an enormous yawn free. It was just after 7 AM on a Friday. Regardless of Tony’s warning yesterday, I didn’t have any classes today, so there was no need to rush across town or to worry about dodging any stalker who could be lurking outside one of my classes.

  Gazing around the apartment, everything still looked as it had the first time I laid eyes on it: nothing out of place. I thought people only lived like this on television shows. My house as a whole, and my room specifically, always had that “lived in” feel. I thought of the last guy I had dated, Calvin. He was nice enough, but every time we went to his place, it smelled like a locker room. I could go for obsessively organized and clean as opposed to grimy and gross any day. Dave was a huge step up from Calvin.

  I plodded to the bathroom, checked myself in the mirror, grabbed some clothes, and decided I was presentable enough to score a cup of coffee downstairs. It was still early, so I thought Dave must be getting in some work before he opened the place. I wouldn’t pass for a supermodel, but sweatpants and a t-shirt had to be acceptable this early in the morning.

  Halfway down the steps, I saw a figure wearing a pair of blue coveralls bent over the engine of a green Chrysler. A quick glance told me it wasn’t Dave: the body was too thin. I froze in place and considered returning back to the apartment when Mr. Kravitz looked over his shoulder and caught me watching him from the stairs. Instant relief flooded me. Although never one of my teachers, he was always great to me, with his easy smile and welcoming demeanor. His skin was weathered, and although it had only been a couple years, gray hairs had begun to take over the hair on his head and face. Mr. Kravitz wore the same scraggly beard and mustache he had the last time I had seen him; his hair was cut short and from what I could see, he was still sporting the same grease under his fingernails as he had in high school.

  He called a happy greeting, “I wondered when you were going to come down. Dave told me to keep a lookout for you.”

  My eyes darted around the garage. Dave’s truck had been parked inside last night, and it was nowhere inside now. How hard was I sleeping? I should have heard him leave. Where would he have gone? “Hi, Mr. Kravitz. What are you doing here?”

  “What? You think only kids cut school?” He grinned mischievously, then added, “Around here, I’m just Ryan.”

  Something felt insanely wrong calling him by his first name. Still not sure what to think about Dave’s absence, I asked, “Where’s Dave?”

  Flashing me a smile, he answered, “He’s sort of an early riser. Dave needed to find a part at a salvage yard. He left a little earlier than normal to catch some gym time first. He didn’t want to leave you here alone, so he asked if I’d come try to work a miracle on this car until he gets back.”

  “Oh.” I looked at the coffee pot in the lobby, “I was just going to grab a cup of coffee, and I’ll get out of your way.”

  Mr. Kravitz put down the wrench he was holding onto the Chrysler’s radiator. “I’ll join you.”

  I went to the little cup tree and took two cups, filling them both and passing one to him. I wondered what he thought about me spending the night. Did he know why I wasn’t at my house? My teeth sunk into my lower lip, the way they did every time I got nervous about something. How much had Dave told him?

  He interrupted my errant thoughts when he asked, “Dave tells me you met Mark?”

  “Yeah, well, at the time I didn’t know it was Mark. The two of them look a lot alike.” After the tattoo revelation last night, I had completely ignored the fact that I had seen Mark a second time. It didn’t feel like I was keeping it from Dave last night because my thoughts were occupied elsewhere, but in the light of day, I regretted not telling him about the encounter as soon as I got here, candles or not.

  “You know, Dave has been searching for his brother nonstop for years. Funny how fate works.”

  His statement took me off guard just as I was bringing the steamy cup to my lips. “He never mentioned to me that he even had a brother until two days ago.”

  “Dave’s a pretty complicated kid.” That was the understatement of the year. Mr. Kravitz paused for a minute before he added, “He’s come a long way in the last couple years. I hope he’s not disappointed when he finally meets Mark.”

  Did Kravitz know Mark? I swallowed the steamy coffee slowly, worried that I wasn’t the only one keeping a secret from Dave. “Disappointed?”

  His smile was warm, “No one is able to live up to a memory. Dave’s been holding on to the memory of his big brother for fifteen years. It would be great if people were as perfect as we remember them to be, but no one is without flaws.”

  That was sort of profound. I felt a little more comfortable; he didn’t seem to be hiding anything about Mark from Dave. Rather than speculating on Mark, or worse yet, letting it slip that he’d choked me last night, I was much more interested in learning what had happened to Dave in the last couple years. “Dave’s a lot different than I remember him being in high school.”

  A thoughtful smile crept across his face. “Different? You mean he’s taller?”

  “No!” I answered with a laugh. “I mean, he was sort of a loner before. He seems, I don’t know, energized or something.”

  “I wish I could take the credit for the changes I’ve seen, but most of the big improvements were Emily’s doing.”

  My heart sank. Dave hadn’t even hinted that he had a girlfriend, or an ex-girlfriend. I was naïve to think just because he had a heart hugging a candy cane on his chest that he had been pining away for me for the last couple years.

  “Oh.” I felt my face blush. What would Kravitz think of me staying here if Dave had someone else in his life? Especially someone who had done for him what I hadn’t been able to do. My eyes rested on the floor as I confessed, “He didn’t mention her.
”

  His voice was rich as he warned, “You’d better keep that tidbit of information to yourself. She is pretty possessive of him, and I doubt she’d forgive him anytime soon if she found out he was having sleep-overs and wasn’t telling you about the other woman in his life.”

  Did he think this was a joke? The light pink on my cheeks morphed into a deep red as I felt the blush stretched all the way to my ears. My teeth gnawed on my lower lip again, and I wanted to escape, not hide, but melt into the wall.

  “Now, don’t get like that. Here. . .” Kravitz whipped a cell phone out of his pocket and flashed his screen at me. A child with light blonde curls, pouty lips, and bright blue eyes scowled at me from his phone. She looked like a cherub, with chubby cheeks and a look that said, “I will have my way whether you like it or not.”

  Aside from her demanding look, she was an angel. “Ah, if that’s my competition, I forfeit.”

  “You’re a smart girl.” He tucked his phone back into the side pocket of his coveralls. “When he came to stay with us, he tried to stay locked up inside himself. She wasn’t having it.”

  “When he came to stay with you?”

  “You met the hideous beast the state placed him with while he was in school? He turned eighteen and aged out of the foster care system. His guardian didn’t want anything to do with him when the checks stopped coming in.”

  A wave of sorrow spread over me, “He never told me.”

  Kravitz nodded. “That was my doing. I told him he was welcome to stay with me and my family as long as he wanted. But there are lots of sad stories out there: I couldn’t take in any other students. I didn’t want any of the faculty or students to find out he stayed with me because I didn’t have room for anyone else in my home.”

  “That’s pretty awesome of you.” I looked around the place and remembered Dave had told me Mr. Kravitz was his silent partner. “You helped him open this place, too?”

  “Only out of necessity. He was fixing cars so fast that my classroom was starting to feel like Jiffy Lube. I had people calling from Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri trying to schedule Dave for a restore. A couple here and there would have been fine, but even the principal noticed we had a significant turnover.”

  “Really? While he was still in school?”

  “Yep. There aren’t many people who have the kind of attention to detail he has. Word gets out fast in the custom world. He needed a place of his own.”

  “You rented this place for him?”

  “I negotiated the lease, and introduced him to an accountant.” His voice morphed into a proud parental brag when he said, “You know that kid pocketed every penny he earned on every job he worked? Students aren’t supposed to make money on the school’s shop, but several of his restores netted him some healthy tips from appreciative car owners. He never spent a dime on anything that wasn’t an absolute necessity. He had the money for the lease on his own; he just needed the encouragement to do it.”

  “But he told me you were his partner?”

  Shaking his head. “Yeah, he tells everybody that. Every month his accountant sends me a check, too. Initially I tried to give them back, but it always turned into a full-blown argument.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Rather than bicker with him, I started a separate account. Every penny he’s ever given me is in there.” He looked around the little garage and commented, “He’s outgrown this place. When he decides he wants something bigger, that cash will be ready for him.”

  “You’re not much of a partner then.”

  “I help whenever he needs it. I’m more of a skilled cheerleader.” His gaze focused squarely on mine. “I’ve seen students come and go. There have been the over-privileged, the undernourished, the troublemakers and everything in between, but there has only been one Dave Brewer.”

  “You sound like a proud father.”

  “Dave’s a part of my family. He doesn’t see it that way, but I do.”

  “I know he appreciates everything you’ve done.”

  “Yeah, I know. You asked me what happened to him? The answer is a little bit of my wife and a whole lot of Emily.”

  “Your wife? I’ve never met her.”

  Kravitz nodded, “You should see his eyes light up when she pays him a compliment. It’s something to see. Like the sun rises and sets on her shoulders.” Conspiratorially, he added, “It’s the same way he’s looked at you for years.”

  My cheeks heated up again, “There was never anything between us back in high school. We were just friends.”

  “You two were just friends because he didn’t know how to tell you how he felt about you. He was too intimidated to let you into his world back then.”

  I didn’t agree with his conclusion, and it felt strange talking about it to Mr. Kravitz. Instead of carrying on a seriously embarrassing subject, I pried him for information on the changes that had happened with Dave. “Is Mrs. Kravitz like a clean freak or something?”

  A sad look shone on his face. “Don’t let that scare you away from him. He doesn’t do it on purpose.” He must have read my confusion because he explained, “He said when he was little he tried like hell to get back to the home where Mark was at. He became compulsive – everything having to be in its place to prove he was a good boy. I’m sure the foster family who kept Mark were good people, but they really did a number on Dave by asking the state to take him back.”

  Dave’s emotions were so raw, I didn’t feel right prying the other night. Kravitz seemed to know everything about Dave, and one question had been eating at me since he told me what had happened. “I thought they didn’t do that? I thought the state kept siblings together?”

  “I don’t know, Candy. Two states in the mix, several different case workers assigned, an adoption that fell through – none of it makes sense to me, either. That kid may be built like a Mack Truck, but he’s got a model airplane for a heart. It’s been snapped together, glued, and painted so that it’s a thing of beauty, but it’s fragile.” He pressed his lips together, as if arguing with himself before he added, “If you aren’t sure you can love him back, you need to cut bait soon.”

  His word choice sent shivers through me. Loving him back was absurd: we hardly knew each other. “Mr. Kravitz, we’ve just spent a couple days together.”

  “You’ve just spent a couple days with him. I can guarantee you, a day hasn’t gone by in the last four years where you weren’t the last thought he had before his eyes closed for the night.”

  Disbelief colored my words, “He didn’t even like me when he first met me.”

  He waved a hand in front of my face. “Are you blind? You remember the day you came into my classroom trying to sweet talk me into letting you into the class? Who do you suppose was rubber-necking and trying to get a better look at you when he thought I couldn’t see?”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You’re right. Back it up a little. When you had detention with me your freshman year?”

  I rolled my eyes, “Yes.”

  “Dave showed up for detention, without a detention slip.”

  “So?”

  “When I asked him for it, he didn’t have one. He said he just wanted to get some extra studying done.”

  I didn’t remember Dave even being in the room anytime during the two weeks. Defensively, I shot back, “That didn’t have anything to do with me.”

  Kravitz furrowed his brow at me, “How many times do you think Dave studied the whole four years he was in school? Still not convinced? You had a small part in the school play your senior year, right?”

  I nodded. “Small” was a kind description. I got to say two sentences. Kravitz’s voice dropped lower, “He didn’t miss one performance.”

  Dave’s simple admission, “I’ve had a crush on you,” took on a whole new meaning when put in Mr. Kravitz’s context. Dave wasn’t being kind or flattering: he really had thought of me that way for much longer than I knew. I still felt the embarrassment
showing brightly on my cheeks.

  Not wanting to continue this trip down my oblivious memory lane, I asked, “You said Emily and your wife helped him come out of his shell? What was their secret? How’d they do it?”

  He rubbed his chin, considering my question. “It wasn’t one single thing either of them did. Emily used to play I-Spy with him for hours, which made him ask questions. She told him about her day, and wanted to hear about his. I guess it was a lot of little things.” He let out a hearty laugh, “You should have seen my wife’s face the first time he put groceries away in our kitchen pantry. When he was finished, all the cans were stacked neatly and grouped according to the contents. All the labels were facing front. I swear she went in and would purposely move cans around only to find them back the way he had arranged them hours later. It used to drive her nuts. She tried to teach him that life is supposed to be messy.”

  “But he’s that way about everything. Have you seen his cabinets upstairs?”

  “Oh, yeah. Lots of times.” Kravitz pointed over his shoulder toward the garage, “His tool box, too. It’s his way of coping. For most of his life it was the only part of his life he could control. When he was younger, he thought it was the key to getting back to Mark.”

  “And now?”

  “I think it just makes him feel good to live an orderly life.”

  I had always liked Mr. Kravitz, but I never knew how insightful he could be. “So someone with a chaotic life is probably a big turn off for someone like Dave?”

  “Dave’s had a thing for you for as long as I’ve known you. A little chaos might do him some good.”

  Sheepishly I countered, “Do you know everything that’s been going on with me?”

  “I know some of what’s going on. Dave’s worried about you, enough that he’s let you interrupt his routine.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His routine. He’s established this schedule he never varies from. What time the garage opens, when he works out, when he eats, everything is planned meticulously. Two days ago when you came here – he closed his shop down for the day. That kid works through blizzards, power outages, floods; he is here when no other place in town is open.” He waited to let it sink in then added, “He closed the place down when he went looking for you.”