Kaleidoscope Hearts (34 page)

I CONSIDER MYSELF lucky to have been in love twice. Some people don’t have the luxury of finding one person they connect with on a deeper level. I found two. I loved both the same, yet differently. One was my mentor, my friend, my lover. He opened my eyes to the greatness I was capable of. He believed in me when others thought I would fail. When I lost him, I cried every day for weeks, grieved for months. I grieved for the loss of a young life, a loved artist, a beacon of light in our community and my life. I still miss his smile and the smell of his hands, even after he’d smoked ten cigarettes. I miss listening to him tell me about the villages he saw and the people he met in them. I even miss his temper tantrums and the way he would throw paint everywhere when the outside light was fading into the moonlight. The day Wyatt taught me to channel my pain in my art was the day I fell in love with him. Shatter it all, he said, helping me break plates and glasses. Hate the world, he shouted, taking a mallet to wooden serving spoons. He watched me break down, and when I was finished, he scooped me up along with the shattered pieces of glass around me. One by one, we glued it all together, and when we were finished, we’d made the most beautiful broken heart I’d ever seen.

The first boy I fell in love with used to regale me with stories about kings and queens and war and peace, and how he hoped to one day be somebody’s knight in shining armor. I lived vicariously through his late night adventures, watching the way he swung his hands animatedly as he told his stories and loving the way his green eyes twinkled when I laughed at his jokes.

He taught me what it feels like to be touched and thoroughly kissed. Later, he taught me the level of pain one feels at the loss of someone you’ve grown attached to. The one thing he forgot to teach me was how to deal with the pain that squeezed my chest after he broke the ghost of what heart I had left. I’d always wondered if it had been a missed lesson. Now, I wonder if maybe he’d been trying to figure it out for himself, or if he just never felt anything at all. I’d wondered, when he left that night, if he would come back. When things got serious with Wyatt, I found myself lying awake at night thinking,
what if Oliver came through that door right now and asked me to be with him? Would I leave?
I never found my answer, because he never came. I like to think I didn’t base my engagement on anything but my love for Wyatt, but still, that “what if” always remained.

Unlike Wyatt’s loss, I never stopped mourning Oliver. I never stopped, because my heart didn’t have time to mend before he came back in and surged through it again. Oliver taught me heartache and longing. He taught me to greet pain with a smile, because as beautiful as life is, sometimes it comes to us in forms we don’t recognize. He taught me to understand that the thing about love—real, over the top, makes you feel crazy, overpowering, strips you bare kind of love—is that when you’re soaring, you’re higher than you dreamed possible. But when you fall, you land inside the deepest darkest crevices, and are left alone to pull yourself out.

The hearts I make are shattered, but whole. They’re kaleidoscopes that beam under the sun. They signify hope in love when you’ve lost it because, like love, you can look at a kaleidoscope a thousand different ways and find something new every time. Shattered or not, if you look carefully enough, you’ll find something beautiful in them, and all beautiful things are a little broken.

WHY COULDN’T I just ship the painting?
I sigh for what seems like the millionth time, and Mia finally switches off the music.

“Okay, talk. I know you’re miserable, and I know how annoying you get when you mope internally, so let it out. What are you thinking?”

I sigh again.

“And stop fucking sighing!” she says in a tone that makes me laugh.

“Sorry. I’m just . . . I feel like an idiot. I knew,” I stop to take a breath and hold back fresh tears. I am so sick of crying over this guy. “I know him . . .”

“You know what bothers me about him?” Mia says suddenly, reaching for my hand to squeeze. “How can someone so smart be so fucking stupid?”

I wipe my face with a laugh. “I wonder that all the time.”

“Just goes to show you. Men. No matter how strong, how smart, how successful . . . they’re just missing that chip that separates them from the better gender.”

When our laughter dies down, I turn and face her. “You know what bothers me about him? That I truly believe that he loves me. I see it when he looks at me. I feel it when he touches me. For the longest time, I wondered what this was to him and the fact that I still can’t get him to actually stay, is pretty telling, isn’t it?”

I lean back in my seat and shake my head, a short laugh escaping me. “Funny thing, all of you think I’m in love with a ghost, and I do love Wyatt, but I’ve been in love with Oliver for as long as I can remember. And everything I love about him is a memory. Good memories, bad memories . . . and it hurts more since Oliver is a ghost I can touch, and feel, and one that beckons to me and brings me under his spell every time he’s around.” I sigh. “Life’s a bitch.”

I check in the painting and board the plane just in time and, as I’m about to switch the phone off, it vibrates with a call from Oliver. I stare at it until it goes to voicemail before I put it in airplane mode. During the flight, I watch a movie that makes me cry, because I’m an idiot and chose to watch one that was nominated for a ton of Golden Globes. By the time I get to New York, I’m ready for a shower and my bed and, after a lengthy conversation with my realtor on the cab ride, I feel like I need a drink to add to all of that. After a long shower, I settle in bed and listen to my voice message from Oliver. My phone is about to die, so I just want to get through this one before I call it a night. As soon as I hear his voice, I close my eyes and wrap my arms around . . .
myself.

“I’m so sorry, Elle,” he says, his voice a low rasp. “I know you’re in New York, but we need to talk. Call me, please. I understand if you’re busy, but I’ll be here, so please . . .”

My battery dies before he finishes his sentence. I put it down with a trembling hand and close my eyes. I have other things I need to focus on right now, and even though it may not seem like a huge deal to everybody else, it is to me. Selling Wyatt’s painting was one thing, but physically letting go of it will be a different task.

The next morning, after pushing the snooze button a million times, I rush to make it to the buyer’s apartment on time. Just as I’m reaching her floor, my phone buzzes again. I tear my eyes away from the painting, sitting on the bellman’s cart, to rummage through my purse. When I find it, I see the picture I took of Oliver one night at the hospital. His flirty grin, the twinkle in his green eyes, his dimples, they all beam at me as I hold my ringing phone. When I can’t bear to look at him anymore, I answer the call.

“Elle, I’m sorry,” he says instantly, as if I’m going to hang up the phone before he gets the words out. His words do nothing to alleviate the pain I feel inside.

If anything, it feels like his voice is breaking me open once again. I take a breath once the elevator doors open, and I’m standing in a foyer. Priscilla Woods, the buyer, owns the penthouse.

“Hey,” I respond.

“How was your flight?” he asks, and when I don’t respond, continues, “Elle? Are you there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” I reply, staring at the dark, paneled door as if it’s going to give me the strength I need to get through this conversation and the meeting inside.

“You busy?”

I clear my throat when the door opens for us, and the bellman greets the coiffed socialite inside. “Yeah. I’ll call you when I get back home.”

He pauses for a long time, and I can hear the argument going on in his head.
Do I force the issue, or do I give her space?
When he finally speaks again, he sounds defeated. “Please do. We need to talk.”

I press the end button without saying goodbye, and glance up as Priscilla ushers the bellman inside.

“Estelle,” she says, smiling as she turns her attention to me. “Great to see you again.”

“Likewise, Mrs. Woods.” I walk over and extend my hand to her, which she takes.

“Please, call me Priscilla.”

I trail behind her, our heels clicking against the marble floor of her lavish apartment.

“Connor, just settle it down there, please,” she says to the bellman. He does as she asks and bows upon leaving. “I’m thrilled to finally have my painting,” she says, looking at me again. “I was surprised to hear from you as soon as I did. What made you decide to let go of it?”

I stare at the canvas, still covered in layers of wrapping, and shrug. “I realized that sometimes in order to move forward you have to let go of the past, even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts,” I correct, smiling sadly.

Priscilla nods. Her pristine hands reach for two glasses of champagne waiting on the table. I hadn’t noticed them there. She hands one to me and takes a sip of her own. “I lost my first husband when we were pretty young. We were so in love.” Her gaze wanders to the side as she smiles at the memory. “He got killed in a car accident. Drunk driver. We had only been together for a couple of months. We got married after a week of knowing each other. It was a whirlwind romance,” she says, laughing lightly before taking another sip. “When I lost him, I thought I would die, but I didn’t . . . and I found love again in Matthew. We’ve been together for twenty years now. It’s been twenty-three since I lost Eric, and still there’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of him.”

I take a gulp of champagne hoping to push down the knot in my throat, and realize that the knot is not there because of Wyatt. “You’ve made a beautiful life with him,” I say, pointing at the photo frames on the mantle that hold pictures of her with a smiling man. Others hold photos of graduates and small children.

“We do have a beautiful life,” she says, smiling as her eyes follow mine. When our eyes meet again, hers are full of compassion. “Okay, let’s see my new painting.”

Her painting.
I take a breath and realize that I’m okay with that this time. I unwrap the canvas, and as I tear the layers off, the image becomes visible. My fingertips graze the outer part of the eye and the memory of watching him paint it resurfaces. This is my goodbye, I say to myself.

Priscilla clutches the pearls of her necklace as she admires it. “It’s even more beautiful than I remember,” she whispers.

“It is,” I agree, twisting the paper in my hands, as I stare at the eye that’s been watching over me for the past couple of years—the one I felt more potently after Wyatt’s death.

We talk a little longer and when my kaleidoscope hearts catch her attention, she promises to give me a call soon so that she can look at the rest of my catalog. When we say our goodbyes, I look over my shoulder one last time, and I burn the image of the way it looks on her wall into my memory bank. I go back to the hotel and let myself cry a little for my losses, and when I’m finished crying, I put a smile on my face. I’m okay despite these things, and maybe even better than I was before them. When twilight rolls around, and I realize I have one more night in the city with nothing to do, I decide to take a page out of the book of Wyatt and go explore on my own.