The Book of Love (7 page)

The thread swirled into a heart shape, then disappeared.

Lucy looked down. She felt them all watching her.

“Lucy, this means . . . ,” Gil started to say. But she didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

If Lucy didn’t break a heart, they couldn’t enter the contest. And if they couldn’t enter the contest, she couldn’t save Tristan.

Lucy knew what she had to do.

Nine

L
ucy woke to the sound of screaming. A second later, she realized the screams had been her own. The sky through her window was velvet black. The clock on her nightstand glowed 12:23. She reached her hand up and pressed her heart. It couldn’t break, but it could still thump the hell out of itself. She’d been dreaming, she realized, dreaming about Tristan. In the dream, the two of them were on a boat, and the boat started to sink. Lucy could see the shore from where they were, and she remembered shouting, “We can swim! We’re close enough to swim!” But Tristan just shook
his head and opened a little door in his chest and took out his heart. He pressed a button on the side, and it started to inflate like a balloon. He handed it to her. “Use this,” he said. And then before Lucy could stop him, he dove into the ocean and she knew it was too late to save him.

Half-asleep, Lucy reached for the phone. It wasn’t until it had rung three times that she fully awoke, and quickly hung up. What was wrong with her? She didn’t just call Tristan in the middle of the night no matter what time it was, knowing he’d either be up already or happy to be woken by her. She didn’t call to tell him about a funny dream she’d just had, or to ask him to tell her a joke if she’d had a nightmare. She didn’t call Tristan in the middle of the night anymore because she didn’t call him at all.

Lucy lay back down. It was just a dream, she reminded herself. Tristan hadn’t drowned. His heart was broken, but she was going to fix it. There was nothing to worry about now. She breathed deeply, trying to slow her heart.

A few minutes later, her phone began to vibrate.

HELP! AN EVIL WIZARD TRAPPED ME IN A PHONE!
flashed on the screen.

Lucy stared at it for a split second, confused, and then smiled. Over the years, Tristan had programmed himself into her phone as dozens of different things. For a week last summer he’d been THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and changed his ringtone to the national anthem. For another he’d been MY INTERNAL MONOLOGUE and would call and pretend to be speaking as Lucy. That past spring he’d been I’M STANDING RIGHT BEHIND YOU, and even though
she knew it was him calling, she’d been incapable of seeing that flashing on her screen without turning around to check who was there.

Lucy raised the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

Instead of words she heard a
ssh
, a crackle, then music—a few bluesy harmonica notes, followed by an acoustic guitar and in the background the pat, pat, pat of drums. The music cut off and then Tristan began to speak. “Heeeey there, listeners.” His voice was deep and low. “This is W-L-U-C-Y radio, broadcasting from Tristan’s truck. You’re live on the air.”

Lucy smiled, her brain still thick with sleep. Her body flooded with relief. This was Tristan. Her best friend. Sounding exactly the same as he always had.

Lucy put on a fake nasal voice. “Longtime listener, first-time caller. Did I win the tickets?!”

Tristan laughed. And then there was silence.

“I hope I didn’t wake you up,” Lucy said. “I’m sorry for calling before, I just had . . .” She stopped. “I was just calling to say hi.” Lucy bit her lip. “Were you sleeping?”

“Yes, I was sleep driving,” Tristan said. “It’s a good thing you called when you did.”

“Sleep driving is very unsafe,” Lucy said.

Silence again.

“Sorry I missed you before, bud, I was just saying good night to someone.”

“Oh!” Lucy said. “Like a daaaaate?” She tried to sound teasing the way she might have before things got so weird between them.

“I don’t know,” Tristan said. “Nah. I don’t think so. Maybe?”

And Lucy smiled because the response was so typical Tristan. “I don’t go on dates,” he’d told her once. “I hang out with people. And sometimes those hangouts include some smoochin’.” He’d pronounced it just like that, without the G. As a joke. Except he wasn’t kidding.

“Listen, are you at home?” Tristan went on, “I’m going to be driving right near your house in about three minutes. Think Suzanne and Georgie would mind if you pop outside and say hello to your buddy?”

Lucy hesitated only for a second. “Well, Suzanne and George can’t mind if they don’t know.” She felt a wave of confused relief. Was she imagining or did Tristan sound happy? Like,
actually
happy. Was that possible? “I’ll be outside in two,” she said.

But before she left her room, she took out that tiny pot of almond-scented Empathy Cream and rubbed a dab into each palm. It felt wrong to look into Tristan’s heart on purpose, but what choice did she have? If she wanted to help him, she’d have to break another heart. And if she was going to do
that
, she had to know Tristan needed her to, that there was just no other choice.

Ten

O
kay,” Tristan said. “Ready for the rest of it?” He leaned over and opened the passenger door, and Lucy slid in. He tapped the
PLAY
button on his phone, and the song that had been playing earlier kept going. The guitar stopped and was replaced by the rich and velvety notes of a cello. The harmonica came back in, and the sounds of the two instruments wrapped around each other, like two voices singing a duet. It was hauntingly beautiful right up until the very last note.

“My god,” Lucy said slowly. “That was gorgeous. Who was that?”

Tristan shrugged. “Oh, go on, you sweet talker,” he said. But when Lucy turned, she could have sworn she saw him blushing. “That was me and Phee.”

“Phee?”

“She’s who I was just with. She’s a girl I met at the diner, and we got to talking about music and things. She plays cello and is a huge music nerd and has a whole studio thingy set up in her basement, so that’s where we recorded this.”

Lucy turned and looked at him. He brushed his hair off his forehead, a tiny secret smile playing on his lips. When their eyes met, she realized something:

The longing she thought she’d seen at the party just wasn’t there.
Instead, there was only that familiar twinkle of excitement. He looked like his old self.

Maybe his love for her hadn’t been so serious after all. Maybe she was egotistical for ever having assumed it was. And whether it was or not, he now seemed to be over it.

They held each other’s gaze, and Lucy felt a warming in her belly. It was funny, she’d been so scared of making eye
contact with Tristan when she thought he loved her, that she’d barely seen him in quite a long time. “She’s really talented,” Lucy said.

“Freakily so,” said Tristan.

Lucy smiled. “I’m really glad you came over.”

“Me too.” Tristan smiled back. “I missed you.” He pulled her toward him in a sudden hug. “Sorry I’ve been a little MIA lately.”

Lucy felt the warmth of Tristan’s body through his T-shirt. She felt herself begin to blush. It was just that they hadn’t hugged in so long, that no one had really hugged her in so long except for maybe Gil. Lucy put her hand on his arm to steady herself. And then, just like that, Lucy couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t anything. Her hand was still on his arm. She closed her eyes. The blood drained from her cheeks. A drum beat in her ears.

“Luce? You okay?” Tristan asked.

But she wasn’t. Not at all.

She felt a bolt of twisting pain in her heart, and a weight on her chest, so heavy it was hard to breathe. Underneath it all was a multilayered love that hit her in wave after wave, swelling so big she could have drowned in it.

Lucy looked down at her hand on Tristan’s arm.

This was how Tristan felt—these were his feelings rushing through her.

It was worse than she could have possibly imagined. “Luce?” Tristan was staring at her, eyebrows knotted, like she was the one who needed worrying about.

Lucy pulled her hand away. His feelings drained out of her.

“Wow, you looked really freaked out for a second,” he said. He tipped his head to the side.

“Yeah.” Lucy tried to force out a laugh. “I don’t know what happened there. . . .”

How was he going around in the world feeling like this? Getting up, going to school, meeting friends, going to parties
?
How was he even surviving?

The answer hit Lucy like a brick in the face: because Tristan was an expert at bearing pain and making it seem like nothing at all.

Tristan and Lucy became friends back in fourth grade, but she knew of him before that. Everyone did. He was the kid whose mom died. Her illness came on fast and he’d missed the last three months of second grade, then came back after the summer and done second grade again, all the while acting like nothing had even happened. Lucy remembered seeing him in the hall, noticing the way he smiled and joked with everyone
.
At the time Lucy decided he must not have loved his mother—either he was terribly mean or she was.

It was only two years later when they became friends that Lucy realized how wrong she’d been. He was the sweetest person in the world, and he’d loved his amazing mother endlessly. It wasn’t that he’d actually been okay when he came back to school—it’s just that he was a master of hiding his feelings, of burying them deep and putting on a smiling face. And since then, he had only gotten better at it.

“Lu?” Tristan said finally.

“I’m okay,” Lucy said. “I’m okay. I’m just . . . suddenly not feeling that well. I think I should go back inside.”

Lucy opened the door.

“Feel better, bud,” Tristan said. And he smiled back, that same sweet smile as ever. But this time there was no chance of convincing herself she didn’t know what was actually behind it. Or that there was any way around doing what she knew she had to do.

Eleven

Y
ES!!!!!

Lucy stared at Colin’s text and felt her stomach sink. Late the night before she’d sent him a message, asking if he was free that afternoon and wanting to do something. And she’d woken up to his response, sent at 6:01 a.m. Lucy squeezed her phone and shook her head. She imagined Colin smiling sweetly while he typed out his message, probably still cozy under the covers. She imagined him trying to decide how many exclamation points he should use and then deciding
“Oh what the hell,” and sending them all. She imagined him hopping out of bed, so happy and excited, because he had no idea what was coming for him, no idea that by the time he got back into bed, he’d have a broken heart. The whole thing made her sick.

But the alternative made her sicker.

Sometimes it isn’t about choosing between right and wrong—it’s about choosing between bad and worse.

When Lucy got to school, she desperately tried to ignore what was coming and just focus on the here and now. But it was impossible. There were eight hours left until she’d have to do it. What on earth was she going to say to him?