Page 27 of Those Heartbreak Scars

“Merde.” I sigh as I pick it up and put it back more gently and purposefully. We used to be friends.

He picked me up from school every day for a whole year though it was out of his way, to make sure those boys he found harassing me didn’t have another chance to get me alone.

He brought me soup and medicine when I caught mono my senior year. Spent an entire weekend playing Mario Kart and quizzing me for my Latin exam.

He checked in every week while I was working on my undergraduate degree, and we’d talk about everything from how stressful exams were to the meaning of the Voynich manuscript; a document in an unknown language from the fifteenth century that the best cryptographers haven’t been able to decipher.

That’s not something people know about. He put time and effort into being able to discuss it with me. He made it feel like I was important to him.

My harmless crush developed into something more because of that friendship. I didn’t mean for my affections to grow stronger and stronger, but how could they not? I’m almost certain his currently being an asshole comes from a good place too, though I don’t need him to be in my business, and I don’t appreciate it.

I take off my apron and grab a fresh one—no one needs to see that crumpled mess—then get back to work, staffing the coffee machine while Vicki takes the next order.

“Your new beau is a looker, isn’t he?” Vicki says when we have a break between customers. “Pretty good with those hips, I bet.”

She thrusts a couple times in my direction. “How do you have all these men falling all over you? That soccer player from the Cardinals. This American boy. What does a woman have to do to get some action like that? Sacrifice a goat?”

“He’s a friend,” I say. “That’s all.”

“Friends don’t beg forgiveness like he did. They also don’t fuck like that.” She taps a chipped pink nail against her chin. “Do they? If they do, then I think I need to make new friends because it’s been a while since anyone has stuck it to me. Or in me for that matter.”

“It’s nothing,” I say.

“If you say so.” She grins widely and then bustles toward the back. Stopping in the doorway she adds, “Oh. Your chap, the distinguished looking one with the glasses and the beard. He was in, asking about you.”

I grow sickeningly overheated from my toes to the roots of my hair. I start to tap, counting up and down my fingertips over and over. It’s been weeks since the last time he came in. I figured he’d gone back to his wife or moved on by now. I still need to unenroll from school, but I’ve been avoiding it. And him. “Did he… leave a message?”

“Said he’d be by again another time.” She looks suspicious. “Is he bothering you?”

I hate that Gray has a point about my taste in men. Taste that includes him too. So much so my heart leaps every time he touches me, despite the fact that he is being an asshole.

“Nothing that I can’t handle.”

Chapter Eleven

America

I’m exhausted and my feet ache. There were a couple of boys, late teens, on the train who kept leering at me and then joking to each other about all the dirty things they’d like to do to my body.

Now I’m grumpy too.

Not that it’s anything I haven’t heard before. For as long as I can remember I’ve put up with looks and snide comments about my appearance. In my teen years a lot of those comments became sexual in nature. I developed earlier than other girls, before boys my age learned any kind of tact.

I’m very fuckable. That’s one I overhear a lot.

Women like to sneer and suggest that I should put my boobs away. Like maybe if I just hide them I wouldn’t get so much male attention. But how much clothing must I wear to get the coverage they desire?

They don’t understand that I don’t want the catcalls. Or the ‘you look like Zendaya only not as hot’ comments that are often followed by… ‘If I squint just right while I fuck her, I could pretend it really was her, just with bigger tits.’

Perhaps that’s why my taste in men is so shitty. I just want someone who sees me for who I really am. Sees past my breasts, and my ass, and my passing resemblance to a gorgeous actress.

Gray was the first guy to do that who wasn’t a relative.

I hold my umbrella in one hand, my purse and the bags with the curry and gin in the other, as I hop puddles in my hurry to get home.

My phone rings as I pass the garden gate. It’s a tiny courtyard that we share with our neighbors. Mrs. Coleman grows tomatoes out here. And Mr. Banjo, the friendly tuxedo cat that lives three doors down can often be found sunning himself on the small workbench.

I manage to juggle my phone out of my pocket and cradle it between my shoulder and ear without dropping anything or skewing the umbrella. “Hey.”

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