Heartbreaker - Julie Kriss Page 0,26

me.”

My mother lived in Colorado now. She hadn’t remarried, though she had dated a few men. My father had taken a job in California, where he was living in a new house with his new wife, as if he could leave the entire lifetime he spent with us behind. “It isn’t that easy,” I told my mother. “I can’t just drop everything and take time off. It isn’t easy for my bosses to get a replacement for my shifts.”

“Driving an ambulance?” She sounded petulant. “They can’t find someone else to drive an ambulance with all of those people in New York City?”

I felt my jaw clench. It wasn’t that my mother didn’t know what my true job was—she did. I knew she did. It was that she refused to face it. Driving the ambulance was definitely part of my job, but there was a lot more, too. It was as if my mother thought pretending I was an ambulance driver instead of an EMT would take away the sting of me leaving home, not becoming a lawyer or a politician or an athlete like she and Dad had wanted. As if pretending could erase all of the bad things that had broken our family apart long before I came to New York, long before we all went our separate ways. “No,” I said, my voice tight with irritation. “They can’t find someone else to drive the ambulance. Okay?”

“I think you’re making excuses,” my mother said. “You can never come visit. I’m alone here, Holden. All alone.”

“You’re fine,” I said. “You work part time, you volunteer, and you’re a member of a dozen different clubs. You and your girlfriends just got back from a Vegas trip. You’re hardly isolated.”

“But I don’t have you,” she pointed out. “My own son. I need to see you sometimes.”

Maybe she believed that, but I still wasn’t coming. I had no desire to see Colorado.

“I can’t, Mom,” I said. “I live in New York now. I work here. I can’t drop everything every time you think you need me. Besides, if you want to see me, you can always come to New York to visit.”

“Oh.” She sounded dubious, just like I knew she would. “New York is so big. And expensive. And dirty. You know I don’t like big cities.”

We would be locked in this pattern forever, my mother and me. We didn’t really want to visit each other, even though we knew we were supposed to. There was too much history behind us, too much baggage. We’d always do this—make excuses, hurt each other’s feelings, avoid seeing each other in person. Our family was in ruins, and everything hurt too much. We just couldn’t admit it.

The alarm went off, telling us we had a call, and it was one of the few times I was actually grateful that someone, somewhere, had probably gotten hurt. “We have an emergency, Mom,” I said. “I have to go.” I hung up before she could say anything else.

What did that say about me, that I’d rather go patch up a stranger’s trauma than deal with my own family?

Thirteen

Mina

It was Hamilton’s fault. Eight months ago, I’d sprung the maximum money I could afford from my paycheck and bought a solo ticket for Hamilton, the show I was dying to see. The ticket was for this Saturday night, the only Saturday night Holden had had off in weeks.

That was how I ended up in Central Park at ten o’clock on Friday night walking and sipping hot chocolate with Holden. It was the only time we were both free. I’d had a vocal class after work on Friday, and Holden had to work at six o’clock Saturday morning. I was starting to see that Holden and I had a scheduling problem.

Normally I wouldn’t walk Central Park after dark, even though the paths were lit and there were still tourists out. But with a tall, muscled EMT as my companion, it didn’t feel quite so risky.

“What are you thinking?” Holden asked as I frowned over my cup of chocolate.

“That if someone mugged us right now, you could probably beat them up,” I said. “Or at least chase them.”

Holden looked around at the busker playing a violin, the man offering horse-drawn carriage rides, the other couples taking a romantic walk. He was wearing jeans, a dark blue hoodie, and a buttoned wool coat, and he had that dusting of dark beard on his chin that made me swoony. “A mugging doesn’t look likely, but