Restless Hearts

by Stephanie Kate Strohm

  “I’ve done that before. I’ve even done the short-term fling with an expiration date thing,” I said, thinking about Sweet Pea. “These things are never as clean as you think they’ll be.”

  “Forget clean. I think it’d be an awful lot of fun to get messy with you, Josie McCoy.”

  That didn’t sound half-bad. It would be so easy to close my eyes, wind my arms around his neck, and kiss him again. I could see the rest of the tour playing out in front of me. The two of us laughing as we flew down the highway in his pickup truck, sharing snacks and fighting over what station to listen to on the radio. Singing together, in front of a packed house, but feeling like we were the only two people in the room. Stealing kisses backstage and holding hands in the wings.

  Until, of course, it wouldn’t be like that. It would be awkwardly avoiding each other backstage. Making sure we never stopped at the same gas station. Standing silently at a Comfort Motel breakfast buffet as we both reached for the last mixed-berry yogurt.

  Or maybe it wouldn’t be like that. Maybe one of us would just leave, eventually, and I’d be the same as before, only with another little piece of my heart missing.

  It wasn’t worth the risk.

  “I don’t have time to get distracted,” I said. “I need to focus on my music. And you, Boone Wyant, whatever else you are, would be an awfully big distraction.”

  “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment?” He scratched his head. It was honestly unfair for someone to look this good. “Can we at least be friends?”

  “Sure.” I shrugged. “I mean, there’s only so much bee talk I can handle with Pauly.”

  “Bee talk?” he repeated, incredulous.

  “You’ll learn.”

  “Come on. Let’s go look at that statue over there.” He pointed down the beach, then held out his hand. I looked at it but didn’t take it. “It’s just a hand, Josie,” he said. “Nothing romantic.”

  “Mmm, yeah, I love a good platonic hand hold. Classic move.”

  “Try it. You might like it.”

  I heaved a mighty sigh, but I took his hand, and we walked closer to the statue. It was a big, buff, green merman holding a trident, one hand on a sea turtle.

  “Neptune,” I read off a plaque bracketed by two bronze octopuses.

  “That’s basically what I look like without my shirt on,” Boone joked.

  “Honestly? I don’t doubt it.” He started to pull up the hem of his shirt. “That wasn’t an invitation!” I tugged it right back down. “If you’re expecting girlish shrieks of delight, please don’t. I’m not one of your fangirls.”

  “They’re called Baby Booners.”

  “Pardon?” I cupped my hand to my ear, sure I must have misheard him.

  “My fans. They call themselves the Baby Booners.” At least on repeating it he had the good sense to look embarrassed.

  “You are kidding.” I burst out laughing. “Stop, Boone, please tell me you’re making this up.” I placed a hand on the fence around the Neptune statue for balance. I was laughing so hard, I was worried I might fall over. “Baby Booners. I can’t. That is absolutely unreal.”

  “It’s not like I came up with it!” he protested. “They did!”

  “Baby Booners. Oh man.” I wheezed. “This is the best thing that’s happened to me all day.”

  “That was the best thing to happen to you all day?” he pouted. “Ouch, Josie.”

  “Sorry, Romeo. Again: I’m not some swooning Baby Booner.”

  “Okay, that’s it, you’re going in.” He walked toward me, a joking look of menace on his face.

  “Going in what? The water?!” I gasped. “No way!”

  I started sprinting down the beach, away from Boone, shrieking with laughter as he chased me. If he wanted to throw me in the ocean, he’d have to catch me first.

  And I knew he could never catch me.

  MY PHONE BUZZED NEXT TO me. Again. Hopefully it would just die soon. I didn’t have time to talk to whoever was trying to reach me. Time was starting to run together. I had definitely fallen asleep at some point, but I wasn’t quite sure what day it was anymore. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was this dress.

  Sighing, I held a black tassel up to the neckline, then held it back down again. What was I doing? I wasn’t a tassel person! Or maybe I was? I didn’t even know anymore. The more I added things, then took them away again, the more confused I got.

  I had to get out of here. The walls were closing in on me, and the already small apartment was feeling so tiny it was suffocating me. Grabbing only my keys and my wallet, I fled down the stairs, out of the building, and ran for the subway, traveling uptown to the one place I always felt safe.

  The Little Red Lighthouse was exactly what it sounded like—a small red lighthouse in Fort Washington Park, facing the Hudson River and nestled snugly beneath the George Washington Bridge. When I was little, Mom used to read me the picture book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, and one day we’d traveled uptown to see it together. That became the first of many visits. We came when I needed to talk through a fight with a friend, or if I got upset about a bad grade, and later, when we needed to cry together about Mom’s diagnosis. Even though the Little Red Lighthouse had its share of bad memories, too, it never failed to make me feel hopeful. Like as long as it could shine its light out over the Hudson, everything would be okay. It was my quiet place, my safe place, somewhere I could be alone with my thoughts.

  Now it was where I came when I missed Mom most of all.

  I could have visited the cemetery, I guess, but I felt closer to her here, on the water. Sighing, I sank down onto a bench and looked out over the river. What a mess I’d made of everything.

  “Katy?”

  I turned, and there he was. My knight in shining track pants. Watching KO jog toward me in his Western Queens Boxing Gym hoodie, I almost burst into tears right then and there.

  The Little Red Lighthouse may have been my safe place, but KO was my safe person.

  “KO?” I asked as he took a seat next to me. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here? I’m looking for you!” He hugged me on the bench, crushing me to his chest, like he never wanted to let me go. “You missed our goodnight call. You didn’t pick up. For the first time ever.”

  Oh no.

  “I’m so sorry, KO.” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t talked to him last night. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

  “Of course I was worried! We’ve never gone to sleep without talking before. And I texted Jorge this morning, and he said you weren’t responding to his texts, either, and then I really started to worry.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t pick up. I was just so wrapped up in working on the dress for the Rex London fashion show, I forgot the rest of the world existed.”

  “That’s what I thought might have happened. But nobody answered when I buzzed your apartment, so then I really got worried.”

  “We must have just missed each other. I haven’t left my apartment since I went to Lacy’s yesterday. How did you find me?”

  “Because I know you, Katy.” He smiled, his eyes crinkling, his face almost as familiar to me as my own. “I know this is your special place. Your safe place, that you always come to when you’re worried. Because this is where you used to come with your mom.”

  Wordlessly, I reached over and grabbed his hand. We sat on the bench like that, quietly, just being together, watching the water. It wasn’t exactly a tropical beach—I certainly wasn’t about to go swimming in there anytime soon—but it was my favorite view in the whole world.

  “I miss her so much,” I said.

  “I know you do.”

  “I just feel like she’d know exactly what to do with the dress. She could tell me why it wasn’t working and we’d figure it out together.”

  “What are you talking about?” KO frowned. “What’s wrong with your dress?”

  I realized then I hadn’t told KO about how much I’d
been struggling. Or Jorge, or anybody.

  “My dress is a mess,” I confessed. “And this isn’t just me being too hard on myself or anything. Rex London said it was a disaster. Like, unless I pull off some kind of miracle, he’s not even going to let me walk in the show. That kind of disaster.”

  “Oh man, Katy, I’m sorry.” He pulled me close and squeezed. “I know you said that not all fashion risks pay off, and even the greats make mistakes, but that cannot have been easy to hear.”

  “It wasn’t. But the worst part is, I agree with him! I know he’s right. It is a mess. But I don’t know how to fix it. It’s just … for the first time ever, I can’t figure out what I want to make. I can’t figure out what I should design that’s the most me. It’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore, or what that would look like on a dress form.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you.” KO frowned. “I don’t know anything about fashion, but even I know that you have your very own Katy Keene sense of style. Like, I could look at anything you made and know instantly that you made it.”

  “That’s how I used to feel, too. But right now, it feels like I forgot what that Katy Keene style is. That’s why I wish that Mom was here.” I had a small, creased picture of the two of us together that I’d been carrying around in my wallet like a totem. I pulled it out and smiled as I looked at it: Mom at the sewing machine, me in her lap. One of my earliest memories. “I need her to remind me who I am.”

  “You don’t need her for that, Katy. You know who you are. Maybe …” He paused for a moment, thinking. “Maybe you just need her to remember what you love about fashion. Like, that little girl right there.” He tapped the picture with his finger. “What’s she thinking about?”

  “Oh, man, I remember that day so well.” I smiled. “That was the first time Mom trusted me to hold the fabric while she worked the pedal on the sewing machine with her feet. I felt so grown-up. I loved sewing with her so much.” Tears pricked at my eyes, but these ones didn’t hurt. “Taking pieces of fabric and turning them into clothing … it was like magic.”

  “Yeah. That’s how you usually look when you talk about clothes,” KO said happily. “Like they’re magic.”

  “It was! It is. And she always had such a great sense of style, too.” I looked at the clean, simple lines of Mom’s dress, utterly elegant. “Although, I was pretty stylish, too,” I joked, pointing at my overalls. “Look at all those little red heart appliqués.”

  “You were cute then and you’re even cuter now.”

  “Look at all those little red heart appliqués,” I said again, more slowly. I loved hearts. And red. Adding little bits of Katy-flair to other items of clothing I’d found or made or repurposed. Maybe I’d been shying away from doing my usual Katy thing because it didn’t feel serious enough, or like something a designer would do. But I thought about Deja, and her awesome cat designs. She was doing incredible work while being exactly herself. It’s not like cat faces were particularly serious. Why couldn’t I create something that was more me?

  My mind was whirling a million miles a minute, like it always did when I was really inspired. Maybe I would make a dress, but a new dress, something almost like what Mom was wearing with its elegant simplicity, but with a few fun Katy touches. Maybe cute pockets? Or fun buttons, like the strawberry ones I’d found at Lou Lou Buttons? And what would be the right hem length?

  “Ladies and gentlemen, she’s back!” KO announced like he was inside the ring at the boxing gym.

  “Huh?” My mind was still on seams and pocket placement.

  “I can see you thinking. I know how your mind works.” He tapped the side of my head gently. “You know exactly what you’re going to do.”

  “I do. I mean, I think I do.” I grinned. “I need to sketch. Why didn’t I bring my notebook?” I patted my coat pockets, pulling out a random pen. “Do you have anything to write on?”

  KO pulled an insanely long receipt out of his pants pocket. Grinning, thinking of my mom at Lacy’s all those years ago, I sketched like my hands were on fire, the dress in my mind taking shape on the paper before me.

  “I love it.” KO looked over my shoulder as I finished up the sketch.

  “Yeah?” I examined it critically from every angle, but couldn’t find fault with any of it. It was exactly what I wanted to make for Rex London’s fashion show.

  I’d be proud to walk any catwalk in this. Even at Lacy’s.

  Especially at Lacy’s.

  “I mean, you know I don’t know anything about fashion, but I think it looks beautiful. And more than anything else, I love the way it made your face light up.”

  Carefully, I folded the receipt up and tucked it in my pocket. This might work. This might really work.

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here before it gets dark.” KO hopped off the bench and held out his hands to pull me up. “Oh, wait a sec. Let me just tell Jorge I found you.” He pulled out his phone and started texting. “Once I called Molly’s Crisis and Darius confirmed you weren’t there, I sent Jorge to Lacy’s to look for you.”

  I had a sudden vision of a panicked Jorge popping in and out of dressing rooms, calling my name, and cringed with guilt.

  “I’m so sorry I caused everyone so much worry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. We were worried because we love you. I’d comb every inch of this city looking for you, and I know Jorge would do the same.”

  I was so lucky to have them. I had lost Mom, and I knew that was a wound that would never fully heal, but I was still surrounded by so much love.

  “Just answer your phone next time,” he teased gently. “No matter how big the fashion emergency.”

  “I promise. From now on, I am always accessible. Well, mostly accessible,” I amended. “I’m going back home to start sewing right now, and I have to focus, but I promise I’ll call you before I go to bed.”

  If I went to bed. I had a feeling I might stay up all night. But I’d call KO either way. I definitely didn’t want him and Jorge combing the streets of Manhattan, looking for me again.

  “Right now? It sounds like you’ve been working literally nonstop for days. Why don’t you take a break, Katy?”

  “I can’t take a break now!” I shook my head. “Are you kidding? The fashion show is only two days away! I need to get back to work, and fix things, and—”

  “I think what you really need might be a break from all this designer drama. Just a little one. So why don’t you come to the least fashionable place in New York? Come home with me.”

  “Oh, stop it.” I laughed. “Your house is not the least fashionable place in New York.”

  True, Mrs. Kelly liked to cook in Crocs with socks, but who was I to judge? She could certainly cook circles around me. Maybe the Crocs were part of the culinary creative process.

  “Think about how nice it might feel to relax, just for a couple hours. I’ve gotta stop by the boxing gym really quick, but after that, come have dinner with us. Mom’s making pot roast. There’ll be plenty.”

  “Ooh.” I’d been living off a mostly-stale box of Triscuits for the past couple of days while I worked. A serving of Mrs. Kelly’s famous pot roast with mashed potatoes sounded like exactly what I needed right now. As did being squished at the table among all the other Kellys, all teasing one another and cracking up and talking a mile a minute. And probably all wearing sweatpants. Maybe a break from couture wouldn’t be the worst thing. “Now you’re speaking my love language.”

  “I know. What did you say on our first Valentine’s Day?”

  “Don’t get me flowers. Bring me some more of your mom’s mashed potatoes.”

  “You love her more than me, don’t you?” KO slung an arm around my shoulders as we walked away from the Little Red Lighthouse. I snuck one last glance at it as we left the park.

  “It’s not your fault. She’s very lovable. And you’ve never made me a mashed potato.”

  “I’ll mash you as many potatoes as you want, Katy Keene.”

&nb
sp; We talked about potatoes and the paperwork KO was grabbing before his next match and everything but my dress for Rex London’s fashion show as we traveled to the Western Queens Boxing Gym.

  Inside, the gym was missing its usual soundtrack of gloves smacking against bags and fighters grunting with effort. Instead, all we could hear was someone crying. Loudly. We followed the sound, until we found a small blonde figure curled up behind the ring, her head down and her knees tucked into her chest.

  “Jinx?” KO asked. She didn’t respond.

  “Is she okay?” I hoped she hadn’t been hurt somehow. We ran over to her quickly, her sobs getting louder.

  “I’m so sorry I blew you off.” KO knelt next to her, apologizing. “That was really lame of me. I was worried about Katy, but I should have at least texted you to let you know I wasn’t coming.”

  “I’m not crying about you, you dummy!” Jinx lifted her head. Two black rivers of mascara-stained tears ran down her cheeks. “It’s m-my girlfriend!”

  “What did she do now?” KO looked like he’d like to use this girlfriend as a punching bag. He settled down, sitting next to Jinx. “Did she stand you up again?”

  “No. And she’ll never stand me up again. Because I saw her kissing someone else!” Jinx wailed.

  “She cheated on you?” I gasped, sinking to the floor to sit on Jinx’s other side. Now I felt even sillier about how jealous I’d been of Jinx. Of course I’d had nothing to worry about. And here she was, with her heart broken, the poor thing. “Oh, Jinx, I’m so sorry.”

  “I guess she didn’t technically cheat.” Big, fat tears spilled out of Jinx’s blue eyes. “We never said we were exclusive. I just assumed. Because we were spending so much time together over the last couple of weeks, and I was so crazy about her, I just assumed she was so crazy about m-m-m-me …” The rest of her sentence got lost in big, gulping sobs.

  I put one arm around Jinx, and KO put his arm around her other side, and we wrapped her up in a hug. I’d had my heart broken by plenty of other things, but never by love. KO and I exchanged a glance over Jinx’s head. I was so lucky to have him. I knew he would never break my heart like this, not ever. Forget the Little Red Lighthouse. KO was my safe place. I could count on him, always, no matter what.