The Heart Of It

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real

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Dear Reader

The Heart of It was originally published in the SUMMER RAIN Anthology that came out in June 2014. All the proceeds from that anthology (and its companion piece WINTER RAIN) go directly to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network). The anthology is filled with amazing stories by a group of extremely talented authors across all kinds of genres and I was absolutely humbled to be a part of it. If you enjoy this short, please consider purchasing the anthology in support of an amazing cause.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23133038-summer-rain?from_search=true&search_version=service

My gratitude goes out to Jessica Lewis at Author’s Lifesaver – who is in fact a lifesaver. And Amber at Book Beautiful who does such amazing covers. Sarah Frantz who edited this story with such care and Audra North who was the brain and beating heart behind it all. Thank you.

Gabe seems outwardly successful and content, but inwardly, he struggles to banish the lingering demons of his childhood. Elena is a survivor herself and knows that the smart move is to walk away from Gabe. But his pain and his hope are too compelling to resist.

Are these two wounded people brave enough to find love together?

Dear Reader,

What a privilege it has been to be a part of this anthology with so many great authors in support of RAINN.

I wanted to explore the difference between what we are able to pin down and intellectualize, and what can only be felt and experienced, so I wrote about man who had been sexually abused as a child and whose parents supported him and found him counseling and who has, seemingly, gone on to be successful and happy. Despite his best efforts, however, he continues to feel the repercussions of that abuse. In reaching out to a surprising and resilient call girl for help, he forges one of the most honest relationships in his life.

I hope you enjoy Gabe and Elena.

– Molly O’Keefe

S
he was there.

At the bar wearing a dress the color of a bruise’s dark heart. Her brown hair caught the candlelight as she tilted her head to check her watch.

Is she early? Or am I late?
Gabe wondered and stepped out of the shadowy elevators into the top-floor bar at the Thompson Hotel.

It was Tuesday night and raining, so the bar was empty. When he walked in, brushing the rain out of his hair and off the shoulders of his jacket, she glanced up. Of course, everyone in the bar glanced up, which he was used to. People noticed men who were six feet, six inches tall and built—as his mother said—like a barn door.

But Gabe really only cared about her.

Her eyes touched him—his shoulders, his wet red hair, his face—and then she went back to her glass of wine, taking a sip with careful nonchalance, as if being sure not to notice him. He wasn’t great at social cues, spent far too much time alone, but that posture he understood: pretending not to notice while actually noticing with every fiber of his being. That was his official language.

She’d told him they should act like they didn't know each other. Wipe the slate clean. That had been easy to agree to. He liked a clean slate.

He took the stool on the other side of the corner, a few seats away from her.

“What can I get you?” The bartender asked, slipping a napkin on the bar.

“Moosehead in a bottle.” He took off his coat and set it over the stool next to him. He unwound his scarf and set it on top of his coat. Carefully. Neatly. His awareness of her just a few feet away made all these things he did seem conspicuous and deliberate.

Don’t pay any attention to me.
He mocked his own seriousness.
I’m just pretending you’re not there.

“Would you like a menu?” The bartender asked.

“Sure.”

He was starved. The game had gone into overtime, and there hadn’t been enough guys so he’d never subbed out. Which was okay with him—he played the top-tier Tuesday night hockey beer league for the workout, so he could skate hard enough to empty his head. That was easiest to do when he didn’t get off the ice.

There were a million other places for a post-game drink and burger, but he liked this top-floor bar. His Canadian publisher had thrown a party for him here once, with signature drinks and a piano player. Very swanky. Too swanky, really. But he’d loved the view. The perspective of being above the city when he spent all his hours down in one of the chambers of its concrete heart.

He glanced backwards over his shoulder, taking her in with a sweeping glance that pretended to look outside through the walls of windows.

“Not much of a view tonight.” Her voice was nice. Soft and low and sweet. He heard just that little bit of an accent and wondered—as always—which part of Quebec she came from.

“Not unless you like watching the storms,” he said. The sky was dark, but he could see the storm blowing in from the west, rolling across the front of Toronto, the CN Tower about to be obscured. Rain lashed the windows. It was grey and dark and cold and about to get a little violent.

He was glad to be inside.

“I never thought of it like that,” she said. “I suppose lightning would be pretty awesome up here.”

“If you like that sort of thing.”

The bartender set down his beer, and he grabbed it with both hands like a lifeline.

“Do you?” Her merry eyes gave the impression they were talking about something other than storms. “Like that sort of thing?”

“I grew up in the prairies.” He was surprised to hear the truth coming out of his mouth. “Storm watching was top-shelf entertainment. My whole family would stand on the porch to see those summer fronts roll in and turn the world a kind of greenish purple.”

“Sounds a little scary,” She watched him through her lashes, her lips curled in a teasing smile. “And boring, if watching storms is considered a good time.”

He laughed and nodded. “Boring yes. Scary . . . only if the sirens went off. If they didn’t, we’d sit there and watch the wind kick up so fast and so hard it laid all the wheat flat.” He took a sip of his beer just to shut himself up. He drained half the bottle and almost immediately wanted a dozen more.

He set the beer down.

“I always wondered what do the animals do in those storms?” Her skin was the color of the harvest moon, or the inside of a shell, something white and creamy and perfect. “All the outside cats and stray dogs. Where do they go?”

“We had a dog once, Queenie. She was too stupid to climb under the porch and instead stood in the yard barking at the wind like it was breaking into our house.”

“What happened to her?”

How strange to be talking about Queenie when he hadn’t thought about her in years.

“She came back after every storm, limping and a little more crazy. She still barked at the wind, which probably just confirms that old dog new tricks thing.”

“Only if the old dog is crazy.”

In the silence after their polite laughter, he realized in a great hot rush how he was sitting there, all sprawled out, taking up too much real estate. Despite having lived in it for twenty-four years, his body could still surprise him with its size. His giant hands, his too long legs. He tried to tuck himself under the bar, but felt stupid.

The first trickle of panic slid down his spine. The rain had given him something to talk about. Lame as that was, he could always say something about the weather. And nerves had pushed him right into that stuff about his family, but they’d exhausted that, and now he sat there, nursing a beer, considering an overpriced burger, because he was rich now and had no idea what else to spend his money on but ice time and better burgers.

All of this was brain-buzzing nonsense while he was torn in two between wanting to grab his coat and go home, maybe hit a drive-thru on his way, or slide across the bar stools to get closer to the woman in the purple dress.

“My name is Elena,” she said.

“Mike.”

She blinked before she smiled. What had he told her last time? Something stupid about baseball.

“Nice to meet you, Mike. Are you staying here? At the hotel?”

“I am. I’m in town seeing clients.”

“What do you do?” She was following his lead, pretending because it was so much easier than the truth.

“I’m a lawyer.” The father in his new book was a lawyer. A good guy, trying to understand his kid, trying to do right by doing all the wrong things. Gabe still hadn’t quite figured out how that was going to work for a kid who fought crime in the Underworld, but the puzzle was still new, and he was thinking that maybe the dad would get kidnapped and held for ransom? Forcing the kid into his gumshoe roll? That could work.

“Family law,” he said when he realized he’d been quiet too long. “Messy divorce case.”

Should the dad be divorced or widowed?

She made a noncommittal hum in her throat and picked up her glass, taking another sip, and he pushed away all thoughts of work, those daydream wormholes that could suck him in for hours.

“And you?” he asked. “Are you staying here?”

She nodded.

“Business?” The green glass of the bottle glowed in his hands, painfully conspicuous. As if it were important. The light from the bar made all the drinks seem slightly more weighty than they actually were. Her white wine looked like liquid gold.

“Yes.” Her smile was really beautiful. She had this girl-next-door thing going for her, combined with that Quebec chill, wrapped up in that purply-blue dress—it was powerful. She was powerful.

“You’re French?” he asked. “I’m guessing by the accent.”

“I grew up in a small town outside of Montreal.”

“And what did you do there? While I was watching storms?”

“Disappointing my parents, mostly.” Her smile, dry as a bone, could not quite cover all the pain the memory clearly caused her. And he realized, as he created this shell of lies around himself, that she was either an incredible actress or telling the truth. Or some slight version of it. And he was suddenly wanted to ask this lovely creature how she’d disappointed her parents.

“Parents are tricky things,” he said, instead of asking.

“Agreed.” She reached over and tipped her glass against his beer bottle. “Though I guess since I’m on the other side of it now, I can safely say kids are pretty tricky too.”

“You have kids?” He tried not to sound surprised and relieved. Kids he could talk about. Kids he loved to talk about.

“One. A son. He’s nine.”

He leapt onto the topic with gratitude. “Is he a sports guy, video gamer, or reader?”

“Sort of a video-gamer-reader hybrid,” she laughed. “He’s very serious. I joke that he’s a little old man in a little boy’s body. I worry sometimes that he’s too serious. That he doesn’t know how to have fun.”

“Video games and books are fun.”