An Optimist's Guide to Heartbreak (Heartsong #1)(59)

Lips trembling, I face him through the dim, yellow light. “You think you know what I want? What I deserve?”

“Yes.” After a few quiet beats, Cal reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his cell phone. He thumbs through it, landing on something and studying it for a moment before turning the screen toward me. “This is how I know.”

It’s my Instagram picture.

Me, laughing in the rain, my hair stuck to my face as a sliver of moonlight reflects off my smile.

I swallow, lifting my eyes to him.

“This is how I see you, Lucy,” he tells me soberly. “Weightless. Free. In love with life, untethered from hardship. Perfect in every way.” Dropping the phone to his side, he looks off over my shoulder at the small window above the sink. His eyes narrow with thought, with memory. “This is how I’ve always seen you.”

When his eyes flick back to me, I swear they’re glazed over, glimmering with sentiment. He’s not immune to this—to me. I find my voice. “I’m not untethered from hardship, Cal. It lives inside of me every day, just like yours does. I simply choose to overcome it. I choose to be happy because being sad spoils the little time we have here,” I tell him. “And you’re right. If I sleep with you, I’ll feel something. I’ll feel everything. More than you think you’re capable of feeling.” His lips thin, body tensing. “That’s what you’re telling me, right? That you’ll make love to me and feel nothing?”

He falters. The crease between his eyes untwists, and he doesn’t respond.

I get my answer then, and I know, without a doubt, he’s not immune; he’s not immune at all.

He’s afraid—and that’s something I can understand.

We marinate in the things said and unsaid before Cal rubs a hand over his face and sighs. “I can take you home if you want. Or you can stay in the guest room. Up to you.”

All I manage is a weak nod.

“I’m gonna hop in the shower. Let me know what you want to do.”

I nod again, our eyes tangling for a split second before he dips his head, pivots around, and disappears out of the kitchen.

A rush of tears flood me when he’s out of sight. I turn and press my palms to the countertop, leaning forward as his words pulse through me like a doleful song.

I won’t love you.

Cal carved a hole between us. A canyon. Two jagged cliffs, too far apart to jump without slipping and free-falling into nothingness.

And so I know what I have to do.

I’ll take these broken bones and build a bridge.





Chapter 16





2.16.13

“Sad Songs”



Mom asked me if any songs made me sad.

I’d never thought about it before, but now that I am thinking about it, the answer is yes. There’s a song that came out a couple of years ago called If I Die Young by The Band Perry. It’s probably my favorite song, but it also makes me really sad inside. I played it on Pandora today, thinking about how I’d feel if my brother or Lucy died young. I started crying. There’s a line that says, “what I never did is done.” It makes me want to do everything. Kiss boys, jump out of airplanes, play the piano in front of thousands of people, go to music school, eat ice cream for breakfast every day. You know, just in case.

I played the song for Lucy last night and told her she wasn’t allowed to die young.

She cried.



Toodles,

Emma





The little panda sits beside me on stage, perched amid my sea of tips; a good luck charm of sorts. I’m almost positive I have double the tips I normally receive during a Friday night show, and it’s probably because of Pinky.

I strum the strings of my guitar, my knee-high boots propped along the rung of the stool. “Any requests tonight?” I ask into the microphone, draped in golden bar glow, missing the setting sun that was recently stolen by daylight savings time.

Alyssa sits at a large round table, joined by my friend Gemma from the animal sanctuary, and her fiancé, Knox. Alyssa cups her hands around her mouth and shouts, “Gangsta’s Paradise!”

Laughing, I blush. “We’ll save that for our karaoke shenanigans tomorrow night,” I say back, producing a flurry of chuckles from the crowd.

I just finished playing Got My Mind Set On You by George Harrison, which went over incredibly well for my first live attempt. I reveled in the way the audience clapped and sang along, bouncing in their chairs and stools while tossing ten-dollar bills into my guitar case. The mood calls for something slower now, a little more somber, so I page through my set list and begin to play the first few chords of Fields of Gold by Sting.

That’s when someone calls out, “If I Die Young.”

Reflexively, I freeze. Ice slithers through my veins, and I’m certain I go whiter than snow. For a moment, I’m standing at that podium beneath a dove gray sky and sad clouds, while a guitar shakes in my hands, my tears mimicking the drizzle I know is coming.

I couldn’t play it then, just as I can’t play it now.

It’s the only song I can’t play.

I’m not sure if it’s fate or design or wild misfortune, but that’s when the door whips open and he’s standing there.

Cal.

He’s dressed in a jet-black beanie sheathed in a sprinkle of the season’s first snowfall, the leather bomber jacket I can still smell on my fuzzy sweater, dark jeans, and a look in his eyes that melts the frost in my bones the second he looks up at me.