Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things

by Jacqueline Firkins

  “Thank god.” He shimmied her dress down around her hips.

  Her bare back, damp with sweat, tingled in the warm night air as everything sped up. His hands circled her waist, rocking her forward and back, pushing and pulling, gently, and then not so gently. Eyes. Skin. Heat. Want. She dug through her skirts, shoving aside tulle until she felt him through her underwear. Sensing Henry’s body react to her made her feel strangely powerful. It made her want him even more.

  She leaned forward to kiss him. His hand groped her breast. Her thighs tightened around his hips. He ground against her. Her tongue pried open his lips. His pushed back. Warm. Wet. Want. Yes. She unbuttoned his pants. He found the hooks on her long-line bra and began to pop them open. Her hand slipped down his stomach, then inside his underwear, where smooth skin shifted to a tangle of hair. As her bra tilted away from her body, her locket trickled onto his chest.

  Wait . . . her locket?

  “Shit!” Edie gathered the chain, shuffled off of Henry, and backed against the wall. The locket popped open, revealing her mom’s face, smiling as if to say, If you let your heart drive, don’t forget to bring your brain. Her mom, who’d instructed Edie to focus on her education rather than her love life. Her mom, whose family had shunned her for her impulsive choices. Her mom, who’d gotten pregnant on her prom night.

  “What’s that?” Henry asked.

  “Something I forgot.” Edie shoved the locket back into place, pressing both the locket and the half-undone bra to her chest. “Something I shouldn’t have forgotten.”

  Henry scooted up beside her and caressed her cheek.

  “Did I go too fast?”

  “No, I went too fast.” Edie hiked up her dress to cover her bra.

  “I can slow down.”

  “No. I’m sorry. I just . . . I need to stop. Okay?”

  “Really stop? Or just take a break?”

  “Really stop.”

  Henry let out a long, slow breath as he slumped against the wall and his eyes trailed to the far corner of the tower.

  “Wow. Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”

  “I want a lot of things, but I need to sort them out before I rush this.”

  He ran a hand over his face and held it against his chin as he shook his head, answering a question he’d only asked himself.

  “This is about the swashbuckler, isn’t it?”

  “No. This is about the girl.” And maybe a little bit about the swashbuckler. Dammit! Why was he still on her mind? He had no right to be there.

  Henry nodded. Then he dragged his shirt onto his shoulders, tipped his head back, and watched Edie comb her fingers through her hair, picking out stray pins until her last remaining curl fell over her shoulders.

  “Are you mad?” she asked.

  “Mad? No.” He laughed softly, a smile barely denting his cheeks. “Unless you’re about to run away and leave me holding one of those shoes.”

  Edie nudged her glass slipper further into a corner. Then she assessed the abrasion on the side of her foot. It was red and swollen, curved like pursed lips.

  “Looks like I’m not running anywhere tonight,” she said.

  “Then neither am I.”

  She adjusted the top of her dress and checked for both necklaces. They were still there, warm but hard and unforgiving, forcing their impressions into her skin. They’d both seemed so beautiful a few hours ago. Now they felt like brands. Her choices were becoming too big, too permanent. For the rest of her life, Henry would hold the title of First Boy She Kissed, ousting Sebastian now that Edie fully understood the difference between clumsily mimicking a statue at age ten and hungrily locking tongues at age seventeen. Did she want Henry to hold another first or did she want to save that spot for someone else, someone with whom it would really mean something? Given time to clear her head, could Henry become the guy with whom it would really mean something?

  “Can we just sit here for a few minutes?” she asked.

  “We can sit here for as many minutes as you want.” Henry opened his arms and invited her in.

  Edie leaned into his embrace and laid a cheek against his chest. She was torn about stopping something that felt so good but grateful she might’ve staved off a few potential regrets. Sure, she wanted minute seven (or whatever minute they were on now), and kissing Henry was as amazing as Maria had claimed, but once she paused to think about it, losing her virginity to him on their first real date didn’t feel right. If she was going to have sex with Henry, she had to really want it, not just with her body, but with her mind and her heart, too. As her mom had said, that was where she kept the good stuff.

  Henry hummed softly as Edie relaxed against his chest and closed her eyes, letting his voice drown out the anxiety and confusion that threatened to overtake the giddy little shivers flickering across her skin, the imprint of kisses and caresses, desire’s tattoos. As Henry’s arms wrapped tighter, and as Edie found the perfect nook on which to rest her head, a layer of loneliness shuffled itself off and scurried away.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  * * *

  The morning sun was stretching across the bell tower when Edie opened her eyes. She scooted upright, quickly shifting from dazed to panicked. Henry was breathing softly behind her, sound asleep, his shirt open and his trousers unbuttoned. As she checked for both necklaces, his eyes blinked open and his face broke into a wide smile.

  “What are you so happy about?” she barked.

  “I wake up to your beautiful face and you ask me what I’m happy about?” He ran the back of his fingers along her cheek, soft and tender.

  “Don’t be charming right now.” Edie adjusted her half-unhooked bra and her unzipped dress, holding both against her chest with her forearm, feeling far more naked in the daylight than when her brain/copilot had been on hiatus a few hours earlier. “Do you realize we spent the whole night here? My aunt is going to murder me.”

  “I’ll smooth things over for you.” He caressed her other cheek. “I’m good with parents. The dads, not so much, but the moms . . .”

  Edie ignored his smirk, still scrambling to reassemble herself.

  “My cousins are never going to let me hear the end of this.”

  “I’m good with cousins, too.”

  She shot him the glare to end all glares.

  “I changed my mind. I’ll take Charming Henry. It’s too early in the morning for Conceited Henry.” She reached behind her back and struggled with her hooks, barely managing to get one fastened. She soon gave up and spun her back toward Henry. “Can you help me with this?”

  “Absolutely.” He popped open a hook.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know. I know.” He hooked her bra and zipped up her dress, lingering to trace her shoulder blade with the side of his hand. His caress felt electric, like they all did, drawing the best kind of shivers across her skin, but she refused to be distracted.

  “Come on. We should go.” Edie quickly knotted her sash and retrieved her glass slippers. She clambered up, brushing the worst of the dirt off her no-longer white dress.

  Henry remained seated with his head leaning idly against the wall. He looked like a marionette at rest, though Edie suspected very few marionettes were costumed in Henry’s current state of undress.

  “I’m serious!” She hauled open the trapdoor and motioned for Henry to get up. “I have to get home.”

  As the sound of choir voices floated upward, Henry checked his phone.

  “You might want to wait a bit,” he suggested. “It’s Sunday. Service isn’t over for another hour.”

  “Well, isn’t that convenient?” Edie dropped the door, letting it thunk down and dampen the music.

  “If you don’t mind interrupting the priest, we could go give the congregation something to talk about.” Henry lazily flicked a bit of grime off his knee. “I could even introduce you to my parents.”

  “Like this?!” Edie held out her filthy skirt. “It’s hardly ‘meet t
he parents’ attire.”

  “We could clean up in the holy water.”

  “I thought holy water burned vampires.”

  Henry laughed but Edie glowered. She began to pace—three steps either direction—making the old boards tremble under her feet. Henry looked on, amused and unmoving, the picture of someone content to remain precisely where he was.

  “Want me to call Maria and explain what happened?” he offered.

  “The less either of my cousins knows about our night together, the better.”

  Edie continued pacing, burning through her anxiety one step at a time until she realized she was only accomplishing one thing: making her feet sore. She didn’t even know what she was so upset about: her own hasty choices, Henry’s carelessness about the impending repercussions, or some complicated overlap between the two.

  “Relax.” He patted the floor next to him. “When the service lets out, we’ll sneak downstairs and merge into the crowd. No one will even notice us.”

  “I guess another hour won’t make much difference now.” She sat down beside him, resigned to her fate. As she blinked into the sunlight, her eyelashes locked together. She peeled off the false bits and stuck them to the wall behind her.

  “Anything else you want to take off?” Henry asked.

  “Nice try, but no.” She ripped away a dangling bit of tulle, appalled at her bedraggled appearance. “So, how should we pass the time?”

  “You know what I want to do.” He leaned toward her.

  “Besides that.” She leaned away and adjusted her sash, now torn and tassel-free.

  He brushed her hair off her forehead, gently, sweetly, reversing the chaos he’d been so proud of only hours earlier.

  “I do love you,” he said.

  Edie opened her mouth to say she couldn’t possibly believe him, not after seeing him play Romeo for Julia, lure Maria away from Rupert, and talk about so many other girls like they were just a bit of meaningless fun. But something in Henry’s eyes—and something in the story of a boy who’d been patient, persistent, and dedicated—made her give his words credence. Besides, her mixed motives for kissing him last night didn’t land her on moral high ground, her present location notwithstanding.

  When Edie failed to respond, Henry’s smile dropped away for the first time since he’d opened his eyes.

  “You really think I’m lying,” he said.

  Edie took his hand in hers. She felt awful for not being able to accept what he was offering, words and feelings that were so beautiful, and that she’d dreamt of hearing one day, but they didn’t sit right for some reason. They were like glass slippers: nice to look at, hard to wear.

  “Honestly?” she said. “I don’t know what to think about anything anymore, especially about myself.”

  He raised her hand to his lips.

  “Then I’ll simply wait until you do.”

  She squeezed his hand and leaned her head on his shoulder as a V of birds flew past, high up in the blue-gray sky, silhouetted against a wispy streak of clouds. She didn’t know how long Henry would wait for her to figure herself out—a month, a week, or maybe only an hour—but she liked the idea that to someone, for some amount of time, she was the one worth waiting for.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  * * *

  Persuasion

  noun

  Jane Austen’s final novel.

  Your prom date’s cunning ability to convince you that a morning make-out session in a church tower would be a truly religious experience.

  A clever orchestration of compliments and apologies that turns your aunt from pursed-lips-on-legs into a gushing, blushing that’s-okay machine who thanks your date for taking such good care of you when he drops you off eight hours past your curfew.

  To Edie’s relief, Maria and Julia were still in bed when she crept upstairs to shower, change, and slather her hair with detangler. She could only imagine her cousins’ faces if they’d seen her and Henry show up on the doorstep looking like they’d reenacted a sordid scene from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Once Edie was back to her pre-makeover self, she carefully stowed Henry’s necklace and slipped her locket on. Then she lay down on her bed and checked her phone, frustrated to discover that even her insinuation about spending the night with a guy hadn’t garnered a response from Shonda.

  As Edie remembered Ithaca High’s prom was the previous weekend, she clicked on Shonda’s Instagram page and flipped through the photos. Shonda was in several shots from the big event, looking fierce in a red strapless dress with her blond-streaked black braids piled high and a new pair of rectangular glasses that suited her heart-shaped face perfectly. James was nowhere to be seen, nor was any guy. Despite the fact that Shonda’d pretty much always had a boyfriend, she seemed to have spent the last couple months without one. Edie didn’t even know Shonda had broken up with James. She didn’t actually know anything about Shonda’s life lately. Edie’d been so busy waiting and hoping for Shonda’s forgiveness, she hadn’t stopped to think about what Shonda needed. Maybe she was lonely too.

  Racked with guilt for being such a selfish friend yet again, Edie began typing an apologetic text. She paused as she recalled her conversation with Sebastian in the sycamore tree. He’d suggested the friendship was likely repairable if she found the right way to reconnect. Not just any way. The right way. Edie’d been telling herself she’d tried everything but it wasn’t actually true. She hadn’t looked Shonda in the eye, in person, and said she was sorry. She’d been full of denial before she left Ithaca and she’d been hiding behind a screen ever since, too afraid to face the pain she’d inflicted and the fury that would likely emerge. If she truly valued her friendship, she needed to stop protecting herself from the consequences of her own actions.

  Edie made herself a promise. No more lexicon posts. No more texts. No more emails. She was living in the Age of Yes now. As soon as school was over, she was taking the bus to Ithaca, even if she returned with a broken nose and no friend to show for it.

  She was still looking through photos when a text came through. She jerked upright. The universe had heard her plea! Shonda was replying after all!

  Sebastian: Can we talk?

  Edie stared at her screen, feeling as if she’d been gut-punched. No. Not this. Not again. She’d finally moved on. He’d even encouraged her to do so in his own mangled, manipulated, moronic way. He had no place in her life right now. He’d only confuse matters. Someone loved her. She was happy. She wanted to stay that way.

  Sebastian: Please?

  The ache in Edie’s gut moved up a few inches, settling itself somewhere inside her ribs, just left of center. Panicked, she wrenched open the bedside table and flung her phone into the drawer as if it were Kryptonite. While she was burying it under a pile of junk like a crazy person, Maria and Julia burst into her bedroom without warning, still dressed in their pajamas. They plopped down on the bed together. Julia hugged a pillow, biting down a smile. Maria folded her arms, sleepy-eyed and scowling. Edie braced herself against the headboard as the inquisition began.

  “Tell us all about it,” Julia practically squealed with excitement.

  “Not all about it,” Maria said with no excitement whatsoever. “Just, like, the family-friendly version.”

  “The two of you?” Julia gushed. “On the dance floor? Total movie kiss.”

  “It was just a kiss,” Maria grumbled.

  “Where did you guys go last night?” Julia barreled on. “And did you . . . you know? You totally did it, didn’t you? Was it perfect and amazing? Tell me it was perfect and amazing. I want my first time to be perfect and amazing too.”

  “Slow down!” Edie waved her hands in front of her face. “We just hung out for a while and fell asleep—otherwise I would’ve been here hours ago.” She spotted her pile of shed clothes on the floor. She scampered up to stash the evidence that “hanging out” had been far more athletic than she was implying.

  “I was hoping you fell in love.” Julia wilted against the
footboard.

  “Wow.” Edie tossed her dress into the closet, ensuring it was out of view. “That’s not how I thought you’d take things.”

  “Someone should get to be his girlfriend,” Julia said.

  “I’m not his girlfriend.” The word sounded strange to Edie, incongruous and oversized. It was far too unwieldy to describe a relationship with a guy she’d spent one impulsive night with, especially a guy who’d always seemed averse to relationships.

  “But that kiss!” Julia’s sock-clad feet fluttered against the dust ruffle.

  “It was just a kiss.” Maria grabbed a stray hairpin and forced it to unbend.

  “You swore you didn’t mind that I asked him to prom,” Edie reminded her.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d do a ten-minute face-dive in front of everyone.”

  “It wasn’t ten minutes.”

  “Whatever. I didn’t pull out a stopwatch.” Maria began rolling her eyes, but she winced mid-effort. She tossed the hairpin onto the table and wrapped a hand over her forehead. “I’m just saying, you could’ve shown a little class. You’re not in Podunk anymore where everyone knows who’s banging who by which trailer’s rocking.”

  Edie allowed herself to picture hairpins smothering Maria like a swarm of locusts descending on a field of crops. Then she shucked her glass slippers into the closet.

  “Maria, I’ll forgive you because I know you don’t mean what you just said, but ease up a little, please? I didn’t set out to hurt you but I had a good time with Henry and I’d like to see him again, with or without a trailer.”

  Maria sneered as she started torturing another hairpin.

  “No more boy-next-door fantasies?” she goaded.

  “No more of your business.” Edie folded her sash into a sharp little square, surprised at her newfound assertiveness. It felt good. Better than good. With a concerted effort, maybe the Age of Yes could bring on the glorious downfall of the Empire of Polite.