The Heart Gives Second Chances
Chapter 5: Warm Beaches
The next date, about a month later, Frankie bought Becky a pink glass heart to hang in the restaurant. They dined on fish for her and salad for him and talked about a trip to the ocean, near where I met her. And they argued, for the first time, according to her memories. She wanted to go now, and he didn’t. He couldn’t, wouldn’t leave the studio, not with so many well-paying commissions in queue. She always saw work as a means to an end, never something that defined a person, and never something to get in the way of life. Maybe that came later, because she let him win the argument, and they agreed to wait.
A year passed before they returned, and they hadn’t left on the trip yet. Frankie couldn’t afford it, but Becky now worked at an advertising agency, where she worked when we met, and could pay for both of them, which made Frankie grumpy. I also hated it when she wanted to pay for me. It made me feel cheap, but as I read her mind and emotions, I realized she didn’t care about the money, just the time together. I never believed her, and we fought about it until she stopped offering, which suited me just fine at the time but now caused regret to fill my stomach, the one I didn’t have, the place that I felt butterflies within whenever I thought about Vicki.
Two months, and Vicki stopped by with a pair of swans, necks shaped in a heart, a delicate glass thing made special for Becky by Lyn, what she called him now, and an odd-shaped heart made by Vicki. A Tuesday, late in the evening, so no guests and Vicki dined by herself, then waited until Becky finished her shift to join her at the table, across the restaurant from where they put me.
“So, what’s up, girl?” Becky asked as she sat down with a plate of fries for the two to share. Carlos and his new dishwasher, Vin, who subbed when Jesus had a catering job, had already left and turned off most of the lights. Only the lamp over the table shone, casting a very romantic halo over the pair. Vicki radiated sexuality, even in an old jersey that looked familiar.
“I went to the beach, without Lyn, and the worst thing happened.” Vicki reached out and held Becky’s hands in comfort. I knew that look. It meant that she needed to make a hard decision, something that would change her life. She made that face when I first asked her to marry me, and no, I didn’t ask her in a stupid romantic way, but in our bedroom, before work, casual, like, “I love you, babe, would you consider marrying me?”
She also had the same face when she sat me down to talk about a possible divorce, which I avoided by getting killed.
“What, what’s up? Did Frankie do something?”
“No, well, kinda. I like Lyn, I really do, but on the trip, I met someone, someone completely different, a girl, and she’s everything,” Vicki said with a faraway smile as my image floated in her mind.
I only kind of looked like I remembered. In her mind, I glowed, and my teeth sparkled when I smiled, which I did continuously, and she noticed the highlights in my hair that no one ever noticed and loved my hands, even though my finger joints looked too big, and she saw something special inside me. Not the horrible person I saw in the mirror, with a scar on my clavicle from a knife, nor the slight pink hue on my hands from the security guard’s blood. She even liked my blemished cheeks, the pits from acne, my too-narrow eyes, and my slightly lower right ear.
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