This is a companion piece to No Regrets, Here.
Open Heart
When he left her at the curb, she walked, more like sprinted, to the door of her apartment building. She couldn't get away from him fast enough, after her declaration did not yield the desired response. Apparently he felt the same, judging from the squeal of tires as he pulled away.
Her whole world turned upside down. She got the signal too late and realized she made a mistake, but by then she had missed her chance. She doesn't regret telling him. She had nothing to lose. She was already alone. Now, she must accept his rejection and adjust.
He did.
She took a shower and wrapped herself in her favorite bathrobe. It was a gift from him from a Christmas past. He said it was the softest thing he'd ever felt and he wanted her to think of it as a guy hug whenever she needed one and he wasn't around. He was always so maudlin about those guy hugs. She sighed on that thought and wrapped it around her just a little bit tighter.
She poured herself a glass of wine and padded barefoot over to the window and opened it. She sat on the window sill and turned to look outside. The storm from earlier was dwindling and she listened to the staccato beat of the rain drops outside. She leaned back against the window jamb and took a bigger than usual sip of the wine. The cool damp breeze caressed her face as she stared at the moon reflected in a puddle until her eyes lost focus. She started to recall the conversation in the car in an effort to compartmentalize, but her emotions were still too raw to be objective. Oh well, maybe she should just enjoy her Malbec and try to get a full night's sleep.
The sound of rain drops plinking on something metal outside brought her out of her reverie. It sounded like fingers skipping over piano keys and stirred a memory. She poured herself another glass of wine, tilted her head to the side, furrowed her brow and pursed her lips as a melody came to mind. A song she knew a long time ago, the words of which eluded her.
What is the name of that song?
Why can't she remember it?
And why is that bothering her so much?
Okay, Tems, you are perfectly capable of recalling the words to the song, so concentrate.
Huh. Tems. She hadn't thought about that nickname in a long time.
She tried to focus again, but the memory of the song was still too fuzzy. She dismissed it as an unnecessary exercise in futility. All due respect to Micah, but she needed the separation of mind and the comfort of her empirical objectivity. And after tonight's events she could neither take her head out of neutral nor her heart out of overdrive, hence the wine and the robe.
She closed her eyes and leaned back again, relaxing her facial muscles, not realizing she had tensed up trying to remember the song. She took a big mouthful of the wine thinking she really had to stop "scrinching" as Angela is constantly reminding her. "If you keep 'scrinching' when you think, Sweetie, which is, let's face it, not a small part of the time, you'll need a crow bar to pry apart your eyebrows by the time you're 40." When she pointed out that "scrinching" was not an actual word and how it was highly unlikely a crowbar would ever be used for that purpose, Angela rolled her eyes and with hands on hips said, "Lighten up on the literal, Lucy, you'll live longer." Brennan still doesn't know what that meant.
"Oh," she said snapping her fingers, "I remember the words, now!" She almost spilled her wine and startled herself in the process, because she shouted a little louder than she intended. She giggled tipsily and sat up straighter. Then she proudly started to sing, "Is it my turn to wish you were lying here, I did not dream you, And I can't sleep, babe."
She stopped singing then, not because she forgot the rest of the words, but because she remembered something else.
Black. It was pitch black in the trunk of the car. "Maybe a night in there will learn ya to warsh them dishes right and not break'em, you stupid, clumsy bitch!"
Brennan flinched when a hand hit the trunk hood to emphasize the word bitch, but she didn't cry. She never cried and it drove the money counters crazy. She thought, "I learned that in the past year, you sociopathic alcoholic ignoramus!" If you don't cry, they may yell at you and even hit you sometimes, but they can't get to you. Not where it counts. Eventually, they give up and leave you alone.
She drew his ire tonight, because the water was too hot …soap too slippery… and she was distracted by her favorite song playing on the kitchen radio… 'Since I'd, die without you...'
She heard more yelling and cursing and crashing sounds coming from the house, but she told herself to calm down and ignore it. She was mildly claustrophobic and didn't need to panic and elevate her anxiety.
The sociopath usually passed out around eight from consuming too much beer and someone else would let her out. Then again, there was that time they forgot and she missed school the next day. As much as she despised school, because she was much more intelligent than any of her teachers and the other kids treated her like a freak, it was still preferable to here. Her eyes hadn't adjusted to the darkness, yet, so she began to explore her proximity for anything to pry open the hood. Her hand landed on something cold and metal. A crowbar! Perfect!
As she was about to wedge the end of the crowbar into the latch of the trunk, she heard footsteps and the tinkling sound of keys. She braced herself and held the crowbar ready to attack when the trunk opened.
Whoever it was started to put the keys in the lock and she held her breath. The keys fell to the ground and she heard a hushed expletive. She was getting a headache from the tension and lightheaded from the fumes of the inadequately maintained exhaust system. Just then the hood was jerked open and she pounced out ready to ward off the attack, but none came.
Jason was standing there with a fledgling black eye and a torn flannel shirt. He was the sociopath's eldest biological son. He looked terrible, but at that moment he was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. He was talking and gesturing with his hands, but the hammering in her chest and pounding in her ears was so loud she couldn't hear him. Jason grabbed her by the hand and turned to go. She started to ask him where they were going, but he turned slightly and put his index finger to her lips to silence her. His finger made her lips tingle. The expletives were getting closer so he turned and ducked out the back door with a gleeful Brennan in tow, fingers to her lips.
He came back for her! He ran away 2 months ago and left a note promising he would come back for her and now he was here! No one ever came back for her. She thought she would always be unwanted and alone. He's the first…the first person who ever kept his word. She was pure joy.
She followed him to his motorcycle. As he jumped on, he tossed her a helmet. She put it on and was barely seated behind him before he sped out of the driveway. Neither one looked back.
As they flew down the highway, she wrapped her arms tightly around his waist and put her chin on his shoulder. She had never felt so exhilarated in her whole life or so safe.
"Tems, are you hungry?" She hadn't eaten since toast for breakfast. "There's PB & J and bread in the backpack and water in the canteen, but we can't stop for long." They had pulled into a deserted rest area. She smiled and started preparing their first meal together, humming that PM Dawn song and mentally mapping out their future.
Jason carved something into the picnic table. She leaned over and read it out loud, "Temperance & Jason, together forever."
"That's right," he said, throwing his arm around her shoulders, "Just you and me, Tems. Always." And for the first time in a long time, she believed it.
Finally, she was happy and she was with him. The one person in the world she thought of whenever Die Without You played on the radio. She would never again be alone.
But it was not to be. The police found them shortly thereafter and arrested Jason for kidnapping. She was still a minor and a ward of the court and he was 18 and considered an adult. She could not convince the authorities that she ran away willingly, so Jason was tried and convicted. The van transporting Jason to prison was T-boned by a drunk driver and he died instantly.
She was sober again. She put her empty wine glass in the dishwasher and put on the kettle for tea. She hadn't thought about Jason in a very long time. It was a difficult memory, one she chose not to recall in all these years. Why did it surface now? Oh yes, the PM Dawn song. What made her think of that song after all these years?
She opened her laptop and distractedly skimmed over her favorite web pages while she waited for the water to boil. The song would not let her go, so she relented and googled it. She found a degraded copy of the original 1992 PM Dawn video on YouTube. The sound quality was good enough, though. She closed her eyes and listened to the piano intro, which sounded like the raindrops she heard earlier. Then the haunting melody began. Holding the memories at bay, she listened to the words. She halfway sang along with the first stanza, but was stunned as she sang along with the second: Is it my turn to hold you by the hand, Tell you I love you and you not hear me, Is it my turn to totally understand, To watch you walk out of my life and not do a damn thing…?
Oh.
Although her younger self was more intelligent and mature than most girls at 15 or 16, that didn't mean she diverged completely from the norm. Jason was her first emotional attachment to someone other than her parents or Russ. Add her raging hormones and he consumed her thoughts day and night. She thought she was totally and completely in love with him. She definitely romanticized the notion that she would die without him and that song was almost a mantra to her at the time.
When Jason died, naturally she was crushed. What she couldn't accept was that she didn't die without him and needed to find out why. She started reading everything and anything remotely related to the heart, from anatomy to matters of. It took her years of researching and then studying, which eventually led her to her doctorates, but along the way she formed an empirical conclusion. The heart was just a muscle with no supernatural properties at all. Love was a delusion caused by a chemical process in the body. An intellectually rigorous person, like herself, would never again delude themselves into thinking they were in love or that they could die from the loss of it.
The song continued, "Oh, I apologize for all the things I've done, Now I'm underwater and I'm drowning, Is it my turn to be the one to cry, Isn't it amazing how some things completely turn around."
The tea kettle started to whistle and she stopped the video. She got up and walked over to turn off the angry little pot.
The irony of the words of the song was not lost on her. She got it.
A grin formed. It was another signal from the universe. Ergo, ipso, facto, columbo, oreo, she must stop brooding and do something about it.
She had to see Booth, again. She needed to explain that she now knows why she kept her heart locked up. That it's not about her being a Scientist or him being a Gambler. Her heart is open, now. Again. She can love him as he should be loved. And it won't be just for 30 or 40 or 50 years, but forever.
The burden of fear, which weighed her down for years, was finally lifted from her shoulders. She felt as light as a feather and did a pirouette as she set off for the bedroom.
Her right foot got caught in the leg of her jeans in her haste to get dressed. She hopped around on one foot and laughed as she fell on the bed trying to get her leg through. She ran a quick comb through her hair, grabbed her coat from the closet, her shoulder bag from the floor and a made a mad dash down the stairs to her car.
The screeching of her tires meant something entirely different pulling out of the parking lot than his before as she raced toward his apartment. She had only felt this exhilarated once before in her life. It will be different this time, she told herself. He'll be different, because…..
She sped right through a red light and didn't even realize it until she was already through. Luckily it was very late (or early) and few cars were on the road. The thought of what could have happened because she wasn't paying attention hit her and all of a sudden she felt really cold and her teeth started to chatter. She pulled into an empty parking lot and sat there idling with the heat turned up. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath to calmly gather her wits so she could continue thinking and driving safely.
But instead of calming down, her breath became ragged. And she screamed through gritted teeth…
WHY? You IDIOT! Why will he be different THIS TIME?
You're going to explain to him that your heart is open now and you think he'll, what…..?
What is your expected outcome? That he will take you in his arms and tell you he loves you?
Isn't doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result a sign of insanity?
She stares out the window at nothing there, chin out, hands still gripping the steering wheel.
She breathes sharply through flared nostrils for a few minutes and then and realizes she is sweating.
With the heater off and her eyes closed, she puts her forehead on the steering wheel and rocks her head back and forth.
You're still too late.
His heart has been given to another.
Big tears stream down her face and plop to her lap.
His big, open, loving, loyal heart is not yours to have.
And then she sobbed for the second time that night. Difference is, this time she couldn't stop.
She grabbed her chest and to stem the stab of pain that hit her and continued to sob.
She sobbed for the loss of not growing up in the loving arms of her mother and her father and her brother.
She sobbed for that young girl who learned not to cry for survival's sake.
She sobbed for the boy who taught that young girl how to love again.
She sobbed for her partner who tried for six years to find the key to reopen her heart.
She sobbed because he courageously bared his own heart to her and she stomped on it even after she saw the sadness and pain it caused him.
She sobbed because she knew he will never again offer his heart to her while it is promised to another.
She sobbed because although the scientist in her says a heart is only a muscle and can't be broken, the woman in her knows the physical pain in her chest could only be caused by a broken heart.
A knock on the window startled her. A flashlight shone on her face and a voice said, "Metro Police, m'am, are you okay? Do you need assistance?"
She opened the window and wiped her face off with her hands as she tried to assure the police officer that she was okay.
Taking in her disheveled appearance and red, watery eyes and nose, he looked dubiously at her and said, "Are you sure? I can call someone to come get you if you're too upset to drive."
She said no, then blew her nose into a tissue from her purse and told the officer that she lived a couple of blocks away and would get home just fine, alone.
He told her to wait there. He went back to his car, said something to his partner, reached into the patrol car, and came back to her car with a familiar cup in his hand. "Here, take this," he said. "I just picked it up from Starbucks and haven't had a chance to drink it yet. Take my word for it, it'll perk you up. Besides, you look like you could use it more than me."
She attempted to decline, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. He told her everything would work out okay and to take it easy going home. She thanked him, hesitantly took the cup and put it in the cup holder on the console.
She pulled out of the parking lot with the Metro police car behind her and turned left at the next intersection to circle back to her apartment. She released a sigh of relief as the patrol car drove straight.
The pleasant aroma of the hot drink in her console enticed her to take a sip. Hmmm, Peppermint Mocha Latte. It was delicious and, she had to admit, it did perk her up.
Her world had turned upside down for three days, then turned right side up again. She considered how differently she would have reacted 6 years or even 6 months ago.
She was glad that she listened to the universe, told him she got the signal and wanted no regrets. His response hurt, yes, but she can gladly say she had no regrets.
She knows that his heart is currently unavailable and that makes her sad.
But she is not dead or dead inside.
She is very much alive and has hope.
Because she remembers, with great optimism, a particularly cherished conversation from their past.
Him: Give it time, Bones, okay? Give it time. Everything happens eventually.
Her: Everything?
Him: All that stuff that you think never happens, it happens. You just got to be ready for it.
And with a pirate smile she did a u-turn and headed toward the Jeffersonian to start getting ready.