First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)

by B.K. Borison

It feels like every time I get my hopes up for something good, reality comes out swinging. I don’t know how to be a hopeful person anymore. It’s easier not to be.

I don’t want to try. All I do is try. All day long, I’m trying and I’m so tired. Why can’t this be the one thing I don’t have to try at? Why can’t it be a thing that just…happens? I don’t want—I don’t want to think about what I should say or how I should act or…or have talking points in the notes app of my phone for a dinner date at a restaurant that I don’t really like. I want to feel something when I connect with someone. I want sparks. The good kind, you know? I want to laugh and mean it. I want goose bumps. I want to wonder what my date is thinking about and hope it might be me. I want…I want the magic.”

“When the whole world tells you you’re silly for wanting the things you want, you start to believe them. You start to think you’re not worth it. That if the things you’re waiting for do exist, they’re not for someone like you.” She sighs, a small, hopeless sound that twists through my headphones. “But what’s wrong with being a romantic? I can be a confident, independent woman and still want someone to hold my hand. To ask about my day. It’s a good thing to want passion and excitement and care. Attention and affection. I don’t want to settle for anything less than that.

I wish there was a guidebook for this. An instruction manual that could tell me how to take myself apart and put everything back together so I’m good as new. I wish I knew how to make sense of my pieces.

“I think it would be nice to have a picnic,” she finally says. “A picnic,” I repeat. “Yeah,” she says slowly, still ping-ponging her attention around the studio. “It doesn’t have to be outdoors either. Maybe on the living room floor. Nothing fancy. Carry-out from a burger place and a fort made out of sheets. Maybe a movie in the background. I don’t know. The idea always seemed nice.” “Eating on the floor seems nice?”

“I like that. Thinking that I’m worth paying attention to. Something ordinary made extraordinary by the person you’re sharing it with.”

“Why does Hughie look like he’s about to be the first to die in a horror movie?” Jackson asks. “He always sort of looks like that.” I watch as Hughie gestures wildly, mouthing something through the window. “What’s he saying?”

I want to keep her in this booth with me for an undisclosed period of time. I’m possessive of her, apparently. Of her time and her laughter and her smiles that stretch so wide her eyes slip shut.

“I want to feel it first and think about it second. I want to be in the moment and not worry about what’s coming next. I don’t want to twist myself into circles over the idea of a partner.”

He holds me steady with his hand squeezed against mine as we stare at his…project. “I figured we could eat the pizza here,” he says carefully, eyes flicking toward me and away again. He’s acting like he’s just presented me with a pipe bomb, not a…poorly constructed fort in the middle of his living room. He nods toward the mess of cushions and haphazardly thrown blankets. Now I know what he was doing with his seven minutes. He was collecting every spare blanket and a beach towel—if the blue sea turtles are any indication—to create a makeshift tent. “Like a picnic,” I breathe. I look up at him and grin. “You remember what I said.”

OMG HE REMEMBERED