Page 151 of My Unfinished Heart

Now, obviously I have this theory that you’ll never be happy without me, and I’ll never be happy without you, but the reason I think that is because now I actually know what it’s like to be with you. And whether you know it or not, I do know how you feel about me.

If I hadn’t gotten up—if I’d left it as the crush it was only ever meant to be, then I would have met someone just fine who would have been an okay person and hopefully a decent lay, and I would have thought to myself—this is what love is. Love is easy. Love is sweet, and sex is good, and relationships are chill. Here’s a nice looking plus one who’ll hold my hand and drive me home, and I won’t have to be the one who remembers to take out the trash all the time because fuck, I’m terrible about that. Here’s someone who’ll deal with all my moods and my needy ass, and I’ll just smile and be cute and give him great blow jobs so he keeps me around. Simple.

Would he rock my world? Who knows. I wouldn’t know. Because I never would have had my world rocked anyway, so maybe. Maybe it’s all relative, and you don’t know what you don’t know, and ignorance is bliss.

Obviously, if I could change the fact that I had a crush on you, I’d go ahead and do that, but crushes aren’t mistakes per se. They just happen. Especially the one-sided ones.

I think we can both agree that I should have stayed put that day. I should have let Connor re-introduce me to you when he was ready. He for sure would have told you how old I was, and then none of this would have been an issue.

So, I’m sorry, Dearest. I’m sorry for not minding my own fucking business. I was a domino, and I fell right onto you, and now everyone is fucking miserable, and I don’t know about you, but I am actually destroyed.

Connor’s big on silver linings. Whenever I’ve gotten bad news—for example having to move to Houston for my senior year—Connor sat me down in all my hysteria, held my hands and asked me—what’s the best thing that can come out of this?

I don’t even remember what I said. Something about having more money for better clothes probably because my mom’s job in Houston paid more. But I did have a real answer, one I didn’t tell him.

The real answer was I’d have a chance to figure out who I am outside of him.

And I did do that. I figured out I was shy as fuck, but I love attention, and as long as someone talked to me first, I was a carnival switching on. I learned people besides Connor thought I was worth inviting places and didn’t mind me hanging around. I learned I like different music than he does, and that I’m actually a decent dancer.

And I think all of that would have been really good for me in terms of heading off to college with some self-confidence if I hadn’t made that first mistake that led to all the rest.

We’ll never know, and I cannot describe to you how truly fucking sorry I am about that.

With deep regret,

Tristan Chase

Part Three

ELIZA

TWENTY-FIVE

Heart Strings

Eliza Holloway is a bookworm who reads far beyond her grade level. She has an iPad but only ever uses it for the Kindle app. If we let her, she would stare at the screen for hours through her blue-light glasses, swinging back and forth on my porch swing, drinking root beer through a straw. She also enjoys talking to me about art. She has a particular interest in Renaissance Italy because she’s read The Da Vinci Code. She makes me show her every work of art described in the book. It’s fun to watch her frowning at a picture in one of my art books as though the image is all wrong. “That’s not what I expected at all, Archer,” she’ll say.

Her younger sister Kate is a sweetheart with a mess of bushy brown hair she never brushes and a rotating gap between her teeth. She’s also a sports fan. She never complains about the amount of baseball we watch. That could just be because of how much she likes to snuggle, though. There seems to be no time limit for how long she’ll curl contentedly up next to someone on a couch. She knows exactly how to fit in the most comfortable places.

Lucky for me, Joey doesn’t seem to mind me, or the chain West and I now wear, shackling us together at the ankles. She says she dated an identical twin before, and we act more or less like the twins did. I take this as a compliment, even though it probably hints at an unhealthy attachment. Unfortunately, it also reminds me of what Tristan once said about his relationship with Connor. “You can think of us like twins.”

West makes absolutely no apologies for me, the fifth wheel, so in that respect, Joey never really has a choice. And she claims to like me. She says I remind her of a Dickens character.

My point is, I have a life now. One that gets schedule-y and complicated. Sometimes I pick the girls up from school, and sometimes Joey or West run late coming home. On the day of the appointment Connor and I have with his therapist, they both run late.

I try calling Rivershore, but I keep getting a fucking fax machine. I arrive about fifteen minutes before visiting hours end. When Connor comes down to see me, one look at his face tells me I should have put the girls in the car and brought them with me.

“Connor, I’m so sorry—I had a babysitting crisis.”

He shrugs and sits down on the nearest couch.

I sit next to him and put my arm around his shoulders. Where my personal boundaries went, I have no idea, but I want to blame Kate.

Connor leans against me, not minding the arm. His face is splotchy from crying, his eyes puffy and red.

“I thought…” he starts but doesn’t finish. He shakes his head again and wipes the new tears away.

“I tried calling, but I couldn’t get through. Seriously. I’m really sorry.”