I shook my head, and showed you my phone.
“My collection of found hearts,” I said, and my own slammed into my rib cage. Showing you something that mattered to me was risky. But I’d take that risk.
“Found where?”
“Nature. The street. Animals. Anywhere,” I said, and then watched as you scrolled through the app where I stored the pictures I found. A coral reef in Australia in the shape of a heart. A chalk drawing on a sidewalk. Two tree branches intertwined into a heart.
You looked up from the screen, the corners of your mouth curving up.
“The tree branches are new. I just found them on a blog and added them,” I said, my voice dry.
“You find these often?”
I shrugged. “When I need to.”
“Why do you need to?”
“They give me hope.”
“I wonder when you’ll find one next,” you said, as if you were merely musing on the topic.
A few days later, after I’d finished dinner with my dad, you sent me a picture. I opened the text with shaky, hopeful fingers simply because it had your name on it.
“Found this for you,” you wrote, and attached a picture of a chocolate-brown horse with a white heart-shaped spot on his nose.
I kissed the screen.
Chapter Five
Kennedy
Lane waits at Columbus Circle. He’s on his bike as well, and we barely even bother with hellos, instead nodding and taking off downtown, helmets on, ready for the thrill of racing through rush hour and conquering the cars. Riding like this requires a supreme focus on not getting killed, which has the welcome benefit of keeping my mind off the whole messed-up situation with Noah.
We zip through traffic on the way to the West Village so we can stop by my father’s latest show that he arranged, an exhibit of famous love letters from history’s greatest writers, sharing wall space with photographs of men, women, girls, and boys writing.
Soon we arrive at our destination in the West Village, a thin and narrow block with cobblestoned sidewalks and arty boutiques and too-cool-for-school cafés every few feet. It’s one of those movie blocks, the kind where the heroine in the romcom walks down the street at night wearing some tulle skirt and cute heels and a little clutch.
We lock our bikes to a nearby post. The ride did the trick—my overactive brain and rebellious heart have settled into the here and now as I survey the scene.
Already, crowds of thirtysomething hipsters in black jeans and slouchy tops are spilling from the inside of the gallery onto the sidewalks. A banner across the glass windows says LETTERS FROM THE HEART, the name of this exhibition—the photographs are for sale; the famous love letters are on loan and they’re the lure.
I spot a familiar face down the street, a lopsided and smarmy grin I know well, watching the crowd at the gallery, while nursing a coffee at an outside table. My heart lurches. It’s my dad’s ex–business partner, Jay Fierstein. My mom was involved with him last year.
I scowl.
“That’s the guy your dad hates?”
I nod. “For many, many reasons. His lawyer has been all over my dad’s lawyer about the company split.”
“What is he doing here? Spying on your dad?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” I say, then spot my dad inside, listening to a small crew of curious onlookers discuss the meaning of a drawing of a girl carrying a heart two times larger than her body. My dad is a graying man, with tuft-like hair barely covering his head, like a baby duck’s. I wave to him, then show Lane the original of a love letter Zelda Fitzgerald wrote to her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
There’s nothing in all the world I want but you—and your precious love—All the material things are nothing. I’d just hate to live a sordid, colorless existence—because you’d soon love me less—and less—and I’d do anything—anything—to keep your heart for my own—
“Is that where your inspiration came from for the famous love letter?” Lane asks.
“Famous unsent love letter,” I add, glad to be able to talk freely with someone. Lane’s the only person besides my shrink that I’ve ever told about Noah. “My dad was working on this exhibit back then when I started writing it. I should have just blamed him, huh?”
“Totally. Parents always deserve the blame.”
“I mean, really! He was constantly talking about famous love letters, showing me copies of them. What was a girl to do?”
“What you did of course. Write one yourself,” he teases.
Lane and I finish reading the letter. “It’s a beautiful letter, don’t you think?”
“Oh, totally. Especially when you consider she was completely bonkers and F. Scott was a total lush,” he says.
“Lane!”
“It’s true though. You’re all Ms. Just the Facts, Please. So you should know Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia and whiled away her days at a sanatorium while F. Scott drank himself silly,” he says as a twenty-something girl brushes past us and gives Lane a thorough once-over from stem to stern. It’s almost impossible not to, because his surface is spectacular. Lane’s hair is light brown with hints of gold. It’s thick and full and invites fingers to be run through it. His eyes are hazel, or maybe green, or sometimes light brown. It’s not that they change with the weather or his mood. Eyes don’t change. It’s just that they’re a lot of colors, and every shade is alluring. They are the kind of eyes that can melt a woman with one look.