The Museum of Heartbreak - Meg Leder Page 0,70

about Mia?” I asked. “Or Autumn or the punk rock girl at the Flea?”

“They’re not you,” he said plainly.

“Oh,” I said, my voice small.

“Pen, here’s the thing: I fucking love you,” he said.

The beautiful words hurtled toward me with the momentum of a meteorite, fierce and terrible and un-take-back-able.

I wanted to shove him in the chest, to stuff everything back in his mouth, to stop this nonsense right now. Because what if Eph broke my heart? What if I broke his?

(But then there was this: What if I stepped forward, what if I took his hand, what if I said it back? What if there were stars falling and orange embers dancing in the air around us and our eyes burned with smoke and our feet hurt from the heat and around us dinosaurs were roaring in pain and we curled around each other, keeping each other’s heart safe?)

I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

We stood there in silence, Eph’s face falling by the second.

“You’re killing me here, Pen,” he said, his shoulders falling, his face broken.

I shook my head.

At that moment the door to the attic creaked open. Two people stumbled up the steps, lips locked as they tripped up—a woman’s giggle, a man’s grunt.

Eph registered it at the same time I did, and a soft cry escaped his lips—he was a boy again—and I gasped.

It was George.

But he wasn’t with Ellen. He was with Annabeth, the lady from the bookstore.

George squinted at us, Annabeth swaying against him.

“Eph?” he asked, his voice slurred.

Eph’s whole body tensed.

Annabeth hiccupped. “Is that Penelope? George and I were in such a fight last time we saw you, I’m afraid I wasn’t very friendly. . . .” She giggled, hiccupping, and tried to snuggle against George, but he jerked away, leaving her tottering.

Eph’s eyes were big when he looked at me. “What does she mean, the last time you saw them?”

“Nothing,” I stuttered. “I saw them once, it was just . . .” My arms fell helplessly to my side.

“Fuck,” he mumbled, shoving hair off his face, pressing his hand hard against his forehead. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I stepped toward him, but he only winced and put his hands up between us, taking a step back, a step away from me.

Annabeth seemed to wilt without George’s support, so after ten seconds or four hours of no one saying anything, she left, propping herself against the stair railing as she sidestepped her way out of the attic, the click of her heels fading.

“Eph,” George said, walking toward Eph, trying to embrace him.

But Eph pushed him away—hard—and George crumpled to the floor, beginning to sob, his elbows ajar. He held his head in his arms, bony shoulders cutting through the air, and his cries were sloppy, devastated.

I knew then that Willo had seen the meteor coming, had seen the fiery ball plummeting against the blue, and Willo froze, it was so beautiful, and then there was only the pain of change, a heart throbbing hard against the heat, how you could only save yourself.

Eph looked down once more at his dad, shook his head, and began walking to the steps, his back to me.

I couldn’t move. I thought of losing Audrey, of Ellen’s beautiful red hair, of holding Eph’s hand, how things leave us and never really come back.

And then I made the biggest mistake of my life.

I let Eph go.

Tonka truck

Tonka carrus

New York, New York

Cat. No. 201X-21

On loan from Audrey Harris

I PUSHED OUT OF THE crowd in the lobby and stumbled down the outside steps, looking for Eph on Central Park West and again on Eighty-First. Trees loomed darkly across the street, and my breath puffed out in front of me; my whole body started shivering, my heart clambering, my arms jittering.

Too late.

He was gone.

It felt terrible, the way my teeth wouldn’t stop chattering.

I dialed Eph’s phone, but it went straight to voice mail.

I texted him. Where r u?

I waited.

I thought about his face as he said the words, the way it changed when I didn’t say anything back.

And then that soft, broken noise he made when he saw Annabeth.

I had messed up, big time.

His words echoed through me: Here’s the thing: I fucking love you.

I said the words to myself, felt their clumsiness, the way they tripped over my lips.

I didn’t even want to think about that, about what it’d mean for him and me and us. At that moment all I wanted was to find him, to wrap a fleece blanket around us