a handful of hearts
by Kat Zahner
Texts after midnight are difficult to decipher; a confusing cocktail of mixed meaning, shaking and stirring up feelings, like a bartender making drinks for a bachelorette party.
Hey I’m gonna be in Bozeman tomorrow are you free at all?
The three-a.m. text arrived three months short of a year since I’d last seen you. It was the day after Valentine’s, and I was dating someone else—someone who didn’t believe in “Hallmark Holidays” or having a beer at the airport before my flight because of the $5 parking fee. Time hadn’t changed us and the feelings that existed before were preserved like a Paleozoic organism frozen in amber. That night, you kissed me against the kitchen counter, your calloused hands in my hair, finding what you were hungry for on my lips. For years, I’d wondered what that moment would be like.
There are memories we try to pack away in boxes, waiting years before re-opening and often finding them still too raw, the timing too soon, the inside a purple rare. A Thanksgiving spent at the cabin—the first time we ever spoke, sharing stories between pulls on a bottle of gas station Merlot as we sat cross-legged mirroring each other—poles repelling the connection between us on a twin bed. You put your hand on my knee as the fire’s embers slowly sputtered out and the sun’s first light peeked over the mountains, like our own tired eyes squinting open.
After that night, we communicated like a lighthouse blinking signals of brief moments in passing. You, returning from the graveyard shift at the hospital (frequently more literal than just the nightshift would imply) finding me asleep on your couch; cigarette smoke trailing behind from the bar, and my pointer finger stained blue with pool cue chalk—all evidence of the night spent out with your sister. Your heavy footfalls on the stairs would wake me like a set alarm, to discover a blanket from your bed was draped over me. Unsure what the gesture meant; I would lie awake for hours.
Your sister told me you had a new girlfriend whose dog shares your name. To lessen a blow that I pretended didn’t gut me, she put on a one man show, playing both parts, your girl yelling “CHARLIE” (at the dog); and you, wondering what you had done this time. Behind the façade of laughing too hard and changing topics too fast, the message was delivered like a letter returned to its sender.
When I read your text, I feared the worst; that you were coming to tell me you had gotten engaged. Just the thought made me feel like a child, with toes curled at the edge of a pool, watching my heart sink to the bottom. My mind swam back to the time when I arrived at your house before your sister got off work, and you grabbed me in the doorway and tied a towel over my eyes before sitting me down at the table for a blind taste test of the cheapest beers. You were proving a point that they tasted better, or just as good as the overpriced microbrews, and I fell for it. I hoped I wouldn’t be blindsided by the news this time.
You once told me that seeing me felt like school letting out on the first day of summer vacation. I never knew what you meant, until your once red, now sun-bleached, salmon colored Toyota Camry pulled up in front of my house and I ran to greet you like it was summer. You went with me to take my dog on a walk, much less confusing when I called his name, which wasn’t yours. We sat across from each other at dinner, shooting glances over the wall between us. Everyone said their goodbyes, except for me.
I drove you back to my house, where I made you coffee in a mug. You said, returning the mug would be a good reason to see me again. The water for the French press began to boil and you turned the handle as the steam hissed and a song from our playlist began. The levees of time burst as you held my face while I cried with resolve that our memories were all we’d amount to. And then, you kissed me.
***
I had been away for two years, what did I expect? Time had passed, even if we both didn’t sense it. You retreated slowly at first, and then all at once, a lone soldier back pedaling to safer ground. You told me not to text you for a few days, purposefully ambiguous, so I wouldn’t know how long to wait. You punished me, like a child being sent to time-out, with nothing to keep the time. Had a minute passed, an hour, or had it been days? I felt like an unwilling participant in a game I had forgotten how to play. I no longer knew the rules. I’m never where I’m supposed to be when it matters, and I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be when it doesn’t.
In the days that followed, the silence fell like a blanket of fresh snow, smothering all peripherals, leaving a sharp focus on your absence. The negative space pulled me down like peering into Vantablack, a substance that absorbs 99.965% of visible light, and it is said when gazing upon it, it gives the viewer the feeling of plummeting into an abyss. When snow starts to melt and refreeze, it hardens— no longer soft and absorbing but reflective, making things louder than before. The waiting was worse because our friends knew. After the kiss, you called your sister—my best friend, and the unraveling of rumors in our tightly knit friend groups exposed the holes, the gaps, the unknowns in spools of speculation. The jury was back with their verdict, but the judge hadn’t decided on a sentence. You told me you were still in love with me, that you “just needed time to get yourself out of this mess.”
We were playing hearts at the bar, a tradition I wish I never introduced you to because now that memory is there forever and it can’t be removed. I was hoping no one would ask if I had heard from you; and, for a while, no one did. I shuffled the deck, dealing them in front of me, without control of chance. Your sister said that she had heard from you. “He’s decided to work things out with Rachel.” The words fell against each other like dominoes crashing into a sharp heap.
You fed me lies; you gave me hope. The cards were cut, decidedly not in my favor. My male friends, who knew me as the embodiment of stoic indifference when it came to love, nudged me on the shoulder and told me to stop looking sad. Too late, I was quickly sinking into a puddle of self-pity. It’d take more than a harmless body check to keep me from playing a hand of hearts with your absence on my mind. Tears burned against my eyelids. I reassured them I was just emotional because I hadn’t eaten or slept much since Monday, but that wasn’t true. I was crying because someone told me the truth, and it wasn’t you.
Before that day, I saw pictures of you and Rachel, your arms looped in an infinite figure 8 around each other’s backs and I was happy for you—which is different from being happy but manageable, nonetheless. I want to be angry; and maybe, I should be. I don’t blame you. I know you already blame yourself. I don’t hate you. I know you are not in love. People, who are in love, do not spend the afternoon trying on another person, like shoes that don’t fit. I forgive you. Your sister told me, so you don’t have to do anything.
Kat Zahner is a twenty-four-year-old Writer, Art Historian and Fine Art Conservationist living and working in Bozeman, Montana. She spent the last two years working as a Conservation Apprentice at the Van Witt Fine Art Conservation studio in Overland Park, Kansas writing Treatment Reports and cleaning nicotine or yellowed varnish off of paintings. During the summers while working as a Fine Art Conservation Apprentice, she attended the Yale Writer's Workshops of 2018 and 2019. She has since been accepted for publication by multiple literary magazines, including PANK's 2020 print edition. Currently, she writes and works for a boutique shop, Salchicha in Bozeman, Montana; assists in the hospitality industry on the Big Sky Mountain at the Yellowstone Club; as well as writing reports for the Conservation studio. In her limited free time, she is working on a collection of short autobiographical stories.
Fine Art Conservation Technician http://www.vanwittart.com/
Zahner Metal Conservation https://www.zmconservation.com/ . 816.590.7887