Page 17 of My Unfinished Heart

“I’m nineteen.”

My posture relaxes. Nineteen is still young, but I’m only twenty-three. For a few more weeks anyway. Not that it matters. Tristan is still my brother’s best friend, and no matter how well we click or whatever, nothing can happen, and my desperate brain needs to stop thinking about it. If I want to hook up, I’m sure Austin has as many options for that as Seattle does.

“So…” He glances away. “He’ll need a place to stay in late August. Changing schools after everything that’s happened… I don’t think he should have to do that, and I want him to graduate.”

The proprietary way he says it—like Connor is his, and he’s the one who’s really going to take care of him pulls me up short. “Right.”

“So maybe you could stick around a while longer,” he says, in the form of a suggestion more than a question.

“Long enough for him to figure something out longer, or long enough for him to finish high school?” My words are smooth, but my thoughts are jagged. I’m trying to get my head around any length of time—one more day even. Suddenly I miss my bed—the futon in my downtown studio apartment in my favorite city in the world—with an ache in my chest. Girlfriend might be an over exaggeration of my relationship with Carrie, but I miss hanging out with her, too. I have hundreds of dollars’ worth of art supplies I really like, friends who lighten me up, and a job I don’t completely hate.

“Well, I don’t know how long his rehab’s gonna take. At least until then, though.”

“Rehab?”

“For his leg,” Tristan says from what I’m guessing must be a well of infinite patience.

I have no idea what he’s talking about. I don’t really want to know. “Right,” I whisper, feeling stupid and underprepared.

“Why do you look like your world is ending?”

I meet Tristan’s color-saturated eyes again. They don’t hold so much sympathy or pity as they do understanding. I’m surprised to see it. It’s not what I expect. None of this is. “You’ll be around the rest of the summer?”

His eyebrows lift, and his cheeks get those spots of pink in them. “Yeah. At my parents’ house.”

“Where’s that?”

“Barton Hills.”

“And Connor can stay with you for now?”

He nods. “Of course. I’ll give you the address. Where will you be?”

Nervous at being put on the spot, I laugh. “Can I have a minute to think about it?”

“Can I give you one more thing to think about first?” he asks.

I sigh heavily. “Sure.”

“You should talk to your brother.”

FOUR

Rip

Carrie once told me my eyes are kind, but they’re Marion Brennan’s eyes. They can be menacing too. I see that same menace in Connor’s gaze when I return to his hospital room three hours after Tristan packed a duffel bag and left the house. My brother’s expression cuts me off at the knees before he even opens his mouth.

After a deep breath, I ask, “How are you feeling?”

Connor regards me with a dull, dry expression. “Incredible. Like I could run a marathon.” He looks down at the book he’s holding and starts tracing the letters on the cover with his finger. When he turns his hand a certain way, he reveals a deep gash on his palm. It must burn like hell.

I sit in a chair not too near the bed. While the ICU room catered to guests staying overnight, the standard hospital room he’s now in is the same as any other I was in and out of as a child. Bed, window, two chairs, bedside table, jug of water. On the wall by the door there’s a scale for pain. From zero to ten. If you were to get confused about quantifying your pain with a number, there’s a helpful set of smiley faces to assist you. The first smiley face, under the zero, is your basic smiley face. The sixth has a frown, and the tenth is an inconsolable frown with tears. If I had to guess at a twelve, it would resemble Munch’s “The Scream.” That’s about where I’m at right now.

I clear my throat to remind myself I have a voice. A voice I found a long time ago. “Do you have a plan for when you leave here?” I don’t know if he knows I’ve already spoken to Tristan about this. On the off chance it would piss him off even more to know I did, I play the oblivious estranged brother card.

He says nothing, continuing to trace the letters on his book.

“Connor?”