Heart on a Shoestring (6 page)

“Awww. It’s like you’re a turtle and I’m a lizard.”

“Huh?”

“The Adventures of Turtle and Lizzy.” She laughed. “You hide in your shell and I hide by changing my colors.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and that means she succeeded in something no person ever had before. “You are the first person who has ever made me laugh when it was the absolute last thing I wanted to do.”

Derek and I reclined against a tree and talked until drops of rain landed on our noses. We shifted gears and spoke of childhood memories and favorite movies. Not the deep stuff. Not the painful images my heart wanted to forget. I wanted to tell him everything. Right there in the middle of nowhere. No one to hear. No one besides him. I didn’t trust anyone with my heart. Not after every relationship I pursued ended up an unrequited love story. Only two people knew my regret. Matt and Gavin. I spilled my heart to them a year after it happened. They were older. Wiser. And I needed to vent. Gavin told me to tell Max that I was sorry and allow myself to move on. Matt repeated. And I obeyed. Trouble is, Autism speaks in ways I didn’t understand. Max couldn’t give me forgiveness. He couldn’t tell me he was okay. He couldn’t tell me that I didn’t crush his dreams and that he really, really was okay.

He didn’t have a voice.

“You alright?” Derek cracked my memories and peeled back reality. “You look like you’re out there somewhere.”

“You’re not telling me everything,” I said. “And I won’t force you, because I want you to come to the point I’m at now.”

He shifted his weight to the left and pulled his knee to his chest, then raked his head where his former hair used to be.

I continued, “I trust you.”

He avoided my eyes.

I looked down too. “I’ve trusted few people with my heart, so tread lightly. I told you my brother Max and I wanted to plant something together, but we never did. See”—I steadied myself on a low tree branch—“I wanted to fit in. I was the type of girl who sat at pep rally’s and high school football games pining over boys who never knew my name. I wrote poems about them. Cried in my car to Radiohead’s
Creep
about them. I practiced writing my name with their last names. Knew their class schedule by heart and where they stood before the bells rang.” I stopped, inhaled as much air as possible, and looked at the grey clouds before I continued. “Finally, my chance had come. I did something dumb. I called this guy randomly from my friends house, blocked my number, and told him I wouldn’t reveal my identity until he guessed who I was. I’d call him every night at eight and give him one clue each night. To my surprise, he loved our conversations and seemed as excited as I was. Then one day I messed up. I was relaying a story and accidentally said my name. A few nights later he figured out my identity. It was so awkward after that. He stopped calling. I thought we’d fall in love and it would be magical. The unknown girl gets the popular guy. The Taylor Swift song comes to life.”

“So, then what?”

“He called me one night. I almost had a heart attack. He knew who I was and still called me. A few minutes into the conversation he told me about this beautiful girl he liked and asked my advice for how to approach her. My heart probably stopped beating as I told him what a girl would like. Anyway, long story short, he ended up with her and I got depressed. That soon turned into a determination to become so beautiful and popular that he would regret his decision. So I had a bit of a transformation and showed up at school one day. No one recognized me. I felt so high on life. All the guys turned their heads. And by the end of the week I was drinking with the cool kids, who turned out to be not as cool as I imagined.”

“Did he regret his decision?”

“Who knows, but I got so into my new status that I made the biggest regret of my life. Well, several of them, including marijuana episodes, but there’s one that I just can’t forget.

“My little brother was outside one morning. I was a junior in high school and loving life. He was watering the grass in the front yard when I pulled up and  got out of my car. He liked watering plants and grass. He’d just stare at the stream of water for hours if we let him. He was really young at the time and I had already started ignoring him to be with my friends. When I got out of the car my brother started jumping up and down and making all kinds of weird sounds. Cool guy that I had a crush on pulled up to my house. Asked if I lived there. I said, ‘No,’ embarrassed of Max. He got out of the car and asked me out on a date. Then he started jumping up and down making fun of Max. I was worried he wouldn’t believe my lie if I didn’t make fun of Max too. So I did.”

“This isn’t that bad, Miranda.” He seemed so sure. So sure of all my uncertainties. “It’s nothing compared to what I did.”

“I’ve barely talked to Max since.” Tears dripped from my eyes, meddling with the rain. “He closed up, Derek. Even more than he was before. His counselor was just starting to get somewhere with him. Then he shut down. I’ll never forget his face that day. The hose fell to the ground, spraying him in the face. He panicked because he doesn’t like getting wet. I walked away, laughing and hiding my broken heart.” My voice rose and fell as I spoke with my fists clenched into balls. “Laughing. I laughed at him as he had a meltdown. My mom heard him and came outside but I was already driving away. All for what? For some guy who wanted to screw me. That’s it. Not even passionate love-making. He wanted to use my body and our conversations gave him a doorway into my pants. At least I wasn’t that stupid. Just stupid enough to hurt the sweetest kid in the world.”

Derek stood in front of me and held my arms. I shoved the tears to a faraway land and looked into his eyes. The rain picked up, but we stayed there, staring at each other as the summer sky darkened. He ran his fingertips up and down my arms, then stopped on my hands. Rain tapped hard on the leaves around us. A rhythmic pulse. I bared my soul, my deepest regrets, and all I could think about was how bad I wanted him to kiss me. He leaned toward me. Pressed his body into mine and held me like a husband holds his wife. I consented. Allowing our bodies to touch when our lips couldn’t. For years I used guys as an escape from myself. My pain. My past. A kiss is all it took to send me into the stars, bouncing off the glowing fire balls from one romance to another. If you could call it romance.

Derek pulled back, his shirt soaked and clinging to his obviously defined chest. I looked up, allowing the rain to land on my eyelids, my cheeks, my neck. And I inhaled the life around me.

“My regrets are five-thousand and seventy times worse,” he said.

A deep cry immersed from my heart. Then another. But he couldn’t tell. Our bodies were laden with the earths tears. Mine blended in. The tears I should’ve cried long ago. Instead of smiling as my brother screamed in the yard, wondering why his best friend made fun of him.

Derek’s palm rested against my cheek. I placed my hand over top of his. The weight of the wind bore down on the trees as they crouched and swung in the howling sky. Throned in sheets of lightening, somber clouds hovered, taunting us. It wasn’t the wrestling sky that scared me. Or the fleeting thought of Dorothy carried in a breeze. It was the feeling I had, as the sea and the air became one, that perhaps I loved the man in front of me. Perhaps the warmth of his hand really was making me forget I was wet and cold. And scared. 

The storm hissed and wailed as Derek pulled me back to his garden. He shoved some bricks into the tent and pushed me inside, then followed after. We sat together. His body next to mine, close enough to feel his arm muscles move, but too far to hear him breathe. The night, alive and well, entertained us with its exploding thunder and etches of light.  

I didn’t fear the man sitting beside me.

I feared my inability to give my heart fully, unadulterated, and guiltlessly to another soul. And no, it wasn’t the giving that petrified me. It was the forever that would bind my soul to another’s. That intimidated me even more than the crashing trees around us.

Derek inched toward me and cupped my face. “You okay?”

“Yes,” I said, but he couldn’t hear me over the whipping and lashing of nature.

Lightening streaked the sky, imprinting shadows of trees on the fabric around us. I thought of Max and I huddled under blankets when we made shadow stories with our hands. I begged my parents for another sibling. I wanted a sister so bad. All boys. And I didn’t want to be the baby. Dad didn’t want another kid. Not sure he even wanted the ones he had.

Max was an accident.

When emotional storms swept through our house at night, they didn’t know I was listening. So many times I heard my father whisper in a tone so fierce it made me cringe, “One night of pleasure wasn’t worth a lifetime of autism.” My mother’s sobs climbed three flights of stairs and smoothed their way under the crack beneath my door. I’d creep into Max’s room and thankfully find him asleep, in peace, unaware of how unwanted he was.

I could relate.

Until I spoke the same lie into his heart that my father spoke into all of his children.

You are not worth the love of another
. 

Holding Max all those nights I told myself over and over, “Tuck your heart away, Miranda. Tuck it away and don’t let anyone in.” Now, after all those years of tucking away, my world was being changed by the man who only wore brown.

Stranger things have happened, I suppose.

I held her until she fell asleep. The storm settled as she rested in my hands. I couldn’t believe it. She opened up and gave me a piece of herself and by the uncontrollable tears, I had a feeling I was the first guy besides her brother and brother-from-another-mother that ever saw her cry. Her regrets may not have been half as repulsive as mine, but you always feel like your scars are the deepest because they’re your own. Pain isn’t comparable. My measuring stick doesn’t work for anyone else but me. Which is why I’ve never been a fan of the “suck it up” mentality.

I watched her sleep as long as I could. Wanting to rub her face, but afraid she wouldn’t like it. She rustled a few times and her hair fell, like a blanket over her eyes. I moved the fading green strands of hair behind her shoulder and zeroed in on her lips. Slightly open. Relaxed. Looking quite kissable. 

Women are off limits
, I reminded myself. They brought nothing but problems. 

I rolled onto my back and listened to the slight tap of rain. Probably falling from the thirsty wisteria vines above us. Miranda was a quiet and still sleeper. Not like Ashleigh. That girl always stole the covers and snored louder than most men I knew. She was gorgeous. Although her personality quickly made her the ugliest person I’d ever known. Funny how the most beautiful people in the world aren’t always the types to gloss the covers of magazines and yet most people spend their lives trying to turn heads.

David Bennett knew all about arrogant and attention-seeking pride. I could see it so clear. Images of my former self, trying to be cool, and succeeding, only to regret every moment I lived without my heart. Fun, sure. But not authentic. Life without the heart is cold and lonely, no matter how many people fill your apartment.

I spent too much of my life like a thanksgiving turkey. Filled to the brim, but dead.

Miranda moved closer to me. I turned my head. Such beauty staring back at me. A woman in the middle of the night. Something about it could ruin me if I let it. All inhibitions are gone in the middle of the night. Or is it just me? I had a tendency to bare my soul when the lights went down. Especially tempting with her. The way she looked right now. Stripped from all of her masks. Vulnerable and real. A real woman. I don’t think I’d ever been so close to something so beautiful.

She touched my arm. “Derek?”

I nodded.

She sat up and traced my brow with her hand, then ran her fingers through my hair. I tried not to look at her. I’m not known for my self-control and she was pushing buttons I didn’t know I had. I loved her eyes. They changed depending on the colors she wore. Or her hair color. Right now they looked grey.

“Why so serious?” I said.

“Do you think I’m pretty?” This wasn’t a question. It was a need. When I didn’t answer she pressed her fingers against the tips of mine and said, “Because you seem like you’re just trying to change who I am. Like every other guy I’ve ever known.”

I ignored the physical sensations as her hand touched mine. “I’m not trying to change you. Blue, pink, brown hair. Doesn’t matter much to me. I’m trying to help you find out who Miranda really is. Not the version of you that depends on what other people like. And definitely not the version that rebels against what other people like. Just you.”

“So.” She pulled a damp piece of hair in front of her face and held it there. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

I closed my eyes. “Doesn’t matter what men think of you.”

She curled up beside me and pressed her chin into my shoulder. “It matters what this man thinks of me.”

That’s it. Everything she did in that moment worked together to activate a switch inside of me. To tackle my self-control and detonate a bomb that would destroy any chance of love. Not that I loved Miranda. I couldn’t. Well, I did love her. Not romantically. Not yet. I couldn’t. 

Could I?

All I knew is if our lips touched … the temptations would outnumber me. I’d fall into the trap and regret it. If I did love her, or could love her, it needed to be the right way. I will never forget the day Ella walked in on me and Sophie Monahan making out on the basement couch. I was seventeen. Ella was in eighth grade, I think. She smirked and with such certainty declared, “The door to a woman’s heart is not her vagina.”

From that day on I remembered her words every time my hands wandered a woman’s body and I knew, without a doubt, that if I continued I’d soon enter the wrong door and end up with nothing more than another dent in my heart. Except for Ashleigh. I left her with more than a dent. A blow so hard my heart barely functioned anymore. And if it did, I didn’t know it. 

Miranda deserved better.