Part 4: Chapter no 45

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

A boy is born with a broken heart.

The doctors go in, and piece it back together, make it whole, and the baby is sent home, lucky to be alive. They say he is better now, that he can live a normal life, and yet, as he grows up, he is convinced something is still wrong inside.

The blood pumps, the valves open and close, and on the scans and screens, everything functions as it should. But something isn’t right.

They’ve left his heart too open.

Forgotten to close back up the armor of his chest. And now he feels … too much.

Other people would call him sensitive, but it is more than that. The dial is broken, the volume turned all the way up. Moments of joy register as brief, but ecstatic. Moments of pain stretch long and unbearably loud.

When his first dog dies, Henry cries for a week. When his parents argue, and he cannot bear the violence in their words, he runs away from home. It takes more than a day to bring him back. When David throws away his childhood bear, when his first girlfriend, Abigail, stands him up at the dance, when they have to dissect a pig in class, when he loses the card his grandfather gave him before he passed, when he finds Liz cheating on him during their senior trip, when Robbie dumps him before junior year, every time, no matter how small, or how big, it feels like his heart is breaking again inside his chest.

Henry is fourteen the first time he steals a swig of his father’s liquor, just to turn the volume down. He is sixteen when he swipes two pills from his mother’s cabinet, just to dull the ache. He is twenty when he gets so high

that he thinks he can see the cracks along his skin, the places where he’s falling apart.

His heart has a draft. It lets in light.

It lets in storms.

It lets in everything.

Time moves so fucking fast.

Blink, and you’re halfway through school, paralyzed by the idea that whatever you choose to do, it means choosing not to do a hundred other things, so you change your major half a dozen times before finally ending up in theology, and for a while it seems like the right path, but that’s really just a reflex to the pride on your parents’ faces, because they assume they’ve got a budding rabbi, but the truth is, you have no desire to practice, you see the holy texts as stories, sweeping epics, and the more you study, the less you believe in any of it.

Blink, and you’re twenty-four, and you travel through Europe, thinking

—hoping—that the change will spark something in you, that a glimpse of the greater, grander world will bring your own into focus. And for a little while, it does. But there’s no job, no future, only an interlude, and when it’s over, your bank account is dry, and you’re not any closer to anything.

Blink, and you’re twenty-six, and you’re called into the dean’s office because he can tell that your heart’s not in it anymore, and he advises you to find another path, and he assures you that you’ll find your calling, but that’s the whole problem, you’ve never felt called to any one thing. There is no violent push in one direction, but a softer nudge a hundred different ways, and now all of them feel out of reach.

Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.

Blink, and you meet a girl.

The first time Henry saw Tabitha Masters, she was dancing.

There must have been ten of them onstage. Henry was there to see Robbie perform, but her limbs had a pull, her form a kind of gravity. His gaze kept falling back toward her. She was the kind of pretty that steals your breath, and the kind you can’t really capture in a photo, because the magic is in the movement. The way she moved, it was a story told with nothing but a melody and a bend of her spine, an outstretched hand, a slow descent to the darkened floor.

The first time they met was at an after-party.

Onstage, her features were a mask, a canvas for other people’s art. But there, in the crowded room, all Henry could see was her smile. It took up her entire face, from her pointed chin to the line of her hair, an all- consuming kind of joy he couldn’t look away from. She was laughing at something—he never found out what—and it was like someone went and turned on all the lights in the room.

And there and then, his heart began to ache.

It took Henry thirty minutes and three drinks to work up the nerve to say hello, but from that moment onward, it was easy. The rhythm and flow of frequencies in sync. And by the end of the night, he was falling in love.

He’d fallen before. Sophia in high school. Robbie in college.

Sarah, Ethan, Jenna—but it was always hard, messy. Full of starts and stops, wrong turns and dead ends. But with Tabitha, it was easy.

Two years.

That’s how long they were together.

Two years of dinner, and breakfast, and ice cream in the park, of dance rehearsals and rose bouquets, of sleeping over at each other’s place, of weekend brunch and bingeing TV shows, and trips upstate to meet his parents.

Two years of drinking less for her, and staying clean for her, dressing up for her, and buying things he couldn’t afford, because he wanted to make her smile, wanted to make her happy.

Two years, and not a single fight, and now he thinks that maybe that wasn’t such a good thing after all.

Two years—and somewhere between a question and an answer, it fell apart.

Down on one knee with a ring in the middle of the park, and Henry is such a fucking idiot, because she said no.

She said no, and that wasn’t even the worst word.

“You’re great,” she said. “You really are. But you’re not…”

And she doesn’t finish, and she doesn’t have to, because he knows what comes next.

You’re not right. You’re not enough.

“I thought you wanted to get married.” “I do. One day.”

The words, crystal clear, despite never being said.

But not to you.

And then she walked away, and now Henry is here at the bar and he’s drunk, but not nearly drunk enough.

He knows, because the world is still there, because the entire night still feels too real, because everything still hurts. He’s slumped forward, chin resting on his folded arms, staring through the collection of empty bottles on the table. He looks back from half a dozen warped reflections.

The Merchant is packed with bodies, a wall of white noise, so Robbie has to shout over the din.

“Fuck her.”

And for some reason, coming from his ex-boyfriend, it doesn’t make Henry feel much better. “I’m fine,” he says, in that automatic way people always answer when you ask them how they are, even though his heart is hanging open on its hinges.

“It’s for the best,” adds Bea, and if anyone else had said it, she would have banished them to the corner of the bar for being trite. Ten-minute time- out for platitudes. But it’s all anyone has for him tonight.

Henry finishes the glass in front of him and reaches for another.

“Slow down, kiddo,” says Bea, rubbing his neck. “I’m fine,” he says again.

And they both know him well enough to know it is a lie. They know about his broken heart. They’ve both coaxed him through his storms. They are the best people in his life, the ones who hold him together, or at least, who keep him from falling apart. But right now, there are too many cracks. Right now, there is a chasm between their words and his ears, their hands and his skin.

They are right there, but they feel so far away.

He looks up, studying their expressions, all pity, no surprise, and a realization settles over him like a chill.

“You knew she’d say no.”

The silence lasts a beat too long. Bea and Robbie share a glance, as if trying to decide who will take the lead, and then Robbie reaches across for his hand. “Henry—”

He wrenches back. “You knew.”

He is on his feet now, nearly stumbling into the table behind him. Bea’s face crumples. “Come on. Sit back down.”

“No. No. No.”

“Hey,” says Robbie, steadying him. “I’ll walk you home.”

But Henry hates the way Robbie is looking at him, so he shakes his head, even though it makes the room blur.

“No,” he says. “I just want to be alone.” The biggest lie he’s ever told.

But Robbie’s hand falls away, and Bea shakes her head at him, and they both let Henry go.

Henry is not drunk enough.

He goes into a liquor store and buys a bottle of vodka from a guy who looks at him like he’s already had enough, but also like he clearly needs it. Twists the cap off with his teeth as it begins to rain.

His phone buzzes in his pocket.

Bea, probably. Or Robbie. Nobody else would call.

He lets it ring, holds his breath until it stops. He tells himself that if they call again, he’ll answer. If they call again, he’ll tell them he is not okay. But the phone doesn’t ring a second time.

He doesn’t blame them for that, not now, not after. He knows he’s not an easy friend, knows he should have seen it coming, should have—

The bottle slips through his fingers, shatters on the sidewalk, and he should leave it there, but he doesn’t. He reaches to pick it up, but he loses his balance. His hand comes down on broken glass as he pushes himself back up.

It hurts, of course it hurts, but the pain is dampened a little by the vodka, by the well of grief, by his ruined heart, by everything else.

Henry fumbles for the kerchief in his pocket, the white silk stitched with a silver T. He hadn’t wanted a box—that classic, impersonal casing that always gave away the question—but now, as he tugs the kerchief out, the ring tumbles free, goes bouncing down the damp sidewalk.

The words echo in his head.

You’re great, Henry. You really are. But you’re not—

He presses the kerchief to his injured hand. In seconds, the silk is stained red. Ruined.

You’re not enough.

Hands are like heads; they always bleed too much.

His brother, David, was the one who told him that. David, the doctor, who’s known what he wanted to be since he was ten years old.

Easy to stay on the path when the road is straight and the steps are numbered.

Henry watches the kerchief turn red, stares down at the diamond in the street and thinks of leaving it, but he can’t afford to, so he forces himself to bend over and pick it up.

Take a drink every time you hear you’re not enough. Not the right fit.

Not the right look. Not the right focus. Not the right drive. Not the right time.

Not the right job. Not the right path. Not the right future. Not the right present. Not the right you.

Not you. (Not me?)

There’s just something missing. (Missing…)

From us.

What could I have done? Nothing. It’s just … (Who you are.)

I didn’t think we were serious. (You’re just too …

… sweet.

… soft.

… sensitive.)

I just don’t see us ending up together. I met someone.