How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

Chapter Thirty-One


I’ve got a plan.

Home first, to shower and change my grubby travel clothes. Francie’s Florals next, for the biggest arrangement of sunflowers I can afford (which at this point isn’t much). Then the candy shop in the mall‌—‌do they have cinnamon jelly beans? I call them up while I’m whizzing past the DQ, my old high school, the pizza place where I worked last summer. They do.

I’m three stoplights from my street when the phone rings.

ABEL CALLING.

This was not part of the plan.

I white-knuckle it past the post office. Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus shoot plastic glares of judgment from the cupholder: Pick up, dumbass. My thumb hovers over the Answer button. Why did I send him that stupid scene? I know exactly what I’m going to hear. What is this fairy-tale crap? You think this fixes things? Just stay out of my life, okay?

“It’s not completely horrid,” he says, “for your first fic.”

Relief flushes through me. “Hello to you too.”

“I was deeply offended by a few things, though. Number one‌—‌Where are you, by the way?”

I picture him sprawled on his fancy metal platform bed, tracing the blue and yellow squiggles on his vintage 80s sheets. “Driving home,” I tell him. “From an errand.”

“What kind of errand?”

“Can’t tell you. So what’s number one?”

“The bubble bath.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, hello. It’s humiliating. You come to my house with sunflowers, all sexy and disheveled in your dirty khakis and your black Castaway Planet shirt, and I’m sulking alone in a lemon-scented bubble bath?”

“Sorry. Is that not in character?”

“Not the point. I could at least be lifting weights or something.”

I grin. “Feel free to edit.”

“Oh, I have. ‘Kay, number two‌—‌this is a larger issue with plotting, unfortunately.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Well, it’s really sweet and heartwarming, having Brandon drive out to my house in a summer storm to deliver this impassioned speech and all, but at this point in the narrative it’s basically Abel who’s been the giant jackhole. So that whole scene kind of falls flat‌—‌no?”

I swerve to miss a squirrel. “I don’t‌—‌”

“‌—‌Like, Abel’s the one who broke it off the second Brandon had a relapse, right?’

“He had good reasons, though.”

“What, the Jonathan thing? So not an excuse. What kind of self-involved assclown bails at the first sign of Catholic guilt? And then doesn’t even call for like days, which basically forces Brandon to nut up and send him that amazing email even though the last thing Abel deserves is a grand romantic gesture.”

“Abel had a point, though.”

“Doesn’t matter. See, when you love someone, the gentlemanly thing to do is stick with them and willfully ignore your differences and draw little valentine hearts over all their weird hangups and just be in love for as long as you possibly can because how often does that happen? And then when you finally start making each other miserable or you meet some perfect guy in your freshman philosophy class, then you can have your tearful heartrending ‘it’s over’ phone call and a nice long satisfying wallow.” He sighs. “So see, there’s no way we’ve earned a tragic breakup yet. We didn’t put in enough time. I pulled the plug too early.”

My heart’s going phosphorescent. When you love someone. “So you’re saying‌…‌”

“We need a rewrite. Abel shows up at Brandon’s house, all apologies.”

“Really.”

“Well, mostly apologies. Know what would really be romantic, too?”

“What’s that?”

“If he’d fixed that mechanical heart he stepped on. Like if Susannah helped him glue it back together, and he wrapped it up in a little silver box and everything.”

“Kind of an obvious metaphor.”

“Yeah, but so? I mean, just think how sweet that scene would be.”

“What if Brandon’s parents were there?”

“Oh, they wouldn’t be. Not in this part of the story.”

“No?” I turn onto my street.

“It would be a criminally gorgeous early summer evening‌…‌Abel would be standing on the brick front steps of Brandon’s white split-level‌…‌”

I brake in the middle of the street. Plastic Cadmus and Plastic Sim knock heads in the cupholder.

“‌…‌taking in a scene of awesomely adorable Americana: the birdhouse, the red geraniums, the Fourth of July wreath made of pom-poms‌…‌”

I creep forward.

“‌…‌thinking about the ‘hi, we’re boyfriends again’ vlog post we could make from your cute little bedroom if we got back together‌—‌oh, and figure out the logistics of doing Castaway Planet recaps from different colleges, and draw up a shared-custody arrangement for Plastic Cadsim‌…‌Bran? You still there?”

“Keep going,” I whisper.

“‌…‌so I watch a butterfly flutter around your mom’s flowers, and while I practice exactly the right things to say to win you back, I watch patiently for an old blue Jetta to putter into view‌—‌it is a Jetta, right?” I spot him down the road on my front steps now, a perfect action figure in tight jeans and snakeskin boots. He’s standing up, showing me the back of his head as he cranes his neck at the opposite end of the street. In his hand is a little silver box, glinting in the fading sun.

“You getting any closer, Tin Man?” he says.

I ease my foot off the brake and start the downhill coast to home. “Almost there.”





Acknowledgments


Huge hugs and a bucket of cinnamon jellybeans to the following fine people:





Jarrett and Rosie, the two main planets in my universe, for enduring a houseful of scribbled-on sticky notes and helping me to the finish line with just the right blend of tough and sweet love.

My mom and dad, for teaching me that brains are for using and that real love and respect survives differences.

Margie, Anthony, Kim, & Brett, for understanding when I vanish with my laptop.

Mindy Dunn, cover designer extraordinaire, for being consistently awesome and putting up with my OMG-my-first-book-cover eagerness and indecision.

Andrea Sabaliauskas, for the brilliant cover illustration of Brandon and Abel and nearly two decades of friendship, support, and B&N chats.

Wendy Bond, my lifelong BFF, one of the first people I ever shared my writing with.

The illustrious Dr. Maverick, my partner in crime and #1 fandom-enabler.

My work pals, for being excited about this project (especially Courtney Stansbury, for coding advice, cheerleading, and lively Game of Thrones debates).

My writing mentors who made me think I could do this, especially Charles Marsh.

The magnificent geeks who invented the Internet so other magnificent geeks could find each other and perpetuate the species. Without you, fanfic would be mimeographed and mailed, this story would not exist, and people would not be skimming this acknowledgments page like “tl;dr.”