A Matter of Heart

by Amy Fellner Dominy

  “Is that it?” Disbelief fills my head like a fog. “You think you’ve been tricked?” I smack his chest with the edge of my fist, and it feels so good, I hit him again. Anger tears through me like a flash fire. It’s good to fight back—to fight something. Half punching and half pushing, I flail at him until he grabs my arms and holds them still.

  “Abby, stop!”

  “You’re acting like this because of Jen, aren’t you?” I shout. “She told you about the call.”

  His eyes widen. “You got the second opinion?” His surprise is unmistakable.

  I yank my hands free, but the fire is gone. I sag back on the seat. It’s all I can do not to cry. I’m on a roller coaster and I just want off.

  “Jen didn’t tell me anything,” he says. “I didn’t know. I swear.” He shakes his head as if it’s sinking in. “So it’s for sure? You have that…thing? What the first doctor said?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. He shrugs his shirt closed and seals up the Velcro. “Damn, Abby. I’m so sorry. It’s…Damn.”

  “It doesn’t have to change things with us,” I say. “Not like that.”

  “But if you start breathing hard…”

  “I’m on medicine. Nothing can happen.”

  He’s quiet for a long minute while I try not to breathe loudly, afraid I’ll lose him because I’ve already lost so much and how can I survive losing one more thing?

  His Adam’s apple rises and falls. “We’re just supposed to be having fun, you know? It’s my senior year. It’s supposed to be all good.”

  Tears burn at the corners of my eyes. A broken girlfriend was obviously not on the to-do list. “Even Darwin is wrong sometimes, I guess.” My words are laced with sarcasm but even I can hear the plea beneath. Please tell me Darwin isn’t wrong.

  He meets my eyes. “Look, I just need to let it soak in, you know? I mean, now that you know it’s really…”

  He can’t even say it. A part of me wonders what happened to my fight, but how do you fight the unspeakable? “Did you cheat at the swim meet in September?” I suddenly ask.

  He blinks, confused. “What?”

  I wish I could believe that he really doesn’t know. “Did you take drugs to help you recover faster?”

  “No.” His voice rises and his chest thrusts forward. “What the hell, Abby?”

  I wrap my hair into a thick rope and hold on to it like an anchor. I don’t know if I believe him or not. “Would you tell me if you had?”

  “I’m not going to answer that.”

  “Because you did?” My eyes search his but I can’t read anything. Did he? Didn’t he? My gut tells me maybe. Maybe. That’s more than I would have said a few weeks ago, but it’s not enough to be sure.

  “You’ve been listening to Mendoza,” Connor accuses. “He’s a loser, Abby. Plain and simple.”

  “But it isn’t simple,” I say. “You did have an amazing comeback. And you know what?” I add. “Nothing is simple about losing when it’s happening to you.”

  He deflates a little with that, and for a minute I feel better. No one is immune to fear.

  My head is throbbing. Is this my first hangover? Or is this just a nightmare I can’t seem to escape? Breathing deeply, I clear a path through the tears clogging my throat. “Forget it,” I say. “Just go. I’ll see you back at the party.”

  “Abby—”

  “It’s okay, Connor. It wasn’t going to work anyway.” And just like that, he’s off the hook. He gets out of the car and so do I. He seems relieved, but he stands there a few seconds longer, probably calculating just how much he has to do to maintain his rep as a “good guy.”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I just need to catch my breath.”

  The pointed words strike home and he nods. He heads toward the party and I start walking too, but in the opposite direction. Moving deeper into the dirt lot, I stride past another row of cars. I reach down and yank off my heels, barely feeling the rocks beneath my feet as I start again, moving faster and faster so I’m jogging by the time I pass the last few cars and hit the open desert. Then I’m running.

  I’m running through the dark, into nothing, and it’s exactly where it feels like my life is going. Tears stream unchecked and I push harder with my legs, pump my arms, the sound of my sobs like an echo that follows me. Prickly bushes catch and rip at my pants and a loose branch flies up and scrapes my arm. It feels good, the pain. Pain layered on pain, and I want to burn it all up on this trail. I want to go so fast I leave it all behind. I want to leave me behind and I want to fly to where the pain can’t reach me at all.

  43

  The mountains call my name.

  My side aches as my legs keep turning, climbing over the uneven ground. I can’t feel my feet anymore. I don’t feel anything but my breath and the wind and the wetness on my cheeks. My head pounds, my thoughts too slippery to hold, but there it is again. My name carried on the air. As if it’s calling me back to myself, but I won’t go. I won’t—

  A branch swings out from the dark and connects with my shoulder. “Ah!” I shriek. Before I can jerk my arm forward, I feel it again, grabbing for my shirt, and my muddled brain realizes it’s not a branch. It’s a hand reaching out for me. I stumble, yanking hard to free myself as the familiar sound of my name echoes around me again in the curve of night.

  “Abby!”

  It’s not the wind or the mountain. It’s him.

  What is he doing here?

  He grabs me again, and I spin and lose my balance. I fall and he’s there, curling around me, protecting me as I tumble, as we both fall to the dirt of the packed trail, the air exploding from my lungs at impact. My neck snaps back; my head thuds against solid bone.

  And for a second, I lie there. Dead, but not dead. Spent and broken like one of the twigs by my elbow. I’m scraped and battered and emptied out and every inch feels bruised and broken.

  Except for my heart. My heart is beating steady and strong.

  And the harsh breathing that sounds pained and labored isn’t mine. It’s Alec’s.

  44

  “You can let go,” I say. My voice sounds raw, as though I’ve scraped it along with my arms and back.

  “I don’t know.” I hear him gulping in air. “Can I? Are you going to run again?”

  I work to catch my own breath. “Just get your hands off me, okay?”

  His arms drop away, but his deep breaths thrum with anger. “What the hell were you doing? Jesus, Abby. Sprinting off like that. Alone. In the dark.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “You’re drunk,” he says.

  “That’s the good news.” I wipe at the wetness beneath my nose. “Go away, Alec.” I shift away from him, crawling backward like a crab, not sure I have the energy to stand just yet. My feet are throbbing now, and I brush away pebbles that are embedded in my soles.

  “Abby?” The anger is gone from his voice.

  I run my hands along my pants and feel rips in the fabric of both knees. Good thing sexy serial killers don’t wear miniskirts or I’d really be torn up.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  I finally look at him. It’s dark but the full moon seems closer at the peak of the hills and I see he’s taken the worst of it. His shirt is torn and dirty, and there’s a rip in his jeans and a bloody scrape on the side of his hand. Well, no one asked him to chase me down.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I was leaving the party. I saw you get out of Connor’s car and then he went back to Tanya’s house and you didn’t. You walked right by my car, and it was like you were in a trance. I didn’t know if something happened. If Moore…” His voice shakes with new emotion.

  “What?” I say. “Took advantage of me?”

  “Did he?”

  I laugh. Okay, so it’s a slightly demented laugh, and I can tell from Alec’s tensing shoulders that he thinks I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. “You got that backward,” I say. “I tried to take advantage of Connor.” A few te
ars spring to my eyes, surprising me. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, then give a sharp “Ow!”

  Alec is suddenly by my side. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “I just wiped dirt in my eye.” I try wiping again but it’s useless. My hands are coated in trail dust.

  “Here.” Alec pulls off his shirt, yanking it over his head and throwing it over a bush. He’s got a white undershirt on and he pulls the bottom edge loose from the waist of his jeans and slides in close enough to wipe my face with the material. It’s warm from his skin and smells like sweat and soap. He rests one hand on my shoulder and gently brushes the dirt from my eye. His stomach is close enough for me to shove him hard—or kiss his hot skin. I do nothing but let him clear my eye. I don’t even shrug off his hand. When he’s done, he sits back, leaving the undershirt loose.

  I shiver, as if something has changed in the air. But it’s me that feels changed. What he’s doing is a reaction. Thoughtless, but thoughtful. Something a friend would do. Is that what we are now? Friends?

  Then he shifts away and clears his throat as if he suddenly realizes how intimate it is, what he just did. And the air is not just changed—it’s charged.

  I have to get out of here.

  Except…I have nowhere to go but home to a worried mother and a father with an empty trophy shelf and a chart of broken dreams.

  I don’t move.

  Neither does Alec.

  45

  A coyote cries somewhere in the distance, but the mountain has no answer. Sound fades into the soft breeze, the air heavy with earth and night.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  I sigh and if I had any resistance left in me, it’s gone in that one breath. “I got my second opinion,” I say. “Same as the first.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I can’t swim competitively. Not ever.” Now that I’m talking, the words begin to bubble up like acid. “It means I’ll never be the best in the world. It means Coach will find another star and my dad won’t be able to look me in the eye. It means everything I’ve spent the last ten years working for is over.”

  He shakes his head impatiently as if I’ve missed the point. “Can you…Are you…” I watch his throat move. “Is it fatal?”

  Oh, that. I shake my head. “Not if I take my meds and keep my heart rate under control.”

  His brows shoot up. “And you were just sprinting up a mountain?”

  “I’m taking medicine, Alec. I’m fine.”

  “What if you push past the medicine? What if you push too hard?”

  The sweat is drying on my skin and goose bumps prickle at the cool air. I look up, away from Alec, concentrating on the tiny dots of starlight. I wonder if I close my eyes, can I just fall asleep? Drift off and away from here, transport myself to one of those far-off worlds?

  “It’s not that bad, Abby,” he says.

  I open my eyes and meet his dark gaze. “Go away, Alec. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s just swimming.”

  “Look who’s talking.” I roll my eyes. “It’s not ‘just swimming’ to you, either, is it? Or you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing.”

  He runs a hand through his hair. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about this morning. The way you broke Connor’s hold on the one hundred.”

  For an answer, he crumples a twig in his fingers.

  “Be honest, Alec. Was it hard work or maybe something more?”

  His breath hisses out but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Did you maybe borrow your mom’s albuterol today?” I press. “Was that the difference?”

  He says something but too low for me to hear.

  “You did, didn’t you? You cheated. You broke your contract with Coach and every basic rule of good sportsmanship.”

  Now his jaw is clenched, as immovable as the mountains looming above us.

  “You could be kicked off the team. Ruin any chance for college. And why?” I demand. “Because it’s ‘just swimming’? Right,” I say, drawing out the word with disgust. “You did it to beat Connor, because winning is everything.”

  His head snaps up, and his face is harsh lines and sharp angles in the moonlight. “I don’t give a damn about Connor. You think I care about bragging rights?”

  “You want the medal, same as the rest of us.”

  “I want Stanford, Lipman. The only way I can afford it is with a scholarship.”

  His voice is harsh but it rings with truth. And pain. I’m startled from my own misery. “But you already have a verbal agreement.”

  “Yeah. Which means that last year they thought I had potential. This year I have to show it. I need to drop a full second from my time or that verbal agreement means nothing.”

  I hug my arms; the goose bumps have turned into a chill. A half second is doable for Alec, but even that won’t be easy. “Still,” I say, and hear the hesitancy that’s crept into my voice. “It’s interest from Stanford. The best of the best.”

  “And that makes it worse.” He pulls his shirt off the bush, fighting the prickly branches until it snaps free. He shakes the dirt loose and hands it to me. “You’re shivering.”

  “Thanks.” I take the shirt and pull it over my shoulders, the heavy cotton feeling good in my scraped-up hands and warm around my arms. “Why worse?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “It’s easier when you have nothing to lose, I guess.” He sighs. “I was just a kid swimming at my local Y. No expectations, no pressure. Then I start breaking records and suddenly there are options. Possibilities. I hear my parents talking, night after night, the dreams getting bigger and bigger. And then Stanford calls.” He half laughs. “Ivy League of the West calling Alec Mendoza. My parents were so proud, my dad had to leave the room so I wouldn’t see him cry.”

  He lowers his head so I can barely hear him. “What do I tell them now? How do I tell them their son, on the brink of everything good, has run out of talent?”

  Somewhere to our left, a coyote yips like an injured dog. It’s eerie. I hug my knees in close. “You haven’t run out of talent, Alec. You’re a great swimmer.”

  “I used to be great. Now I’m just good.” It’s his turn to look at the sky and I wonder what he sees. Does he wish he could disappear too?

  “I thought I could do it with heart and hard work,” he says softly. “But it doesn’t work like that, does it? Connor never swims an extra workout or an extra lap. Still, he edges me out every time.”

  “So you cheated?”

  He sighs again. His eyes lock with mine and there’s darkness inside and out. “Why didn’t you tell Coach about the albuterol?”

  I curl more tightly into myself. “Why didn’t you tell Coach I got dizzy at the gym?”

  “I didn’t know how serious it was, or I would have.”

  Thoughts rush through my head. “I wasn’t sure if you were cheating. The albuterol was still wrapped.” I pause. “Is it still wrapped?”

  “I used it for the first time this morning.”

  It’s what I guessed, but the shock still hits me like a dunk in icy water.

  “And I used it for the last time,” he adds.

  “Alec—”

  “You can check my swim bag. It’s gone.”

  “Did it…did you…”

  “Was I faster? Is that what you’re asking?”

  “Most people don’t think albuterol makes a difference.”

  His mouth twists into an ugly smile. “Did you see the race?”

  I nod.

  “It was close from the second we hit the water. I got off the blocks crisp and rolled right into a rhythm. He came off the wall slow at the last turn and I had him. I had that asshole the whole way in. Or did I?” His voice cracks. “Was it me? Or was it the albuterol? My time was better, yeah, but not by much. It feels like me, like I did it, like I won. But how can I know? How can I ever know?”

  He curses a
nd I hear a rock skid and realize Alec just pitched it at a mesquite tree. Something scrambles through the brush and absently I hope it’s a rabbit and not a snake.

  “So what happens if you don’t get the scholarship?” I ask. “You can still get into a good university, right?”

  “Oh, sure,” he says, and I stiffen at the pain in his voice. “Any university ought to be good, right? I mean, hell, university might even be too good for a guy like me. Why not a community college?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you were thinking it, weren’t you?”

  “No!” A breeze picks up and I pull Alec’s shirt tighter around me. I think again about how little I really know him. And about how dreams come in all shapes. Does Alec’s dad sit on the edge of his bed at night while they whisper about him going to a school like Stanford? Does the dream go as deep as my dream of the Olympics? I’m guessing the answer is yes. Everything about Alec seems to run deep.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I guess I should have known.”

  “Why would you?”

  “Because you work harder than anyone else out there.”

  “Except you.”

  I close my eyes against a sudden rush of tears. “Not anymore.”

  “Abby—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I snap.

  “There’s more out there than swimming.”

  “Oh, sure,” I say, my turn to pour on the sarcasm. “I can do lots of things.” I put a finger to my lips and pretend to think. “I know! I’ll make out with my boyfriend. Oh wait, I can’t do that, either.”

  There’s a second of silence and I can feel new tension pulsing from Alec. But his voice is quiet as he asks, “What happened tonight?”

  “Nothing,” I mutter. “Forget I said that.”

  He leans forward. “If he hurt you—” His hands are fisted again and it makes me feel strange that he wants to protect me. Alec has always been a mystery. Maybe never more than now. The mystery is how we went from hating each other to this. Whatever this is.