Page 64 of Heart Check
22.HARPER
Today’s the kind of miserableday I just want to spend in bed binging a whole podcast season, like the forgotten slug smashed under humanity’s boot that I am. But I have work to do, so instead I force myself down to the kitchen to pour the biggest cup of coffee I can manage.
Mom is lesson planning at the table. When she turns her raised eyebrow on me and opens her mouth to remind me of the dangers of caffeine dependency, I whirl with my tureen-sized mug to face her, stopping the words right in her throat.
“I need coffee to keep myeye on the ball, okay? You can choose: scholarship or no caffeine addiction, I don’t care.”
Luckily, she doesn’t say anything about community college today. Just stares after me, mouth agape. I feel a little guilty, but I cannot hold myself responsible for what I might say if we keep arguing. So I escape with my prize, frowning and stuck in my own head as I pad up the dingily carpeted stairs.
I barely slept last night, tossing and turning for hours, sheets twisted around my legs, skin clammy and mind in knots. Too busy reliving every minute with Dawson.
The good ones: holding his hand on the rink, laughing andjoking with the rest of the team, his touch skimming over my skin in the car.
And the bad ones: the hurt on his face when he realized I hadn’t told Marissa. The way it hardened when he suggested dating me might be considered afavor.I should be grateful the truth came out. If all this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t know how he really feels.
But under it is my own guilt: at being shady with Dawson, at not giving him more of a chance to explain, at being too chicken to text Marissa back.
Maybe that’s why, instead of getting started on my enormous to-do list, I find myself staring blankly at the ticket stub from the hockey game that I pinned on the corkboard above my desk.
Whatever. I take a deep breath and shake my head. Hockey never distracted me before, and it won’t distract me now. I have work to do.
Clutching my coffee with one hand, I click over to the review section of my website with the other. I haven’t checked since making it live again and I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until I let it out in a sigh of relief.
All the negative comments are gone.
I scroll down to double-check, but all that remain are the glowing ratings from before.
My new necklace is the number one thing strangers compliment me on…. harper’s jewelry cleared my skin and watered my crops…. Harper is such a professional!My rating is right where it used to be too.
I slump back in my desk chair, drawing my legs up underneath me. I cup my mug and take a long, slow sip to distract myself from the mixed feelings in my chest.
Dawson made good on his promise to get the negative reviews deleted.
My chest aches. I can’t help seeing his face, earnest and determined, when he said he’d get those reviews taken down. I wonder how that conversation with Noah went. He didn’t even brag about it! Didn’t even use it to try to get in my pants!
I catch a glimpse of my face in the window, pale and sad. Like an abandoned puppy. The thought hollows out my stomach, makes me feel sosorryfor myself, because Idofeel abandoned. Shut out from the new sense of belonging I was just starting to get used to. So used to that I even shared my old longing for it with Dawson, like anidiot.
An even more devastating thought hits me, and I suck in my breath: Did he fix my reviews because hepitiedme? Did he think I was that desperate for validation? I never should’ve told him how nice it was to hang out with everyone. Letting him know even a tiny part of me wanted to be more involved was way too vulnerable. I don’t need his pity inclusion.
I can’t believe I thought he was different from the rest of them.
But even as I get myself good and worked up, I have a hard time believing my own anger. It’s not the same as it used to be, when I could take one slight from a hockey player and turn it into a sign of their character, when anything they did made them dead to me.
I can’t quite make myself believe they’re villains anymore. Not Alex and Ryan, and especially not Dawson. He believed in my business. Respected my hard work. Every time we hung out, he was so chill, so interested in me. He took me to the party—to the rink. He wasn’t embarrassed to introduce me tohis friends. He was the one who kept holding my hand.
And he sure didn’t kiss me like it was community service.
What if… what ifIwas wrong?
I wince. Outside, the clouds pass over the sun; the last leaves of fall cling to the tree in front of my window. True winter is right around the corner.
It makes me remember the chill in Dawson’s car. Makes me want to wrap myself in his warmth all over again.
I wasn’t exactly the nicest to him last night, either. Keeping him a secret from Marissa was fucked up of me. How would I have reacted if he was trying to do that tome?
There’s a pit in my stomach that won’t go away. All I can think about is whether Dawson and I are too caught up in our own egos. Maybe it was too much to imagine that we could create these brand-new versions of ourselves this year. Together.
I can’t focus on my site any longer—it’s not even worth pretending I am. What’s the point, at this stage in the semester? The grant application’s due in less than two weeks, and I have almost no profits to show for the fall. There’s a dull, hopeless whisper in my chest:Does it even matter? Do you even care anymore?
