by Noelle Marie
For a moment, the only sounds in the room were Heath’s harsh breathing and the oblivious thumping of Sawyer’s tail against the couch. Then Heath broke the tense silence. “How can you tell me this and not expect me to go after him, Emma?” he demanded tightly. “There’s nothing I want to do more.”
Emma frowned, something that felt like disappointment squeezing at her chest. “Nothing?” she asked quietly.
Heath sighed, running the hand not covering hers through his hair in what Emma was quickly learning to be a stress-induced gesture. “Maybe not nothing,” he admitted, eyes meeting hers for a moment before he shook his head. “I want to kick my own ass just as much, for one.” He paused, swallowing thickly. “I remember what I said to you that first week. Asking you if you’d stolen that awful blonde’s boyfriend. God, it had to be Gunther,” he spat out the name as if that alone offend him, “of all people. No wonder you hated me.”
“I never hated you,” Emma immediately denied.
Heath snorted.
“It’s true!” she exclaimed, truly bothered by the fact that he could think that. “I mean, I thought you were a rude, egotistical jackass, that’s true enough, but I never hated you.”
Heath glanced at her, looking more amused by the words than anything, but Emma could still see the glimmer of hurt in his eyes.
“And I was wrong for thinking even that,” she quickly added.
Heath shook his head. “No you weren’t. I was a jackass to you. And besides, that’s hardly the worst thing I’ve ever been called.”
The claim gave Emma pause. She knew the question she wanted to ask – knew what she desperately wanted and didn’t want to know at the same time. She bit her lip. “What’s the worst thing?” she finally asked, voice soft and unassuming.
Heath shrugged. “Useless, moronic kid. Disgusting waste of human flesh. Worthless freak. A creative combination thereof. Take your pick.”
Emma hated how matter of fact Heath sounded as he listed horrible name after horrible name. Like he’d heard them a million times before. Like he believed them.
She sniffled. “Heath…”
“Don’t,” he snapped at her, tearing his hand from hers and refusing to even look in her direction. “Don’t feel bad for me. Because it’s all true.”
Emma firmly ordered her bottom lip to stop quivering. “How can you say that?”
“Because it’s goddamn true!” he repeated.
Emma paused, realizing that her current line of questioning was only serving to work Heath up. With his anger at Gunther still brewing beneath the surface, she knew that wasn’t a good idea. So she changed tactics. “How old were you?” she asked quietly.
Heath spared her a heated glance. “How old was I when what?” he demanded. “How old was I when I was forced into foster care? When I started to learn what a burden I was? Or how old was I when one of my foster fathers decided to make mincemeat of my back? Exactly what question are you asking, Emma?”
Emma took a deep breath, ignoring the way that Heath’s words made her chest ache where her heart was supposed to be. “All of them.”
“Seven,” he answered shortly after a lengthy silence. “That’s how old I was when I was thrown into the system. I was made to know what a burden I was to the families who took me in pretty quickly after that. And nine,” Heath paused, his eyes shining with an anger reminiscent of that of a caged animal’s, “is when I was first introduced to one of my foster father’s favorite belts. There, happy?”
Emma’s own eyes were swimming with tears, but she refused to let them fall.
Of course, she wasn’t happy!
But she held the words back, allowing her hand to slowly inch forward and recapture one of Heath’s instead. She ran a finger over one of the tiny, circular scars there. “And here?” she asked softly. “How old were you when this happened?”
Heath looked down at their connected hands. “I was eleven,” he said after a moment. “One of my foster mother’s boyfriends thought it was funny to put out his cigarettes on my arms and hands and try to make me cry. I honestly think it bothered him that I never did.”
Something inside of Emma shattered at that confession and like a dam bursting, she could no longer hold back her tears. They flooded her eyes and poured down her face in little rivulets of despair.
Heath spotted them immediately. “Emma, hey, no, don’t cry,” he all but commanded her, jerking his hand from hers and holding it out near her face like he wanted to physically stop them from falling but wasn’t sure how.
“How can I not?” Emma demanded, nearly choking on the tears that had built up in the base of her throat in her efforts not to cry – efforts that had been in vain. “The abuse you’ve suffered is horrendous.”
Heath stiffened beside her and his hands fell back down to his sides. “Don’t feel bad for me. I deserved it.”
The turbulent emotions swimming inside her boiled over at his words. Disbelief, sadness, and so much anger at whoever had convinced him so thoroughly of that made Emma snap. “How can you say that? You were a little kid, Heath! About Charlie’s age, for God’s sake. You could never have done anything to deserve what happened to you.”
Heath’s entire countenance hardened. “You can’t possibly know that.”
“Then explain it to me!”
And just like that, he cracked. “I killed my own mother!”
The words were sharp, harsh, and left absolutely no room for argument.
Emma paused. “What?”
“I said,” he spat, “that I killed my mom.”
There was not even one tiny fraction of Emma that believed that was true. But what was true was that Heath obviously believed it.
“How did you do that?” she asked as calmly as possible, knowing she was treading in dangerous territory. “Did you take a knife and stab her? Suffocate her in her sleep?”
Heath stared. “She hung herself from the fan of our living room ceiling.”
The breath was knocked from Emma’s lungs. She’d thought maybe there’d been an accident of some sort, but suicide… it hadn’t even crossed her mind.
Heath took advantage of her stunned silence. “I was such a little shit. Always giving her a hard time and talking back. Same with the teachers at school. I was failing second grade reading, for Christ’s sake. I’d just brought her home a note from school about it the week before… before she…” He swallowed, unable to finish.
Emma didn't know how many times her heart could break in one evening.
“What about your dad?” she asked quietly. “Where was he?”
Heath snorted. “I don’t even know who the bastard is.”
Emma chewed nervously on the inside of her cheek, her teeth digging into the flesh there as she debated whether or not to share how her own mother had passed. “My mom died of breast cancer,” she finally offered after a moment of silence.
Heath shot her a confused frown, but nodded. “Sorry.”
Emma took a deep breath. “She was diagnosed with it when she was pregnant with me. The doctors said that probability of survival was high if she started chemotherapy right away, but she refused because it would also likely mean she’d miscarry or that her unborn child would suffer birth defects. By the time she had me the cancer had progressed to the point that treatment could no longer help her. She died four months after I was born.” Emma paused. “Do you think that I killed her?”
“What? No!” Heath was aghast by the suggestion. “Emma, your mom was sick.”
“So was yours,” she pointed out somberly.
Heath stared. “It’s not the same, Emma,” he argued. “Your mom wanted you so much that she was willing to die for you. My mom… I mean, I wasn’t even a good enough reason for her to stay.”
“You’re right,” Emma agreed, ignoring the way Heath tensed beside her. “It’s not the same. In some ways, I think mental illnesses are even harder to treat than physical ones. A lot of the time, no one but the person suffering from the il
lness can see it festering. Certainly not a little seven-year-old kid.”
For a long moment the room was silent save for her sniffles.
“Even if you’re right, and I didn’t deserve any of… what happened,” Heath ventured, and Emma could tell it was a hard concept for him to grasp, let alone accept, “that doesn’t change the fact that I’m damaged. I’m not just talking about my mangled back either, as disgusting as it is. You were right before to think I was a jackass. Regardless of how it happened, I am one now. I’m crass and mean, I…
Emma gathered up her courage and reached out for his hand one more time. Bringing it up to her face, she kissed one of the many tiny scars littered there. It was barely more than a brush of her lips against his skin, but it made Heath’s breath hitch, and served its purpose to stop his barrage of self-directed insults.
“I think you’re beautiful, both inside and out,” Emma said quietly. Honestly.
Heath’s eyes were perhaps the most intense she’d ever seen them as they stared hard into hers. “Don’t say things like that.”
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s true.”
Heath tentatively reached up and brushed a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “Because it makes me want things that I have no business wanting.”
Emma dared to move closer to Heath – so close that her leg brushed against his on the sofa and mere inches separated their faces. “What if I want them too?”
She leaned forward closer still.
“If you do this,” he warned, his breath a soft caress against her skin, “I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to let you go.”
“Good thing, then, that I don’t want you to.” With that, Emma erased the remaining distance between them and pressed her lips to his.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
School resumed the second week of January.
While Emma loved learning in general, she couldn't deny that a large part of her had been dreading the return to school. She feared that the almost magical bubble that had encapsulated her and Heath since New Year’s Eve would burst. That the monotonous routine of school and homework would somehow poke a hole in the happiness they’d so recently found.
Okay, so mostly she was just afraid that the sight of Gunther would trigger the suppressed rage she could still sometimes see lurking in Heath’s blue, blue eyes.
Her anxiety peaked when she discovered that she, Heath, and Gunther shared not one, but two classes together. However, when Statistics and Creative Writing both passed without incident – Heath had merely smirked at the sight of Gunther’s still swollen nose and the fading bruises beneath both his eyes – Emma finally allowed herself to relax.
Tuesday proved to be as uneventful as Monday, and Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday passed in a similar fashion.
In fact, besides their schedules, the only thing that seemed to change from the first semester of school to the second was the fact that Heath was glued to her side between classes. He insisted on walking her to all of them despite the fact that his classes were often on the other side of the school. Emma hardly needed a chaperone, but she couldn't help but find the gesture sweet.
Just because Heath made all the non-learning parts of high school bearable, however, didn’t mean that Emma was thrilled about being dragged back to the school a little after seven on Friday evening.
Without Heath, no less, because he was busy working at the diner.
But she just couldn't bring herself to say “no” when a forceful Collette had shown up on her doorstep looking like she’d been possessed by school spirit personified. Decked out in a Maple Valley High boys’ basketball jersey – it was comically large on her and hung down to nearly her knees – and with the majority of her short hair pulled back into a matching polka-dotted scrunchie, Collette had looked both adorable and ashamed.
Emma could admit that she may have stared a beat or two longer than was strictly polite.
She didn’t feel too bad about it, though, seeing as her friend had used her momentary shock to strong arm her into throwing on her jacket, hopping into her sedan, and going to the boys’ varsity basketball game with her.
“I’m still half-convinced your body has been taken over by one of those pod people my dad was watching a documentary about the other day,” Emma said as Collette searched the school parking lot for an empty spot.
Collette rolled her eyes. “Hardy har har.”
“I’m serious!” Emma intoned. “You still haven’t explained what all of this is about.” She gestured helplessly at Collette’s attire.
“Haven’t you ever heard of school spirit, Emma?”
Emma’s eyebrows shot up at her friend’s response. “Okay, now I’m completely convinced that an alien currently resides under your skin. Are you going to stealthily sneak away now to send some sort of obscure message to the mothership?”
Collette finished parking her car before bothering to shoot Emma an exasperated look. “Aliens, Emma? Really?”
Emma shrugged. “Well, I couldn't think of any logical reason that you’d willingly subject yourself to supporting, and I believe this is a direct quote: 'the jock producing, superiority-complex inducing machine that is our high school sports system'.”
Collette had a thing against sports since she’d been forced to perform at the very back of the dance team they’d been members of… in the sixth grade. (The girl could hold a grudge.)
Her friend was quiet for a minute. And then… “This is Luca’s jersey.”
Oh.
And suddenly everything made sense.
Luca had been faithfully participating in basketball since he was a pre-teen. As much as he seemed to enjoy the sport, however, the fact of the matter was… well, he wasn’t very good at it. She and Collette had attempted to support their friend in his hobby, but had stopped going to his games somewhere around freshmen year when he went from obligatory playing a few minutes a game to being little more than a bench warmer.
Emma suspected that the only reason he’d even made varsity this year was because of the sudden height he’d gained over the summer.
“He asked me to wear it,” Collette continued. “And as much as it goes against my principles to pay good money to watch a bunch of brain dead boys chase around a bright orange ball, I can’t not support him.”
That was just so… sweet. And not like Collette at all. But Emma supposed she could cut the girl some slack. Despite the weird sort of mating dance they’d been engaged in since the third grade, Collette and Luca’s budding relationship was still very new. Nearly as fresh as her own was with Heath.
Emma sighed. “Well, I can’t not support you, so let’s get this over with.”
Collette grinned. “And that right there is why you’re my best friend. Now come on, we’re going to be late.”
Without further ado, the two friends climbed out of Collette’s car and headed into Maple Valley High’s gymnasium. They paid their way in, but the varsity team was still warming up, so they made their way to the concession stand to buy a few snacks – popcorn for Emma and a few candy bars for Collette – before finding a fairly empty spot to sit on the bleachers.
The crowd at the game was fairly small – apparently the team had a lousy record – and Luca had no trouble spotting them in the thin throng of spectators. His wave from the court was the definition of enthusiastic.
Collette’s wave back, on the other hand, was positively shy.
Emma smirked when she spotted a pink blush spreading over her friend’s cheeks.
“What?” Collette demanded, crossing her arms over her chest when she caught Emma staring.
“Nothing,” Emma teased good-naturedly, “I’m just not sure whether I want to gag from all the teeth-rotting sweetness that I’m now forced to endure on a daily basis, or if I should just be thankful that you two aren’t engaged in another very heated, very public liplock.”
Emma had made sure to tease her friends about that many times since Lulu’s party.
Ap
parently too many times, because Collette seemed fairly nonplussed when she simply snorted in response. “Like you can talk," she said. "Thank God I don’t have any other periods but lunch with you and Heath. It’s a wonder I can choke anything down having to watch the two of you stare at each other like the other is the second coming of Jesus. The second coming of Jesus that you desperately want to bone.”
“Collette!” Emma protested, a red flush climbing wildly up her face now.
“What? I’m serious! To be fair, it’s Heath who does most of the, what I call, sex-staring. On Wednesday I was half afraid I’d look up from my spaghetti to see that he had you pinned to the table, one hand up your shirt and the other-”
“That’s ridiculous,” Emma cut off Collette, attempting to hide her burning face with her curtain of hair.
“Keep wading in that river, honey,” Collette said. “It’s called de-Nile. And for the record, I don’t blame Heath. You’re so freakin’ cute. If I was blessed enough to actually be into girls instead of horrible boys, I’d-”
There were no words to describe how thankful Emma was when the buzzer sounded throughout the gym, signaling that it was time for everyone to stand and sing the national anthem. The game began immediately after.
Of course, that didn’t stop Collette from teasing her throughout the basketball match. Emma attempted to give back as good as she got, and while she didn’t find basketball particularly interesting, time passed by surprisingly fast, and an hour and a half after the game had started, it was over.
Maple Valley lost by double digits.
Luca didn’t get to play a single minute.
Emma worried about his feelings as they waited for him outside the gym, but Collette didn’t seem overly concerned.
“You know Luca,” she assured, “he doesn’t stay upset about anything for long. Besides, I figured this would happen, and I bought him a Milky Way to make him feel better.” She showed Emma one of the chocolate bars she’d purchased before the game had started. “It’s his favorite.”
Emma frowned. “I thought he liked Snickers.”
Collette stared at her like she’d grown an extra head. “Emma, he’s allergic to nuts,” she said like she was talking to a five-year-old.