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.

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.

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.

“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.”

I can be a confident, independent woman and still want someone to hold my hand.

Blankets shift and I imagine somewhere in this sprawling city, Lucie is smiling. For one night, at least, the both of us a little bit less lonely.

“You don’t have to be alone to be lonely.”

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.

“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. Her cheeks are wet, her nose red. I’m feeling more than a little unhinged. “Who the fuck made you cry?” I snap.

SCREAMINGGGG

And from the moment I met her and made an inappropriate comment about dental instruments, Lucie has always felt like something good. Like the very best thing.

Isn’t that how it goes? The most precious, delicate things wedge themselves between the plans you’ve made for yourself.

“You tell me all the time you have all the love you need. That you’re fit to burst with our family and all the people in it. But I thought, maybe just this once, you could have the love you deserve too.”

“Not wanting me to go isn’t the same as wanting me to stay. I want you, Aiden. No one else. You decide what happens next, okay?”

Jackson spent ten minutes trying to get me to go to a bar with him, and Maggie glared at me through the window with her arms crossed over her chest, mouthing, Team Lucie, with her fist thrust in the air. Her face softened when I dug my finger in the middle of my chest and said, Me too.

“I’m sorry about this week. I wanted to take the time to find the right words to say. I wanted to get it right.” “I don’t need the right words. I just need your words.”

Later today, we’ll go to my parents’ house for dinner. Maya and my dad will slip off to the garden in the backyard for hours and they’ll come back in with pink cheeks and mud on their knees. Lucie will help my mom cook something on the stove while I do my best not to ruin a salad, and they’ll laugh and whisper and laugh some more. And I’ll try not to let my heart beat out of my chest, my life so much fuller than I ever allowed it to be.

The almosts and the maybes and the what-ifs. The universe lining up for one perfect moment and handing me her. I got so fucking lucky. I drag her mouth to mine and press a hard kiss against her lips. “I’m thinking about you.”