Year of Giving, Cover Reveal, and First Chapters
This year is my FIFTH year in publishing, having released Tight KnitJanuary 1st, 2013, and to celebrate I've decided that throughout the entire 2018 year I'll be donating half of my profits to various charities.I'll be releasing two (possibly more) books this year and each book has a designated charity.The first book had its cover reveal yesterday (gorgeous cover by Okay Creations) and it's a book almost five years in the making. It's a book that has been through countless name changes, hours/weeks/months of revisions, years of research, beautifully encouraging rejections from its brief wander into the submission trenches, and a long patient rest until I decided what to do with it.But it's time. This book wants to be out in the world and who I am to stand it its way.
She believes that love is a lie. He makes her a bet that he can change her mind...but he only has one night to do it.After her heart condition diagnosis, Evan's family fell apart, leaving her faith in love shattered. She uses music and the science of the stars to distance herself from her feelings and make sense of her own mortality. After having his heart broken again by the same girl, Jordan's belief in the power of love is finally cracking. He uses poetry to untangle the complexities of his emotions and make sense of his circumstances. When Evan and Jordan's lives collide at a concert, they can't deny all the ways they parallel each other. But each carries a secret that threatens their night of perfect distraction and when the truth comes out, the lies they find themselves confronting are their own. Can Evan and Jordan redefine the word love in a single night?You can pre-order EVEN ON THE DARKEST NIGHT for iBooks, Nook, or Kobo and here's why I think you should...For the entire year of 2018 I'll be donating 50% of the profits of this book to the organization that helped me SO much while writing it. I reached out to multiple organizations in my research to make sure that I treated Evan's heart condition—Cardiomyopathy—with respect and sensitivity and the CHILDREN'S CARDIOMYOPATHY FOUNDATION responded with support and enthusiasm, taking time out of their day to direct me to true studies and reliable research on the condition. The foundation works on both sides of the fence so I was able to ask questions about the medical implications as well as the emotional stress it can put on a family—two important aspects of the book.I watched a LOT of videos on kids with Cardiomyopathy and I shed a LOT of tears in the process of writing this book.To say thank you to Gina and the rest of the Foundation, half of every dollar I make on this book will go to them! They are extremely passionate about what they do and I want to give back.Disclaimer: While the CCF helped me extensively with my research they did not read the finished book, nor do they endorse the book in any way. This is simply me wanting to give back for the time they spent answering my questions and guiding my research. Any comments/concerns/questions about the book should be directed at ME.
Not sure if you're ready for the pre-order? Read the first TWO chapters below (unedited and subject to change slightly).EVEN ON THE DARKEST NIGHTFriday, April 19 • 2:36 PMEvan Vibrant light glitters behind my closed eyelids like a meteor shower as I run my fingers from the old scar on my breastbone to the fresh incision under my collarbone. My t-shirt snags the gauze tape, and I wince in pain. A soft clucking sound pulls my focus to my mother, sitting in the corner of the small sterile room at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Her thin lips are pressed together in sternness, but I see through her concerned stare. I always see the same insincerity swimming through the deep brown. She doesn’t want to be here. Not alone. Not with me. Mom catches my gaze and taps her collarbone. “Evan, darling.” Mom’s eyes flick back down to her magazine, and I drop my hand from the t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of my favorite band. “Stop touching it.”It is the four-inch long incision along my collarbone where my Implanted Cardioverter Defibrillator was implanted two days ago—or ICD if you don’t want to waste twenty minutes saying the whole thing. The device makes sure I don’t die immediately if I have another heart attack, but there’s also a pacemaker built in for a more everyday sort of reminder for my heart that it’s supposed to beat, like my old track coach clapping his hands every time I run by (Com’on, Com’on, Com’on, Jordans, we don’t have all day here. Get that blood moving). I don’t have time to remind Mom she really didn’t need to fly in from Iowa just to cluck her tongue at me when the door opens and a young male nurse pushes his way in backward. “Hey, Evan,” the nurse says, pulling gloves out of a plastic box on the wall and sliding them onto his hands. “I’m Lane. We’re just going to check a few things before the doctor will release you, ‘kay?” He has a typical nurse voice—the tone that says he’s used to talking to kids but trying not to talk down to me because I'm seventeen. But as my eyes do a pass over of his blue scrubs and tall lean frame, he does not look like a typical nurse, and the more I stare at him the more my cheeks flush. “I need you to breathe in deep for me, Evan. Nice and slow and steady,” my nurse says as he slides his hand up the back of my too-loose Lemming Garden t-shirt, pressing the cold stethoscope just under my shoulder blade. An odd ripple of goosebumps travels out from the cold metal. “That band is playing at The Aftershock tonight,” he says, nodding to my shirt, and I grin, sucking in a long breath. “I know,” I say with a small shrug. In truth, I know everything about Lemming Garden. They are my reason for being. I plan to be at that concert. Lane leans closer and shifts the stethoscope higher, his fingers right above the clasp of my bra, and my breathing shallows. I forget about the band as his lips count my heartbeats, and I try to swallow the foreign jump in my stomach. Little stars explode through my vision, like every time my blood tries to move too fast, and I let out a slow calculated breath. “Whoa.” He chuckles, and my cheeks heat up further. “Slow and steady. Emphasis on the steady.” My mom, who has been patiently reading her garbage magazine about “fat” celebrities and the men who cheat on them, springs out of her chair. She’s sitting by my side before I let out my next long breath. “Is she okay?” Mom’s expensive foundation does a great job of masking her frown lines as her eyebrows come together. The expression is one I’m familiar with—half worried, half stoic, making her look like she’s preparing for me to drop dead. This is totally possible given my condition, but I don’t think she’s worried about that as much as she doesn’t want me to die while she’s around. I’ve heard my parents fight about my uncertain future more than once (I’m sure half the neighborhood heard it by the little round mouthed pity shrugs I got from random people). I used to be tormented by my mortality, but the brain is an amazing thing, and at some undefinable point in my life I couldn’t think about it for one second more. Like a shooting star, it just poof… disappeared. “What’s wrong, Evan? Are you dizzy? Should I call your father?” Mom glances over her shoulder a thousand times. Her gaze flicks around, and her thumb taps blindly on her cell phone. I wonder what possessed my dad to leave her here with me, even if it was for ten minutes to go get coffee. I roll my eyes and catch Lane watching me, a little knowing smile on his lips. Please, Sweet Jesus, don’t say anything to my mother. The last time Mom and I talked about boys, it was just after my twelfth birthday and my first period. Mom wrung her hands in her lap. That’s really all I remember because I couldn’t stop staring at them. Eventually, I just stood up and walked away without ever saying a word. She never brought it up again. Granted, soon after that I went into cardiac arrest, so we had bigger family issues than what I was going to do with my virginity. “It takes a little while for the ICD’s wires to implant properly in her heart. You should start seeing a steady improvement in her arrhythmia in a few weeks. The doctor mentioned all this in the post op, right?" Lane smiles at Mom. Mom tucks waves of hair behind diamond-studded ears and shakes her head. Her eyes are glazed, making it clear she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Not only did the doctor explain in excruciating detail how the ICD pacemaker will work to regulate my slow heart rate and buy me some time in a crisis, he also made sure I understood (complete with the tilted head stare down popular among adults of authority) that this device tucked beneath my skin is not a fix. It is merely a tool to help me monitor and extend the life of this heart before I will inevitably have to get a new one. Mom missed that part, too. She always misses that part. “I wasn’t here for the procedure. I flew in late, I mean, I had—” Mom stutters and I can't look at her. “Her father usually handles these things.” “The recovery on this procedure is usually fast, and she’s been monitored closely for the last forty-eight hours with no complications. A couple days of rest and she’ll be back to her regular life. Your daughter is a strong woman, Mrs. Jordans,” Lane adds with a charming smile. Both Mom and I tense up at the fact that he called her Mrs. Mom hasn’t been a Mrs. anything in years. Not since I was diagnosed. Not since she walked out on us for a guy ten years younger than her named Robbie who “understood what she was going through.” “Yes, but your father said the nurses let you sleep in this morning. You’re supposed to take your medication at seven-thirty. Why he didn’t wake you himself is just…” Mom’s squeaky, flustered voice falls out in a jumble of words, and I reach out my open palm toward her. “Mom. I’m fine.” I mean it to sound comforting, but it’s laced with the exasperation I so often feel whenever she’s around. She insists on coming to all of my appointments but refuses to learn the specifics of my condition. She can’t bail on our family because she doesn’t want to deal with the hard parts, and then blame Dad when something goes wrong. The door opens, and like he’s my psychic savior, Dad enters to rescue me with two huge paper cups of steaming tea. Following Dad is my ever-present best friend, Nat, who immediately blows my cover by zeroing in on the nurse. Her thick, dark eyebrows shoot straight up as her wide mouth opens in a gawking, gap-toothed grin. She mumbles a few words in Spanish that are wholly inappropriate given the fact that my dad is standing right next to her. She’s lucky I love her more than I love my own flesh and blood sister. “Hey Jordans, why is your face so red?” Nat laughs as the nurse looks over his shoulder briefly before tilting my head to the left to check my Carotid artery. His expression stays solid and unreadable, but he’s a cute male-nurse in a children’s hospital; I guarantee he’s used to this—seventeen-year-old virgins with chronic heart conditions looking at him and wondering what it would be like. It’s not like I obsess about it, but every once-in-awhile in the natural course of my life, the thought comes up. Mostly because Nat talks about it all.the.time. Even without her boy-crazy chatter, it’s difficult not to wonder...to not be a slave to my biology. “Why are you still here?” I mutter to my best friend as she flops in the chair, fluffing her messy bun of dark curls and picking up Mom's magazine. The nurse laughs to himself as he fits the blood pressure cuff over my arm. “Because you love me,” she says digging through her huge fake leather purse, slowly pulling out an envelope that makes my chest tighten. “And because you need me. You wouldn’t know what you’d ever do without me.”Her grin grows even wider, and I’m sure my blood pressure is spiking. She found tickets to the Lemming Garden concert. Just like she promised she would. My face is stretched in this crazy smile, and I forget everything. I forget the ICD. I forget my hot nurse. I forget that my parents hate each other and my life sucks. I tune out everything except my best friend in the whole world as she slyly pulls out two shiny tickets. We may not agree on the importance of boyfriends, but we both definitely believe that music is life, and our favorite band is playing tonight. Nat didn’t think it was a good idea at first, but it was pretty easy to convince her I felt good enough. When people hear the word Cardiomyopathy (and actually know what it means) their first thought is one step from death in a hospital bed. Sure that happens, but there are people who live their whole lives with it and only take a few pills and don’t do any crazy sports. It’s not like I’m made of glass; it’s more like I’m on a timer and no one is sure how much time is left before shit goes south. I am a supernova. A star on the path to implosion. Nat rubs the tickets together like they’re money. I laugh out loud, and in the excitement I’m hit with a wave of dizziness, my body wobbling. “Easy, Evan,” Lane says, steadying me with a hand on my back. Natalie’s dark eyes widen, and she shoves the tickets back into her bag, mouthing, “Sorry.” “I’m okay,” I assure Lane and my now hovering father. I forgot Dad was even in the room.“You shouldn’t have let her sleep in this morning, Chris.” Mom’s tone startles us all, but Dad’s shoulders are instantly tense. The staff let me sleep in, not Dad. Mom knows that, but she has that look in her eye she gets when she wants to fight. Dad’s attention is no longer on me, and mine no longer on those concert tickets. I shoot Natalie a desperate look. A look I give her a lot. A look that says save me, you are the only sane person in my life (which is saying a lot because Natalie is far from sane). “She was seeing spots earlier, too.” Mom puts her hands on her hips. “The nurse was checking her lungs, her eyes went all weird like they do, and she said she took her meds late this morning. You can’t leave me alone here if you aren’t taking care of her.” Of course this is about her. “She’s fine, Mr. J.” Nat shifts in her chair, her loud voice, while bored sounding, takes over the entire room. She’s going to save me. “Evan just thinks her nurse is hot. It’s no big deal.” "Oh. My. God," I say, flopping back onto the hospital bed with the blood pressure cuff still around my arm. When I get home, I’m finding a new best friend. My head hangs upside down, a little off the edge of the thin mattress, and immediately I see spots. I try to cover my face with my forearm, forgetting the incision just under my collarbone. Pain explodes out from the stitched skin, but I suck the hurt back into my chest before it escapes my lips. "Shit," I mutter when the pain won't go away. The edge of my vision turns to shadows. "Shit, shit, shit." I try to roll over, to breathe slower, but instead of slowing the air, I hold it. My heart slams as my body gives off adrenaline to deal with the pain. My vision blurs further, and the dizziness takes over, shadowing my world in a thick hazy blackness. Like a starless night.2:57 PM When I fade back in, Dad is sitting next to me, rubbing my back. Lane helps Dad shift me in the hospital bed so I'm comfortable, and he begins to check all my signs and signals again. He only looks slightly irritated that he has to repeat his checklist. “I’m fine,” I try to say, but my throat is dry. Sometimes when I pass out I make these noises that Nat says sounds like a cross between a pig snort and a muskrat with its foot caught in a trap. I have no idea what that sounds like (and I’d guess that she doesn’t either). All I know is that my body isn’t getting enough oxygen, and when I come to, it feels like I inhaled a sandbox. Dad hands me the hot tea he brought, and I take a sip, letting the warmth spread through my chest and wet my pasty mouth. He squeezes the fingers of my free hand, glancing over at Mom. She’s retreated to the back of the room, looking a lot paler than she should. Fainting is not a new thing for me. Even when I was little I had, what is politely called, a delicate stomach. “Maybe I should cancel my appointments. Then I could fly home with you tomorrow instead,” Dad says with that wobble of doubt that burns through me like a meteor. It’s the voice that says, ‘I don’t want to do it, but you give me no choice, Evan’ and I can’t stand that voice. When my mom makes me feel like I’ve ruined her life, I get mad, but when Dad does it, I can’t handle the look on his face. I feel like maybe I did it on purpose, even though that makes zero sense. You can’t just tell your heart to break. “No, Dad. I’m fine. I should know better than to move like that. I’m just getting used to this thing.” I pat my collarbone lightly and wince at the pain where the doctor cut open my skin and stuck in the machine that monitors my heart. I have no idea if I’m coming across as calm and confident, but I hope so. Dad cannot stay in the city with us tonight. It will ruin everything we’ve planned. He has to believe I’m definitely well on the way to recovery.3:12 PM Dad stands awkwardly in front of the hotel, talking to Mom and trying to sound civil. The air isn’t cold, but it may as well be eternally winter when those two are in the same place. I can hear the ice in Dad’s voice when he speaks. He still hates her for leaving, for leaving him with me. He blames her. She blames him. “They’ll be fine, Chris.” Mom’s hands on her thin hips tighten with every word. “It’s one night. The doctor said she can’t travel until tomorrow. He said—” “I know what he said, Janine. I was there.” Dad puts his hand between them and then pinches his nose with his fingers. Ouch. Even I can see that was a dig. “Well, stop treating me like I have no clue what I’m doing.” Mom’s voice is high pitched, like it usually is when she talks to Dad. His eyes snap up to hers in a flash of anger, but he doesn’t say anything. He never says anything. We stand in limbo for a long time, the cars rushing by on the street making me more and more tense with every passing whoosh. I just want to be inside now, my parents on opposite sides of a very thick wall and not staring each other down. Nat loops her arm through mine and smiles big. “We’ll be totally fine, Mr. J.” Nat’s voice floats over the artificial sounds of the city, and my parents look over as if they suddenly remembered I’m standing right here. “My mom gave me her laptop and her Netflix password, and there are, like, twelve seasons of Supernatural to watch.” I bump her hip with mine while forcing a smile. “We’ll be sweatpants-and-glasses perfect, Dad.” Dad’s face softens, but he rubs his tired eyes, squinting into the sun. I let go of Nat to wrap my arms around his waist and inhale his Dad smell—comfort and safety. He places his hand on the back of my head in his signature one-armed hug, kissing the top of my head. “I know. I just wish I didn’t have to fly back today. It’d be nice to just get to spend time with you. Hang out or whatever it is you do.” “It’s okay, Dad. You can’t keep cancelling on your patients. I totally get it.” I put the most genuine smile on my face but have no clue how it comes off. I hope he doesn’t see through me. But saying I don't want you to stay because I’m sneaking out to go to a concert and you're too good of a parent for me to get away with it probably won’t get me far either. “Okay, but listen to your mother, and no hot tubbing. Keep an eye on your heart rate. Make sure you set your phone. I’ll call in the morning to remind you to take your medication. Do you have your pill box?” Dad talks as I lightly push his chest, as if I were pushing a truck out of a snowbank. “Dad…” I push more and laugh. “Go. Seriously.” Dad opens the cab door, getting in. “Evan?” he calls after me, and my eyebrows go up. “Yeah?” “I love you,” he says in a way that brings me closer to snapping than anything else ever does. Dad says he loves me like it’s the last time he’ll ever say it. I feel the words float from him in a protective force field, wrapping me up and squeezing tighter and tighter. I can’t stand to hear him say it like that, and I still can’t say it back. If I say it, it might come true, so I always answer the same way. “It’s my glue,” I say with a smile. I told him once under a heavy dose of morphine that his love was like the glue that held my heart together, and as long as he loved me, I'd be okay. It's dumb, but it stuck (no pun intended). Nat pulls on my elbow. Dad lets go of my hand, forcing a wrinkled, worried smile. He glances at Mom, and I see him changing his mind, forcing me to close the cab door on him, smacking the window. I mouth, “I’m fine” before he drives away, but my stomach rolls around as I watch him go. “Hey space cadet, you coming?” Mom tries to be funny, but like her parenting skills, she’s just not a natural. Nat and I follow her into the stuccoed franchise hotel that screams middle class trying to pass off as rich. She checks us in and hands me my small wheeled suitcase. “You’ll meet us for dinner,” she says, and I shake my head. I don’t want to hang out with her and her beef-cake boyfriend. “It wasn’t a question, Evan. We’ll be having dinner in the restaurant at five. After that we’ll be going to a ballet at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Dance. I trust the two of you will be fine. A relaxing night in the hotel with that nature show...” “Supernatural, Mom.” My heart beats a little faster now that we’re talking about tonight. “And yeah, just a lazy night.” A sinister smile cracks Nat’s face as she quickly glances up at the fancy faux-chandelier above us, and my mind is flooded with images of our night in Philly. Of those tickets that I’m sure Nat had to threaten people to get a hold of. I’m glad Mom has the worst Mom instincts in the history of Moms. I elbow Nat and clear my throat. “Totally lazy,” she adds. Mom looks between us, her expertly sculpted eyebrows not betraying the thoughts that play behind her eyes. For a second, I think she’s onto us, but she settles into a satisfied smile. “Good. We’ll meet at five then, and don’t be late, we need to leave for the ballet at about six. I’m going to go get a massage; it's been a long day.” She spins and clacks away on her high heels, wheeling her designer suitcase along behind her as if she were the most important person in the universe. Nat laughs nervously next to me. “I love your Mom, EJ, but man is she dense. I thought we were busted.” I look over to my friend, her large eyes are swimming with mischief. Mom totally should have picked up on her guilty expression. Mom’s not dumb; she’s selfish. There’s a big difference, but both can make you equally oblivious. “Me too.” We make our way to the elevator at the end of the hall. “You think she’ll catch on at dinner?” Nat leans forward and presses the up button, her eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Nat, this is my mom we’re talking about…Just start talking about her, and you’ll be fine.” The elevator dings, and I press my palm to my chest. My other hand grips tighter to the handle of my suitcase. “I can’t believe we’re sneaking out,” I say as the doors slide open, and I feel like freedom pours through me with thoughts of a parentless night in the city. Nat groans, shifting her suitcase from hand to hand. “I can’t believe we have to wait three more whole hours to ditch this place! Lemming Garden, EJ. Lemming-frickin-garden.” I laugh as we enter the elevator and immediately reach out my hands. I’m almost frenzied now that we’re alone. “Let me see them.” Nat reaches into her bag and pulls out the two long tickets stamped with a logo that says, The Aftershock. She wiggles her eyebrows, and I feel like I could kiss her. I have so many expectations that are tied to these tickets, yet at the same time I have no idea. Anything could happen. This must be what freedom feels like—high hopes and deep mysteries. In this second, I don’t care about anything else that’s ever happened to me as I run my fingers over the smooth, shiny black letters that say Admit One.Friday, April 19 • 3:25 PMJordan “I got these tickets for you.” I fan the two tickets in Annie's face, while her arms fold in front of her chest. I fight to stay calm, to act as if this familiar situation isn’t hammering my heart into hamburger. These tickets, like so many other things in our relationship, are a bribe. A please don’t leave me again type bribe. “I can’t take the tickets. I wouldn’t feel right taking someone else.” Her dark eyes shift to the door of my apartment, and I know who that someone else is. My heart is a moth on a windowsill, banging into the glass over and over, oblivious to the barrier between it and the outside world. All I want is freedom, to get to the light. Annie is that light. I push a small box into her arms before rubbing my hand up and down my face as if I could get rid of the sting behind my eyes with a little friction. “Is he here? You brought him with you to get your stuff?” I try to catch the words, but they slide out, pouring over my tongue and through my teeth like a waterfall of hate. She shifts the box of things on her hip, and I watch it. Pictures, books, toothpaste, necklaces… all things that will end up back here as if they were on a bungie. They’ll end up right back where they were along with her tear-streaked eyes and desperate 'I’m sorrys'. “Jordan, don’t be like that. You knew we were over. We’ve been fighting for months.” Annie tightens her arms around the box. Thump, thump, thump. The poor moth in my chest, willing to bash in its own skull to get to her. “You were fighting. Nothing changed with me. Nothing. I’m still the same guy I always was.” I throw out my hands, wishing with everything that she would smile at me again, melt for me again. I hope that she remembers how perfectly she fits inside my outstretched arms and steps inside. “That’s the problem, Jordan,” she suddenly yells, and it makes my arms drop. The moth bashes his head for the last time, falling dead to rot on the sun-baked ledge of my soul. “You haven’t changed! You live in this crappy apartment with your brother. You have no plans. No future. You didn't even apply for school. We graduate in a month. Where the hell is poetry going to get you in life? Wake up.” “Don’t.” She should know better than anyone why I’m here. That my brother was my legal guardian until last week. Until I turned eighteen. “Someday you’ll have to talk about it, about why you’re so damn scared to grow up, but I’m not waiting for you anymore. We do this over and over. I’m not happy. I don’t love you. I leave you, and you win me back with your words. I get out, and you suck me back in. I can’t do it anymore." Tears fill her eyes, and she quickly wipes at them with the back of her hand. I reach for her, running my thumb over her wet knuckles, and she sighs. "Everyone we know is pumped for high school to be over, to move on, to get the hell out of here and start life. But you still write on bathroom walls, wasting your potential, only using it when I’ve had it and you need me back. You refuse to grow up.” “You can’t leave me,” I mumble, and she yanks her hand away. “I love you.” “You say you love me in a hundred thousand ways, Jordie, but I don’t feel it. I’ve never felt it. I never feel you really mean it.” She slams her hand against my chest, and I grab her wrist. “What does that even mean?” Now I’m yelling, pressing her palm to my chest. “How do you not feel that?” My heart hits her hand with sharp jabs, and I hope it saysI. love. you.I. love. you,but the longer she stands in front of me with tears rolling down her cheeks, jumping to their death from her chin, the louder I can hear what it’s really saying. Don't. leave. me. I. am. scared. to. be. a. lone. “The only thing you’ve ever loved is the words you use. Not the people you use them on.” Annie pulls her hand back, grabbing something from her back pocket. She places a lined piece of paper into my hand before walking out with my heart in hers. Again. That's always our trade.4:23 PM I crack my second beer, trying to fill the void that is Annie with anything other than emptiness, when my best friend Rick buzzes up. I hit the button to let him in and unlock the door before flopping back down on my brother’s vintage couch. Every time I shift, a fresh reel of memories plays behind my eyes. Sleeping on this couch after Dad went away...The first time I got any play from a girl was on this couch...Laying on top of Annie, feeling her warmth beneath me as I recited my poetry against her skin...Movies, video games, wrestling, sex, coldness, sex, space, fighting, sex. Fighting, fighting, fighting. “You look pathetic,” Rick says as soon as he walks in the door, moving to the fridge to grab a beer. “You look like an asshole.” I slam my notebook shut and toss it across the room, the pages fluttering like the wings of a bird that can’t yet fly—frantic and unpracticed. Rick laughs as the fridge door slams. The bottle cap hisses, and he sinks down next to me, hitting the neck of his bottle against mine. “Sorry to hear, man.” Rick’s deep dark features sink into his even deeper, darker skin. His face almost disappears into his scrunched up concern, which means I really do look pathetic. But after the third time Annie left me he stopped being genuinely interested even though she's his cousin. I can see it on his face that he thinks this is stupid. That I’m being stupid. I probably am, but I can’t stop it. She’s my girl. I need her. “How’d you hear?” My head falls back against the amber fabric of the sofa. I try to count the pieces of glitter embedded in the stucco ceiling, but I get stuck at the large crack that splits our apartment in two. “Ran into Annie. She seemed pretty torn up…” I shoot up, back straight. “She doesn’t get to be torn up. Not when I walked in on her screwing that guy. Again.” Rick’s face pulls further in, his eyes the only in the world that see me for what I am. Except for maybe my brother. “That really sucks. She neglected that part of the story.” She always neglects that part of the story. I relax back into the couch and lift the green glass bottle to my lips. Using booze to fill the great disparity between my head and heart isn’t working. Though I shouldn’t be surprised; I rarely drink. The silence ticks by between my friend and me. The physical space is mere inches, but we may as well be in parallel universes. Disparity. Such a great word. Totally shit meaning. “What did you do with those tickets?” he finally asks. “I thought about burning them.” Rick laughs. “You’re so emo bro. Writing poetry and burning your ex’s shit. Taking her back time after time after—” “I get it, man,” I say holding my hand between us. “I don’t wanna go. Lemming Garden sucks now, anyway.” That’s a lie. They really don't. They may have sold out, but their stuff is still sort of decent. I guess. “No they don’t. You’re just pissed.” “I’m not pissed.” I’m a capacious void of anger. “Well then, let’s go to the concert if you’re not mad.” Rick downs the rest of his beer in a couple gulps. “I don’t want to go to the concert.” Rick sets his empty beer on the coffee table and stands, holding out one of his huge basketball-sized hands. “Then give me the tickets. I’ll take Trooper. He’s always down for some concert action. Those fangirls are crazy, dude.” I look up to the tower that is my friend and then to the tickets laying on the coffee table. “I’m not paying for you to go pick up some woman from a concert.” “Then…” He lets his voice trail off, but I know what he’s saying. Get off your ass. I mumble to hide the tiny smile that forms at the corner of my mouth and stalk off to the bathroom to jump in the shower. If I’m going to hang out with crazy fangirls, I may as well smell half decent.Read the rest of EVEN ON THE DARKEST NIGHT March 5th, 2018. Make sure to pre-order for iBooks, Kobo, and Nook.
She believes that love is a lie. He makes her a bet that he can change her mind...but he only has one night to do it.After her heart condition diagnosis, Evan's family fell apart, leaving her faith in love shattered. She uses music and the science of the stars to distance herself from her feelings and make sense of her own mortality. After having his heart broken again by the same girl, Jordan's belief in the power of love is finally cracking. He uses poetry to untangle the complexities of his emotions and make sense of his circumstances. When Evan and Jordan's lives collide at a concert, they can't deny all the ways they parallel each other. But each carries a secret that threatens their night of perfect distraction and when the truth comes out, the lies they find themselves confronting are their own. Can Evan and Jordan redefine the word love in a single night?You can pre-order EVEN ON THE DARKEST NIGHT for iBooks, Nook, or Kobo and here's why I think you should...For the entire year of 2018 I'll be donating 50% of the profits of this book to the organization that helped me SO much while writing it. I reached out to multiple organizations in my research to make sure that I treated Evan's heart condition—Cardiomyopathy—with respect and sensitivity and the CHILDREN'S CARDIOMYOPATHY FOUNDATION responded with support and enthusiasm, taking time out of their day to direct me to true studies and reliable research on the condition. The foundation works on both sides of the fence so I was able to ask questions about the medical implications as well as the emotional stress it can put on a family—two important aspects of the book.I watched a LOT of videos on kids with Cardiomyopathy and I shed a LOT of tears in the process of writing this book.To say thank you to Gina and the rest of the Foundation, half of every dollar I make on this book will go to them! They are extremely passionate about what they do and I want to give back.Disclaimer: While the CCF helped me extensively with my research they did not read the finished book, nor do they endorse the book in any way. This is simply me wanting to give back for the time they spent answering my questions and guiding my research. Any comments/concerns/questions about the book should be directed at ME.Not sure if you're ready for the pre-order? Read the first TWO chapters below (unedited and subject to change slightly).EVEN ON THE DARKEST NIGHTFriday, April 19 • 2:36 PMEvan Vibrant light glitters behind my closed eyelids like a meteor shower as I run my fingers from the old scar on my breastbone to the fresh incision under my collarbone. My t-shirt snags the gauze tape, and I wince in pain. A soft clucking sound pulls my focus to my mother, sitting in the corner of the small sterile room at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Her thin lips are pressed together in sternness, but I see through her concerned stare. I always see the same insincerity swimming through the deep brown. She doesn’t want to be here. Not alone. Not with me. Mom catches my gaze and taps her collarbone. “Evan, darling.” Mom’s eyes flick back down to her magazine, and I drop my hand from the t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of my favorite band. “Stop touching it.”It is the four-inch long incision along my collarbone where my Implanted Cardioverter Defibrillator was implanted two days ago—or ICD if you don’t want to waste twenty minutes saying the whole thing. The device makes sure I don’t die immediately if I have another heart attack, but there’s also a pacemaker built in for a more everyday sort of reminder for my heart that it’s supposed to beat, like my old track coach clapping his hands every time I run by (Com’on, Com’on, Com’on, Jordans, we don’t have all day here. Get that blood moving). I don’t have time to remind Mom she really didn’t need to fly in from Iowa just to cluck her tongue at me when the door opens and a young male nurse pushes his way in backward. “Hey, Evan,” the nurse says, pulling gloves out of a plastic box on the wall and sliding them onto his hands. “I’m Lane. We’re just going to check a few things before the doctor will release you, ‘kay?” He has a typical nurse voice—the tone that says he’s used to talking to kids but trying not to talk down to me because I'm seventeen. But as my eyes do a pass over of his blue scrubs and tall lean frame, he does not look like a typical nurse, and the more I stare at him the more my cheeks flush. “I need you to breathe in deep for me, Evan. Nice and slow and steady,” my nurse says as he slides his hand up the back of my too-loose Lemming Garden t-shirt, pressing the cold stethoscope just under my shoulder blade. An odd ripple of goosebumps travels out from the cold metal. “That band is playing at The Aftershock tonight,” he says, nodding to my shirt, and I grin, sucking in a long breath. “I know,” I say with a small shrug. In truth, I know everything about Lemming Garden. They are my reason for being. I plan to be at that concert. Lane leans closer and shifts the stethoscope higher, his fingers right above the clasp of my bra, and my breathing shallows. I forget about the band as his lips count my heartbeats, and I try to swallow the foreign jump in my stomach. Little stars explode through my vision, like every time my blood tries to move too fast, and I let out a slow calculated breath. “Whoa.” He chuckles, and my cheeks heat up further. “Slow and steady. Emphasis on the steady.” My mom, who has been patiently reading her garbage magazine about “fat” celebrities and the men who cheat on them, springs out of her chair. She’s sitting by my side before I let out my next long breath. “Is she okay?” Mom’s expensive foundation does a great job of masking her frown lines as her eyebrows come together. The expression is one I’m familiar with—half worried, half stoic, making her look like she’s preparing for me to drop dead. This is totally possible given my condition, but I don’t think she’s worried about that as much as she doesn’t want me to die while she’s around. I’ve heard my parents fight about my uncertain future more than once (I’m sure half the neighborhood heard it by the little round mouthed pity shrugs I got from random people). I used to be tormented by my mortality, but the brain is an amazing thing, and at some undefinable point in my life I couldn’t think about it for one second more. Like a shooting star, it just poof… disappeared. “What’s wrong, Evan? Are you dizzy? Should I call your father?” Mom glances over her shoulder a thousand times. Her gaze flicks around, and her thumb taps blindly on her cell phone. I wonder what possessed my dad to leave her here with me, even if it was for ten minutes to go get coffee. I roll my eyes and catch Lane watching me, a little knowing smile on his lips. Please, Sweet Jesus, don’t say anything to my mother. The last time Mom and I talked about boys, it was just after my twelfth birthday and my first period. Mom wrung her hands in her lap. That’s really all I remember because I couldn’t stop staring at them. Eventually, I just stood up and walked away without ever saying a word. She never brought it up again. Granted, soon after that I went into cardiac arrest, so we had bigger family issues than what I was going to do with my virginity. “It takes a little while for the ICD’s wires to implant properly in her heart. You should start seeing a steady improvement in her arrhythmia in a few weeks. The doctor mentioned all this in the post op, right?" Lane smiles at Mom. Mom tucks waves of hair behind diamond-studded ears and shakes her head. Her eyes are glazed, making it clear she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Not only did the doctor explain in excruciating detail how the ICD pacemaker will work to regulate my slow heart rate and buy me some time in a crisis, he also made sure I understood (complete with the tilted head stare down popular among adults of authority) that this device tucked beneath my skin is not a fix. It is merely a tool to help me monitor and extend the life of this heart before I will inevitably have to get a new one. Mom missed that part, too. She always misses that part. “I wasn’t here for the procedure. I flew in late, I mean, I had—” Mom stutters and I can't look at her. “Her father usually handles these things.” “The recovery on this procedure is usually fast, and she’s been monitored closely for the last forty-eight hours with no complications. A couple days of rest and she’ll be back to her regular life. Your daughter is a strong woman, Mrs. Jordans,” Lane adds with a charming smile. Both Mom and I tense up at the fact that he called her Mrs. Mom hasn’t been a Mrs. anything in years. Not since I was diagnosed. Not since she walked out on us for a guy ten years younger than her named Robbie who “understood what she was going through.” “Yes, but your father said the nurses let you sleep in this morning. You’re supposed to take your medication at seven-thirty. Why he didn’t wake you himself is just…” Mom’s squeaky, flustered voice falls out in a jumble of words, and I reach out my open palm toward her. “Mom. I’m fine.” I mean it to sound comforting, but it’s laced with the exasperation I so often feel whenever she’s around. She insists on coming to all of my appointments but refuses to learn the specifics of my condition. She can’t bail on our family because she doesn’t want to deal with the hard parts, and then blame Dad when something goes wrong. The door opens, and like he’s my psychic savior, Dad enters to rescue me with two huge paper cups of steaming tea. Following Dad is my ever-present best friend, Nat, who immediately blows my cover by zeroing in on the nurse. Her thick, dark eyebrows shoot straight up as her wide mouth opens in a gawking, gap-toothed grin. She mumbles a few words in Spanish that are wholly inappropriate given the fact that my dad is standing right next to her. She’s lucky I love her more than I love my own flesh and blood sister. “Hey Jordans, why is your face so red?” Nat laughs as the nurse looks over his shoulder briefly before tilting my head to the left to check my Carotid artery. His expression stays solid and unreadable, but he’s a cute male-nurse in a children’s hospital; I guarantee he’s used to this—seventeen-year-old virgins with chronic heart conditions looking at him and wondering what it would be like. It’s not like I obsess about it, but every once-in-awhile in the natural course of my life, the thought comes up. Mostly because Nat talks about it all.the.time. Even without her boy-crazy chatter, it’s difficult not to wonder...to not be a slave to my biology. “Why are you still here?” I mutter to my best friend as she flops in the chair, fluffing her messy bun of dark curls and picking up Mom's magazine. The nurse laughs to himself as he fits the blood pressure cuff over my arm. “Because you love me,” she says digging through her huge fake leather purse, slowly pulling out an envelope that makes my chest tighten. “And because you need me. You wouldn’t know what you’d ever do without me.”Her grin grows even wider, and I’m sure my blood pressure is spiking. She found tickets to the Lemming Garden concert. Just like she promised she would. My face is stretched in this crazy smile, and I forget everything. I forget the ICD. I forget my hot nurse. I forget that my parents hate each other and my life sucks. I tune out everything except my best friend in the whole world as she slyly pulls out two shiny tickets. We may not agree on the importance of boyfriends, but we both definitely believe that music is life, and our favorite band is playing tonight. Nat didn’t think it was a good idea at first, but it was pretty easy to convince her I felt good enough. When people hear the word Cardiomyopathy (and actually know what it means) their first thought is one step from death in a hospital bed. Sure that happens, but there are people who live their whole lives with it and only take a few pills and don’t do any crazy sports. It’s not like I’m made of glass; it’s more like I’m on a timer and no one is sure how much time is left before shit goes south. I am a supernova. A star on the path to implosion. Nat rubs the tickets together like they’re money. I laugh out loud, and in the excitement I’m hit with a wave of dizziness, my body wobbling. “Easy, Evan,” Lane says, steadying me with a hand on my back. Natalie’s dark eyes widen, and she shoves the tickets back into her bag, mouthing, “Sorry.” “I’m okay,” I assure Lane and my now hovering father. I forgot Dad was even in the room.“You shouldn’t have let her sleep in this morning, Chris.” Mom’s tone startles us all, but Dad’s shoulders are instantly tense. The staff let me sleep in, not Dad. Mom knows that, but she has that look in her eye she gets when she wants to fight. Dad’s attention is no longer on me, and mine no longer on those concert tickets. I shoot Natalie a desperate look. A look I give her a lot. A look that says save me, you are the only sane person in my life (which is saying a lot because Natalie is far from sane). “She was seeing spots earlier, too.” Mom puts her hands on her hips. “The nurse was checking her lungs, her eyes went all weird like they do, and she said she took her meds late this morning. You can’t leave me alone here if you aren’t taking care of her.” Of course this is about her. “She’s fine, Mr. J.” Nat shifts in her chair, her loud voice, while bored sounding, takes over the entire room. She’s going to save me. “Evan just thinks her nurse is hot. It’s no big deal.” "Oh. My. God," I say, flopping back onto the hospital bed with the blood pressure cuff still around my arm. When I get home, I’m finding a new best friend. My head hangs upside down, a little off the edge of the thin mattress, and immediately I see spots. I try to cover my face with my forearm, forgetting the incision just under my collarbone. Pain explodes out from the stitched skin, but I suck the hurt back into my chest before it escapes my lips. "Shit," I mutter when the pain won't go away. The edge of my vision turns to shadows. "Shit, shit, shit." I try to roll over, to breathe slower, but instead of slowing the air, I hold it. My heart slams as my body gives off adrenaline to deal with the pain. My vision blurs further, and the dizziness takes over, shadowing my world in a thick hazy blackness. Like a starless night.2:57 PM When I fade back in, Dad is sitting next to me, rubbing my back. Lane helps Dad shift me in the hospital bed so I'm comfortable, and he begins to check all my signs and signals again. He only looks slightly irritated that he has to repeat his checklist. “I’m fine,” I try to say, but my throat is dry. Sometimes when I pass out I make these noises that Nat says sounds like a cross between a pig snort and a muskrat with its foot caught in a trap. I have no idea what that sounds like (and I’d guess that she doesn’t either). All I know is that my body isn’t getting enough oxygen, and when I come to, it feels like I inhaled a sandbox. Dad hands me the hot tea he brought, and I take a sip, letting the warmth spread through my chest and wet my pasty mouth. He squeezes the fingers of my free hand, glancing over at Mom. She’s retreated to the back of the room, looking a lot paler than she should. Fainting is not a new thing for me. Even when I was little I had, what is politely called, a delicate stomach. “Maybe I should cancel my appointments. Then I could fly home with you tomorrow instead,” Dad says with that wobble of doubt that burns through me like a meteor. It’s the voice that says, ‘I don’t want to do it, but you give me no choice, Evan’ and I can’t stand that voice. When my mom makes me feel like I’ve ruined her life, I get mad, but when Dad does it, I can’t handle the look on his face. I feel like maybe I did it on purpose, even though that makes zero sense. You can’t just tell your heart to break. “No, Dad. I’m fine. I should know better than to move like that. I’m just getting used to this thing.” I pat my collarbone lightly and wince at the pain where the doctor cut open my skin and stuck in the machine that monitors my heart. I have no idea if I’m coming across as calm and confident, but I hope so. Dad cannot stay in the city with us tonight. It will ruin everything we’ve planned. He has to believe I’m definitely well on the way to recovery.3:12 PM Dad stands awkwardly in front of the hotel, talking to Mom and trying to sound civil. The air isn’t cold, but it may as well be eternally winter when those two are in the same place. I can hear the ice in Dad’s voice when he speaks. He still hates her for leaving, for leaving him with me. He blames her. She blames him. “They’ll be fine, Chris.” Mom’s hands on her thin hips tighten with every word. “It’s one night. The doctor said she can’t travel until tomorrow. He said—” “I know what he said, Janine. I was there.” Dad puts his hand between them and then pinches his nose with his fingers. Ouch. Even I can see that was a dig. “Well, stop treating me like I have no clue what I’m doing.” Mom’s voice is high pitched, like it usually is when she talks to Dad. His eyes snap up to hers in a flash of anger, but he doesn’t say anything. He never says anything. We stand in limbo for a long time, the cars rushing by on the street making me more and more tense with every passing whoosh. I just want to be inside now, my parents on opposite sides of a very thick wall and not staring each other down. Nat loops her arm through mine and smiles big. “We’ll be totally fine, Mr. J.” Nat’s voice floats over the artificial sounds of the city, and my parents look over as if they suddenly remembered I’m standing right here. “My mom gave me her laptop and her Netflix password, and there are, like, twelve seasons of Supernatural to watch.” I bump her hip with mine while forcing a smile. “We’ll be sweatpants-and-glasses perfect, Dad.” Dad’s face softens, but he rubs his tired eyes, squinting into the sun. I let go of Nat to wrap my arms around his waist and inhale his Dad smell—comfort and safety. He places his hand on the back of my head in his signature one-armed hug, kissing the top of my head. “I know. I just wish I didn’t have to fly back today. It’d be nice to just get to spend time with you. Hang out or whatever it is you do.” “It’s okay, Dad. You can’t keep cancelling on your patients. I totally get it.” I put the most genuine smile on my face but have no clue how it comes off. I hope he doesn’t see through me. But saying I don't want you to stay because I’m sneaking out to go to a concert and you're too good of a parent for me to get away with it probably won’t get me far either. “Okay, but listen to your mother, and no hot tubbing. Keep an eye on your heart rate. Make sure you set your phone. I’ll call in the morning to remind you to take your medication. Do you have your pill box?” Dad talks as I lightly push his chest, as if I were pushing a truck out of a snowbank. “Dad…” I push more and laugh. “Go. Seriously.” Dad opens the cab door, getting in. “Evan?” he calls after me, and my eyebrows go up. “Yeah?” “I love you,” he says in a way that brings me closer to snapping than anything else ever does. Dad says he loves me like it’s the last time he’ll ever say it. I feel the words float from him in a protective force field, wrapping me up and squeezing tighter and tighter. I can’t stand to hear him say it like that, and I still can’t say it back. If I say it, it might come true, so I always answer the same way. “It’s my glue,” I say with a smile. I told him once under a heavy dose of morphine that his love was like the glue that held my heart together, and as long as he loved me, I'd be okay. It's dumb, but it stuck (no pun intended). Nat pulls on my elbow. Dad lets go of my hand, forcing a wrinkled, worried smile. He glances at Mom, and I see him changing his mind, forcing me to close the cab door on him, smacking the window. I mouth, “I’m fine” before he drives away, but my stomach rolls around as I watch him go. “Hey space cadet, you coming?” Mom tries to be funny, but like her parenting skills, she’s just not a natural. Nat and I follow her into the stuccoed franchise hotel that screams middle class trying to pass off as rich. She checks us in and hands me my small wheeled suitcase. “You’ll meet us for dinner,” she says, and I shake my head. I don’t want to hang out with her and her beef-cake boyfriend. “It wasn’t a question, Evan. We’ll be having dinner in the restaurant at five. After that we’ll be going to a ballet at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Dance. I trust the two of you will be fine. A relaxing night in the hotel with that nature show...” “Supernatural, Mom.” My heart beats a little faster now that we’re talking about tonight. “And yeah, just a lazy night.” A sinister smile cracks Nat’s face as she quickly glances up at the fancy faux-chandelier above us, and my mind is flooded with images of our night in Philly. Of those tickets that I’m sure Nat had to threaten people to get a hold of. I’m glad Mom has the worst Mom instincts in the history of Moms. I elbow Nat and clear my throat. “Totally lazy,” she adds. Mom looks between us, her expertly sculpted eyebrows not betraying the thoughts that play behind her eyes. For a second, I think she’s onto us, but she settles into a satisfied smile. “Good. We’ll meet at five then, and don’t be late, we need to leave for the ballet at about six. I’m going to go get a massage; it's been a long day.” She spins and clacks away on her high heels, wheeling her designer suitcase along behind her as if she were the most important person in the universe. Nat laughs nervously next to me. “I love your Mom, EJ, but man is she dense. I thought we were busted.” I look over to my friend, her large eyes are swimming with mischief. Mom totally should have picked up on her guilty expression. Mom’s not dumb; she’s selfish. There’s a big difference, but both can make you equally oblivious. “Me too.” We make our way to the elevator at the end of the hall. “You think she’ll catch on at dinner?” Nat leans forward and presses the up button, her eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Nat, this is my mom we’re talking about…Just start talking about her, and you’ll be fine.” The elevator dings, and I press my palm to my chest. My other hand grips tighter to the handle of my suitcase. “I can’t believe we’re sneaking out,” I say as the doors slide open, and I feel like freedom pours through me with thoughts of a parentless night in the city. Nat groans, shifting her suitcase from hand to hand. “I can’t believe we have to wait three more whole hours to ditch this place! Lemming Garden, EJ. Lemming-frickin-garden.” I laugh as we enter the elevator and immediately reach out my hands. I’m almost frenzied now that we’re alone. “Let me see them.” Nat reaches into her bag and pulls out the two long tickets stamped with a logo that says, The Aftershock. She wiggles her eyebrows, and I feel like I could kiss her. I have so many expectations that are tied to these tickets, yet at the same time I have no idea. Anything could happen. This must be what freedom feels like—high hopes and deep mysteries. In this second, I don’t care about anything else that’s ever happened to me as I run my fingers over the smooth, shiny black letters that say Admit One.Friday, April 19 • 3:25 PMJordan “I got these tickets for you.” I fan the two tickets in Annie's face, while her arms fold in front of her chest. I fight to stay calm, to act as if this familiar situation isn’t hammering my heart into hamburger. These tickets, like so many other things in our relationship, are a bribe. A please don’t leave me again type bribe. “I can’t take the tickets. I wouldn’t feel right taking someone else.” Her dark eyes shift to the door of my apartment, and I know who that someone else is. My heart is a moth on a windowsill, banging into the glass over and over, oblivious to the barrier between it and the outside world. All I want is freedom, to get to the light. Annie is that light. I push a small box into her arms before rubbing my hand up and down my face as if I could get rid of the sting behind my eyes with a little friction. “Is he here? You brought him with you to get your stuff?” I try to catch the words, but they slide out, pouring over my tongue and through my teeth like a waterfall of hate. She shifts the box of things on her hip, and I watch it. Pictures, books, toothpaste, necklaces… all things that will end up back here as if they were on a bungie. They’ll end up right back where they were along with her tear-streaked eyes and desperate 'I’m sorrys'. “Jordan, don’t be like that. You knew we were over. We’ve been fighting for months.” Annie tightens her arms around the box. Thump, thump, thump. The poor moth in my chest, willing to bash in its own skull to get to her. “You were fighting. Nothing changed with me. Nothing. I’m still the same guy I always was.” I throw out my hands, wishing with everything that she would smile at me again, melt for me again. I hope that she remembers how perfectly she fits inside my outstretched arms and steps inside. “That’s the problem, Jordan,” she suddenly yells, and it makes my arms drop. The moth bashes his head for the last time, falling dead to rot on the sun-baked ledge of my soul. “You haven’t changed! You live in this crappy apartment with your brother. You have no plans. No future. You didn't even apply for school. We graduate in a month. Where the hell is poetry going to get you in life? Wake up.” “Don’t.” She should know better than anyone why I’m here. That my brother was my legal guardian until last week. Until I turned eighteen. “Someday you’ll have to talk about it, about why you’re so damn scared to grow up, but I’m not waiting for you anymore. We do this over and over. I’m not happy. I don’t love you. I leave you, and you win me back with your words. I get out, and you suck me back in. I can’t do it anymore." Tears fill her eyes, and she quickly wipes at them with the back of her hand. I reach for her, running my thumb over her wet knuckles, and she sighs. "Everyone we know is pumped for high school to be over, to move on, to get the hell out of here and start life. But you still write on bathroom walls, wasting your potential, only using it when I’ve had it and you need me back. You refuse to grow up.” “You can’t leave me,” I mumble, and she yanks her hand away. “I love you.” “You say you love me in a hundred thousand ways, Jordie, but I don’t feel it. I’ve never felt it. I never feel you really mean it.” She slams her hand against my chest, and I grab her wrist. “What does that even mean?” Now I’m yelling, pressing her palm to my chest. “How do you not feel that?” My heart hits her hand with sharp jabs, and I hope it saysI. love. you.I. love. you,but the longer she stands in front of me with tears rolling down her cheeks, jumping to their death from her chin, the louder I can hear what it’s really saying. Don't. leave. me. I. am. scared. to. be. a. lone. “The only thing you’ve ever loved is the words you use. Not the people you use them on.” Annie pulls her hand back, grabbing something from her back pocket. She places a lined piece of paper into my hand before walking out with my heart in hers. Again. That's always our trade.4:23 PM I crack my second beer, trying to fill the void that is Annie with anything other than emptiness, when my best friend Rick buzzes up. I hit the button to let him in and unlock the door before flopping back down on my brother’s vintage couch. Every time I shift, a fresh reel of memories plays behind my eyes. Sleeping on this couch after Dad went away...The first time I got any play from a girl was on this couch...Laying on top of Annie, feeling her warmth beneath me as I recited my poetry against her skin...Movies, video games, wrestling, sex, coldness, sex, space, fighting, sex. Fighting, fighting, fighting. “You look pathetic,” Rick says as soon as he walks in the door, moving to the fridge to grab a beer. “You look like an asshole.” I slam my notebook shut and toss it across the room, the pages fluttering like the wings of a bird that can’t yet fly—frantic and unpracticed. Rick laughs as the fridge door slams. The bottle cap hisses, and he sinks down next to me, hitting the neck of his bottle against mine. “Sorry to hear, man.” Rick’s deep dark features sink into his even deeper, darker skin. His face almost disappears into his scrunched up concern, which means I really do look pathetic. But after the third time Annie left me he stopped being genuinely interested even though she's his cousin. I can see it on his face that he thinks this is stupid. That I’m being stupid. I probably am, but I can’t stop it. She’s my girl. I need her. “How’d you hear?” My head falls back against the amber fabric of the sofa. I try to count the pieces of glitter embedded in the stucco ceiling, but I get stuck at the large crack that splits our apartment in two. “Ran into Annie. She seemed pretty torn up…” I shoot up, back straight. “She doesn’t get to be torn up. Not when I walked in on her screwing that guy. Again.” Rick’s face pulls further in, his eyes the only in the world that see me for what I am. Except for maybe my brother. “That really sucks. She neglected that part of the story.” She always neglects that part of the story. I relax back into the couch and lift the green glass bottle to my lips. Using booze to fill the great disparity between my head and heart isn’t working. Though I shouldn’t be surprised; I rarely drink. The silence ticks by between my friend and me. The physical space is mere inches, but we may as well be in parallel universes. Disparity. Such a great word. Totally shit meaning. “What did you do with those tickets?” he finally asks. “I thought about burning them.” Rick laughs. “You’re so emo bro. Writing poetry and burning your ex’s shit. Taking her back time after time after—” “I get it, man,” I say holding my hand between us. “I don’t wanna go. Lemming Garden sucks now, anyway.” That’s a lie. They really don't. They may have sold out, but their stuff is still sort of decent. I guess. “No they don’t. You’re just pissed.” “I’m not pissed.” I’m a capacious void of anger. “Well then, let’s go to the concert if you’re not mad.” Rick downs the rest of his beer in a couple gulps. “I don’t want to go to the concert.” Rick sets his empty beer on the coffee table and stands, holding out one of his huge basketball-sized hands. “Then give me the tickets. I’ll take Trooper. He’s always down for some concert action. Those fangirls are crazy, dude.” I look up to the tower that is my friend and then to the tickets laying on the coffee table. “I’m not paying for you to go pick up some woman from a concert.” “Then…” He lets his voice trail off, but I know what he’s saying. Get off your ass. I mumble to hide the tiny smile that forms at the corner of my mouth and stalk off to the bathroom to jump in the shower. If I’m going to hang out with crazy fangirls, I may as well smell half decent.Read the rest of EVEN ON THE DARKEST NIGHT March 5th, 2018. Make sure to pre-order for iBooks, Kobo, and Nook.
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