Pulse

PULSE

Copyright © 2015 by
Liv Hayes

All rights reserved.
This book or any portion may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of
brief quotations within reviews.

This is a work of
fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the
author's imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

PULSE

a novel

for you, J.

Chapter 1

MIA

It
started with a pulse, a secret, and a bad breakup.

“Mia,” he
told me. We were lying in my bedroom, on top of the sheets, our skin still damp
with that post-sex glimmer – faces flush, limbs heavy. “I need to tell you
something. It's important.”

I knew
right then, to be honest. Though it was kind of hard not to. When somebody
tells you:
I need to tell you something
,
and you have half a working brain-cell, you can piece together the puzzle pretty
quickly. It's either a) I'm fucking someone else, or b) I have an inoperable
form of ___ cancer, and this is actually a Nicholas Sparks novel, and didn't
you know?

I already
knew. But I still indulged him. I indulged him because even though my brain was
telling me:
Mia, kick him out now. Don't even give him the chance to hurt
you
, I was silently begging for different words to tumble out of his mouth.

“What is
it?”

The words
were heavy on my tongue. I could feel my heart clench as I yanked the sheets
over my chest, instinctively covering myself. In the back of my head, like a
distant record on repeat, was that bit of sage advice we kids always get:
you're young, and young love doesn't last, and there's a billion fish in the
sea and so forth. When you're older, you'll learn what real love is.

Had I
loved him in a real sort of way? Of course I had. At least, I thought so. We'd
been together for two years, shared the same bed in my tiny, cramped apartment,
and spent countless hours messing around and laughing and behaving like wild,
college-aged kids together.

So yeah,
I loved him. In that young, first-time kind of way.

As I
clutched the sheets, I added, barely audible: “Uh-oh.”

Evan sat
up, reaching for his boxers that lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. He slid
them on, combed his hands through his hair, and looked at me.

“I love
you,” he said. “You know I love you.”

“Okay,” I
said. I was vaguely incredulous. “What do you need to tell me, then?”

Another
sigh. He broke eye contact, glancing down at his hands.

“You're
so beautiful,” he said quietly. “I'm so sorry.”

“Sorry
about what?”

Why was I
doing this? I knew why. It was the same reason we all drag things out: because
spitting them out, like a bitter venom, is hard. It's never easy to say the
things that we know will hurt people. It's never easy to let the ax drop.

Evan knew
he was about to hurt me. I knew he was about to hurt me. I suppose dragging it
out with stupid little words seemed to soften the hit.

“There's
someone else,” he said. “Another girl that I've been seeing.”

Outside,
a car alarm went off. The afternoon sunlight sliced through my window shades,
making the room feel like a prison.

“How
long?”

“Mia,” he
said.

“How
long?” I asked. I felt bolder, then. Stronger. “How long have you been lying to
me?”

Evan
covered his face with his hands; large hands, maybe too large for his small
wrists. He was such a boy.

“Three
months,” he confessed. “In February.”

“When in
February?”

He shook
his head, stood, and faced the window. I could see the sunlight almost seep
through him. I could still smell his shampoo and sweat on the sheets. He was
already gone, but still everywhere.

“Valentine's
Day,” he wasn't even going to lie for the sake of sparing my feelings. “I
didn't mean for this to happen.”

Evan
turned to me, and he looked almost as if he wanted to care, but couldn't bring
himself to.

“I wanted
this to work,” he explained. “It's just, I can't fake it anymore.”

“Then why
did you just fuck me?”

“I'm
sorry, Mia.”

I'd had
enough then. I was done.

“Get
out,” I said. “Pack your shit and leave. Now.”

“Mia,” he
said. “Listen, let's not do this. Let's not end it like this.”

I threw
the covers off and grabbed my bathrobe from the floor, needing to clothe myself
in something. I didn't even want him to look at me. Vulnerability had left me
feeling like the reflection of some Circus House mirror; skewed and disfigured.

“You said
you didn't want this,” I said coldly. “But you let us fall apart.”

Evan slid
into his jeans, stumbling and catching himself. He was tall, lanky, and he was
always stumbling. It was one of the first things that had made me fall in love
with him – but now, it just made me sick.

“We've
been together for two years,” he said. “Things happen.”

“Things
happen when you let them happen,” I said, looking down at the floor. I could
feel my heart breaking, and really, why bother with the theatrics of a break
up? It was over, anyhow. Just let it end. “Get out.”

“Mia,” he
said.

“I'll
pack up your stuff. Come back when I'm not around to pick it up,” I told him.
“In the meantime, you can go back to bunking with Lewis. I assume that's where
you were fucking this new girl.”

Before
moving in together, Evan had lived in the dorms with his roommate, Lewis. When
I got this apartment, during the last semester of my final year at UCF, Evan
eventually became my unofficial live-in boyfriend. Clothes turned into boxes,
and boxes turned into posters, and all of it melded into a mesh of Hers and
His, mine and ours.
 
Our home.

Now here
we were.

Evan
looked at me, his expression full of an obvious awkward discomfort, and I said:

“At least
tell me you didn't bring her here,” I said.

“I
swear,” he said. “I'm a dick, but I'm not
that
kind of person, Mia.”

“I'm not
sure what kind of person you are,” I said. “Now please leave.”

And that
was it. We didn't yell, but who really wants to yell, anyway? I was young, but
handled most disagreements maturely enough – and honestly, screaming was never
my thing. And Evan, for all of his apparent bullshit, was never one to raise
his voice. It was another one of the things I had grown to love about him: he
wasn't much for conflict. He never barked, or let things irritate him, or spent
time mulling over the constant crap that came with being a
twenty-something-year-old in a world that is very, for the most part, totally
unaccommodating and cruel.

Before he
left, I asked him one last thing:

“Can you
at least tell me why?”

He
sighed, giving a small, defeated shrug.

“You're
better looking,” he declared, as if that would somehow make me feel better.
“She wasn't nicer, or prettier, or even smarter than you.”

“Then
what?” I asked.

“She was
just different,” he said. “I don't know, Mia. That's all I can say. I'm sorry.”

With
that, Evan left. I gathered up his belongings, which, collectively, didn't
comprise of more than a few small boxes. And that was the conclusion of my
first heartbreak.

After, I
lay down, my chest tight and body aching, and tried not to cry. My heart was
throbbing in the most painful way possible; my bones felt brittle as thin
glass. Every single thought of the past two years I had spent with Evan felt
twisted and blurred – but no tears fell. I couldn't cry. I could only silently
break.

There's a
million fish in the sea, they say. And you know, they're right. Maybe I had
just been swimming sideways.

Approximately
six hours and a dozen missed phone-calls later, Aimee was peering down at me.
Burnished hair, sprightly eyes and the figure of a Roman goddess, she was also
never one for knocking on doors, or ringing bells, or acknowledging most forms of
common courtesy. We were vastly different – she was wild, vibrant, and more
erudite that most
 
gave her credit for
(something she blamed, largely, on being
blond
). I was small, quiet, and
in my opinion, plain. And no, this isn't one of those stories where we're
talking about one of those 'seemingly-plain' girls that's actually a total babe
with a bit of makeup and a tight dress.

I was,
all things considered, nothing spectacular.

But I
relished it, in the same way I relished long afternoons where I spent hours
watching YouTube videos on elaborate hair and makeup tutorials that I'd never
end up accomplishing with any sort of eloquence – or
 
managing to finish my homework early enough
to binge-watch Netflix or the Home and Garden channel, picturing the exact sort
of bathroom or kitchen (all with marble counter-tops and stainless-steel
appliances and magnificent floral arrangements) that I would someday,
undoubtedly, have in my future, Grown Up home. To me, plain was normal, and
comfortable, and rendered me able of avoiding most stares and glares and
whistles on the street.

“You are
a hot mess,” Aimee said, sympathetically enough. “Get up. Take a shower. Get
dressed. We're going out.”

“I think
I'd just rather stay inside and watch a hundred episodes of Supernatural and
die,” I said, feeling adequately sorry enough for myself.

“You've
hit rock bottom, Mia. Congratulations. Now get up.”

So I did.
Because Aimee was right, and because the faux-wood floor of the apartment was
aggressively uncomfortable, and because maybe I did need to shower.

That
night, we drove to the local dive-bar, much to my chagrin, and Aimee ordered us
a round of margaritas which I sipped at precariously. I hated bars, to be
honest. And with summer around the corner, they were frequently cram-packed
with Spring Breakers that I much preferred staying approximately ten leagues
under the sea from. Loud, voracious, and overly-intoxicated on more things than
just the tequila in their drinks. They yelled and blared their shitty music
(because what was waiting for the 'beat to drop', really?) and by the end of
the night, even without a single drop of booze, I had a pretty damn substantial
hangover.

Aimee was
flipping through her phone, looking at whatever she was looking at, when I
finally muttered:

“I can't
believe it. Two years, and he was fucking someone else behind my back.”

“And you
want to know something?” she asked.

“No. Yes.
Wait, no.”

Aimee
half-smiled. I sighed, feeling that funny twinge in my heart start to tighten
and twist again.

“I guess
this new chick isn't even from our campus or anything. I guess he met her on
Tinder.”

“You're
joking.”

“That's
what Lewis said. I
swear
. So here's exactly what went down: Evan sent me
about a hundred text messages telling me that you guys had broken up – omitting,
of course, the details – and for me to come and check on you, because I guess
you looked as if you'd just swallowed a dram of poison or whatever. So I go
straight over to Lewis' suite, expecting Evan to be there, but he isn't, so I
ask:
what the actual fuck is going on here, you sleaze
?, and he just
stares at me blankly.”

“You're
still sour that he never called you back, after,
ahem
.”

Aimee
threw up a hand.

“Anyway!”
she said. “So after a solid minute of pacing around like a complete tool, he
looks at me, as if a light-bulb went off, and says, verbatim:
he left her
for that girl on Tinder, didn't he
?”

I
wondered what she looked like. I wondered what her tagline was. I pictured
something ironic and clever, with her profile photo smacking of some kind of
fabricated depth. A fake, flashing smile and manipulated angles. Wing-tipped
eyeliner to give a sultry sort of look. The kind that washed away at night.

My
stomach flip-flopped, and I grimaced.

“I don't
even want to think about it.”

She shook
the glass in front of me, and I took a sip. Suddenly, the tequila, warm with
each swallow, was welcoming - but I didn't want to get drunk.

“So
don't,” she said. “You're a total catch, Mia. There's plenty of other guys out
there. And besides, with Cambridge around the corner, why bother even focusing
on American guys? Find yourself a cute, articulate British one.”

“Call me
a fool,” I muttered. “But truthfully, I'm more keen on attending Cambridge to
pursue a further education, and not drool over boys.”

Aimee
rolled her eyes. Maybe I deserved that one. I mean, there would be tons of guys
in the UK; assuming I even got into Cambridge, that is. Cambridge was where I
(hoped) to pursue my Master's degree – in English, of course. Because in some
ways, I was utterly typical. And it was another thing I relished: my love of
books. My love of stories. My love of escapes.

“What.
Is. My. Life?” I asked, scraping the salt from the rim of my glass with the
clear, plastic straw. “I'm tired. I want to go home.”

“Want to
make a Ben and Jerry's run en route?”

I nodded,
sighing for the countless time.

In the
car, while Aimee searched for her keys that were lost (as they always were) in
her abyss of an over-sized purse, I sat with my head against the window, my
chest tightening again.

Suddenly,
a sharp pang made me sit upright.

“My heart
hurts.”

“I know
it does,” Aimee said, touching my hand. “Things will get better, Mia. Time goes
on, and there's always a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and you know
the rest. You'll heal from this mess eventually.”

“No,” I
pressed. “I mean, it
really
hurts. I think something's wrong.”

I looked
at her, alarmed.

“I think
I might be having a heart attack?” I said, the upward inflection making
everything seem worse. “It feels like it. It definitely feels like something.”

“But
you're only twenty-two. Is that even possible?”