Stray Heart.
Prologue.
I sit on the couch, scribbling in a notebook instead of practicing my trumpet like I should be doing. I would be practicing but there is a story in my head that needs to get out or it will drive me crazy. This one is an unlikely tale of a knight’s gawky squire that has to save a princess after the knight gets cooked by the dragon. There is a knock on the door and I hear my mom answer it, her voice cheerful and welcoming. When she is done speaking, I hear a voice I could pick out in the dull roar of a crowd; one that has always improved my mood and could make me smile just hearing it. The two voices talk, getting louder as they come toward the living room, and my mom laughs. She says something softly to our guest before leaving the room.
I don’t look up as the couch cushions shift with the weight of someone sitting down beside me; I don’t need to. There is a clichéd feeling of being complete, a sense of ease that tells me that it’s her. She and Tom chat for a minute about the game he’s playing, and she is making a pest of herself in bumping me around. If it were anyone else, it would really irritate me to be pestered and interrupted from my writing. However, from her, I would never mind the things she does as she tries for my attention. It makes me smile.
“New story?” she asks, resting her chin on my shoulder and peering down at the words written on the pages of the notebook. She is one of the only people I let read the things I write. I never feel very good at story-telling.
“Yup,” I nod, writing again since she stopped bumping me and I can finish. We sit silently for a few minutes, her resting her chin on my shoulder with her head slightly cocked while she reads, me scribbling words down.
“Get a room, you two,” Tom teases and we both look at him, simultaneously sticking our tongues out. He laughs, chucking a pillow our way, then walks out.
“I hope the squire gets the girl,” she says finally, and I hope the same thing. But my princess will never know that she deserves better than the arrogant knights storming her castle’s doors. She will never see the gawky boy in her life is the one that loves her and would do anything to make sure she’s happy. And I do; I love her more than I had ever loved anything before. But she wants bad boys with motorcycles and big trucks that ignore her texts and make her cry, and I am the one that lies out in the grass with her all hours of the night listening to her question her self-worth and trying to reassure her that she deserves better; I tell her to leave the men who don’t know what they have with her, and she says that she loves them and they loves her and things will get better. So I have to make the sacrifice because I would rather have her in my life as just my friend than not at all.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” She reaches into the messenger bag she had tossed on the coffee table and pulls out a small black box that she then hands to me. “Open it!” I look at her curiously for a minute before I lift the lid off the box and pull out the chain inside, half a small pixelated heart pendant dangling from the end. She pulls an identical chain necklace out from under her shirt to reveal the other half of the pendant. “It’s cheesy, but I saw them and I couldn’t resist buying them for us. You don’t have to wear it but you definitely have to keep it.”
I smile and put the necklace around my neck. “I wouldn’t dream of not wearing it, let alone getting rid of it. Best friends ‘til the end, right?” It is our promise to each other, to stay together in each other’s lives through thick and thin.
That necklace stayed around my neck for three years. Only a year into college, I ripped it off. I broke the chain and sent the token of my attachment to a girl I loved sailing into the night sky, never to be seen again. A year away from her and I abandoned our friendship out of anger over some petty shit I couldn't even remember anymore, and I found myself in my own toxic relationship. I was selfish and I was hurt, but that never gave me the excuse to throw away my best friend.
I can’t do anything to change the past. I know that. I can regret never telling her how I felt; I can regret letting her think and feel the way she did about herself; I can regret the decisions I made in college that started to tear apart our friendship. All that regret will never give me the power to fix what I had done and I am left wondering if I can ever repair the future. Not a day goes by where I don't think about her and where I went wrong.
I don’t look up as the couch cushions shift with the weight of someone sitting down beside me; I don’t need to. There is a clichéd feeling of being complete, a sense of ease that tells me that it’s her. She and Tom chat for a minute about the game he’s playing, and she is making a pest of herself in bumping me around. If it were anyone else, it would really irritate me to be pestered and interrupted from my writing. However, from her, I would never mind the things she does as she tries for my attention. It makes me smile.
“New story?” she asks, resting her chin on my shoulder and peering down at the words written on the pages of the notebook. She is one of the only people I let read the things I write. I never feel very good at story-telling.
“Yup,” I nod, writing again since she stopped bumping me and I can finish. We sit silently for a few minutes, her resting her chin on my shoulder with her head slightly cocked while she reads, me scribbling words down.
“Get a room, you two,” Tom teases and we both look at him, simultaneously sticking our tongues out. He laughs, chucking a pillow our way, then walks out.
“I hope the squire gets the girl,” she says finally, and I hope the same thing. But my princess will never know that she deserves better than the arrogant knights storming her castle’s doors. She will never see the gawky boy in her life is the one that loves her and would do anything to make sure she’s happy. And I do; I love her more than I had ever loved anything before. But she wants bad boys with motorcycles and big trucks that ignore her texts and make her cry, and I am the one that lies out in the grass with her all hours of the night listening to her question her self-worth and trying to reassure her that she deserves better; I tell her to leave the men who don’t know what they have with her, and she says that she loves them and they loves her and things will get better. So I have to make the sacrifice because I would rather have her in my life as just my friend than not at all.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” She reaches into the messenger bag she had tossed on the coffee table and pulls out a small black box that she then hands to me. “Open it!” I look at her curiously for a minute before I lift the lid off the box and pull out the chain inside, half a small pixelated heart pendant dangling from the end. She pulls an identical chain necklace out from under her shirt to reveal the other half of the pendant. “It’s cheesy, but I saw them and I couldn’t resist buying them for us. You don’t have to wear it but you definitely have to keep it.”
I smile and put the necklace around my neck. “I wouldn’t dream of not wearing it, let alone getting rid of it. Best friends ‘til the end, right?” It is our promise to each other, to stay together in each other’s lives through thick and thin.
That necklace stayed around my neck for three years. Only a year into college, I ripped it off. I broke the chain and sent the token of my attachment to a girl I loved sailing into the night sky, never to be seen again. A year away from her and I abandoned our friendship out of anger over some petty shit I couldn't even remember anymore, and I found myself in my own toxic relationship. I was selfish and I was hurt, but that never gave me the excuse to throw away my best friend.
I can’t do anything to change the past. I know that. I can regret never telling her how I felt; I can regret letting her think and feel the way she did about herself; I can regret the decisions I made in college that started to tear apart our friendship. All that regret will never give me the power to fix what I had done and I am left wondering if I can ever repair the future. Not a day goes by where I don't think about her and where I went wrong.