Page 37 of Salvaged Heart
I had no regrets that I had been so focused on getting Anders sober that I’d been too busy to answer her calls. I didn’t even feel remorse about the feelings that stirred in my chest when I thought about him or that his lips had been on me just a few minutes ago, and I had been completely lost in him. No, the guilt was that I had to keep all of it inside, like some dirty, shameful secret, when every part of my body wanted to scream from the rooftop how incredibly proud I was of him for getting sober. For all the demons he’d taken down over the last few weeks and how alive he felt now. How the man he had transformed into over the previous few weeks took my breath away. But sharing those things with her would mean confessing how bad things had been for Anders when we arrived at Arbor Ct, and I could already imagine all the nasty comments Laurel would have to say about the matter.
But I didn’t want him to be my secret.
So, I kept it all pushed down and focused on a half-truth instead. “We’ve just been busy. Things are really starting to come together here.”
“That’s part of the reason for my call. I thought I could drive over there this weekend?”
“No.” The word barreled out of me, harsh and finite, before I could catch it.
The tone had not been lost on her. “No?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. This weekend is just going to be a busy one.” I tried to sound as inconvenienced as possible. “All the cabinets were delivered a few days ago, and I’m anxious to start the installation.”
She sighed a little too dramatically. “And I couldn’t help with that?”
“I wouldn’t ask that of you. It’s hard labor,” I swallowed, the words feeling like acid on my tongue. “If you were here, we both know I wouldn’t get anything done.”
It said a lot about how shit of a person I was that the thought of spending a weekend in bed with my girlfriend turned my stomach to lead, but not as much as the same thoughts about her brother sending my heart soaring in a wave of butterflies.
What in the world had I gotten myself into?
“You know, Beck.” She was pissed now. I could practically hear her displeasure rolling down the phone. “I’m starting to think you care more about this renovation than you do me.”
“That’s not true, it’s just…” The words died on my tongue. Laurel would never understand. Everything I was feeling deviated from a path she'd spent years meticulously planning for us, and I had already thrown enough of a wrench in it with the loss of my baseball career. “Never mind, you’ll think it’s stupid.”
“Why don’t you try me?”
I could think of a million reasons why opening up about this to her would be a bad idea, the main one being that she wouldn’t understand and the most crushing one being that she wouldn’t support me. But I knew Laurel better than I knew anyone, and because of that, I also knew she wouldn’t let this go until I told her, so I opened my mouth anyway.
“The project is good for me. I felt so lost with what to do next when we came here this summer, but… I’m good at this. Working with my hands, fixing things, breathing life back into this old place —it’s good for the soul. I am starting to find myself again, what I want to do with my life, and…”
“Beck, haven’t we talked about this?”
Yeah, we had, probably a hundred different times already.
“You could do so much more with your life than run a construction business like your Dad. Don’t you want that for yourself? You had big dreams once. I know the MLB didn’t workout, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t coach or go back to school and get a master’s in something a little more focused.”
That thought was almost comical. “Get a master’s? Laurel, I barely passed my undergrad.”
“Yeah, but that’s because you were too distracted by baseball to commit fully. If you put your head down and worked hard, you could get an MBA in two years, and then a whole bunch of doors would be open to you. I’m going to be in school for another four years anyway. You might as well do something productive with that time.”
“But I don’t want that.” I bristled. Leave it to Laurel to think following dreams I had made for myself wasn’t productive. Sometimes, I wondered if she even knew me anymore or if the version of Beck she was dating was one she had created in her head.
“Want what? A better life than your parents?”
“My parents don’t have a bad life, Laurel. My parents are happy, have a loving marriage, and both work jobs that fulfill them.” Why would I want a life any better than that?
“You don’t honestly believe that, do you?”
“Yeah, I do. Because it’s true.”
“God, Beck, you can be so dense. What happened to us creating a future together?”
“I… that’s still…” However, the words to convince her that was still my intention caught on my tongue. Less than an hour ago, I’d had someone else pinned under me, my fingers tangled with his, lips desperate to consume every part of him. How could I sit here trying to convince her that I was still working towards the same future she was when I didn’t even know if that was the truth anymore?
She cleared her throat, a clear indicator that this conversation was over. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’m sorry this wasn’tsupposed to turn into a whole thing. I just wanted to catch up with you on my lunch break.”
“Okay.”
