Page 72 of Heartbeat

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know.” I hated to stall but, truly, that sounded like such a good idea. “Meals, laundry—that sort of thing.”

“How long did this last for? You, doing everyone else’s job?”

“A few months?” I lied.

He didn’t say anything, which either meant he didn’t believe me, or maybe he was waiting for me to stick to that version of the story.

“Almost a year,” I corrected.

It didn’t feel right to lie. Not to him.

“Jesus, Tom.”

Tom. Fuck, that sounds so good.

“It’s how it goes, I guess. We all need time to stop because it’s how it feels when someone dies, you know? It’s like your entire reality is shifted so suddenly; you can barely breathe and think time itself will stop to mourn…” I went quiet for a beat. “It doesn’t work like that though. Nothing stops, except sometimes a heartbeat or two. Someone needs to make sure everyone else can just…keep up.”

“And that someone was you?”

I shrugged.

He reached his hand under the table and put an open palm over my knee, squeezing it gently—but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t acknowledge it in any way. He just kept looking at me. For the first time, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. It wasn’t obvious, as it had been that night. It was…undefined, and it bothered me to no end.

So I kept talking.

“Eventually, Mom started to get up from bed. She’d make tea, work a bit from home, that sort of thing; Noah gradually stopped getting into trouble; even Dad began to come home in time for dinner.”

“And your grandparents?”

“They still call every day. Mostly to check up on me and Noah.”

He smiled and let go of my knee.

*

We had two choices for dessert. Crème brûlée and profiteroles. We ordered one of each and shared.

“I’m loving this,” Ethan said, taking too big a bite out of a profiterole and getting chocolate all over his face.

“I can see that.” I had to look down at my spoon to keep a straight face.

“What?”

“You have a bit of chocolate,” I said, using my spoon to point at his nose. “Just there.”

He took his napkin to his nose and wiped it off.

“Did I get it?”

I smiled. “Ten percent of it.”

“Ten percent? Where else do I have chocolate on?”

“Just there.” I again pointed with the spoon at his face but swirled it around as to encompass the entirety of his face.

“Shit,” he said, laughing. “Help.”

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