Paper Hearts

15

Being the gentleman he was, Luke allowed me to choose the ice cream flavor, despite his winning the game. Once I'd ordered a cup of some new strawberry-cheesecake flavor, he led me to a table outside, where the sun was just beginning to lower itself into the horizon. A warm breeze wafted through the air, and I closed my eyes briefly, enjoying the sweet, cold dessert melting on my tongue in the somewhat warm afternoon.

"So we're down to about three weeks left," Luke said pointedly, and I nodded, opening my eyes to see that he wasn't looking at me, but rather at some point in the space behind me. I tried to ignore his sudden lack of eye contact and replied,

"Yeah, I—I guess we are."

He cleared his throat, and I wasn't sure what else I could say. I felt nervous whenever I thought about my mother—even more so when I thought about my mother questioning me—and insurmountably more so when I thought about my mother questioning Luke.

So I shoved the thought of my mother herself out of my head entirely and tried to change the subject, my gaze falling to Luke's wrist.

"I didn't know you have a tattoo." I said, my voice light and breezy as I touched a finger to his wrist. He turned it over, bringing his eyes up to mine as he said,

"It's not permanent. I have a friend who's a tattoo artist, and she just gives me a temporary one every week. That way, I can try it out without having to, you know...keep it."

I nodded, brow furrowed, and looked down at the temporary tattoo. It was simple—two circles overlapping, almost like a—

"Is that a Venn diagram?" I asked, holding back an incredulous laugh. "Like, the ones we did in eighth grade?"

"Yeah," Luke replied, smiling. He paused for a second, looking down at it before saying, "I kind of like it, you know. Venn diagrams are just graphs describing the differences between two things, and then—in the middle—everything that they share. Their similarities."

He took my hand and lowered it onto the middle part, right where the circles met, intersecting, creating a space.

"I like to consider myself that middle space." Luke said, quietly, "Not quite one thing or another. Not a stark difference. It's not like I'm either a good guy or a bad one. I'm a firm believer in the idea that I can be both."

I glanced up at him once more, breathless, my finger still resting on the would-be tattoo.

"If you believe in it so much," I said, softly, "Why won't you get it for real? Make it permanent?"

At this, Luke leaned back with a laugh.

"It's all about perspective, Victoria. You might think something is exactly what you want, until it's a permanent part of your life and you can't change it. That's when you begin to have regrets."

I just looked at him, astounded.

"Rough drafts," he said simply. "That's all these are. Choices. Options. Possibilities. Just like you and me. We're not final; we're not permanent. We're rough around the edges, and we don't last forever, but we can always start over again. That's the beauty of it—we're rough drafts, and we can recreate ourselves into whoever we want to be."

I blinked, taking this in.

I could be anyone I wanted to be? Impossible.

But a part of me—a deep down, tucked away, no-one-can-see part of me—wanted to believe it.

________

The next day at school, I was unnerved by how quiet the hallways had become whenever I walked through them. I could hear every click of my locker combination, every footstep I took against the tile floors. I felt a thousand pairs of eyes on me, and by the time my first class began, I was desperate to know what was going on.