Instructions for a Broken Heart by Kim Culbertson Read Free Book Online Page A

much—huge fight.
    The poor guy in the box office hid behind a copy of The Hunt for Red October . By the time Carissa called and said they weren’t coming, Jessa was already heading off down the street, calling her mom for a ride home.
    When she turned at the corner, waiting for her mom to pick up, she had seen Sean duck under the shelter of the theater. He had seen the movie anyway.
    ***
    Tyler found her standing alone outside of the chapel in the looming shadow of St. Peter’s. “Where did you go?”
    She pulled her hair from her neck, her pulse returning to a steady rippled river through her body. “I was having a religious moment or something.”
    “Well, this is the place for it.” He looted his jacket pocket for a half empty bag of bears.
    Jessa wrinkled her nose. “More gummy bears? Isn’t this your third bag today?”
    “Enough stalling. Read your poem.” He chewed a huge gob of them. “I saw you writing it at lunch.”
    Jessa imagined all the little gummy-bear bodies colliding, all their colors mixing, churning in his teeth. She blinked in the strange light. Tyler picked a green fleck of bear from his teeth. Jessa declined the open bag he held out to her.
    “You want me to read it here?” Jessa shivered a bit in her denim jacket, eyeing the spill of tourists from the chapel.
    “Why not? You going to offend the pope or something?” Two elderly Italian women passed by in their Good Friday fine dresses, their pinched faces frowning under their kerchiefs. Tyler lowered his voice. “Come on.” He shook the bag of bears at her. “Carissa said you would stall. Don’t let Carissa be right about anything. You know how she gets.”
    “OK.” Jessa pulled Tyler to a nearby bench, dug through her bag for her journal. She took a breath. “It’s called ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors.’”
    Tyler made a face. “Very funny. But I made you play that game for the audition description, not this one.”
    “I knew you’d appreciate the reference.” Jessa took a breath, then read her poem into the still, rain-scented air:
    With you, I am paper, wrapped around, folded, creased,
left cut with your slices. You are rock and scissors—hard
and sharp. You are the metal blades and blue plastic handles
of my childhood craft bin scissors. You are the smooth river rock
I’m collecting and losing in that same sunlit day where the sky split
    open, drenched our towels—and you, your pockets filled with stones,
    ankle deep in river water, you smiled at me with rain on your face.
    That day—the day after finding the dead dog, the day after my tears and our fight—that day I filled my pockets with the stones you found me,
the stones you named for me—the black one “night,” the quartz-shot
granite “love,” and the one I lost, the gray-flecked small one,
you named “George.” Now, paper Me is pocked with rainwater, turning to pulp—and you are nowhere, no one to papier-mâché me
    whole, no one to reconstruct me.
    She snapped her journal shut and jammed it back in her bag. Tyler sat silently, his eyes blanketing her, seeking hers out, but she couldn’t meet them. She could only wipe at her eyes, unfold Carissa’s third instruction, press it into his hand, and say, “Long enough. What it means.”
    “What does it mean?”
    Jessa surveyed the massive walls of St. Peter’s Basilica, a church so big, Francesca had told them, that you could fit the Statue of Liberty inside it. Sighing, she closed her eyes against all that ancient stone.
    “‘Long enough’ means that even though I pretty much hate him now, even if he ruined everything, it wasn’t long enough. Something about Sean, I don’t know what, just something, made me feel whole. Now”—she blinked in the gray light—“now, I just feel like I’m in ripped-up pieces.”

#4: valentine’s day
from hell
    Jessa couldn’t get off the bus. It sped down the Italian highway, the Tuscan landscape a sepia blur. Sean kept smashing his face all over Natalie’s