How to Repair a Mechanical Heart (26 page)

It’s cruel to you both. Keeping this going.

He drops cute desperate kisses on my nose, my eyelids, my cheeks.

Pull away now. You know you’re going to.

“Abel.”

“What?”

I toy with a button on his polo shirt. “I just‌…‌Maybe we should‌—‌”

“She can’t hear us. She’s in Daveland.”

“No, like‌—‌” I duck the kiss he’s about to plant on my neck. “Maybe we should hold off. Just for a while.”

A light snaps off inside him. I watch hurt morph into disgust on his face, like he’s just caught me sacrificing kittens in the bathroom.

“Damn,” he says.

“Not forever! You know? I just think maybe we did this too fast.”

He shakes his head and shoves my hands away. “You said you were
fine
with it, Brandon. I asked you like, every step of the way, and‌—‌”

“I know. I know.”

“How could you let this ruin things?”

“It’s not a choice. It’s
in
me. I can’t just make it go away.”

He wraps his white tie around and around his hand. “So‌—‌what? We’re just
friends
now?”

“No‌…‌no.”

“Should I like, get written permission to touch you, or‌—‌”

“Stop. Abel.”

“What? I want to know! What happens now?”

“I don’t know!” My arms make this desperate wriggly gesture that’s completely offensive, like I’m trying to slough off something gross. “Can we just‌—‌hold off on the physical stuff? For now? And then I can work through things, and maybe later‌…‌”

“I can’t believe this,” he says softly. “I can’t believe you’re breaking up with me.”

“I’m not.”

“Well, clearly you don’t want me to touch you anymore, so that’s kind of what happens, darling. By default.”

He huddles on the edge of the bed with his back to me. I try to find something smart to say, some bull’s-eye quip that’ll turn this whole conversation around.

I hear a little sniffle.

Oh.
Crap
.

“Abel‌—‌”

“It’s okay. It’s fine. You can’t help this, I know. It’s just the way you are.” He’s speaking slowly and carefully, like he’s reading off cue cards. “I mean, it’s my fault, really. I’ve been through this before. I’m so stupid, I just jump in with both feet every time‌…‌”

I kneel in front of him. “I like that about you.”

“I wanted it to be true. I liked you for so long.” He scrubs tears away with his fist and tries to smile, which makes me feel worse. “You just didn’t seem interested and it was all Fake Zander and whatever, and I was with that dumbass Kade and then‌—‌”

“It was true.” I correct myself: “It
is
.”

I touch his arm. He reaches out for me, but he pulls me close too hard and fast and I feel all my muscles go stiff.

He lets go of me. Stands up.

His face erases all emotion, like Sim’s face when he’s in the charging dock. Then it hardens.

He pulls his big black bag out from under the bed and tosses it on the comforter.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving, Bran.” He says it with a simple ease that hurts much worse than bitterness.

“How‌—‌?”

“There are these magic things called buses.”

I close my eyes. This isn’t happening.

“I can’t do this again,” he shrugs. “Sorry. I can’t get all moony and ID-bracelet-y over you, and then get a call from you at two in the morning after some college retreat made you have a backwards epiphany and now you think you’re in love with some cute little Polly Pocket who can’t wait to pop out your cute Catholic babies. And don’t try to tell me that’s not extremely likely, because guys like you are a fucking minefield, and I was dumb to pretend I didn’t know it.”

“Abel‌…‌”

“Be logical!” He’s shoving clothes in his bag. “What happens if I stay? More awkwardness. More fights. We break up and we can’t even be friends anymore because we let things get ugly, and then I end up crying for days and calling up my exes and eating Nutella right out of the jar.” He throws his bag on the bed and yanks at the zipper. “So we make a clean break now, and this way I get to keep my dignity, right, and you get lots of time or space or whatever the
hell
you need to figure things out, or not figure things out, whatever works for you. Sound good?”

He grabs the bag. I know exactly what I need now. I need a Speech that Changes Everything. Like Cadmus’ quotable “Today, We Survive” speech in the pilot, or the tearful speech Abel gives me in whispering!sage’s “One Day More,” where we make up in a hospital bed before I lapse into a coma. I catch myself thinking
What would hey_mamacita write?

Beware of false prophets, Brandon.

Just let him‌—‌

“No. Don’t go.” It’s all I can get out.
“Please.”

“Put up a fight, then,” he says. “Convince me. Tell me exactly how it won’t end horribly.”

All the words I’ve ever learned scuttle out of my head. If I had more time I could call them back, arrange them in just the right order. But I know without looking him in the eye that I’ve already paused too long, and he’s not going to wait.

He hoists the bag over his shoulder.

“Have fun at the Baltimore con,” he says. “Tell Lenny Bray I said hi.”

***

He’s gone.

He can’t be, though.

He left Plastic Cadmus behind, face down on the Whitetail Wildlife bedspread.

He left his Sim shirt from the ball dangling damp from the doorknob and the spicy-sweet smell of his cinnamon soap hanging in the air.

He left me standing by the bed with his last kiss still fresh on my cheek and a hundred better things to say.

So I wait, because I know he’s coming back. I stand right here in the spot where he left me, rocking gently on my heels. I’ll be patient. He went for a long walk to clear his head, took a detour to a diner to sulk at a cup of black coffee, and when he’s done making me sorry, making me want him back so much that nothing else matters, the Sunseeker door will creak open again and there he’ll be.

I wait.

And wait.

Knock knock on the bedroom door; it slits open.

“Brandon?”

Bec.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Her dad left when we were twelve. I knew he was going to leave, just like she probably knew Abel was going to leave sooner or later, but we both know the unspoken rule about comforting someone. You pretend you had no clue what was coming, no privileged outsider’s view. I sat on her yellow bedspread that day with a stiff arm around her and my head bowed like people do at funerals, letting her know I was sharing her sadness. “You don’t have to stay,” she sniffled, but she knew I would. That’s what we do.

“Do you want to go home?”

“I don’t know.”

She’s running with me. We’re running to nowhere, down the wooded path that winds away from our campground.

“Do you want to go after him?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? We could find the bus station.”

The fic writes itself: I track him down at the crowded station, shout his name over the very last call for his bus. He makes me work for forgiveness when I catch up to him, but only for a minute. We fall into each other’s arms and the make-up kiss goes on and on, and all the travelers set down their suitcases to clap for the triumph of love.

I stagger to a stop by a giant cottonwood and close my eyes.

“No,” I tell her. “What’s the point?”

She watches me carefully.

“Okay, well. I’m up for anything,” she says. “Just tell me what you want to do.”

She waits in the near-dark. She’s wearing sneakers with her pajama pants and the sleeves of her black t-shirt are rolled up to her shoulders, like she’s ready for a fight. I think of Sim. Standing outside Lagarde’s hut with a knife pointed to his right temple, where the evolution chip was installed.
Take it out,
he’d begged Lagarde.
How do people live like this?

When she refused, he’d picked up a thick long branch, like this one, and beat it against a tree until it shattered into splinters.

Like this.

Bec watches. She doesn’t try to stop me. She just lets me pummel the poor old tree like a Boy Scout gone savage, smashing one branch after another until I’m out of branches and out of breath and I give up the fight, collapsing limp against the ancient bark.

I hear a distant trill. My phone.

“That’s him,” Bec says.

She sounds so firm and hopeful that I believe it too. I yank the phone out of my pocket and answer fast, in the dark. If I’d checked the screen first, I would’ve seen the warning.

HOME CALLING.

“Brandon?”

Damn.

“Uh. Hey!” I force a smile into my voice. “Everything’s great. Can I call you back?”

“No, actually,” Dad says.

“Brandon,” says Mom, in the same tone she used when I was twelve and she found the
Tiger Beat
stash in my closet. “Is there something you’d like to tell us?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“I would like to know,” my father says, “why your mother had to find out in an email from
Mary Beth Heffler
that you were driving across the country with a boy we clearly do not trust.”

“What?”

“Facebook doesn’t lie, Brandon. Mary Beth’s daughter posted on Bec’s wall. Something about‌—‌you have it, Kathy.”

“’Lucky you‌…‌cross country with two hot guys! Too bad they’re both gay, lol.’”

Oh God.

I make an
I’m dead
sign to Bec, finger slashing throat. She cringes and makes a
Should I stay?
motion; my hands tell her
My demise needs no witnesses.
She slips away but I see her stay close, just behind a Ponderosa pine a little way back down the path.

“You lied to us,” Dad says. “True or false?”

“True,” I whisper. I rest my forehead on the cottonwood I’d just attacked.

“Tell us it’s Abel, at least. Not someone worse.”

“It’s him. Or, it was. He‌—‌” My eyes fill up. “He left.”

Dad makes a disbelieving
ugh
sound. “You’re coming home, in case you’re wondering,” he says. “Right now.”

“What‌—‌why?”

“Why?”

“There’s one more convention.”

“You should have thought about that before you spent five weeks lying to your parents.”

“I’m not in high school anymore,” I say. “It’s my life.”

“Well, it’s my RV, kiddo,” Dad says calmly. “And I want you to return it immediately. Where are you right now?”

I dig my fingernails into the bark. “Far away. Nebraska.”

“All right. Fine. I want you back here tomorrow night. On Friday you can help with setup for the Funfair at St. Matt’s and then you and your mother and I will have a long talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Honey. Come on,” soothes Mom.

“I’m not coming home yet!”

“Ah, okay. I see.” Dad’s voice goes low and taut, like it always did when he’d lecture Nat. “So this is what the Life of Brandon’s all about now. No, I get it. Real cool. You walk away from church, you lie to your parents‌—‌”

“Yeah, well, why do you think I lied? What if I told you Abel was coming? There’s no way you’d have said yes.”

“You’re damn right!”

“We’re just concerned, sweetie,” says Mom.

“You’re just backwards, is what you are,” I shoot back.

We all plunge into silence. The woods around me feel dark and cold and endless. I think of the old Family Game Nights in the St. Matt’s parish hall, when Dad would school everyone in Jeopardy and Mom was reigning Pictionary Queen with a 7-layer taco dip everyone wanted the recipe for. Nat would roll her eyes when they put their goofy plastic trophies on the mantel but I thought it was great, having parents who were champions and knew just about everything.

“Do you think I
want
to be this way, Brandon?” Dad sighs. “I mean, look: I wish to God I could say ‘Suuure, go ahead. Whatever you want, kiddo! Dessert for dinner! Blow off that homework! Loosey-goosey, whatever feels good‌…‌’”

Mom giggles lamely. “Loosey-goosey?”

“The
point
is,” he huffs, “I’m on your side. Very much so. I want you to be happy. I want to see you fall in love, get married‌—‌”

“I can still do that.”

“But the fact is, you’re never, ever going to be at peace. Not like this.”

I just blink.

“Greg‌…‌” my mother whispers.

“It’s true. You won’t, because your mom and I raised you to know what’s right, and you’re always going to know deep down that this isn’t what God wants for you. That even if he quote-unquote ‘made’ you a certain way, you separated yourself from him with your choices. And if I didn’t keep pointing that out to you, if I didn’t give my only son every chance to fix his relationship with God‌—‌” His voice wavers. He pauses, pulls in an even breath. “‌—‌then what kind of dad would I be?”

The kind of dad I need.
If hey_mamacita was real and I was in her fic, I’d say it clear and brave. I’d tell him I respected his opinion, but it wasn’t mine, not anymore. I’d tell him that my beautiful boyfriend was probably still at the bus station, and if I drove fast enough I could probably still catch him.

Instead I just mumble
I gotta go.
And I hang up.

Three seconds later it rings again.

hey_mamacita says,
Answer it, baby. Stand up to him. You can do it.

It keeps ringing.

Tell him who you are! Be Fanfic Brandon! Unleash some mayhem!

Which is easy to say, when you don’t exist.

I wait for the phone to stop ringing. When it’s finally quiet, I send a single pathetic text to my dad’s cell. He always keeps it on his belt, even when he’s home watching baseball or working in the garden. “I don’t want to be fertilizing the roses when someone calls with terrible news,” he likes to say.

GOING 2 BALTIMORE CON

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