Page 4 of Speeding Hearts

I hadn’t wanted to come home without her.

“Who was that?” Victoria asked, her eyes narrowed to slits as she sat on my dad’s old tweed couch.

“Just someone from back in Jewel Lakes.” Someone with a laugh like tinkling bells. A brown ponytail and freckles and a crooked turn to her front teeth that somehow made her more beautiful than if they’d been model-straight.

“Just someone? You seem to be kind of shaken.”

“How could you tell that from my face?” I said, genuinely rattled that she could see that.

The person I was thinking about was my best friend. Someone I definitely shouldn’t be thinking of the way I just was. The way Victoria had seen.

“Come on, Dean.” Victoria folded her arms, looking at me from under her eyebrows. “I’ve known you since we were kids.”

I got up from the recliner, sticking my phone in my pocket with some reluctance. I would have liked to keep texting with Stella. We’d had some long conversations over text message before—in fact, I’d stayed up way too late texting her over everything from engine parts to pizza toppings. She was a better conversationalist than most of my buddies, and talking with her made me feel… easy.

I wished it was Stella in my living room right now instead of Victoria.

Then I felt a wash of guilt as I plastered on a smile. Victoria looked better than ever, with her wavy blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. And she was making it clear she wanted to pick up where we left off five years ago when I’d last been here.

“A friend?” she asked.

“Yeah, a friend.”

“Go ahead and answer her.”

“It’s alright,” I said, realizing I’d walked into Victoria’s trap.

“So, itisa ‘her?’”

“Thanks for the casserole,” I said, dodging the question.

Victoria pinched her lips but nodded. “It’s your Dad’s favorite. Oh—is he allowed to eat meatballs?”

The call from Mom two weeks ago had been to let me know Dad had gotten heart surgery that week. He hadn’t told anyone about it. Not her, not even me, his only son. My parents had been split up for over a decade. The only reason she knew about the surgery was because the home care company taking care of him had called her when Dad’s credit card had been declined.

“When he finally talked to me about it,” Mom had said, “he told me the doctor said he’d have to stay home from work for six more weeks. He didn’t tell me, but I knew his old injury must be acting up too—being in bed for so long always caused him a lot of pain.”

Dad had apparently broken his back when he was in his twenties. He didn’t like to talk about it—he said it was a car accident, but I didn’t know much else about it. All I knew was that he was lucky to have survived the accident and that the older he got, the more residual pain it seemed to be causing. And the crankier he got about everything.

“Anyway, I paid for the home care people for this week and next,” Mom had said. “Apparently he’s up and about now, but he’s going to need help around the house.”

“Mom,” I’d said. Then, I’d hesitated. I was going to offer to call around to see if anyone could help out, but I’d heard the wobble in her voice. They may be estranged, but I realized, deep down, Mom still felt responsible for him in some way. Maybe she even cared for him. The thought was too much for me to deal with—especially considering I was the reason they weren’t together.

I knew things were too messy between them for her to take on being his caregiver. They avoided each other at community functions. If Dad saw Mom at the grocery store, he’d walk out without food. It was ridiculous and one of the reasons why marriage scared the hell out of me. How could someone go from full-on adoration—having akidtogether—to this?

I knew how. By said kid driving a wedge between two happy people.

An old wound, deep and hard and somehow, after decades, still bruised and tender around the edges, throbbed inside of me.

I shoved it down where it belonged. Far in the past.

So, I had come home. I’d told myself it was only temporary, but who knew how long Dad would need me? And I didn’t want to put the responsibility of him on Mom.

“He can have meatballs, I said. “He’s healthy, despite his best efforts. The surgery is due to an old heart murmur.”

“Well, is there anything else I can do?” Victoria asked, coming up and standing too close to me. She smelled like something strawberry-scented. But instead of the presumably desired effect of making her seem like some kind of tasty dessert, my stomach turned slightly, and I took a subtle step sideways. My mind was so far away from Victoria I couldn’t even fathom that we had once spent so much time together.

My high school buddies had been jealous that I’d hooked up with the hottest girl in school. I’d thought I was happy too. I guess I had been. But there hadn’t been much more between us except teenage hormones. We’d never really had much to talk about. Or at least, I hadn’t. Victoria had no problem keeping a conversation going on her own. I thought that was normal. Without having a good model—my parents had always been tumultuous and had split up when I was thirteen—I hadn’t really known what normal relationships looked like.

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