With This Heart (25 page)

“
Ma’am,” I began, twisting on my feet and starting to run back into the living room. I grabbed a towel from the counter as an afterthought. “Colby was my donor. He gave me his heart. Your son saved my life.”

The woman was leaning over the table, moving papers out of the way of my lemonade spill. When I said my spiel, her gaze lifted to mine and she looked as if she’d seen a ghost. “Oh, sweetie. I’m not Colby’s mom. His family moved out of Odessa shortly after his death.”

What?

My shoulders slumped in defeat and I dropped her towel onto the coffee table. What did she mean they moved? Why hadn’t they updated their address with the hospital yet?

“
What? Do you know where they are?” My hand flew to my mouth. Crap. This was just a random stranger. I was lying, spilling lemonade, and now crying in front of a total stranger.

“
I don’t have any idea. They didn’t tell anyone. I was just a neighbor of theirs. We moved into this place so we could have more space for our family.” Her family that did
not
include Colby. What the hell.

The front door opened. “Alright, Abby, the tow truck driver is on his way, but I think I figured out our problem. It looks like the alternator was short circuiting with the cable that leads to the ignition. I just swapped it out with…a spare we had in the back,” Beck rambled awkwardly. He really was a terrible actor. I don’t think any of those sentences actually made sense.

“
Colby’s family doesn’t live here. This isn’t his mom,” I muttered, feeling the tears starting to build behind my eyes. I could hardly look up toward him. Beck grimaced, eyeing the woman apologetically before walking over to me. He wrapped me in his arms and I stuffed my face in the crook of his arm.

“
I’m so sorry, Abby,” he whispered into my ear.

“
It doesn’t matter,” I tried to cover up my sadness, but it felt like the treasure at the end of my hunt had been stolen by thieves without me even realizing. I’d needed this light at the end of the tunnel. I’d dragged Beck across the state for absolutely no reason. What a colossal waste of time.

Then I thought of something. “So you didn’t really know Colby?” I asked the woman, pulling away from Beck. I needed to know if her story about him having a big heart was true or if it was just hearsay.

The woman frowned and shook her head, unable to meet my eyes.

I nodded and then reached down to wipe the lemonade off the table with the towel. It was the least I could do after barging into her house and feeding her lies.

“
Oh, you know what! We have a neighborhood newsletter that comes out every few months. I keep them all in a little folder so I can stay up to date with community stuff,” she shook her head clear of her tangent, “Colby was in a few of them. Let me grab them for you.”

She hustled into the kitchen and I could hear her shuffling through papers. I studied the towel that had soaked up all of the excess lemonade before looking back toward Beck. He was watching me with worried eyes and I gave him a crooked smile to let him know I wasn’t going to breakdown on the spot. I’d wait until we were alone.

“
Did you really call a tow truck?” I asked.

He wiped a hand down his face. “No, and I felt terrible lying about it.”

“
Here you go!” the woman sang as she reentered the room with a folder held safely in both hands. “These are the ones I think you should have,” she said, offering them to me. I didn’t even hesitate; I took them from her and lunged forward to give her a massive hug. I felt guilty for lying to her, but now she’d given me another chance at completing my goal. I needed to know about Colby. About the boy who gave me his big heart.

“
She said he had ‘the biggest heart’?” Beck asked with a raised brows.

“
Technically she said ‘everyone said he had the biggest heart’, so it almost doesn’t count,” I clarified, wiping my hands with the napkin. We were tucked away in a booth at a random dive bar in Odessa.

The folder’s contents were lying out before us, beckoning me to start investigating. I hadn’t wanted to read them until the food was cleared from the table for fear that we’d spill something on the last connection I had with Colby.

There were three newsletters in total. The first two had front pages that were centered on community festivals or school sports, but the last one had a large black and white photo of a boy on the front cover: Colby. It was clearly his school picture. It had that cloudy staged backdrop and he didn’t have a real smile, just a cheesy fake one. Underneath, in large title casing it read: “A Neighborhood Loses One of Its Greatest.” I tried not to dwell on the headline.

“
I competed in UIL competitions for headline writing,” Beck offered after finishing a drink of his beer. I guess he’d seen the newsletter as well.

I furrowed my brows in confusion, glancing up at him in the dim lighting. He’d dropped his hand on the table and was running his fingers through his sexy mussed-up hair.

“
Headlines as in newspaper headlines?” I asked with a bemused smile.

“
Yeah.”

A half-smile still peeked through my teasing. “Who
does
that?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Cynical Girl Misjudges Brawny Hero.”

I threw my head back and cracked up. “Wait, where is the alliteration?”

Beck nodded and quickly made amends. “Cynical Girl Cuts-down Cute…”

“
Cunt,” I interjected.

“
That.” He pointed the rim of his beer toward me and narrowed his eyes. “Look at that. Very creative, Ms. Mae. Would have loved to have you on my UIL team.”

“
So did you win?” I asked with a hidden smile.

“
What a Boar! Slumbering Swine Snoozes, Loses State Championship,” he recited animatedly, swiping his hand across the air as if reading off a marquee. You would have thought the competition had taken place earlier that morning rather than four years prior.

I couldn’t stop laughing. It was just too much. “You won with that?”

“
Women threw their underwear on stage when I recited that headline.” He grinned, sipping his beer.

“
Spare me.”

“
What did you do in high school?” he asked as I reached for the first newsletter.

“
Nothing,” I answered.

“
Nothing?” he rubbed his chin.

“
No. My parents pulled me out when I was a junior. When it looked like I wouldn’t get the transplant,” I clarified, remembering how somber my timeline had looked then. “Before that I wasn’t really involved in anything.” I shrugged and started flipping through the newsletter. Beck
took a different one and we started working in silence, scouring the pages for any mention of Colby’s name.

I kept flipping through, seeing one cliché small town thing after another: Bake Sale, Founder’s Day carnivals, Town Hall meetings. Then finally I saw a tiny section of sports that covered everything from Odessa elementary to Odessa High School. There was a tiny, grainy photo at the bottom of the page that looked like an action shot from a basketball game. I skimmed the article underneath until I found his name. “
Colby Brubaker leads varsity basketball team to winning season.”
To my dismay, i
t was impossible to discern which of the tiny pixilated bodies was his in the photo.

“
This one mentions his basketball achievements. I guess he was pretty good.” I pointed to the article so that Beck could read it as well. I couldn’t help but wonder how he died. He seemed like a really healthy kid.

Beck nodded, pressing his finger down to mark a spot on the newsletter. “I found something about his work with the National Honor Society. Apparently he set up a blood drive for the high school three years in a row.”

I nodded appreciatively and grabbed the newsletter in the center. This is what I wanted. I wanted Colby to be a quasi-super hero, right? But to be honest, in that moment, when I found out that Colby was, in fact, a much better contributor to society than I could ever hope to be, I felt like shit. It was the same feeling that washed over me when I found out Caroline had died. If given a vote, would people have chosen Colby’s life over mine?

My hands fell to my lap and I stared down at where they rested on top of my blue sundress. I picked the chipping red polish off my thumb nail, contemplating the peacefulness that comes with defeat. I could let a ghost haunt my life forever, or I could make the decision to carry him with me, not as a burden, but as a talisman.

I didn’t bother reading about how Colby died. Two minutes prior, I would’ve done anything to know the details of his life, but now? Now there was no point in dwelling on the fact that this poor guy had passed away. I needed to use his heart the way he would’ve wanted it to be used.

Without consulting Beck, I slid out of the booth and hunted down a bartender.

“
Do you guys do karaoke here?” I asked with a shaky voice. My hand was fidgeting with the hem of my dress as I attempted to meet his dark beady eyes.

The old, burly man eyed me skeptically. “Does it look like we do karaoke here, lady?”

I couldn’t argue with that. The bar was filled with tired, sunburned patrons, trying to take a load off after a long day. They’d be more likely to have an old-timey western shoot-off than host a karaoke night. I turned back to the bartender and read his name tag: Dave.

“
Dave, what about just this once?” I gave him a pleading smile. “I’m attempting to get out of my comfort zone and I’m afraid that if I leave here without doing this then I might never work up the courage again.”

He shook his head slowly, not even bothering to look up at me. I gripped the side of the bar while I watched him retrieve a cold beer for a patron. Was I going to walk away? No. I couldn’t leave Odessa like this. If he wasn’t going to cooperate than I had no choice. I turned back to see Beck eyeing me skeptically from the booth, and then with one last breath, I hopped onto the bar.

Dave yelled for me to get down, but I didn’t listen. I turned to face the crowd. All ten small town Texans and one adorable Beck smiled up at me in awe.

“
Um, hello everyone.” Only a few people had stopped their conversations, but by the end of my greeting, the bar was maddeningly silent. What kind of bar had no background music playing at least? “I’m going to sing a little song for you.”

“
Get the hell down!” Dave yelled, throwing his towel on the bar next to my feet. Beck hopped out of the booth, ready to grab me if the situation escalated. He looked menacing with his baseball cap pulled low and his arms crossed over his chest. He kept walking until he was right under me and I smiled nervously down at him.

I flitted my gaze over to Dave and gave him my best puppy dog eyes. “Please, it’ll be quick…” I pleaded. He huffed and then rolled his eyes. That was as much of an approval as I was going to get.

I pinched my eyes closed and took a deep breath, preparing the sorry excuse for vocal cords I was about to subject everyone to.

“
This is for Colby,” I murmured, staring up at the dirty fluorescent lights.

With no musical accompaniment, I was left high and dry as I started to hum the opening strands of “Your Song” by Elton John. I wasn’t certain that I’d be able to hit all of the notes, but I closed my eyes and pretended I was standing alone in my shower. I began to sing the first words so softly that I doubt anyone could even hear. It was painful and I knew my entire body was shaking with nerves.

But then I opened my eyes and looked down at Beck. One of his arms was wrapped around his torso and the other was propped up and holding his chin. I tried to focus solely on him as I kept singing.

Mind you, I’ve never had a single singing lesson in my entire life. But I let Sir Elton John lead me forward as I broke into the chorus without reservation. I was belting the lyrics, telling everyone in the bar that I was so happy that they were “in the world”. A few of the patrons whistled and clapped their hands. I guess even in Odessa, Elton had some fans.

When I tried to hit a really high note and my voice cracked, I laughed, rolling with it. The adrenaline made the embarrassment roll off me like I was wearing a waxy shield.

When I had to repeat the part about hoping “you don’t mind”, the entire bar joined in with mismatching vocals. It sounded pretty terrible, but when I carried the song home, the entire bar was silent. They’re eyes blinked up at me with such profound understanding. I knew they’d probably all known Colby. Or at least known of him. Maybe that song meant something to them as well.

The second I finished, I hunched forward and started laughing. It was quite possibly the worst rendition ever created, but Beck was grinning up at me with quiet admiration. He reached up to grab me. His arms gripped my waist securely, and as I slid down to the floor, he held me steady against his body so that our faces were level. I’m sure everyone in the bar was watching, but they were strangers and I didn’t care. My hands gripped his shoulders, and when our faces aligned, we both had impossibly wide grins.

“
You were amazing,” Beck complimented me, pressing his forehead to mine.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, trying to soak in the moment. “Don’t think I didn’t hear you chiming in at the end.”

He chuckled and then pressed his mouth to my ear. “Am I allowed to love you?” he asked, making my heart sputter to a stop. I looked up into his hazel eyes and I knew I was a goner. I couldn’t form words because I would have cried. My eyes filled with unshed tears and I bit my lip in hopes of quelling the surge of happiness. My gaze shifted to his chin and I nodded gently again and again.