Page 50 of His Heart

“Only you, man,” he said. “What was she like?”

“Beautiful,” I said before I could stop myself.

Charlie raised his eyebrows. “Um, okay. What’s that about?”

“Never mind,” I said. God, where had that come from? But she hadn’t just been beautiful. She’d been haunting. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since we’d met. “That doesn’t matter. She wasn’t sure about me, but I wound up buying her a cup of coffee and talking to her for a while.”

“Wow,” he said. “How did that go?”

“Okay, I think. She didn’t stay long. But I gave her my number before she left.”

“Dude,” Charlie said. “You can’t hit on her. That’s just… really wrong.”

“Fuck off, I wasn’t hitting on her,” I said.

Charlie raised his eyebrows at me in disbelief. The waitress brought our dinners and we paused while she set our plates in front of us.

“Then why did you give her your number?” he asked when the waitress had left. “That sounds like hitting on her to me.”

“It just seemed like the right thing to do,” I said. “In case she ever needs anything, I guess.”

He picked up his fork and shook his head. “Sure. It had nothing to do with the fact that she’s cute.”

“No, it didn’t,” I said. “And I never said anything about her being cute.”

“Right, you said beautiful. That’s completely different.”

I cut into my chicken and took a bite. “That’s not why. It was the look in her eyes—her expression.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “What did she look like?”

“Like she’s broken,” I said. “I know that look. It’s how I looked before the transplant, when I’d given up.”

Charlie paused and nodded. He understood. He was one of the few people who’d seen me in those last days before the surgery. I had given up. I’d been waiting for a death that wouldn’t come fast enough. Brooke had looked as if she were waiting for the same thing.

I’d hated seeing her that way. It was strange, because I didn’t know her. I didn’t remember her smile, or what she’d sounded like when she’d been happy. But the deadness in her eyes had been gut-wrenching.

My phone rang and I pulled it out of my pocket to glance at the screen. I didn’t recognize the number. “That’s weird.”

Charlie just shrugged and took another bite.

I swiped to answer. “Hey, this is Seb.”

A woman’s voice. “Um…”

I waited a second, but she didn’t say anything else. “Hello?”

More silence. I figured it was a wrong number and was about to hang up when she spoke again, her voice halting.

“Seb… Sebastian?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Oh god, I’m sorry.”

“Brooke?” I asked. Charlie’s eyebrows lifted. The other end of the line went quiet again, but noise in the background told me the call was still connected. “Brooke, is that you?”

“Yes.”

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