Page 84 of Exchange of Heart

I’d begun to love the way her excitement over small victories twisted my stomach, and her insistence to fight for the ideas she believed in made my heart beat that bit faster. I’d stacked everything about her into cherished piles of admiration, and the bundles continued to grow. I didn’t just want her happiness, I craved it. Each little piece of success and joy I witnessed burrowed under my skin and nestled into my heart so hard it hurt.

Her cheeks reddened and I looked away, unable to deal with my desperation to find longing in her eyes, too. I pulled up the menu on my phone and held it in front of her. ‘Choose what you want and don’t skimp. I meant it when I said my treat. Order anything you want, and what we don’t eat can go in the fridge for tomorrow, or you could take it to work for lunch.’

‘If I’m choosing the food, you can choose the movie,’ she negotiated so I’d have some input, too.

‘Deal.’

Nora tapped away on my phone, then tossed it to the other side of the couch and stood. ‘Half hour ’til it gets delivered, I’m going to take a shower.’

Desperate to bask in Nora’s heart-clenching happiness for the rest of the evening, I waited for the click of the bathroom door. I removed my hat and changed into a clean cotton shirt and track-pants, adjusted the cushions on the couch, then tidied the coffee table. The doorbell rang and I accepted the Mexican. I grabbed some beers from the fridge and placed them on the clean coffee table, clicked the remote until the movie appeared on the screen, then glanced around my apartment. My trembling fingers searched for a distraction, but everything sat in place with nothing left to do. The shower turned off, and my heart pounded. A few minutes later, Nora appeared in a white cotton shirt and trackpants, too.

‘How embarrassing, we’re wearing the same outfit.’ I gestured between us.

Her eyes gleamed and her mouth stretched in a gorgeous smile. My lips had never been able to form such an easy-going grin without focusing on them with an imaginary angle calculated in my mind.

‘You’re not wearing your hat,’ she noticed.

I shrugged. ‘I know it drives you mad.’

‘I don’t know, it matched my eyes. It’s not so bad when you wear it, after all.’ She closed her eyes and deeply inhaled the Mexican, opening them to see what I’d chosen on TV. ‘There’s no way you chose this movie when you’ve been begging me to watch Star Wars all week.’

My fingers clasped her hands, and I stared into her soul through my eyes.

‘I’m not kidding. I’m trying to make it up to you. You said my pick, now go sit on the couch to eat some Mexican so we can watch Mean Girls.’

Tears pooled in her eyes, but she quickly blinked them away. ‘And just when I’d convinced myself you didn’t have a heart.’

I’d had a heart all along, I just didn’t realise it could feel this way.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Nora

Corey leaned his hands against the bathroom sink with a towel wrapped around his body and pleading puppy eyes. ‘Will you help me do my hair?’

With the event tonight, he’d dried it the way I’d shown him last week, but scattered next to the sink were hair ties and bobby pins waiting to be used.

‘Damn, Corey. You’re going all out tonight. Hoping to meet your soulmate?’

He nudged my ribs with his small elbow then grabbed fistfuls of his hair. ‘Shut up. I looked up some easy hairstyles so I could keep all of this out of my way. Honestly, you’re lucky I didn’t leave work early to get a haircut.’

‘All right, all right. Come here.’ I grabbed Corey’s shoulders and moved him in front of me, then started gathering hair to pin into place.

I missed my hair. If I could pluck the strands from his scalp and stab them into mine, I would. Each day in this foreign body became more familiar, yet reminders of our differences found me at every corner I turned. Especially within the office under the scrutinising glare of his father. I could never truly be Corey Flemmington, not in the way that horrible man expected.

‘Are you nervous to be Corey Flemmington at a black-tie event?’ he asked.

I hesitated, with his long black hair in my hand. ‘I don’t think so. Should I be?’

‘Well, there’s a chance a journalist or someone will try and sneak a little interview about the event, but I’d be more concerned about the fact you’ll be spending another night in the same vicinity as my father outside of work hours.’

My face scrunched into an involuntary scowl. ‘Please. Every day of his life is work hours, whether you’re in the office or not.’

Corey shrugged and lowered his eyes like a child that had been told ‘no’. I’d always thought it had been hard on me having no father around, but compared to Corey, I think I got it easy. It’s all or nothing for me. You’re either in my life with something to offer that betters it, or you’re out of it. Negative energy can manifest too hard until I’m an insecure ball of doubt, and I couldn’t live a life like that. I wouldn’t be living, I’d be existing.

I put the final hair pin into place and spun him to face me. ‘Now, let’s do your makeup so you can meet Mr Right tonight.’

I dropped Corey’s keys into the valet’s palm, then held out my arm so Corey could grasp it with his freshly painted fingers. Despite my insistence for colourful nails, he handed me his boring beige hand which made his nails blend in with his fingers. If he’d had it his way, he would have had chipped nails with no polish at all. Over my dead body. If he’s going to be photographed as me tonight, I needed to look perfect.