Pieces of You (Shattered Hearts) (22 page)

Claire looks at Melina for a moment before she glances back at me. It’s just a split-second look, but I swear there was a trace of jealousy in her eyes.

She leans my crutches against the handrail and descends the stairs. She gives my mom a hug before she turns to Melina and holds out her hand. “I’m Claire.”

Melina takes her hand and my mom beams as if she’s introducing long lost sisters.

“Claire, this is Melina. She was with us for a few months just two years before you showed up.”

Melina and Claire share a quick handshake before Melina casually moves toward the door. “I should get going back to the shop now. Nice to meet you, Claire.”

She glances up at me and I raise my eyebrows, but I don’t say anything. I don’t want to give Claire the idea that I know this girl even though she did stay with us a billion years ago.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Claire says as my mom opens the door for Melina.

My mom closes the door and looks up at me with utter contempt. “Jesus, Christopher. She came to me a few weeks ago because she had aged out and needed a job. She’s going through a really hard time. You could have been just a little more courteous.”

I roll my eyes because I am not going to be courteous to a strange girl who obviously makes Claire uncomfortable.

Claire squints at me for a second before she rushes out the front door. My mom looks confused then quickly follows after her.

Damn this leg! I hop down the steps and grab my crutches from where Claire left them. By the time I make it onto the front doorstep, Claire and my mom are returning up the front walk. They both look serious, then I spot a hint of a smile on Claire.

“What was that?” I ask as she enters the house ahead of me and holds the door open for me.

“I just wanted to give her my number in case she needs someone to talk to.”

My mom enters behind me and I stand inside the foyer watching them. I know my mom. She wants to be angry with Claire because of Abigail, but Claire is not going to allow that.

God, I fucking love her.

“That was very kind of you,” my mom says to Claire. “But we still have some things we need to talk about. You go ahead upstairs and let Chris show you his little surprise then we can talk.”

I make my way upstairs as quickly as I can, before my mom can interrupt again. Claire follows me into my bedroom, though I sense a bit of reluctance as she enters.

“I’m not going to try anything. I know you have a boyfriend.”

She winces at the word boyfriend then shakes her head. “I don’t have a boyfriend. Adam and I broke up.”

I want to tell her how happy this makes me, but her face screws up, as if she’s in physical pain, and I’m suddenly mad as hell. Did this motherfucker break her heart?

“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. This is what you wanted.”

“Claire, I want you, but I don’t want to see you in pain.”

She closes her eyes as she heaves a deep sigh. She’s trying to hold it together. “What’s the big surprise?”

I think of the box of photos my mom found in her room the other day while searching for Claire’s diary. I was so pissed when I found out what she had been doing, but I quickly got lost in the pictures. It was the box of photos I hid in her room after I left to L.A. because I knew my mom would leave Claire’s room as is. I didn’t trust her to do the same with my room. I looked through that box of pictures the other day and found moments I’d long since forgotten. I hoped that giving her the pictures might spark some forgotten feelings inside her, but now I can’t bring myself to put her through that. She doesn’t need me pushing myself on her right now. What she needs right now is a friend.

“It can wait,” I say as I nod toward the bed. “Sit down so we can talk.”

“I don’t need to talk.”

“Don’t pull that on me, Claire.” I rest my crutches against the dresser and sit down on the edge of the bed as I pat the mattress. “Talk to me.”

She sits next to me, but she stares straight ahead at the mirror above the dresser. “I can’t talk to you about this.”

I don’t want to hear about her problems with Adam. I think I’d rather break my leg again than talk about this with her, but I’m nothing if not a complete fool when it comes to Claire.

“You can talk to me about anything, babe.”

She glances at me and I nod to encourage her. “He left for Hawaii four weeks ago and everything just fell apart. He said we should take a break so we don’t hate each other by the time he gets back.”

“So you two are getting back together when he gets back?”

“I don’t know.”

She looks miserable. This is not how you treat someone you supposedly love. This guy is a fucking idiot.

“Do you
want
to get back together with him when he gets back?”

She sighs again as she stares at the carpet. “I don’t know. I….” She looks at me then shakes her head. “I can’t talk about this with you. This is too awkward.”

“Awkward?”

She smiles. “Yes. It’s very awkward.”

“You know what’s awkward? You sitting there talking to me about your breakup while wearing that shirt. I think you should take it off and this would get a whole lot less awkward.”

She presses her lips together to suppress her smile. “Really, Chris? You’re talking to me like that at a time like this?”

I can sit here and argue with her and make little cute comments back and forth or I can do something.

I reach across and trace my finger lightly over the side of her cheek. She only flinches a little, but I can see her body tense.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve been dying to touch you since we broke up.” She leans forward and hides her face in her hands. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She shakes her head as she takes a moment to compose herself. Finally, she pulls her hands away from her face and wipes a few tears away.

“Claire, I love you and I just want you to be happy.”

She looks at me, her eyes are rimmed red, and it’s as if she’s seeing me for the first time. “How can you still love me after everything I’ve done to you?”

“How can I not? You’re the fucking love of my life. You don’t stop loving someone just because they’ve hurt you. Yes, what you did hurt me, but I gain nothing if I stay angry with you. But I might gain everything by forgiving you. You’re my everything. I just want you back.”

She gazes into my eyes and before I can change my mind I take her face in my hands and kiss her.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Claire

H
E TASTES MINTY AND
I
recognize the flavor of his brand of toothpaste—the toothpaste I had to stop using last year because it reminded me too much of him. I want to push him away. I don’t want to kiss Chris. But my curiosity gets the best of me.

Not counting the kiss that didn’t really happen two months ago, this is our first kiss in over a year. How can we still be so in sync? I can anticipate the movement and pressure of his lips, every graze of his tongue, and I respond exactly the way he wants me to. No one can kiss me the way Chris does.

This thought makes me sick and I instantly push him away. “Stop.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to.”

He looks as though he can’t decide whether he should be pissed or understanding. “You felt that. Don’t tell me you didn’t feel that.”

“Please don’t do this,” I say as I stand. “I came to talk to your mom.”

“Go ahead and walk away. You’re still mine, Claire, whether or not you admit it to yourself.”

I want to tell him to fuck off, but I can’t turn off the nagging voice inside my head telling me he’s right. Why else would that kiss have felt so good?

I leave his room, still attempting to make sense of this. I’m just feeling lonely. I miss Adam. Of course, I wanted to be kissed. And who better to do it than Chris? Someone who’s kissed me a million times. Someone who knows exactly what I want. But that’s all it was, just a kiss. We are not in love anymore. I love Adam.

Even if he did break his promise to never hurt me.

This is not exactly what I wanted to happen when I showed up here. I should never have worn this stupid shirt Senia bought me. I glance down at my chest at the gray T-shirt with a black silhouette of Chris playing the guitar and the letters CK behind the silhouette. I thought it would be kind of funny, but apparently I gave Chris the wrong idea. I should never have told him that Adam and I broke up.

I should have taken Linda Coldwater’s advice.

I think back to the conversation I had with my professor yesterday and I can’t believe I allowed myself to get so emotional in front of someone who holds such a large piece of my academic career in her hands. I’m a complete emotional wreck lately. Linda insisted that she didn’t quit her job as a caseworker because she didn’t enjoy it. She insisted that she loved the job, and the children she worked with, too much.

“It’s no secret that it’s a tough job. You can see that from watching any damn movie about orphans,” she said as she leaned back in her desk chair. “What you don’t see in movies and what most people who’ve worked in this job won’t tell you is that there is very little you can do for these children other than placing them in decent homes and performing thorough inspections. What happens the moment you leave a foster home or when they leave your office is not up to you.”

That’s about where I lost it. Then Linda handed me her business card with the name and number of a campus therapist scrawled on the back.

If I had had someone there to watch over me during the eight years I was shuffled through the system, I might have found a forever home sooner. I think back to all the homes I came through to get here, to Jackie and Chris.

When I was eight years old, I was placed with an artist, his wife, and their two young sons who were toddlers. They had a nice home in a quaint suburb where he painted mock-ups for large-scale murals. I was fascinated by these paintings, until he picked me up to set me on a stool, to watch him paint, and he accidentally touched my butt. I punched him and kicked down the stool and threw a hellish tantrum until they called my caseworker.

Eight years of these episodes. It’s no wonder my caseworkers hated me, and any wonder how Chris and Jackie got through to me.

Jackie sits at the table in the breakfast nook going over some paperwork, probably bills or something for the bakery. She looks up at me over her reading glasses and I feel like a child about to be chastised, full of shame and guilt over my indiscretions.

“Sit,” she says, pulling out the white wooden chair next to her.

I sit down and resist the urge to launch into a long apology. Jackie hates excuses and she doesn’t want to hear that.

“Jackie, I know you don’t hate me, but I can’t bear the idea of you being disappointed in me.”

She pulls her eyeglasses off and looks me in the eye. “I’m not disappointed in you. I’m hurt that you didn’t feel you could come to me.” Her eyes begin to water and my chest tightens. “Even if you and Chris aren’t together, you will always be like a daughter to me. You’re the little girl I always wanted but couldn’t have.” I make no effort to stop the tears once hers begin to fall. “After Chris was born, I had three miscarriages and it tore my marriage to his father apart. When Michael left, I gave up on finding unconditional love in a man, so I decided I would give unconditional love to those who needed it most.” She grabs my hand and my body shakes as I attempt to keep from sobbing. “I’m not angry with you. I love you, unconditionally.”

She stands from her chair and beckons me into her arms. I rise and we hug for a while as she strokes my hair and rubs my back.

“So are you ever going to bring this boyfriend of yours here to meet us?” she asks and I freeze.

“Boyfriend?”

She lets go of me and looks me in the eye. “You don’t have to pretend, honey. Rachel and Chris already told me you have a boyfriend. I want to meet him.”

Shit.

“I don’t have a boyfriend. Chris just assumed we were still together, but we’re not. He’s in Hawaii right now for business, anyway, so he wouldn’t have been able to come.”

“For
business
? How old is he?”

“Twenty-two.” It dawns on me that Adam’s birthday is coming in just a few days. October 10th. He’s going to be twenty-three.

She narrows her eyes at me. “So you
don’t
have a boyfriend?”

If I were being honest I would tell her that I don’t have a boyfriend, but that I desperately still want Adam to be my boyfriend. I miss everything about him. My heart and body ache for his voice, his jokes, his touch.

“He’s not my boyfriend anymore, but I miss him. His name is Adam.” I want to say that he brought me back to life, but I don’t want to drop too many bombshells on Jackie today. “I think you’d really like him.”

The look of sympathy in her eyes makes my heart squeeze in my chest. “Well, I hope for your sake that you two can work out your differences.”