Page 17 of The Wrong Heart

Bree is an anomaly. Awoman. But it’s different with her—I’ve never really noticed her gender. I only see her heart.

I pull my chin from my chest when I catch a whiff of something girly and citrus. Something like sunshine. The new girl stumbles past me, cheeks stained pink and hair so light it resembles cotton fields. She’s careful not to trip over my outstretched legs as she finds a seat on the opposite side of Emo Chick, then slinks back like she’s hoping it’ll swallow her up.

Looks like we’ve got one thing in common.

Ms. Katherine settles back into her own chair, while the rest of the circus quiets down and we resume circle time. “Let’s welcome our newest survivor,” she says, fisting her journal between knobby fingers. “This is Miss March.”

“Melody,” the woman corrects, voice cracking slightly. “Just Melody.”

Melody.

Yeah, right—a melody she is not.

She is noise, discord.

A sour note.

They all are.

Everyone welcomes her with a warm hello, except for me, and somehow, my silence must be the loudest of all because she turns to me then, seeing me for the first time.

She’s all big green eyes and pale skin. Emerald and ivory. Her frame is petite and willowy, a sundress hanging loose off her modest curves, while a bandage adorns her wrist like a dismal focal point. My gaze shifts from the bandage to her bony collarbone, then skims back up.

She has that kind of face.

Like maybe she was happy once.

I pull away with a crude exhale, tipping my head against the seatback and closing my eyes, zoning out of this embarrassing spectacle. Bree means well, I know that, but I’m only here because she asked me to be here. I know these meetings won’t do jack shit—I’m confident I’ll walk out this door the exact same man I was when I walked in.

But she asked me.

She begged and pleaded with tears streaming down her freckled cheekbones: “Please, Parker. If not for you, then do it for me.I can’t lose you.”

So, I did.

I’ll do anything she asks me to because she’s the only person who’s ever had my back. She was the only one to give a shit about me, to pull me out of that black hole, and there’s no favor in the world that can compensate for one small act of compassion in the midst of brutality.

The starting points have transformed into sob stories now, and I heave out another jaded sigh when Robert starts rambling on about his shitty day at the car dealership, and how a customer was going to buy a car but didn’t, and now he feels worthless.

Go play in traffic, Robert.

Just when I don’t think it can get any worse, the woman to his right speaks up with her own tale of distress.

“He won’t talk to me,” she sniffles, nose red and blotchy, her fist coiled around a well-used piece of tissue paper. “I just don’t understand why he won’t talk to me. He sees me so upset, so hurt by his avoidance, and I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure what else to say to get him to hear me, to look at me, toseeme, and it’s just so painful that we can’t have a normal conversation because he won’t even talk to me—”

“Maybe because he can’t get a word in.”

I’m still slouched down in my chair, head tilted back with my eyes shut. The words just slipped through without warning, as they often do, because it’s easy to have no filter when you don’t give a shit. The silence is deafening, but that’s not what has me twisting in my seat, eyelids popping open.

It’s a laugh.

It’s a quick, genuine burst of laughter that seems to have been expelled as unintentionally as my own outburst.

The new girl.

She glances at me briefly before clearing her throat, then inching back into her seat, head ducking downward. She’s a contradictory mix of sunshine and sadness as she becomes engrossed with the dirty linoleum beneath her shoes.

I keep my eyes on her another minute, more curious than interested, before Ms. Katherine breaks the awkward lull with a light humming sound.

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