Purple Hearts

by Tess Wakefield

  I sat up in bed and heard music filtering in from the living room, and on top of it, a voice out of tune. The song was “Going to California” by Led Zeppelin. The voice was Luke’s.

  I gave Mittens a pat on the head and slipped on shorts and a tank top.

  Everything in the living room was like what I had imagined, except the plants were back in their places. Somehow they seemed fuller, though. I stood still. The sun shone. Luke was in the kitchen, limping back and forth from the stove. The air smelled like fried eggs.

  “Good morning!” I called.

  He couldn’t hear me over the music and a very exaggerated impression of Robert Plant. I tried to keep from laughing, and held up my hand for Mittens to stay. Luke had his back to me, poking at the skillet with a spatula.

  “Good morning,” I called again.

  He turned to me, shirtless, startled. “Oh! Good morning. Yeah. I was just . . .”

  “Making eggs?”

  Luke was still an anomaly in my close quarters, too big to fit, or at least he was now that he was upright, his six-foot-plus frame in my little kitchen. And especially after last night. The memory jolted me. Our bodies, together. I wondered why we didn’t stop ourselves before it got that far. Then I wondered why we stopped. I cleared my throat.

  He gestured to the stove with the spatula. “Making eggs and working on some, you know. Vocal stylings.”

  “Very good. You should consider starting a Led Zeppelin cover band.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Shed . . . Dead . . .”

  “Nothing rhymes with Zeppelin,” I assured him, grabbing a glass for water. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  I left him to the stove and caught a smile in my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I was thinking about the recent uptick of his interest in music. Today was not the first day he’d started by putting on one of my records. He was just as he said he was, a straight classic-rock fan, but I could put on something rock-y but obscure and get a curious glance out of him.

  We emerged at the same time, me with my face washed, him from the kitchen with two plates.

  He sat, I sat. Over-easy eggs, still steaming, and avocado on toast. The last time we were here, we were holding each other. He’d revived me. He’d cried into my hair. Now his elbow touched mine only on occasion, balancing the toast to his lips, trying to get the crumbs to fall on the table rather than all over his leg brace.

  “What are you gon’ do t’day?” he asked, his mouth full.

  I laughed. “Eat eggs and avocado.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He took another bite. “That sounds pretty good.”

  “What are you doing?”

  He swallowed. “Eat avocado and eggs.”

  “Huh, who knew?”

  Mittens trotted in, tongue out. We moved our plates out of her reach. I stood, paused the Led Zeppelin, and put on Xenia Rubinos’s “Hair Receding.” A crease rose between his eyebrows, his mouth slightly turned up, listening.

  “I knew it,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I call this look your new face.” I pretended to frame him with my fingers.

  “My new face?”

  “Your new face. It happens every time you’re exposed to something outside of your comfort zone. It’s the song, and I can tell because of this.” I reached across the coffee table to touch the crease between his brows. “You got it when I put on Dirty Projectors, too. And when you ate sweet potato fries.”

  He touched the spot, too, and shrugged, looking at me. “I bet I get it a lot around you.”

  “Hey!” I sat back down beside him, an inch closer than I had sat before, and gave him a small push. He didn’t scoot away.

  “It’s not a bad thing.” He glanced at me, smiling.

  “No, it’s not.” We were quiet for a while, finishing our breakfast.

  Our breakfast. The plants were flourishing even though I’d been so busy with the band. Because he’d watered them. I thought of my dream and felt a rush of gratitude. He’d asked what I was doing today, and I realized I just wanted to be here, or anywhere, anchored in peace, knowing Luke was there, too. I’d tried not to name it last night. I could tell myself I had been too tired, too confused, too torn up from talking about Frankie, wanting someone’s comfort.

  “Are you okay?” Luke asked beside me. I nodded, unable to look at him right then. Looking at his hands.

  Because here we were, wide awake and well fed, and I knew I hadn’t just wanted to be held by anyone last night. I wanted to be held only by him.

  Luke

  Beside me on the futon, Cassie curled her knees into her chest. The flash of her lower back under her tank top, her calm breath, the waving black strands of hair falling on the back of her neck—it all kept pressing, pushing some tender part of my chest out into the open. Since I’d come back from the cemetery I still hadn’t figured out how to broach the subject of what she meant to me, what we meant to each other, let alone what to say. I’d tried to get some sleep before she woke, but I couldn’t. So I’d taken a shower. I had put on her music, letting it loop quietly, realizing I’d learned the words. I’d made her eggs and avocado toast.

  And now I just wanted her to lean into my arms, against my bare skin, and stay there indefinitely. I didn’t want to reach out to her without knowing she wanted me to, without knowing that what happened last night was not just a fluke because we were both so exposed, so vulnerable.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  She nodded, her chin still against her knees, her eyes ahead.

  “When we were talking last night . . . ,” I began.

  She suddenly adjusted her legs, shifting to face me, her gaze set on mine. I didn’t break it.

  But now that she was listening, not just listening, but listening for something, there was so much to say. There’d be no way I could say it all without messing it up. I started slow. “Talking about Frankie meant a lot. And I didn’t get a chance to thank you.”

  “It meant a lot to me, too,” she said. “And—”

  “And—” I echoed, almost on top of her. We paused, waiting for the other, and burst out laughing.

  “You go,” she said.

  “No, you,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, then swallowed. “I was thinking about what I said at your dad’s barbecue. I mean in the attic. When I said if you talked this much all the time, our lives might be a little easier.”

  I remembered what had taken root that day, the day I showed her my dad’s medal. “Right.”

  “And you have, lately.”

  “I’ve tried.”

  “You’re different,” she said. Then she shook her head, holding up a hand. “Not that you were bad before,” she added.

  “I was, though.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, quick.

  Another step toward the truth. I realized I had stopped breathing. Honesty was a new sensation. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it still shocked me, bit by bit. Like descending into a cold pool. I was probably making that new face Cassie pointed out. I tried to relax, to breathe again.

  “I was just in this for the money, and now I’m not.” The truth, lapping harder. Refreshing. Cleansing. Wishing I could take her hand.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said, sitting straighter, nervous. “Yeah,” she repeated. “Me, too.”

  My heart skipped.

  I saw her eyes glance at where her phone lay dead on the coffee table. She was thinking of Toby, probably. Trying to tread carefully. She brought her eyes back to mine. “Now that we’re better friends,” she continued, and the word “friends” felt like a stab, though it shouldn’t have. “I can’t help wondering why you needed the money. I mean, the real reason you were in debt.”

  “Right.” This part of the truth was harder, cracking ice. The feeling of Johnno’s bones under my foot. His crumpled form on the bed. “I’m sorry. I should have told you a long time ago.”

  “That’s okay,” Cassie said, quiet. “You don’t have to tell me now.
But sometime.”

  “No, I want you to know,” I said, and hoped I didn’t look like I was in as much pain as I felt. Here was the rotten core, the snake in the water that didn’t belong with all the other sweet, cool facts. I wanted to tell her that I loved her, not that I was even worse than she could have imagined. I was a criminal. Even before we played this marriage game, I was an addict and a thief and a terrible son, a terrible brother.

  “You can tell me,” she said, and held out her hand, palm up, on the futon between us. I took it and tried not to grip too hard.

  If I was going to tell her the truth, that I was paying for pills that I flushed down a toilet, then I’d have to tell her I was too addled to understand what I was doing, and then I’d have to tell her that not two days before I flushed the pills, Johnno had kicked me awake because I had washed down some crushed-up Oxy with beer and “it didn’t look like you were breathing,” and then I’d have to explain that it wasn’t a big deal because I regularly smashed Oxy into a powder and either sucked it up my nostril with a straw or put it in my drink, and that I’d been doing it for years.

  And then she’d wonder why, and I’d have to say I wasn’t sure, all I knew is that I felt better as cloud head at Johnno’s than I did in my own home, because I was pretty sure my dad hated me, and she’d ask why I thought my dad hated me, and I’d have to say I didn’t know, but I knew what hate felt like more than I knew what love felt like, and I was pretty sure what I had for her was love, so if she could look past all that, it would be great.

  “Luke?” She squeezed my hand and let go, her eyes full open, still on mine.

  “I owed money to an old friend from my hometown,” I said. The guilt grew but I couldn’t bring myself to force the right words—the real words—out. To see her eyes shutter, feel her hand pull away. “I . . . I lost something of his that was incredibly valuable. And I couldn’t pay him back for a long time, and so he started to charge interest. And it really added up.”

  It wasn’t a full lie, at least. Cassie nodded, thinking. “What did you lose of his?”

  “I was working for him, selling . . . medical supplies.” I looked away. Cassie wasn’t dumb. The honesty had felt so good, and now it was ebbing away. “And it was really embarrassing to have lost it, like, so dumb. So, so dumb how much money I owed. So I don’t like talking about it.”

  “I get it,” she said, and put a hand briefly on my knee. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  “But it’s paid back now,” I said, not ready for her to move on, to get up and forget that we were getting somewhere.

  She kept moving, slow, a smile almost hidden, and stood. Maybe someday when we were further away from all this, when the blood from Johnno’s nose wasn’t fresh in the drain, and when Cassie didn’t have a million other things to think about, like her mother’s safety, like the show at the Sahara she’d been rehearsing for for months and the stupid pseudoboyfriend who was tagging along, I would tell her everything, start to finish. If there was a “we.”

  “Cassie,” I said, and resisted the urge to ask her to sit down again, her thigh close to mine, and we wouldn’t have to kiss, just sit, and I would run my hand down her back.

  She turned, taking her hair out of its ponytail, and I was overcome. “What?”

  “Your show’s going to be great tomorrow.”

  A smile grew as my gaze traveled her face. But I had trouble smiling back. Cassie deserved the truth, and sooner or later I’d have to find a way to come clean. Even if it meant losing her.

  Cassie

  The day of the show, I went with Luke to River Place. While he did his physical therapy, I walked Mittens through the trails, up and down the hills, letting her sniff every leaf and root and footprint she wanted to. After breakfast yesterday, Luke had fallen asleep immediately. I’d gone over to Nora’s to practice, and Toby had asked me to stay at his place. I’d said yes too quickly, worried he’d sense my hesitation or feel my guilt. As conflicted as I felt right then, I was glad to get out of my apartment. I couldn’t work out my feelings for Luke very well while he was around, because the feelings themselves were too big. I needed space away from him to identify them, to wonder when they’d come, what to do next.

  But the feelings had followed. They’d followed me to Toby’s, where I lay awake next to him, and today, through the trails, thinking about the day I’d first given Luke Mittens. How his face changed, softened. How I’d catch him speaking to her and everything inside me would become all warm and syrupy. When I’d tried to think about the future, somehow I could think only of him now.

  The trails ended. We circled back to the green where Luke waited. My stomach did jumping jacks.

  “Who’s got the cutest face?” He bent down and rubbed his nose to Mittens’s. “Who’s the cutest? Hello,” Luke said to me, grinning, scratching behind Mittens’s ears.

  I could barely get a word out before grinning back. “Hi.”

  We walked to the car together, and drove home with the windows down.

  I walked behind him up the steps, slow, and when we got through the door, Luke turned to me. “Cassie, can we talk?”

  My heart pounded. “Yeah! Yeah. I’m glad you— Yeah, we should definitely talk.”

  I tossed my keys on the front table and headed toward the couch. Before I could sit, he touched my arm. I stood, waiting, my face on fire.

  “I want to tell you something. I’ve been wanting to, but I just couldn’t . . .” He shook his head and took a deep breath, as if steeling himself. “I have to be completely honest with you.”

  “Okay,” I said, letting out a nervous laugh. “Should I be scared?”

  “No, not scared, I think, but I’ll understand if you’re upset,” he said, his voice dropping, deep and more serious than it had been in a long time. I folded my arms. “I told you I owed money to a friend from my hometown. And that’s true, but it wasn’t the whole truth.”

  I nodded, braced, waiting for him to go on. I wasn’t stupid. His explanation had been vague, and it had been vague on purpose. I assumed that was for my benefit. He was my business partner, not my confidant. At least not until a few days ago.

  Luke searched for words, and when he couldn’t find them, he looked me straight in the eyes. “He was my dealer.”

  I felt my eyes widen. “Dealer of what?” I said.

  “OxyContin. Or any other opiate I could get my hands on. Vicodin. But mostly Oxy.”

  I’d known in the back of my mind that his mood swings weren’t natural. He’d been struggling to stay sober this whole time, tempted by the very drugs that’d been meant to help him through. I remembered that day he had given me earplugs, how his head had lolled on his shoulder.

  “How long?”

  His face contorted, trying to keep back tears. I reached out to squeeze his arm, his shoulder.

  “Sorry.” He pushed on his eyelids. “This is hard. It was just recreational when I was a teenager. Then two years ago I realized I was addicted. But I couldn’t stop. So I got clean and joined the army, and . . . here we are.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me right away that you were sober?” I searched myself for anger, for a feeling of betrayal that he hadn’t leveled with me. But as I stared at him, at the way his hand gripped his cane, the stiffness of his leg, the way his shoulders hunched as if bracing himself, I couldn’t find it. All I found was a man who’d been through hell.

  “I didn’t think you would want to . . .” He made quote marks with his fingers. “Be with a person who got involved in that kind of stuff.”

  “You mean be married to you?” I smiled.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well.” The jumping-gut feelings returned. “I wish you’d been honest with me . . .”

  He smiled back, reluctant, then bigger. “You’re not upset?”

  “I’m not happy, but hell . . .” I shrugged. “I was no stranger to recreational drug use in college. It could happen to anyone. Especially with opiates. That stuff . . .” I sighed.
“I don’t envy you.” I swallowed. “So what now?”

  “I gave him all the money I owed, and now we’re done.” Luke stepped closer.

  For some reason, I began to get uneasy. Maybe it was a delayed reaction. Or maybe that he had started to talk about his dealer again. I still didn’t know the whole story about that, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to just yet.

  I had meant “what now” with his sobriety. And mostly, I had meant “what now” with us.

  “He used to be my dealer. Key words, used to. So, yeah, I plan to stay sober. Sober as a . . .” He looked for the phrase.

  “Sober judge?” I said, trying to smile, opening and closing my hands, trying to shake off the feeling that something had wound tight around me. “I can’t totally dive into it with you before the show, but I want to know more. And help you.”

  “Of course. I just . . . wanted to tell you. Anyway.” He paused, shaking his head. The sensation wound tighter, for some reason. “He won’t bother anyone anymore.”

  I wanted to reach out to him, to give him a hug, but something wasn’t sitting right. The way he phrased it made me pause. “What do you mean, ‘anyone anymore’?”

  Luke’s mouth dropped open, and he closed it. All of the composure of his confession had left his face. He hadn’t meant to say that. He began to stammer. “Well, like, you and me . . .”

  “What?” There was something else he wasn’t telling me. Then it hit. There was a reason why his eyes had flashed with anger after he left the duplex two nights ago. Why he had offered to pay for the TV. My insides were a tidal wave. “No. No. Wait, really? No.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think I’m going to puke,” I said.

  I could feel him stepping closer. “Cassie.”