Still Beating

F I F T E E N   Y E A R S   E A R L I E R

Mr. Adilman is such a douche-nozzle.

I flick the eraser side of my pencil up and down against the blank page of my notebook with a giant yawn, resting my head on my opposite hand. Mr. Adilman is prattling on about some book we were supposed to read as he simultaneously checks out Miss French when she stops in to give him a message about a new student. Gross.

“Listen up, everyone. We have a new student joining us today. Let’s make her feel welcome here at Cary-Grove High,” Mr. Adilman announces.

I glance up from my serious lack of note taking and my mouth goes dry.

In walks an angel.

Seriously. I think she’s a real-life angel with wings and a halo and maybe even a harp.

There’s definitely a harp.

Her hair is spun with gold, partially pulled up with a flower barrette. Her denim skirt almost touches her knees, and a lavender blazer sits over her baby blue tank top. She’s wearing chunky sandals and the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen.

I’m blatantly staring, possibly drooling, as Mr. Adilman directs the petite blonde to a desk much too far away from mine. She clutches her books to her chest with nervous hands, quietly taking a seat.

“Class, say hello to Corabelle Lawson. Her family just moved here from Rockford.”

She clears her throat. “Um, it’s Cora.”

“Oh.” Mr. Adilman looks down at his notes. “I’m sorry. This says Corabelle.”

“Yeah, but I go by Cora.”

The class mutters a bored ‘hello’ as I continue to plan out our future in my mind. Homecoming and Prom are a given. It would be great if we end up going to the same college together, but long distance relationships aren’t so bad. We’ll make it work. We’ll be married by thirty, buy a big house in the suburbs, and have three blonde-haired babies by thirty-five. We’ll travel a lot, then move right by the ocean when we retire.

I wonder if she likes the ocean.

Cora glances over in my direction and our eyes meet for the very first time.

Green.

Angels have green eyes.

She smiles at me, that same sweet smile, and this one is all mine. It fills me up and lights me on fire, and I know, I just know…

I’m going to marry this girl one day.

I’m sitting on Mandy’s couch after work that Friday, guzzling down a water bottle as I try to collect my thoughts. I squeeze the bottle in my fist, listening to the crinkling plastic mingle with the sound of Mandy’s chipper voice floating through the apartment.

“…and I can’t believe Margo is retiring…”

I open and close my hand around the empty bottle.

Crinkle. Crinkle. Crinkle.

“…she’s basically our mama bear…”

Crinkle. Crinkle. Crinkle.

“…definitely going to… Dean? Are you listening?”

I snap my head up as Mandy saunters into the living room, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Everything okay?” She cocks her head to one side, her hazel eyes shimmering with concern. “You look a little pale.”

That’s probably because I’ve been holding back my vomit for the last fifteen minutes.

My throat bobs as I swallow. “We need to talk, Mandy.” I set the bottle down next to me and wipe my hands along the front of my denim pants.

Mandy stares at me for a moment, registering my words. She nibbles on her top lip as she wrings the towel between her fingers. “About what?”

She knows about what. I can see it all over her face.

Fuck.

“Shit… this is the hardest conversation of my life.”

“Dean.” My name comes out as a tiny cry—a plea. “Don’t do this.”

I stand from the couch, stepping towards her with outstretched hands. She moves back to avoid my reach and I pause my feet, my arms falling at my sides, defeated. “I don’t want to hurt you…”

“Then don’t. I don’t want you to hurt me.” She folds her arms across her chest, her body already trembling. “We can work through this.”

“We can’t. And it’s not because I don’t care about you… we’ve had an amazing run, and I don’t regret a single moment of the last fifteen years.”

“Please stop…”

“But I feel like a completely different person right now. I know it was only three weeks. I get it, but I can’t explain what happened to me. I just… I don’t feel that connection, that spark, and you deserve that. You deserve so much more than what I can give you.”

God, I hope that didn’t come off like I’m feeding her bullshit because it’s the fucking truth.

Mandy closes her eyes, holding them shut as her emotions begin to peak. I see her hands curl into fists, and she asks, “Is it because of her?”

“What? Who?”

“My sister.”

The word spits out between clenched teeth, like it was nearly impossible to say.

My jaw ticks in reply. This isn’t about Cora. This is about me and Mandy. We’re not well-suited. It doesn’t work.

Not anymore.

“No,” I say.

“You’re a liar. Something happened between you two in that basement,” she says. “That guy was called The Matchmaker, Dean. I’ve tried to tell myself that you two hated each other and nothing would have happened, but now I’m just feeling like a huge idiot…”

I sigh. “I’m not saying I don’t have a strong connection with Cora—I do. We went through a horrible trauma together, and it’s impossible not to come back different from that.” I run a hand along the nape of my neck, scratching at my hairline as I try to piece together words and sentences that make sense to both of us. “We were forced to do some fucked up shit, and… it bonded us.”

She swallows, almost choking on the words. “Do you have feelings for her?”

Feelings.

God, of course I have feelings for her. She makes me feel a lot of things—she always has.

But I realize Mandy is referencing something more specific.

More destructive.

She wants to know if I have romantic feelings. Sexual feelings. More than friends feelings.

“It’s complicated.”

Mandy glares at me. “It’s not complicated, Dean! You either want to fuck my sister or you don’t.”

Jesus.

I look down at my work boots, realizing I should have taken them off at the front door. I probably tracked mud and sludge through her apartment.

“I’m going to be sick.”

I glance back up as Mandy’s hand hovers over her mouth, holding back her horror. I shake my head. “This isn’t about Cora. I told you that.”

“Then what is it? You just fell out of love with me in a matter of twenty days? All the other thousands of days didn’t mean anything?” she demands.

I hesitate before blowing out a breath. “You don’t feel like there’s always been something missing between us? Like, we just haven’t been able to dig deep enough?”

She grits her teeth. “What the hell does that mean? You asked me to marry you, Dean. I assumed you had done your digging.”

“Fuck, I don’t know. I think I was just comfortable… everything had become routine and easy, you know? I’m close with your parents, we have the same friends, Blizzard…” I trail off, closing my eyes for a moment to regroup. “Change is fucking scary, Mandy. I cared about you, we had history, and on paper we fit just fine. It didn’t seem worth it to throw it all away.”

“So, what’s different?”

“Change was forced on me. I was forced to rot for three weeks in a serial killer’s basement, and it really put shit in perspective.”

Mandy taps her foot against the carpet restlessly, her long nails digging into the flesh of her arms. “It’s great to know you were down there thinking about how you couldn’t wait to break up with me.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” I take a small step closer to her. “Jesus, Mandy, I’ve tried to give this time. I thought I just needed to clear my head and work through all the bullshit. I’ve spent countless hours wondering how I can fix this and make it work. I want it to work, but…” I throw my hands up with defeat. “We don’t fit anymore.”

Tears spill from her eyes, smudging her perfectly applied makeup. Her eyes are level with my chest, unable to meet my guilty gaze. Mandy runs her fingers through her hair, tugging it back and cradling the nape of her neck as she tries to control her grief. “Fifteen years. Fifteen years of my life wasted on you.”

God.

I’m an asshole.

A giant, fucking asshole.

“You want to know what I was doing while you were down in that basement, thinking about how much we don’t fit and “bonding” with my sister?” She finally lifts her eyes to me and they narrow with disdain. “I was making flyers. I was leading search parties. I was on the phone with police, with friends and relatives, with your mortgage company and utility providers letting them know your payments might be late… with fucking wedding coordinators begging them not to cancel our date because you were coming home.” Her cheeks are bright red, flushed with scorn. “I was driving around town looking for your car every single day. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. All I did was cry and look for you, praying for you to be okay… picturing you standing at the end of that aisle.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, cupping a hand over my mouth and breathing deep. I know there’s nothing I can say to make this better. I know there’s nothing I can do to lessen her pain or make her understand. I can’t go back in time and tell her to stay the fuck away from me because I’m only going to break her heart one day.

All I can do is trust that this is the right thing for both of us and hope she sees it, too. She deserves better than this. She deserves more than half-assed kisses and hollow conversations. She deserves better than me.

“I’ll always care about you, Mandy. Always. And I know you’ll fall in love again and walk down that aisle someday. I know you’ll find someone who sees the scariest, darkest parts of you and loves the shit out of you anyway. Someone who presses your buttons, gets under your skin, makes you crazy in all the best ways. Someone who makes you feel so alive, you can’t imagine going back to the shell of a human you were before you met them. Someone who sees you, really sees you, stripped down and raw, and wants to collect all your broken pieces and cherish them like they are something beautiful.”

I take a deep breath. Then another.

My heart is pounding against my ribs, my vision blurring. Mandy is staring at me like I was momentarily possessed by Nicholas Sparks.

Fuck.

I close the gap between us and grab her face between my hands, pulling her forehead in for a kiss. “Mandy, Mandy, sweet as candy,” I whisper, echoing the rhyme I’d sing to her when we were teenagers. “I don’t regret you. And I pray you can forgive me someday and we can be friends, because my heart won’t be the same without you in it. But I understand if you can’t, and I respect that.” Her eyes are shut tight, weighed down by the burden I am handing her. “I know this isn’t the happily ever after you imagined. I’m so sorry for that. But I promise you’ll get it, and when you do, you’ll look back and this will all make a hell of a lot more sense.”

I place one last kiss against her hairline, watching as her tears silently dampen her cheeks.

Then I pull away and walk out her front door.