Page 45 of Salvaged Heart
We chatted a little longer, and I took her on a FaceTime tour of the house and showed her all the various upgrades that had been made. She ooed and ahhed over the changes, praising me for the job I’d done. It felt good to hear her compliment me. So often in our relationship, I’d felt not good enough in comparison to her.
“You’ve done an amazing job, Beck. You should be incredibly proud.”
“I am,” I answered, walking her to the back deck to show her the window planters. I promised to send her pictures of the repaired and freshly painted siding in the morning. It was the only job in the entire house Anders and I hadn’t done ourselves. Kara recommended a friend of a friend who was starting his own siding business and would give us a good deal if we were willing to let him post the before and after pictures on his social media. He had done an incredible job.
“Anders has been a great help, too. He seems to be enjoying the work. I couldn’t have completed half of this without his eye for design.”
Her face dropped at the mention of his name. I hated she always had this reaction when I brought him up in conversation. I wanted to tell her what a fantastic guy he was and how she should take the time to get to know him again now so many years had passed. How much that would mean to him. But I knew it would be disregarded. Laurel had made up her mind about Anders a long time ago, and if there was one thing I knew about Laurel Mitchell, it was that once she'd decided something, it might as well be gospel.
I wouldn’t give up that easily, but today was not the day to wage that battle. Our relationship, while mutually over romantically, still felt raw and new. One wrong step, one push too far, and the whole thing could come crashing down before it ever got started. It amused me how similar Laurel and her brother were in that regard.
“Will you be honest with me about something?” She was looking down again, fussing with something in her lap.
“Of course.”
“You wanting to break up with me, it didn’t have anything to do with Anders, right?”
My heart skipped a beat. Had I been that transparent? Could she have caught on to what had transpired between us?
“Huh?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Did he say something about me that influenced your decision?”
She was always so quick to presume he was running his mouth about her. But I couldn’t remember a single instance where he'd spoken ill of her. Something had happened between them years ago, the details of which I still didn’t know, and the years since they'd been completely out of contact, but that didn’t explain why her first reaction was always to think he was bad-mouthing her. I imagined Laurel’s father and stepmother probably had something to do with that.
“No, Laurel. I told you months ago. Anders wants to have a relationship with you. You need to give him a chance.”
She considered my words for a moment before glancing over her shoulder to have a silent conversation with her seemingly empty apartment.
“That’s my roommate. I got to go.”
Without waiting for me to say goodbye or point out she didn’t have a roommate, she hung up with a click.
I locked up and made my way back upstairs to Anders’ room. Not that we could call it just his anymore. I hadn’t spent more than a few minutes at a time in the third-floor room I’d been originally camped out in since the night I found Anders’ drugs. The only time I went up there was to check the stash I'd hidden, was undisturbed, and even those trips were becoming less frequent. Anders seemed fully committed to his recovery. Even over the last few days, which had been incredibly difficult, he'd held strong.
I’m going to keep getting these for him. One for every year I got to live, and he didn’t.
He was doing this for Jonah, and he would succeed for him, too.
I pulled back the top sheet and slipped under. The summer was so warm we hardly ever slept with anything else. Plus, Anders, who was usually cooler in the day, seemed to turn into a radiator the second he fell asleep. He had his back to me now, so I scooted up to him, tucking my front to every inch of his back. Our few inches of height difference made him the perfect little spoon, and I clung to him tightly.
“How’d it go with Laurel?” His voice was scratchy from the outpouring of emotions earlier.
“Were you eavesdropping?”
“I was deducing. You took your phone. Who else would you be calling?”
“She broke up with me.”
“No shit.”
I laughed into his neck, placing gentle kisses against his nape. “Is this okay?” I whispered, running my hand around his chest to hold him tightly.
“It’s perfect.”
22
ANDERS
