The traffic has cleared, or the three accidents, I should say. People in New England seem to think they’re superheroes in the snow with their front-wheel-drive cars. AJ’s truck is a little skittish but it’s only because his pick-up bed is empty—thanks to me canceling our job for the day. We pull down the street of the bus stop just as we see the bus slowly creeping down the hill. Olive is probably upset right now. She doesn’t like when things change or are out of order. It makes her nervous. I step out of the truck just as the bus comes to a stop. The snow is thick and heavy as it covers my head. I pull my hood on and step up beside Charlotte, who looks like an Eskimo.
“You under there?” I nudge my shoulder into hers.
She tugs on the hood of her coat, allowing only a little opening for her eyes to show. “Are the roads bad?” she asks.
“They’re not good.”
The door of the bus squeaks open and Olive jumps off the bottom step right into a mound of snow. Her lip curls as she tiptoes around the big piles that haven’t been plowed yet. “It’s cold!” she shouts, making her way over to me. I wrap my arms around her, doing my best to warm her up.
“Hey, as much as I hate this damsel in distress crap, my washer is leaking and I have a week’s worth of laundry to do. Any chance you can take a look at it tonight?” The last of her question is cut off with a loud heave as Lana swings her arms around Charlotte.
“I lost another toof, Mom!” Lana points to the big gap in the front of her mouth.
“My goodness, you have no more front teeth!” Charlotte says through laughter.
“Do you think the toof fairy will make it in the snow?” Lana asks.
“Yes, she’s magical and strong. She can make it through anything,” Charlotte explains, squatting down in front of her.
“Just like you, Mom. You’re magical and strong and you tell me all the time you can make it through everything. Remember you said it last night when you were crying on the phone?”
Taking in the conversation between Lana and Charlotte, I’m filled with questions as I wonder why she was crying last night and who she was on the phone with. Not that it’s any of my business but I hope she’s okay.
“Lana, start walking with Olive,” she says, standing back up and brushing the snow from her knees.
Charlotte looks over at me, her eyes wide. I’m guessing she’s either hoping I ask or hoping I don’t ask. “Spill it,” I say.
“It’s nothing,” she responds, taking a few steps backward and turning to head home.
I look over to AJ in the truck, waving at him to get his attention. He cracks the window and I shout over, “I’m going to walk home. I’ll see you in a few.” The window closes and the gears grind as he turns the truck around to go down the street.
“Hunter, you don’t have to play this role, remember?” Charlotte says through a shiver.
“Don’t make me beg, Charlotte. What’s going on? And I’m not playing any kind of role. I care about you a lot. You’re the one who doesn’t want to be with me right now...”
She looks at me like I did something wrong or just said something stupid, which seems to be the norm lately. I question if anything intelligent ever comes out of my mouth these days. “And I care about you a lot, but I don’t want to get into it—” She exhales with exaggeration.
“Why were you crying last night?” I ask again.
“You just asked me that...”
“I’m persistent. So, why were you crying last night?” I ask in a softer voice as we catch up to the girls.
“Because that jackass took away my goddamn child support,” Lana says in a mock-adult-Charlotte voice.
Jesus.
“Lana,” Charlotte snaps. “What did I tell you about eavesdropping, and what did I tell you about repeating things you hear me say in the house?”
A strong pout pulls across Lana’s lips, a bad fake pout, “I forgot,” she says. Then, she yells, “Olive! Look!” And the girls run ahead until they reach a snow bank created by a plow. Olive stops and watches as Lana climbs up and then slides down into the street. “Come on, Olive!”
Olive contemplates for a long second, knowing her aversion to the cold snow, but I think she notices the amount of fun Lana is having and decides to join her. Without snow pants, the two girls instantly become soaked from the makeshift slide. Normally, Olive would have a fit about being wet, but evidently neither of them feels it, or they’re having so much fun, they don’t care. If only life as an adult could be so carefree.
Charlotte drops her gloved hands into her deep pockets, walking one step ahead of me. “Are you okay?” I ask.
Her head shakes under her hood and snow dusts off of the material. “Can you fight this in court?” I ask. I don’t know much about divorces or how they work but I can’t imagine whatever is happening isn’t fair.
“He took a job for an underground contractor. He’s being paid illegally and isn’t reporting any income. To the court, it looks like he doesn’t have a job or money so they can’t force him to pay child support,” she says. I’m having a hard time hearing her with the snow blowing and the kids screeching so I take her arm and force her to turn around, keeping my eye on the kids at the same time.
“How did you find this out?” I ask.
“My lawyer called.”
“What’s next?”
“I don’t know, Hunter. Please, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I can’t help you unless you give me the details.” I realize she didn’t ask for help but she clearly needs someone to at least talk to.
“I didn’t ask for your help. There’s nothing you can do for me,” she says. “All that matters is I’m going to lose my house if I don’t figure this out.” Sadness tears through my chest as I consider the thought of Charlotte and Lana not living across from us anymore.
“I won’t let that happen to you,” is the only thing that comes out of my mouth. I’m not sure how I can promise that but it seems like the only thing to say and the only thing I want to say. “We both know I have plenty of space in my house, so just know you have that as your backup.”
“Hunter, how could you offer such a thing?” How could I not?
“Charlotte, how are you still questioning how much I care about you and Lana?”
“I’m not questioning that. I’m questioning every other part,” she says, pulling her hood back down so it hides her eyes. She turns around and continues walking as she pulls her phone out of her pocket. It’s lit up and ringing a soft tone. I take a step closer as she studies the name on the phone and intentionally brings it in front of her so it’s out of my sight. It doesn’t matter though because I already saw it. Someone by the name of Lance. Lance. Who the hell is Lance? I’ve never heard her mention a Lance, and why wouldn’t she pick up the call? Although she has taken her glove off and is now texting someone—Lance, I assume. Is she seeing some guy named Lance? I am still the one she asked to look at her washing machine. Is that a good thing?
I give Charlotte the space I’m guessing she wants and grab the two girls, one under each arm, as I shuffle down the snow-covered street. The girls are hitting me and shaking their snow covered fists at me through laughter. I love how much these two love each other and it’s just another reason I would be heartbroken if Charlotte moved.
As we approach our driveways, I assumed the lack of conversation might get awkward but there is zero awkwardness as Charlotte takes Lana by the arm and leads her up their driveway without so much as saying goodbye.
“Is Charlotte mad?” Olive asks. Obviously, it isn’t in my head if Olive is noticing it, too.
“Not sure,” I tell her, tugging her into the house. “I need you to go change your pants because we have to go out for a few minutes.”
“Where are you going?” AJ asks from the other room. “It’s horrible out there.”
“Yeah, where are we going, Daddy?”
“The store,” I answer.
“We have food,” AJ responds. “Dude, you shouldn’t be going back out in that.”
I’m looking back and forth between AJ and Olive, both looking back at me. I take my phone from my pocket and thumb in another text to Ari.
Me: Are you still there?
A minute passes before the three little dots flicker beneath my text.
Ari: Unfortunately. I don’t think I’m going anywhere tonight.
I replace my phone in my pocket and glance over to Olive. “Do you want to come with me or stay here with Uncle AJ?”
AJ is glaring at me and crosses his arms over his chest. “Olive, why don’t you stay here and help me make something yummy for dinner.”
Olive covers her mouth and giggles. “Uncle, you can’t even make Lucky Charms.”
I laugh along with Olive because it’s true. AJ lunges for her and flips her over his shoulder. “Oh yeah, little girl?” Giggle fits erupt as he tickles her until she’s breathless. “That’s why I need you to stay here and help me.”
“Okay, okay,” she agrees. “Daddy, I should stay here with Uncle so he doesn’t ruin the food.”
“Where are you really going, Hunt?” AJ asks. I look at Olive, now realizing that bringing her with me wouldn’t have been a good idea, nor do I think she should know where I’m going. Allowing her to get attached to any other woman in my life right now isn’t healthy for her. Not yet, anyway.
“Go upstairs and change your pants,” I tell Olive. “You’re soaked.”
She skips up the stairs, followed by her door closing.
“Ari is stuck at her shop and she agreed to talk to me. The sooner I can figure all of this out, the sooner I can stop debating my life decisions,” I explain.
“For the fact that you are acting partially normal this second, I won’t give you shit for trekking out into a blizzard for some chick—not that it’s normal to do that.”
She isn’t some chick. AJ knows this but that’s how he sees her. Arguing this won’t help anything, it’ll just waste more time. “Do you mind watching Olive for a bit? I’ll try to keep it under two hours.”
“Dude, it’ll probably take you two hours to get there in this crap.”
“I’ll keep you updated,” I tell him. I look out the window, watching a plow fly by. “I’ll be fine.”
Olive comes flying back down the stairs in sweatpants and t-shirt with her dress-up apron on. “Ready!”
“When I get home, I want to hear more about what happened with Alexa,” I tell him. I do feel guilty for completely ignoring his life issues.
“Not much to tell,” he says. “In fact, I’d like to forget her name all together.”
“Understood,” I say, slipping on my jacket.
“Make sure you’re home in time for dinner, Daddy,” Olive shouts from the kitchen.
“Yes, Ma’am.” Another giggle floats through the air. “Love you, Olive.”
“Love you!”
Two hours. Pft. Try twenty minutes. I followed a salting truck half of the way, which sort of worked out perfectly. At least they’re keeping up with the roads. As I’m driving, I realize I never responded to Charlotte’s request to fix her washing machine. Well, she’ll just have to wait or let Lance take care of it.
When I pull up to the flower shop, I create a spot for myself along the sidewalk. I’m sure I shouldn’t be parking here right now since the plows are trying to get by but there’s nowhere else to park. Plus, Ari’s car is buried right in front of me.
I kick through the foot of snow and make a narrow path up to the glass door of the flower shop. I’m guessing this might be why she isn’t going anywhere tonight. Besides the fact that her car is pretty much stuck, thanks to the drifts, the door is also snowed in.
I walk back to my truck and grab a shovel out of the bed. Clearing a path, I remove the snow so the door can move freely, but as I pull on the handle, the door doesn’t budge. I knock a few times, rubbing away a coat of frost on the window so I can see inside.
Through the blur, it only takes a few seconds before Ari appears in the door with a smile. She unlocks the deadbolt and pushes on the door. “You were stuck in here and felt the need to lock the door?” I ask with amusement.
“You never know who is crazy enough to have a shovel and dig me out so they can break in and abduct me,” she says with a cunning grin. Her soft laughter fills the air as she brushes a few strands of hair away from her cheek. At the same moment I’m watching her, the mixed scent of different flowers hits me all at once, nearly making my knees weak. So many of the scents remind me of Ellie. She always had a new flower obsession and each flower had its moment in the spotlight under the skylight in our family room. The aroma from the flowers always filled the house.
“Have you always been into flowers?” I ask Ari.
She bobs her head from side to side as if her answer is neither here nor there. She lifts a planter from one of the stands and places it down on the glass counter. “Actually, no, but because my parents are gardeners, I was always around plants and flowers. You know, too much of anything can sometimes be more than enough.”
“Yeah, I can understand that.” Kind of.
“Anyway, once I recovered from the transplant, I sort of needed a fresh start. I considered going back to teaching but they made me take a year off for liability reasons and I wasn’t about to waste precious days of my life sitting in front of the TV. My parents were friends with the guy that owned this place and he was getting ready to retire. A month later, I was running the shop. Crazy, right?”
“I guess everything happens for a reason,” I tell her. “Ellie would have loved this shop. She lived and breathed for flowers. It was just a hobby but it was her greatest passion.”
“I know,” she says. “She told me many times.” Ari moves the planter to the back counter and I follow. “Knowing that definitely helped with my decision to manage this shop. I think it’s a nice tribute to her.” She turns around, finding me probably a little too close. “I know it’s silly but I sometimes wonder if she can sense me being in the shop here—you know if she really is connected to me and stuff.”
“I’d like to think that,” I tell her. Her words are enticing, soul-filling, wonderful and similar to the thoughts I don’t share with anyone. Why does that make me want to tell this woman I love her? Why do I want to kiss her and press my hand up against her heart and never separate from her existence again? I do not know her. This is wrong.
If I’m wrong, though, why is she looking at me like I’m right? My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my head and in my arms and legs. I just need to... I shouldn't. There’s Charlotte. And Ellie, but part of Ellie is inside of her. I have to...I think...
The struggle is short lived and I act on an un-thought-out whim, cupping my hands firmly around her face as I press my lips against hers. I startle her, as well as me, and she falls heavily against the back counter, her hands moving back and forth from my waist to the counter behind her, as if she can’t make up her mind on the right or wrong of this situation. I’m kissing a complete stranger who I might soulfully know the most in this world. My chest is against hers and holy shit, I can feel her heart pounding. My cheeks are burning and I squeeze my eyes shut tightly, avoiding tears that would destroy this moment before it had a chance to unravel. I can feel her heart. Ellie’s heart. It’s beating against mine again. It’s beating against me. I can feel it. I can feel her. Ellie. Ellie. It’s pounding so hard, just like mine. It feels everything mine feels, just like it always had before. She’s in there.
As our lips part, I realize I didn’t even consider the sensation of her mouth against mine; my only thoughts were focused on her heart. That’s all I can feel. Still. I can feel it against my chest even though there is space between us now.
“Hunter,” she says between heavy breaths. “Is this wrong?” Yes. Completely wrong. My mind is spinning between Charlotte and Ellie and now Ari, and why would I throw myself into a mess like this?
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you have a girlfriend?” she asks. “Oh my God, you do. This should not be happening. I shouldn’t have done that...Ellie. God, I don’t know what I’m thinking right now. This isn’t right. This definitely isn’t right. This, us, we are not supposed to be doing this.”
I agree with everything she just said. I shouldn’t be kissing her when I feel the way I do about Charlotte, but my lips against hers make Ellie’s heart beat faster. This attraction is a connection, one I am so desperate for that I can’t tell her I’m sorry for what I just did. “Charlotte broke things off with me so I could figure out what I want,” I tell her. “Meeting you has added a whole lot of confusion into my life.” Maybe that’s too honest.
“Oh,” she says. We’re staring into each other’s eyes and all I want to do is see Ellie’s soul within her beautiful gaze. But souls cannot be seen, they can only be felt and I feel it. I’m at a loss for words. I don’t know what to say to her. “Why did you kiss me if I’m adding confusion to your life?”
The answer shouldn’t be complicated. How do I tell her I fell for the words on every typewritten note she gave me? How do I tell her I want to be near her because it’s like being near Ellie? It makes some sort of screwed up sense in my head, but I’m not sure it would make much sense to anyone else. “I wanted to,” I say simply.
“I don’t think you want to get involved with me, Hunter.”
Not that I can decide whether it’s a good idea to get involved with her or not, but why would she just spit that out? Clearly the kiss didn’t bother her since she didn’t stop me. “Why?” I should be asking myself the same question. Because of Charlotte.
She smiles at me and touches her finger to her lips before slipping out of reach. Grabbing the broom from the corner of the showroom, she begins sweeping around me. I place my hand on the broomstick and stop her. “Why?” I ask again.
“I’d fall for you,” she says.
“You don’t have to,” I tell her as if it would be that easy.
“I know, but I would.”
“So what if you did?” What am I saying? Love? I can’t love anyone else...I don’t think. I should be telling her she doesn’t want to be with me. I might only want to be with her for what’s inside of her body.
“You’d end up hurt,” she finishes the back and forth with this stabbing statement.
“How could you be so sure?” I push for a deeper explanation, one I don’t quite need but curiosity is stabbing at my brain.
Ari stares coldly into my eyes and I swear I see her thoughts assembling within her gaze. “Hunter,” she begins, though it sounds more like a prolonged pause.
“What is it?” I ask, gripping my hands around her slim shoulders. The sensation of touching her is foreign, considering I jumped from every other stage of getting to know someone right to kissing her.
Her focus breaks from my face and she looks down between us. I want to press my finger under her chin so she looks back up at me but I give her the time she needs, hoping she decides to divulge.
“Ellie’s doctor told her she had an unruptured aneurysm. They discovered it when they did a CT scan after the car accident you were both in.” Her words are soft, almost hard to hear, but the meaning of what she is saying is louder than a piercing foghorn. “The doctors told her that operating on it would only result in a fifty percent chance of survival. They also told her that by not operating on it, she would only have a fifty percent chance of survival. Because of where the aneurysm was located, it could rupture with any intense activity or trauma. The doctors advised her not to pursue a pregnancy.”
My knees literally give out and I’m on the ground, leaning up against the counter, staring blankly out the glass door. Everything I thought I knew was not accurate. Ellie was hiding the world from me behind her truth-filled eyes.
“She wanted a baby so badly,” I say out loud to myself. “We tried to conceive Olive for three years. If I had known—”
“You wouldn’t have Olive,” she interrupts me with sternness laced into her voice.
I could never respond to that with what first comes to mind because I would never give Olive up for anything in the world, but I should have known. “She kept this from me,” I say. Ari slides down against the counter, the clamminess of her hands scrape down the glass as she places herself close to my side. “I thought I knew everything about her, down to the order she put her make-up on in the morning. We didn’t keep things from one another, and now I know she kept everything from me.”
“This isn’t everything,” Ari says. “This is one secret that she kept from you.”
“This one secret is everything.”
“I asked her once what you thought about her condition and I’ll never forget the look that swept across her face at that moment. I had never seen that look before, not that I’ve known Ellie my entire life or anything but she was my mentor and we spent a lot of time together.” Ari reaches up and sweeps the back of her hand under her eye. “She told me it was something she couldn’t figure out how to tell you and she hadn’t decided if she wanted to ruin your life by telling you. Even her parents didn’t know. She knew the chances of surviving were poor and the last thing she wanted was to be treated differently because of it. Especially by you.”
“I don’t understand why she would want a baby so badly if this is all true.” How could this all be true? I was with her at the hospital after the accident—she never said a word. The doctor we saw for the pregnancy, he would have had to know, too. This information had to be in her files somewhere. Why would no one tell me?
“She wanted to leave her mark in this world, and Olive was the way for her to do that,” Ari says, placing her hand on mine.
“She left me purposely, leaving me with a little girl who I’m raising alone.” She did this deliberately and I don’t know how to accept this fact. How could she ever assume I would want to be left without her, and as a single parent?
“You were left with a part of Ellie,” Ari says, as if she can hear my thoughts.
“Why the hell would she tell you all of this? You were a student to her—student teacher, whatever. Why the hell you instead of me?” I stand up, doing little to conceal my growing rage. Why Ari and not fucking me? I deserved to know. I was her life. I was the one pushing her closer to her death every month we tried to get pregnant, and nothing in her head made her think we weren’t meant to have a baby so she could live. Nothing made her think that. We could have lived a relaxing life and kept her safe against extraneous activity. It didn’t have to be this way. She could have lived.
Pacing from the door to the middle of the shop and back, I notice Ari out of the corner of my eye, hugging herself in the back of the shop, looking a bit frightened. I shouldn’t be blaming her. I should be blaming Ellie. All of these years I have refused to feel any resentment or anger toward Ellie, even if I felt it sometimes on the nights when Olive wouldn’t sleep and the days she was sick and I had no idea what to do to help her. I wanted to scream so loudly in hopes of Ellie hearing me so she knew how angry I was about having to raise our little girl alone. What did I know about raising a kid? Nothing. I was supposed to have a partner in this life. Olive was supposed to have a mother.
Olive was supposed to have a mother.
Olive was never meant to have a mother. She was only meant to have me.
“A car accident, even a fender-bender could have killed her,” Ari says through a whisper. “Then you would have been left with nothing.” I don’t want to listen to Ari and her thought-out words. I don’t want to hear the truth or any more lies. Now I know why Ari didn’t want to tell me and I can pretty much assume why Ellie didn’t tell me. I would have talked her out of it. I would have put her in a bubble and cared for her. She didn’t give me that option, though. “Instead, she left parts of her behind.” Ari places her hand on her heart, clutching at the material over her chest. “Olive has so many parts of Ellie.”
“You don’t even know her,” I remind Ari. I know it’s an asshole comment but it’s true. Unless she knows Olive, too, and just decided not to share that with me either.
“You’re right, but it takes two people to create another human being; therefore she is, in fact, half Ellie.”
“Okay,” she says. With nothing left to argue about, Ari wraps her hand around mine and pulls it toward her body. Placing the palm of my hand flat against her chest, she holds it there firmly. I close my eyes and focus on the thumping rhythm. “It’s her.” Ari’s gentle voice vibrates through her chest.
I focus solely on the beat of Ellie’s heart, trying to remember a time where I listened to her heartbeat. There’s only one time that I can remember, though. The first heart doppler check we got at the beginning of her pregnancy. We thought the heartbeat was Olive’s but it was really Ellie’s. It had taken a minute before we heard a similar sound, just softer and more delicate. I didn’t consider how badly I would want to remember that sound. Does it sound the same in Ari’s chest? Does it work that way?
“When the doctor told me there was a heart waiting for me, I knew,” Ari says. “The doctors told me there was little to no chance of finding a heart donor with the same blood type. So I knew it was Ellie. Excitement, relief, and gratefulness never set in when I heard the words come from my doctor’s mouth. I had less than a month to live at that moment. I was deteriorating by the day and we were at the point of looking for hospices since it was becoming too difficult for my parents to care for me themselves.”
“You weren’t happy that you were getting a heart?” I ask, clarifying what she’s explaining.
She presses her lips together as an uneasy smile threatens to show through the evident pain. “Like I said, I knew it was Ellie. I knew she had died. I knew she was due to have Olive, and I knew the likelihood of her surviving labor and delivery.”
I want to tell her this isn’t fair, that she knew and I had my life ripped out from beneath me but I’m still focused on feeling her heart beating beneath my hand. I know why Ellie named Olive before she was born now. She knew it was over. “I don’t know whether to be angry or grateful for her actions, but I’m hurt. Incredibly hurt.”
“I can imagine,” she says, releasing my hand from hers. “But you can’t be angry with her. She didn’t want to die, but sometimes in life we don’t get to choose the path we want, sometimes we’re only left with shitty options and she chose the less shitty one in her mind.” How can I agree with that? “She didn’t deceive you to hurt you...she made the choices she did because she loved you so much. She wanted to leave something behind that belonged to both you and her. That something was someone...Olive.”
As much as I need space right now, my hand isn’t moving, so I close my eyes, trying to piece everything together. My head hurts. The thoughts coming and going are in a jumbled mess. How did things end up like this?
“Why aren’t you teaching now? Your year off has come and gone. Why didn’t you go back?” I ask her, wondering why she would spend all of that time being mentored by Ellie and now not be doing what she wanted to do.
“In order to maintain my license the year following my surgery, I would have needed to get my MBA. I decided against it,” she says.
“Why, though?”
“For the same reason you shouldn’t consider getting involved with me, Hunter.” A struggling grin tugs at the corner of her lips and she cups her soft hand around my cheek. “I’m not good for you. I’m simply the soul carrier of Ellie’s heart. If our paths were to have crossed in different circumstances, we might feel different, but that’s not the case.”
This confuses me. I didn’t know who she was when we first met in the gardens and yet I was pulled to her—I was attracted to her and her expressive way of speaking since it sounded so much like the way Ellie spoke. “That’s not true,” I argue.
“I was at the gardens because I visit Ellie on a regular basis to thank her for her generous life-giving gift. That’s why we met. If it wasn’t for Ellie’s heart, we wouldn’t have met,” she says.
That’s a ridiculous statement, especially for someone who seems as intelligent as she is. “Unless you’re God, I’m not sure you can truly know that for sure.” She removes her hand from my face and stands up to walk toward the front door, forcing space between my hand and Ellie’s heart. She peers out through the glass. “What is the real reason you didn’t get your MBA, and what is the real reason why I would end up hurt by you?”
“The snow has stopped,” she says.
I stand up too and move up behind her, placing my hands on her shoulders. “Why?”
She turns around, her hair flying into my face as she faces me. “We all have our secrets, Hunter. Mine is my reason for everything.”
Without an understanding as to why her words don’t drive me utterly mad, I take her face back into my hands and kiss her gently, focusing on the texture of her lips and the warmth her skin offers mine. Her arms wrap around my back, squeezing me gently but tightly. I slide my hand between us, pressing it up against her chest, feeling the heavy thuds of her heart as our lips remain connected. Needing a more intense reaction, I slip my tongue into her mouth, immediately noticing the effect on her heart, the increase of beats, the speed in which it’s racing. I still have an effect on this heart.
Ari pulls away breathlessly, looking at me with wonder in her eyes. “What did you feel?” she asks, dragging her tongue along her bottom lip before biting down on it.
“Your heart,” I tell her.
“And I feel her heart.” By the look of expression on her face, it wasn’t the right response. I don’t know what a right response would consist of though. Should I tell her she’s hot and an amazing kisser? Is that what women really want to hear? Because I’ve always seemed to think differently. “You’re in love with this heart, that’s all this is.”
“Ari, that’s ridiculous,” I argue, but maybe she’s right...
She huffs a quiet chuckle and lightly presses her fingers against my mouth. “The flowers, the scents, the truths, this heart—it’s her, not me, Hunter. You don’t know me.”
“I do know you. I know every word you have written to me over the past five years. I have learned about your desires, wants, needs, and passions. You’re appreciative of everything you have and you live as if you are caring for the most prized possession this world has ever had. Your stories and updates on how you are caring for Ellie’s heart are what made me know you. The only thing I didn’t know was your name and where you lived.”
She creates space between us, seemingly struggling with my words, struggling with this moment. “Everything you have said means a great deal to me, knowing you read every word I wrote, knowing you appreciated the thoughts behind each letter. Writing became my inspiration to heal from the guilt attached to this borrowed heart, but the letters were never intended to make you fall for me because I know I am not the path for you. Please understand that. And those words, they were words to describe what Ellie’s heart was feeling, so I understand why you felt connected. I came to realize I was doing you more harm than good by sending you those letters, that’s why I put a stop to it. It wasn’t so I could make you fall for me.”
Her explanation of why I should not think anything more of her than the recipient of Ellie’s heart dumps me into a new level of confusion. “What are you saying?”
Her eyebrows pucker as she presses her hand to her throat as if she’s feeling strangled. “I don’t know,” she cries softly as she throws her arms around my neck and places her head against my chest. Her body trembles within my hold and her breaths are shallow and uneven. If I’m confused, so is she. The weakness within her decisions is making my chest ache.
I take her by the hand and bring her into the back room where I find a couch. As we both sit down, she looks at me with tears clouding her eyes. “This is wrong,” she says. “I do like you, Hunter...but I think it could be for the wrong reasons.” Ari brushes the back side of her hand under her eyes, wiping away the fallen tears. “I don’t know if what I feel is because of Ellie’s heart or if it’s because I selfishly needed to know you. I just wanted to make sure your life wasn’t destroyed after Ellie’s sacrifice for me. The pain I felt for you that day in the hospital made me want to help you the way Ellie helped me. I won’t ever be able to know the answer to my own question; therefore, this could never work.”
“But what if I only want to be with you because of Ellie’s heart? Doesn’t it make our confusion even?” What am I saying? Why am I saying this out loud? It’s ridiculous...I think. She is a person, too, not just placed on this earth to carry around Ellie’s heart—which is how I have imagined her for five years. That’s terrible.
“Maybe it makes us even, but you have to understand, I might be good at being part of your present, but I will never be part of your future. I think we’re meant to be in each other’s lives for a different reason. A reason that makes sense to me and that I’m not sure I can explain.”
“You should never assume what our future will hold,” I say. Regardless, she has summed up my self-confusion in only a breath full of words. I just need her in my life, in any capacity, simple as it may be. “Though, you make everything make sense.”