Page 83 of Heart Strings
A lady with an overflowing cart cuts me off and the cake slips from my grasp, the plastic clamshell packaging popping open on the floor and sending it face down onto the grocery store tile.
I stare down at the ruined dessert. I just wanted to feel sorry for myself for a few minutes, in the company of a cake, but I can’t even do that.
“I’m so sorry!” the woman says, but it’s too late. My chin starts to wobble right there in the checkout line next to the Cadbury. “Let me find someone who works here to clean this up—”
Mortified, she runs off and abandons her cart at the end of the line.
It’s all too much: Aidan with that beautiful woman, my mom berating me for being dumb enough to date him in the first place, my bad blood test results, the dropped cake. My breath starts to come faster and my eyes fill. I’m spiraling. I need Lark, but she’s on her honeymoon.
“Lo?”
Saoirse walks up, the handle of a basket tucked into the crook of her elbow. She cringes at the splatted cake at my feet, then takes a long look at me.
I take a shuddering breath to try to keep it together. “Hey.”
“Are you okay?”
For the first time in weeks, I tell someone the unvarnished truth. I don’t have to protect Saoirse’s feelings or manage my expectations or worry about upholding a reputation. “No. I’m pretty awful at the moment, thanks for asking.”
“Is it…Aidan?” she asks cautiously.
My chin drops to my chest. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
Saoirse steps out of line and motions for me to follow her down an aisle. “Forget the cake. Do you mind drinking the garbage wine that comes out of a box?”
Saoirse slides myphone back across my coffee table. On the screen are Aidan and Emma Kinnane. “Maybe Emma didn’t even mean for her post to start rumors, you know? She’s mentioned Aidan’s music in an interview before. That’s probably what gave his team the PR idea in the first place.”
“I believe him when he says he didn’t agree to a PR stunt,” I tell her. “I don’t think he’d disregard my feelings like that. It still sucks, though. My mom will be forever convinced he’s a cheater. She’s been calling me a delusional fangirl all day.”
“Oof, parents are tough.”
“I’ll drink to that.” I take a swig and grimace at the robust notes of nail polish remover and cough syrup. My cheeks are starting to numb, but my emotions are still vivid.
“I’ll tell you one thing: A guy has never said the kind of things to me that Aidan has sung about you.” Saoirse sips her wine. “The last one I went out with used to come into the flower shop every week and buy a bouquet. He said they were for his mam. After four dates, I ran into him and his girlfriend at a coffee shop. With their infant twins. Turns out that all our dates were during nights she’d stayed with them in the NICU.”
“If I were you, I’d rip him in half with my bare hands. Right in front of his babies.”
“You terrify me,” Saoirse says, laughing. “But I can’t say I didn’t want to. I tracked her down and sent her proof of hischeating that night. A couple months later, she emailed me an update that she’d left him and took the house and the dog.”
She’s strikingly beautiful, with a warm heart. It’s a shame that she can’t seem to find anyone worthwhile.
“Can I tell you something?” I ask, separating the purples out of a handful of Skittles. I pile them up on the coffee table. We’ve chewed through two bags already. Rather, I have and she’s grabbed a few discarded currant-flavored ones. “I don’t know if you know this, but I had leukemia in high school.”
“I remember.”
“I’ve been NED—no evidence of active disease—for a long time, but you still have to get a checkup every year. This last one was…scary.”
She scoots closer. “It’s back?”
“Maybe. Probably. I have a biopsy tomorrow afternoon to confirm.”
“Will Aidan be back in time?”
I shake my head. “It’s okay. It might take a few days to get my results back anyway.”
Saoirse’s face hardens. “He didn’t want to be here for you?”
