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.

Aiden Valentine: Flowers die. Everything dies. Caller: I thought this was a romance hotline.

“All right, Baltimore. Stick with me. We’ll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.” “We will possibly be back after these messages from his sponsors,” Lucie tacks on, sounding grumpy but resigned. “One of us will absolutely be back after these messages from our sponsors.”

I laugh and Jackson goes bug-eyed on the other side of the glass. He presses his face up against it, nose squished to the window, hands cupped around his eyes to get a better look.

“I hate it. It’s like everyone is doing some dance that I never learned the steps to. I’m clueless, and I’m not using that as an excuse. I am genuinely clueless. I don’t understand all of the…stuff you have to sift through before you can be yourself.”

Ugh twin

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.”

Love and romance seem like a fairy tale now, something we tell kids to help them sleep better at night. Something we tell ourselves too.

“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 want goose bumps. I want to be wanted. All this time and I—I haven’t given up. I guess I’m just waiting for it to find me.”

Jackson tries to grab one and I tug the box closer to me. “Hey.” He reaches for it with a frown. “Share the cookies.” I twist myself around, giving him my back. “No. I need them more than you.”

shovel another cookie into my mouth. These cookies are the only thing going right for me and I’m not giving them up. I’m not.

He punches me once in the side and grabs the box while I double over, spilling coffee down the front of my shirt. I pull the scalding-hot wet material away from my chest as he scarfs down the rest of the box like a goddamned barbarian. I raise both of my eyebrows, watching in disbelief. “Was that necessary?” “You did this to yourself.” His cheeks are bulging with cookie. “You wouldn’t share.”

“Or maybe she’s sending you to one of those fancy performer retreats so you learn how to turn that frown upside down. You know. Icebreakers. Team building. All your favorite things.” I freeze. “She wouldn’t.”

I don’t know what I want for myself. It’s all twisted up in the things I think I deserve, then squashed under the things I’m brave enough to reach for. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about any of it long enough to know what I want.

I’ve been with my husband for sixty-five years. Every day isn’t a fairy tale. We’ve worked hard for our relationship. To build it. To maintain it. I’ve become so many versions of myself and so has he, but we’ve found a way to fall in love with one another over and over again. Every time.

Her lips twitch into a full smile and she grins at me. Beautiful, I think hazily, my brain clearly somewhere on the floor with the dust bunnies and the Slurpee stain Eileen left six months ago. She’s really fucking beautiful.

My fingertips skim the soft material of the sweater she’s wearing and I drop my hand abruptly, curling it into a fist. There is about three inches of space in this room and there’s nowhere I can move that doesn’t have some part of me pressed up against some part of her.

YEARNING????

About to do my best to help a woman find something I’m not even sure I believe in. Something that’s never been good to me.

“It tells me you know exactly who you are, and you know exactly what you want. You’ve just buried it under everything else for so long you’ve forgotten.”

Someone knocks against the window. Lucie turns to look, but my eyes are stuck on her. Specifically, the curve of her ear and the hair tucked behind it. The three tiny studs along her lobe and the way her fingers trace them. One, two, three. I clear my throat and turn my head.

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

Lucie tosses her head back with a cackle. It slices through the room like lightning, and my nails dig half-moons into the palm of my hand.

I swivel back and forth in my chair. My knee taps against hers with every twist to the left. She doesn’t move away and neither do I. I’ve decided a little touching is okay. As long as she doesn’t mind.

“Aiden…” she drags out my name with a bit of a whine and something sharp settles at the base of my spine. I shift in my chair.

Lucie frowns at me. Her face is so damn expressive. I wonder what it’s like to walk around with your heart on your sleeve. Mine is buried so deep in my chest I’m not sure I could find it if I wanted to.

I reach forward and brush my hands beneath her hair, my knuckles ghosting against her neck. My hands must be cold because she shivers, her eyes jumping to mine. They really are the prettiest green. Pale emerald in the center, a dark ring at the edges. Like treasure beneath still waters. I tug her headphones off her neck and push them carefully over her ears, making sure I don’t catch any of the shiny silver hoops looped around her earlobe. I tuck her hair beneath the band and my hand lingers.

UGH

I curl away to avoid the flick to my arm and keep the other stuff to myself. How her eyes are the prettiest green I’ve ever seen. How the freckles across her nose are a match for the ones dusted over her shoulder—the ones I keep getting a glimpse of every time the collar of her sweater slips. How her laugh is husky and warm and makes her whole body come alive. That it starts somewhere in her belly and twirls ribbons around her, making her fucking glow.

“You know you’re supposed to be finding her a boyfriend, right?” “Isn’t that what I’m doing?” She studies me. “Is it? You haven’t let her talk to anyone for more than three minutes.”

“I’m going to pick someone. Tonight.” He watches me carefully, his blue eyes heavy. They drift along my face. Eyes. Cheeks. Mouth. His gaze lingers there the longest before snapping away. I have no idea what he’s thinking. “That’s what you want?”

HUHHHHH

We have about three minutes left in this song, then we’ll go straight into ads for another four. Seven blissful minutes of sweet relief. I’d like to use the time to stare unseeingly into the void, but Jackson is hell-bent on having a conversation.

toward Lucie. “Have you been crying?” She blinks at me, surprised, her dark eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks. She tries to wave me off, but I step closer, tipping her chin up with my knuckles to get a better look at her face.

“Why don’t you come back? Have a coffee.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to be in the booth.” I could not possibly care any less about the show. “You don’t need to be in the booth,” I murmur, taking half a step closer. My fingertips drift along her elbow. “You’re freezing. Warm up for a few minutes.”

I’m going to kill that slimy piece of shit.

The backs of his hands brush against my shins and sparks of sensation scatter up my legs.

“Lucie.” He sighs. He taps his pointer finger against my ankle, then circles it gently. He squeezes. “I don’t like seeing you sad.”

“What do you think?” he asks, our knees slotted together like puzzle pieces. “You ready? You okay?” He’s always doing that. Asking me. Checking in. “Yeah. I’m okay.” One dark eyebrow climbs his forehead. “I am,” I tell him again. No one ever has ever fussed over me the way Aiden does. “Promise.”

I listen to the rhythm of his vowels and consonants and the way he says some words fast and others slow and let myself drift to a place where expectations don’t exist and my feelings aren’t a fragile glass balloon.

The bench groans and something heavy slips over my shoulders. I think I left my jacket inside, over the back of the beanbag. “It’s cold,” he mutters when I touch the edge of the sweatshirt draped over me in silent question. He glances once at my bare legs in the glittering moonlight and then out at the view. His jaw tightens, then releases. “I didn’t want you to be cold.”

Grayson Harris: She is one of the most important people in my life. She’s got questionable taste in music, can’t bake cookies to save her life, but has the most generous, kind, beautiful soul. I would commit terrible, violent crimes on her behalf.

“You’re gonna make me work for it, aren’t you?” he murmurs. “You like it when I make you work for it,” I fire back.

“Ah, Lucie.” Aiden smiles, his fingers fanning out wide against my back. “I’d know you anywhere.”

feeling a rush of embarrassment for the way I rushed over. Lucie is a grown woman and she can handle herself. But all I could think about was the hopeful tremble in her voice when she asked me if she thought she’d find someone, the two of us sitting alone at that picnic table. I clear my throat. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”

The way he’d look at my mom when he thought no one was looking at him. Like his heart was being ripped out of his chest. Like he wouldn’t survive it if she didn’t.

“He loved her so much, and it was killing him the same way the cancer was killing her. After that I thought it would be easier if I just never—if I didn’t let myself feel that.” Lucie makes a soft sound. Her fingers brush over my arm. “Aiden.”

“Secret swoony boy,” Lucie parrots back.

I trace my thumb over the grease stain on the bridge of her knuckles. “I think if anyone could convince me to believe in it, Lucie, it would be you.”

Lucie sighs. “You can ignore me.” “It’s impossible to ignore you,” I murmur. “What was that?” I shake my head. “Nothing.”

A grin splits her face and it’s like I’ve been plugged into the wall. Like the sun’s been tilted in my direction.

“Have you always been this bad at Skee-Ball?” “No.” I glare at the giant flashing zero at the top of the machine.

It’s actually a combination of the alcohol and her feet kicked up on the side of the machine, her long legs a smooth line all the way to the hem of her dress. I don’t think I’ve gotten a single ball past the metal gate.