Page 45 of Story Of My Heart

She opens her mouth to respond, but the answer comes to me before she gets the chance to speak.

“Boundaries. I get it.”

We both hover around the door, neither of us quite sure what to do with ourselves.

“First of all, I’d like the private elevator disconnected. It’s no longer needed. Secondly, what do you want me to work on this morning?” Piper holds her bag against her chest, blocking herself off from me. She runs her tongue along her teeth, holding her head high and looking off into the apartment behind me, keeping her eyes anywhere but my face.

“Is this how it’s going to be?” The words escape me in a whisper, half-choked, as I grapple with the icy barrier she’s erected between us, every cell of my body permeated with fear. I can handle her anger. This is something else entirely.

The air feels thinner, and a cold dread settles in my stomach. Piper’s posture, the deliberate distancing—it’s like a door slamming shut, echoing through the hollow space where warmth used to live. I shuffle awkwardly, my feet rooted to the spot, my heart sinking with the realization of her withdrawal. The sudden starkness of her professional facade, the absence of her usual warmth, cuts deeper than I expected. It feels like I’m watching the last embers of her affection cool into indifference. My heart squeezes as I realize she’s missing the spark that used to light up her eyes whenever she saw me.

Suddenly, I’m the odd man out in my own life story, and Piper’s distant look tells me I’m not getting back in anytime soon. How did we drop from sneaky, shared smiles to this icy standoff? It’s a slap in the face, a wake-up call I can’t ignore. Yeah, I screwed up—big time. It was all me. Every time she looks away, it’s like she’s shutting a door, and part of me is desperate to knock, to shout through the cracks with an apology, anything to fix this. But the Piper in front of me feels like a mirage now, and here I am, tasting the sharp sting of a world where I’m more ghost than guest.

“This is how it has to be,” she replies, squaring her shoulders. “How it always should have been.” This is even worse than if she hadn’t shown up at all. Even though she’s in the room with me, she’s never felt further away. Every second I spend with her makes me regret last week even more. I can’t do this. More than that, neither can she.

“Okay then…” I sigh, leaning against the arm of the sofa. I don’t want to let her go, but I’d rather have no Piper at all than a Piper who dreads every minute she spends with me. “I need a couple of weeks to go through the data and process everything.”

She stares at me, and I watch as she struggles to work through what I’ve just said. “What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

I flick my wrist. “You get two weeks paid vacation. Effective immediately.”

Piper starts to speak, then thinks better of it, turning on her heels and heading right back out the door. As it closes behind her, I can’t help but feel that I’ve made a mistake. I want to be with her, but I’ve pushed her away. I want her to be happy, and I want her to be with me, but I’m not sure those two concepts go together. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to give her what she wants.

It doesn’t matter if I love her, and I do. I’m not good enough for her. I’m not the man who’s capable of making her happy. My brain doesn’t work the same way a neurotypical person’s does. I’m defective. Knowing that, it would be reckless to make a declaration and then not be able to follow through.

Of course, the one person I would ask for advice is the one that I just sent packing. Funny how these things work out. I’m like a thirsty man floating on the ocean. There’s water all around me, but drinking it will only make things worse.

I wasn’t lying when I said I needed more time with the data. There’s a mountain of work ahead of me, none of which can be done until I untangle and sift through the teeming mass of information we collected throughout our beta test. It’s going to be a long road, and it isn’t a journey I’m ready to embark on while Piper has me so emotionally off-kilter. If I can’t turn to Piper, I can turn to the next best thing.

I never in a million years would’ve thought I’d be making the trip twice in a decade, let alone a month, but I need to go home, a place I’m surprised isn’t in this penthouse but is instead in the town I’ve been running from my whole life. To cross the finish line, you need to go back to the starting gate. Not knowing how long I’ll be gone or what my intentions are beyond simply not wanting to be here, I pack a haphazard bag, shoving in fistfuls of clothes, my laptop, and my notebook. Before I can think twice, I’m back out on the road, headed right back where I came from.

When I arrived at the lodge last week, I was able to walk in with my head held high, feeling like I owned the place. On the one hand, I literally owned the place, and on the other, I had the most wonderful, intelligent, beautiful woman on my arm, backing my every move. Now, I’m pulling up with my tail between my legs, shuffling up the front steps and through the door to the main lodge with my duffle bag slung over my shoulder, looking and feeling for all the world like I’d just been kicked out of my house.

“Back so soon?” Ledger calls to me from the front desk, that stupid bird echoing his words. “Guess the place grew on you. Also, you can take the five to eleven shift?”

“Tate takes a shit. Take takes a shit,” Captain Obvious squawks, hopping around on his perch. “Taking a shit from five to eleven, five to eleven! IBS, IBS, IBS!”

A little boy grabbing a Capri Sun from the snack bar stares at me. “Gross, dude!”

I swallow my annoyance, not wanting to explode on my brother who hasn’t done anything wrong other than exist too cheerfully for my tastes today.

“Where’s Fallon?” I grumble. Ledger nods behind me with his chin, and I hear her voice coming from the other side of the lobby, where there’s a handful of guests gathered around the fireplace in front of her. I stride over toward her, nearly knocking over a small child carrying a hot chocolate as he crosses the lobby in front of me.

“Fallon.” I saddle up next to her, lowering my voice so the other guests can’t hear me. “I feel wretched. I need you.”

“I’m running a game right now,” she hisses through a broad smile plastered on her face. “We can talk after.”

“It has to be now.” Realizing that the dozen or so guests sitting in front of us are starting to stare, I join my sister in sticking a taught grin on my face. I even offer a polite wave to our audience. My name may not be on the door, but their bottom line is directly tied to my net worth.

My sister puts her pointer finger up. “Listen, bossy bro, you heard me. After.”

She isn’t going to budge. If anyone in this family approaches my level of bullheadedness, it’s my sister. Being the only girl in a house full of boys will do that to you. I give the assembled group a once over, surveying the two teams. Seated on the left is a group of three older couples, the sort who seem to either own an RV or go on a lot of cruises. To their right is a tired looking mom, with four boys ranging in age from ‘rolling around on the floor with a toy truck in his mouth’ to ‘old enough to not want to be here, probably texting his girlfriend back home in Iowa.’ After a moment’s consideration, I slide to the right, taking a seat on the sofa next to the boys’ mother, who barely registers my presence, too invested in her massive cup of coffee.

I’m already disturbingly good at trivia and other feats of mental strength. When I was a kid, the entire family stopped watching Jeopardy after dinner because I was just too insufferable. I sucked the fun right out of it according to my dad. I already expected to be able to blow through the rest of Fallon’s questions, but to my pleasant surprise, all of them are about Sunset Lake. Every single bit of information was something I’ve absorbed over the years, either from a fourth grade history class or a flier in the lobby of the lodge. The answers come out of my mouth as quickly as Fallon can pose the questions, and while my team is happy that the whole thing is coming to a close, I can feel the eyes of the other team starting to bore into the back of my skull.

In fear of getting jumped later and slung into the back of a Winnebago with a bag over my head, I decide to clam up, whispering the answers to the sullen teenager sitting next to me, letting him take the glory and get his mom off his back for the afternoon.

The score isn’t even close, and by the time Fallon is out of cards, she looks like she’s going to throw me headfirst into the fireplace. I think the only thing stopping her is the audience of guests, and the bad PR that fratricide would bring to the resort.

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