Read Pieces of You (Shattered Hearts) for Free Online Page B

looks like she’s about to cry.
    “Don’t cry. Please. You’re gonna make me cry. I’m just starting to get over it.”
    She bites her lip, trying to hold it together. “I should have been with him.”
    “He died in May. I was with him. He went peacefully. I even took him to the dog park that morning. He just laid there real quiet, but he was smiling.”
    She covers her face. “Oh, no,” she whimpers as she shakes her head.
    I want to pull her into my arms, but I’m afraid she’ll push me away. I give her a moment to compose herself. Finally, she pulls her hands away from her face and looks at me with pure hurt in her eyes.
    “We have to get going.”
    She glances around the garage at my car and my mom’s Volvo for a moment before she steps down and makes her way toward my car. “You got a Porsche?” she asks incredulously as she gazes at the shiny, black hood. “Could you be any more flashy?”
    “Hey, I don’t spend money on a lot of shit. I don’t even have an apartment in Raleigh. Let me have my cars and my bikes.” I make my way to the driver’s side of my mom’s Volvo. “We’re taking the Volvo. I have to at least pretend to be responsible.”
    She tears her gaze away from the Porsche and we both climb into the Volvo. We sit for a moment in silence as I slide the key into the ignition and adjust the radio station.
    “Pretend to be responsible?” she says. “But you are responsible, Chris. You don’t have to pretend to be anything. I’m the one who should be worried about looking irresponsible.”
    I open my mouth to refute this when my phone vibrates in my pocket. “Hold that thought.” I slip the phone out of my pocket and see Tasha’s name. “Hello?”
    “Chris, I’ve got bad news.”
    I let out a deep sigh because I already know what she’s going to say.
    “They backed out?”
    “Yeah, but this is normal. This is the way these things go. They’re good people, as far as I can tell, but she got cold feet. I guess she’s a big fan of your music and she got a little nervous about meeting you. Then her husband got freaked out about the whole rock star thing.”
    “Fuck!”
    “Hey, it’s just a minor setback. We’ll give them a few days to cool off then I’ll call and try to set up another meeting. Don’t get discouraged.”
    “What happened?” Claire whispers.
    “Thanks, Tasha.”
    As soon as I say her name, Claire’s face falls. I tuck the phone into my pocket and we sit in silence for a moment. I don’t know how much more heartache Claire and I can take. All I know is that this was not the homecoming I had planned for today.
    “Hey, did I show you this tattoo,” I say as I pull up the sleeve on my right arm and show her the shattered heart tattoo I got on New Year’s Day.
    It’s just a two-inch red heart broken into a bunch of pieces, but some of the shards are colored black and spell out the one word I think of when I think of Claire: home. She gazes at my arm for a moment before she looks up at me.
    “This is really hard for me, too,” she says. She doesn’t have to say anything more.

 
    Chapter Seven
    Adam
     
    I PULL INTO THE PARKING lot at Spencer Hall and, as usual, there’s no parking on a Friday night. I pull back out and find a parking space in the lot on Franklin. I’m walking past the Chapel of the Cross, just a few hundred feet from the dorm, when my phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s my dad.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Your mom needs you to come into the office tomorrow to help her with the Blackwell close-out. She’s having a problem reconciling the change order log. You need to be there by two.”
    “I can’t. I’m not coming home until Sunday. I’ll go in early on Monday to look at it.”
    “No, you’ll be there tomorrow. The auditor is coming on Monday morning and this shit needs to be done by then. Your mom has a church thing on Sunday, so it has to be tomorrow.”
    My dad knows I can’t refuse now. Religion is a topic we no longer discuss