The Anatomical Shape of a Heart (17 page)

I sat down on the cushionless bench. She wasn't wrong. A girl I'd met earlier sat down next to me, untucking a long, dark brown ponytail from the back of a sweater she was pulling on. “It's getting chilly. Someone needs to turn on the heat lamps.”

I glanced to where she was pointing and spotted a couple of standing lamps that looked like the ones on restaurant patios, just nicer.

“Lala,” she said when it was clear I didn't remember her name.

“Sorry,” I replied.

“No worries. I wouldn't remember them all, either.”

But I did remember her story: a girl originally from Brazil who went to school with Jack. She was willowy, pretty, and friendly, and she was dating one of the Abercrombie & Fitch blonds. She lifted her plastic cup of alcoholic fruitiness.

“No, thanks,” I said, waving it away.

“Hunter tried to get a mini keg from his brother, but no go. We did, however, score two bottles of Fernet. He's running to the store to get ginger ale.”

I had no idea what Fernet was.

“Tastes like old-timey medicine,” Sierra said, making a face. “You have to chase it with ginger ale, or it'll come right back up. All the local bartenders drink it.”

Whoop-de-freaking-do. Heath was the drinker in my family, and I'd hit my once-a-year vomit limit that first day at the anatomy lab, so I'd be passing, thank you.

“How long have you and Jack been dating?” Lala asked.

I didn't know how to answer that question. Sure, he'd vandalized a museum for my birthday, but dating? Dates were things you planned. You asked someone out. You didn't just say, “Hey, it's sunny and you're standing here, so let's go to the park.” But even if I knew in my heart there was something more between Jack and me, it wasn't definable—not in the way this girl was asking. So I answered, “We're just friends.”

“That's not what I heard,” Sierra said. “Andy told me Jackson's in luuurve.”

My cheeks warmed. Had Jack told Andy that, or had Andy just said it? You couldn't be in love with someone you'd never even kissed … could you?

“Um, I don't know about that,” I said. “But you guys dated?”

Sierra pointed at herself. “Me and Jack? Is that what he said?”

“No, that's what
you
said at the tea lounge.”

“You told her about
that
?” Lala said.

Sierra gave us both a dismissive wave. “You make it sound like we banged each other's brains out. Jackson was going through a rough time, and I provided some cheer.”

“You can keep your cheer away from Hunter,” Lala warned.

I truly did not know what to say to any of this.

The last of the three other girls at the party appeared from nowhere and plopped down in the middle of Sierra's island of cushions. “I'm not finished, Nicole,” Sierra complained.

“Work around me. I'm too buzzed to stand.” Nicole threw her arms back and stretched like a cat, long auburn hair fanning around her head like a pinwheel. She had a natural, girl-next-door kind of vibe, and I would've pegged Nicole for one of Jack's Zen friends, but he'd said she went to school with him. “Who are you guys talking about?”

Lala slurped her drink. “Sierra's bragging about giving Jack a blow job in front of his new girlfriend.”

Wait—what?
This
was her idea of “cheer”? All my insides twisted into knots.

“Ugh, Sierra. Shut the hell up,” Nicole said, closing her eyes.

“I wasn't bragging,” Sierra argued. “But while we're on the subject, lemme just say, damn. That boy is packing,
am I right
?”

She was seriously saying this to me? “Um, we're just friends,” I repeated.

“Really? I'm sorry. You mean, you guys haven't—”

“Jesus, Sierra,” Nicole said. “No one wants to hear about your stupid erotic adventures with the entire population of San Francisco. Don't listen to her—” Nicole looked up at me from the cushions, her face upside down. “What's your name again?”

“Beatrix.”

“Don't listen to her, Beatrix. Her grandmother was a Haight hippie, and she thinks this gives her some kind of free-love club card.”

“At least I'm not all hung up on sex,” Sierra argued. “We're all just bodies. It's not a big deal. And if you want my opinion, I think it's weirder he's going around telling everyone he's tripping over someone he's just
friends
with,” she said.

Um … what?

Nicole shooed her away. “Why don't you go bounce on Andy and leave us the hell alone.”

“Whatever. This is why I don't hang out with girls anymore. You're all bitches.” Sierra threw down a cushion and stomped away.

Nicole groaned. “Oh my god, she drives me nuts.”

“Give her a break. She's had a bad home life,” Lala said, gesturing with her cup. “Her mom kicked her out of the house for, like, three months. Can't you see how screwed up she is? It's sad.”

Nicole propped herself up on one elbow and watched Sierra merrily jumping on Andy's back. “I'll play a tiny violin for her as long as she keeps flashing her tits at every guy I'm interested in.”

“It takes two to tango,” Lala said before glancing at me. “Don't worry about Sierra. Jack's a good guy. He's just a little screwed up, thanks to Jillian.”

My body tensed. Jillian must be the sister in Europe. Was digging up firsthand gossip from his friends any better than snooping around for secondhand info about Jack's family online? I didn't know, but I was too curious to let it pass, so I feigned innocence and said, “Who's Jillian?”

Nicole and Lala glanced at each other. “Jillian is the Vincent family's dirty little secret,” Lala said.

I didn't have time to ask for clarification before Nicole elaborated.

“Wouldn't we all be a little screwed up if we'd been through what he has? I sure as hell would. So, big deal, he's never had a steady girlfriend.” She raised her chin at me. “I think you're lucky, being his first. Just look at him. He's gorgeous and funny, and he's got that cool retro-rockabilly thing going on. And he's just plain sweet.”

“And
those eyes
,” Lala said.

“So unfair,” Nicole agreed. “Who cares if he's a man-whore. I mean
was
, not present tense. Sorry, Beatrix.”

Lala laughed. “He's not a whore, Nicole. Where'd ya hear that?”

“Well, Sierra, for one.”

Lala shook her head. “Sierra never went all the way with him. That's what I was saying about Jillian—she really screwed him up. Sierra said Andy told her Jack's a—”

A what? A WHAT?

Part of me knew that listening to all this wasn't as bad as reading gossip about Jack's family online; it was way,
way
worse. So why wasn't I getting up and walking away?

Lala's ice sloshed against the rim of the plastic cup. Nicole sank lower into the cushions. I glanced up to see what they were staring at and spotted Jack at the edge of the fireplace nook. He'd heard. I could tell by the anguished look on his face. And at that moment, I wanted to die.

18

The girls scattered like dandelion seeds, disappearing into the crowd that was now gathering around Hunter, who had apparently lived up to his name and successfully hunted down ginger ale.

“They're just drunk,” I assured Jack when everyone was out of earshot. I wanted to tell him that none of it mattered to me, all the things they were saying that I only half understood. I felt guilty for listening to all of it. Doubly guilty that he'd overhead—exactly how much, I didn't know.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked in a low voice.

“No,” I answered over the thickness in my throat. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No!” Then more softly, “No.”

Loud laughter billowed from the drink-mixing table. Jack glanced back at them. “Let's…” He scratched the back of his neck. “Let's talk. Not here.”

I followed him over the smallest deck and into the guesthouse. As he closed the door, muffling the drunken laughter outside, I looked around. It wasn't much bigger than my dining room, but he had room for a double bed and a sofa at the foot of it that sat in front of a TV screen and several game consoles. Everything was tidy. His bed was made. (Mine wasn't.) A shelf held a small green ceramic Buddha and a few other trinkets—an altar of sorts—and I recognized the meditation cushions from the Zen bookstore. Being here felt as if I'd opened a door on the side of Jack's head that led into his brain.

Looking around, I noticed a door to a bathroom, next to which several odd portraits hung on the wall. They looked almost childish and were brightly colored. One of them was an alien woman. “Your work?” I asked.

He shook his head but didn't say anything else, so I continued my surveying, passing by a desk with an expensive computer and stopping at his drafting table, where a built-in shelf on the wall above it held a small fish tank. Beneath the white glow of its hood lamp, a single intensely blue betta fish with lacy fins rippled through a miniature town of tiki huts sitting among a forest of live aquatic plants. A school of tiny gray fish was the betta's only company.

“He looks a little like your tattoo,” I said.

“Mmm.”

Well. He was certainly in a black mood. Couldn't say I blamed him. I wanted to ask him about everything—his sister, Sierra, what the girls outside were all gossiping about. But I didn't know where to start.

My gaze slid over sketches pinned to an oversized corkboard. Alphabets. Dozens of them. All drawn by hand with pen and ink and markers, the occasional telltale pencil lines showing behind some of the letters. “You did these? They're incredible.”

“Thanks.”

“Is this a page from your comic?” It looked like a storyboard, illustrated with what I assumed were Andy's drawings and Jack's lettering. The hero seemed to be some sort of martial arts expert slash mechanic. “What's the story about?”

“I'm a virgin.”

I froze. “Excuse me?”

“What they were saying is true. I am.”

“Oh.” How in the world was I supposed to respond? High five? “So, blow jobs don't count, then, I suppose?”

He closed his eyes. “That was one time and, no, I don't think it counts.”

I disagreed, but then, I wasn't a blow job expert.

He sighed heavily. “And, no, I haven't really had a girlfriend. A couple of girls came and went before the incident.” The break-in? Or his sister being shipped off to Europe? I wanted to ask for details, but he kept talking. “There was one other girl. I guess we started seeing each other around Christmas. She's the one I sort of mentioned to you in the park. Pretty early on, she found out about my family's so-called dirty little secret, as Lala put it, and got freaked out.”

“And Sierra,” I reminded him.

“Sierra was a mistake.”

“Not to hear her talk about it,” I said, toying with a comic inking pen on his desk.

“I'm not saying it wasn't fun—”

I glanced up at his face.

“Wrong word,” he muttered. “And it was the absolute wrong person.”

“Oh.” But what I meant was “good.”

After a long moment, he said, “It's not like I'm saving myself or anything.”

“It's not a Zen thing?”

“No. The only rule about sex is not to misuse it, which basically means that you shouldn't do something that will harm yourself or someone else—like, literally, of course, but emotionally, too. It's pretty broad, and you're supposed to figure out what works for you. But that doesn't mean … it's not because—”

“Look, you don't have to explain.”

“I just don't want you to look at me like you did out there.”

“Like how?”

“Like you pitied me.”

I stared at his inked alphabets for a long moment, not knowing what to say. It's not like I cared one way or the other about his experience or lack thereof, and he could've just lied and I never would've have guessed differently; he certainly
seemed
much more experienced than I was. But he didn't lie. He told me the truth, and I had to think it took a lot of guts for him to admit it, which made me like him even more. It also made me want to be up-front in return. “I'm not, you know—a virgin, I mean. Is that weird for you?”

“How many?” he asked in a low voice.

“Four.”

“Four guys?”

“Four
times
! One guy. Well, one and one-half guys, if you count Lauren's anti-prom party, but we didn't actually, uh, you know, and”—I shook my head, secretly wishing lightning would strike me down—“it really wasn't anything.” Definitely not a blow job, but I didn't say that.

“Oh.” He looked greatly relieved.

“Would it have been an issue if it was four guys?” After all, I'd known plenty of guys our age who'd slept with twice as many girls. Double standards were the worst.

“Intimidating, maybe. But, no, it wouldn't matter. Were things serious? With the one guy—not the half guy,” he clarified, one side of his mouth quirking up.

“With Howard Hooper? God, no. I didn't even like him toward the end. He was kind of an ass. And the sex was disappointing, if you want to know the truth. At least, it was for me. He seemed to enjoy it, and that really pissed me off.” Talking too much again. What was wrong with me? Was I trying to out-honest him with the embarrassing confessions? “Anyway, I overheard him calling Heath a fag, which was a deal breaker.”

“I hate this Howard Hooper already.”

I laughed a little. Things got quiet again.

“I'm not screwed up,” he insisted.

“I've never thought that.”

More silence.

“I'm not a monk, either,” he said. “And I don't just want to be friends with you.”