The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(23)

He laughed, stretching out his long legs beneath the squat table. When he did, his thigh bumped against my knee and then stayed there, sending a chain of warm chills through my nervous system that short-circuited my frontal lobe.

“Zen would tell me to embrace the middle pencil,” he said.

“Ah, the HB pencil,” I agreed, nodding.

“So boring, that HB.”

“You’re no HB. You’re like ten Prismacolors all at once.” Did I really just say that? Maybe if I just slid all the way under the table, no one would notice.

“You’d be surprised how tame I really am.”

I seriously doubted that. He tugged on the small black cord that hung from one side of the bracelet I’d noticed earlier. “Is that a religious thing?”

“Mala beads,” he said, offering me a closer look. The strand of irregular dark beads wound around his wrist three times. “Bodhi seeds. I use it to count a mantra. I twist each bead as I count, like this.”

I ran my fingertips over the smooth surface of one strand, just for a moment; it seemed too personal to be pawed. “Like a rosary? To count penance or sins or whatever?”

“Sort of. Buddhists don’t believe in sin—at least, not in a punished-by-an-angry-god way.”

“So you can do whatever you want?”

“We follow a ‘do no harm’ moral code—basic stuff like don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t criticize others.”

“Don’t destroy property?”

One side of his mouth twitched. “I haven’t done anything that can’t be cleaned up. I’m not knocking the heads off statues or setting fire to anything.”

“But—”

“But I’m aware that what I’ve done affects others, and sometimes that might be in a negative way. And that’s not cool. But I do my best to keep the harm to a minimum.”

A couple of girls passed by our table on their way to the restroom, so I didn’t push Jack about the vandalism, just in case we might be overheard. “How long have you been a Buddhist?”

“Two years. And before you ask, my family isn’t religious. My mom’s family is Episcopalian, so my parents make appearances at Grace Cathedral. But it’s just for show. My dad sort of worships himself.”

“My dad ran off with a strip-club owner a few years ago.” I was surprised the words came out of my mouth, because I only talked about Dad with Heath, never with my friends, and never, ever with Mom.

“Yikes. Superclassy.”

“Right? I have zero contact with him, so don’t ask me to get you free passes,” I joked. Of course, right after I said it, I realized that this wasn’t exactly true anymore—the zero-contact thing. That carved artist’s mannequin was currently stuffed in the bottom of my Ikea wardrobe under some shoeboxes. I hadn’t decided what I was going to do about it yet.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said in a low voice that made me feel self-conscious.

“About what? He’s an ass, but our lives went on without him. Half of all marriages end in divorce. Everyone expects me to be crying over the fact that I don’t have a father figure in my life, like I should be screwed up over it or something. But I never even really think about him.”

I shrugged as Star and another server climbed the stairs to our platform carrying two pots of tea: one made of black ceramic, and the other glass. With those came a long tray filled with hummus and roasted eggplant and olives and plump dates filled with feta and garnished with flower blossoms—flowers!

“I’m suddenly starving,” I murmured.

“I could eat all this by my lonesome, so we’d better get something else. Cheese or sweets?”

“Hmm, tough choice.”

“Bring both,” he told Star.

“Just so we’re clear, I’m not paying for any of this, rich boy.”

“That might be a problem since you have my wallet,” he reminded me as he poured steaming cups of the most amazing-smelling mint tea I’d ever inhaled.

“In that case, drinks are on me.”

Everything tasted amazing, even the tea. And the flowers were edible. They tasted like nothing, but still. As we stuffed ourselves with finger food, I stretched out my legs beneath the table alongside Jack’s. It took only two bites of a honey-drizzled date stuffed with feta for me to end up pressed against him from hip to ankle. He was warm and thrillingly solid, and maybe it was because I was small and he was tall, or maybe it was the fact that I had his wallet in my pocket, but I couldn’t remember ever feeling so … well, safe was the wrong word, because I was still nervous around him. I don’t know. Maybe I was content—who knows? Could’ve just been that I was relieved to have some food in my stomach after what had happened at the anatomy lab.

We laughed at each other’s stupid jokes and discovered we had a few things in common: We were both born in the city; we both had been to Alcatraz on school field trips and hated it; and at Amoeba Music, we liked browsing the movies and retro rock posters more than the actual music.

Once I was sure no one was listening to our conversation, I said in a low voice, “Since I’m the only one knows your secret identity, I think I need to know why.”

“Why I haven’t told anyone else?” he asked.