Page 22 of The Wrong Heart

Re: Serendipity

Magnolia,

I hate to burst your bubble, but there’s no such thing as perfect timing.

Perfection is an illusion, as is time.

Manmade. A synthetic coping mechanism.

I don’t like to bet on fate or circumstance. I bet on experience. Reality. Things that are tangible and proven.

That’s probably why I’m forever wilting.

You say I wrote you back at the perfect time, but maybe you were just searching for something to cling to in that moment—a reason to make a comeback.

That’s not fate or aligning stars. That’s all you.

Give yourself some credit.

Zephyr

I click “send,” then shut down my computer and head to bed.

—SIX—

Ifiddle with the bandageencasing my wrist, picking at the sticky adhesive. It’s been two weeks since my brush with rock-bottom, and while the wound has been healing appropriately, the evidence of my crime is still glaring.

A grisly, jagged branding of my pain. My ghosts are now corporeal, carved into my flesh, visible to the naked eye. I can’t hide them anymore.

And I don’t have to hide them here, in this white room, with faces that are unfamiliar, yet so kindred. Fellow companions in pain. My eyes float around the circle, making up stories for each troubled soul. Loss, break-ups, mental ailments, death. Their sagas are written all over their faces, scribbled into their fine lines and shadows. Glowing in their hollow eyes.

The eyes are always the mecca for grief.

Except… it’s different with him—the dark stranger with hidden tales I can’t seem to read. He’s illegible. He doesn’t wear his pain like the others, and that fascinates me somehow. I want to learn how he did it, where he studied, what tools he used to perfect such a thing.

Parker.I think that was his name.

I can’t help but glance over at him, surprised to see him in the same seat, one chair over, after his dramatic exit the week before. He clearly finds no healing between these four walls, so what keeps him coming back?

Raindrops cling to inky hair, one going rogue and gliding down the side of his neck—a testament to the storm raging outside the tall window, rainfall pelting the roof above our heads. I zone in on that lone droplet as it makes a languid journey to his shirt collar, collapsing into nothing, like it never even existed.

Poof.

While I’m spaced out, envious of a raindrop, the mysterious man looks up, feeling my attention pinned on him. Jade eyes assess me in a slow pull from my scuffed ballet flats to my curious stare, almost violent in their scrutiny.

If he’s undressing me, it’s not my clothes he’s peeling off. It’s everything else.

A hard lump clinches my throat, and I jerk away until my gaze is focused on the sterile wall across from me. A safer canvas. A reprieve.

But I still sense his perusal prickling my skin, making me feel itchy and unnerved. He’s digging and digging, hollowing me out, pulling all my buried pieces to the surface. He’s a human excavator.

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