Heartless (5 page)

“Joshua!” Leonardo bellowed from the kitchen.

“He knows I hate that name,” said Josh, rolling his eyes. “Promise me you’ll never add on the
ooh-ah
. Unless, of course, I make you see stars or fireworks one day.” He gave me a sexy wink. I noticed his fleeting glance to my chest, softly concealed by my thin bandeau and sleeping tank. I quickly crossed my arms and took a step back from him, a flurry of feelings duking it out for center stage in my heart, guts, and brain. He raised a questioning eyebrow.

Leonardo’s heavy footsteps rounded the hall until he saw the two of us standing together in the doorway. He
harumphed
, eyeing us suspiciously. “Time to work,” he grunted at Josh.

Josh gave me a quick professional nod and stepped past me to follow Leo to the kitchen. I leaned against the door to catch my breath.

While they got to work I ran upstairs to finish getting dressed. I didn’t bother to ask Josh to move the van. I needed the walking time to clear my head.

I walked briskly toward the paint store trying to calm down. A part of my brain kept repeating,
Holy Shit, Holy Shit,
over and over. Josh Hansen had come out of nowhere. Out of the blue this cute guy jumps into my car. Three days later he shows up on my doorstep. I really was not okay with this. It was too close, too soon. I never knew he existed and then suddenly he’s all around me, inside and out. He called it Fate. I scoffed. There’s no such thing. I took a few deep breaths and then pulled out my cell phone and hit my astrology app. Ever since I’d lost my faith I’d needed something to consult, and my Starlight app had been my solace. It was uncanny how accurate it could be, at times, but even when the message was vague it still made me feel better. This morning was no exception.

Dear Moonchild, A disruptive energy has entered your field, but don’t fret. This disruption is good for you, though it may not feel that way at first. Fear often precedes change the way destruction precedes creation. You are an emotional creature. You feel things intensely. But the only antidote to fear is love. Feel the fear, allow the change, and pay attention to any love that is finding its way into your life. If you are feeling on edge, indulge in a long, hot bath. Water will be healing for you at this time
.

I still felt wary, but I knew the words were wise, and I smiled to think that I’d already chosen baths over showers. Sometimes I was more intuitive than I gave myself credit for. Though, really, it had been Josh and the movie Psycho that had inspired that decision. Still, I was on the right path. It was true that it was time to face my fears and change. But the love part? That was out of my hands, even though a part of me was now curious to know if something like love might lie deep in the blueness of Josh’s eyes…

I tried to push thoughts of Josh out of my mind as I clocked in at Color My Life. Thankfully, Eliana had arrived early and made good coffee. The day went by quickly. Once, when Eliana was stuck on the phone with her babysitter, I helped another customer choose a sexy color for his bathroom. I refrained from asking what he planned to do in there though I had a feeling he was dying for me to ask.

By the time the afternoon rolled around, I’d probably only thought of Josh about 1,026 times. Not that I was keeping track.

“You’re leaving at 4 today?” said Brian looking over my shoulder while I restocked paint brushes (that task alone brought up at least 250 thoughts of Josh).

“Yep. Just like every Tuesday.”

It was part of the deal when Uncle Wayne had asked Brian to hire me. I had to go to these weekly therapy sessions with Miranda. Only illness or an act of God—I mean Nature—was reason to not show. I lived in LA now so I kept waiting for an earthquake to hit on a Tuesday. Not really. I liked my time with Miranda. She wasn’t like my mom exactly—thank…whatever force makes life possible—but she cared and worried and guided me like a really good parent might, if such parents existed. Aunt Marsha was a pretty good standin mom, but she was my mom’s sister and I think she was reminded of death and depression whenever she looked at me, and that made her type of worry a bit more burdensome.

I left work a little earlier than four so I had enough time to walk over to Miranda’s office. She was always ready to see me and opened the office door herself as she didn’t have a receptionist.

“Come on in, Heather. How are you this week?” I plopped down on the comfy leather sofa, crossed my legs, and smiled like I had a secret.

Miranda sat across from me in a wicker rocker. She raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to say something.

“I had the most amazing dream last night.” I reached into my bag for my dream journal. Miranda had asked me to keep one about a year ago after recommending that I stop taking sleeping pills. She taught me meditation and relaxation techniques, too. She said I needed to begin working with my subconscious memories so that they didn’t become unconscious forces inside me. Dreaming is a way our subconscious minds talk to us, she said.

At first my dreams were chaotic and made no sense. Some were disturbing and replayed moments of the Tragedy. The hardest were the ones about my parents before they died. But the worst were when I dreamt about them dying. They burned to death and so those dreams were always about fire. And hell. And heaven. No matter what I decided about what to believe in my waking life, my dreams did not follow my new rules. Miranda said our time together, and journaling about the dreams, was a kind of bridge between the past and the present that would allow me to build a new future.

I leaned forward and said, “I dreamt I could fly.” I could still almost feel the sensation in my arms. “I felt so free. I’d never felt like that before.”

Miranda smiled. “Flying dreams are very positive. They’re a real gift.”

I wondered if the dream had been influenced by meeting Josh. “There’s something else,” I said tentatively. “I met someone.”

“Oh?” Miranda’s eyebrows lifted high enough to disappear under her bangs. Her smile had flattened and her expression was more neutral, more therapist-face. She crossed one leg over the other and frowned ever so slightly.

“Your Aunt and Uncle are away now, aren’t they?”

“Yes, and the kitchen’s under renovation and, well.. That’s sort of the problem.”

“What’s the problem?”

I told her about meeting Josh for frozen yogurt and how he just turned up that morning as the the contractor’s assistant.

“I mean it’s so weird. Do you believe it’s Fate?”

“Actually, I
think
it’s coincidence. Tell me more about him.”

I had leaned forward to tell her about the flying dream and now I leaned against the back of the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. “His name is Josh Hansen. He just kind of came out of nowhere.”

“How do you feel around him?”

“Honestly?” It was a rhetorical question. She had insisted I be honest with her from the get-go, or else therapy would be pointless. I swear Miranda knew more about me than I did. She was so much smarter. Each puzzle piece I laid out for her, she seemed to know where it fit.

“He kind of scares me.”

She nodded in the way she does. The way that urges me to keep talking. “Like I was scared when he showed up at my work, but then I felt fine when I started talking to him. And after work I felt really safe with him. But this morning, I was so surprised to see him, I got scared all over again.”

“It’s natural to feel this way, Heather. Anyone who gets too close too fast could trigger some trauma reaction. You’re sensitive right now. But you can trust your intuition about people. In fact, in order to complete your healing, you need to relearn how to do just that. What happened in the past does not set the course for the future, unless we let it.”

“So you think I can trust him?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m telling you that it’s okay to begin trusting yourself.”

“He likes me. Or he likes who he thinks I am.”

“Are those two different people, Heather?”

I looked at her now. She had pretty green eyes with crows feet at the corners. “Do you have any kids, Miranda?” In all our years working together I had never asked her this.

She watched me for a minute, perhaps wondering if I was avoiding her question, but I wasn’t. I just didn’t know the answer. And I suddenly wanted to know if she was a mom.

She nodded. “I have a boy and a girl, ages ten and seven. Taylor, the boy is older. Jennifer is seven. Why do you ask?”

I just shrugged and looked away. I thought of Brian’s words, and I repeated them to her: “‘Appreciate everything you’ve got while you’ve got it. There are no guarantees in life.’”

We spent the rest of the appointment taking about taking it slow with Josh, remembering to meditate, and not taking on too much too soon.

“Deep down you feel ready to fly,” said Miranda. “But you need to stretch your wings carefully as you reenter the world. College is on the horizon, and it’s a big step to be on your own without your Aunt and Uncle this summer.”

“I’m think I’m ready,” I said. “I know it’s time. That’s what you’ve been telling me, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But we still have to keep taking one step at a time.”

By the time I got home it was almost seven. Josh and Leo were long gone. The old cupboards had been pulled off the walls and sat in a corner of the family room. Tarps and tools sat neatly beside them. The stove had been disconnected and stood in the middle of the kitchen, and the sink faucet had already been removed, but the microwave was still plugged in. It’s not like I cooked anything except frozen dinners and toast, but it was still a bit disorienting to have the kitchen literally coming apart at the seams.

The phone flashed with missed messages. I keyed in the code while examining the contents of the fridge. I should have picked up groceries on the way home. I was pulling out a container of yogurt when I heard Josh’s voice through the receiver.

“Hi Heather, it’s Josh. Thought you might be home from work by now… You left the house this morning without saying goodbye and I just wanted to make sure everything was all right. I know this is a weird situation, but… I hope you’re okay with it. Are we still on for Friday? Call me.”

He didn’t leave his number. Or had he? Had missed it? The next message kicked in. His voice again! His phone number this time. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope, plus I saved the message. I liked the sound of his voice saying my name.

I felt a little nervous calling Josh back. It was like high school all over again and I was calling Ethan Dunne back after the baseball game when he asked me out. My parents had said I couldn’t go, and I had to call him to break the news. And to suggest we go anyway without my parents knowing. By then I’d lost faith that my parents knew what was best for me. I pushed away those memories. My parents were long gone, and so was Ethan. Josh was in my life here and now, and that’s what I was determined to focus on, the here and now not the then and there.

Josh’s appearance in my life was making me feel new things. I liked how I was feeling but my feelings scared me, too. Josh made me feel things I hadn’t known I
could
feel. The only words I could think of were fluttery, tingly, excited, scared, thrilled, curious, hot, wet, weak and strong at the same time, safe, too, but also like I was dancing at the edge of danger.

My nervousness made me delay calling him back right away. I took a bath to calm and center myself and applied a mask to my face. Before I knew it, it was time to make my scheduled call to Aunt Marsha and Uncle Wayne. They said they’d check in from Italy weekly and we decided Tuesday evenings after my therapy appointments were the best days to connect. I opened my lap top and double-clicked on Skype. Within five minutes the burbly ring tone reverberated through the tiny speaker.

“Heather, are you there? Can you hear me?”

I plopped down on the bed and bent over the screen. “I can hear you, Aunt Marsh. Let’s click on the video feed.”

“Darn, where is that? Wayne? Can you help—Forget it! I got it.”

Marsha’s dark framed glasses swam into view. She squinted at me. “What’s that on your face?”

“I’m trying out your mud mask.” I scratched at my jaw. The mud was beginning to itch at the edges.