A Matter Of The Heart

I woke up this morning dreading going to work. I got out of bed and put on my black tights and a NYPD t-shirt and grabbed my blue Nike's and headed to the park for a run. I had my hair pulled up into a ponytail on the top of my head, just the way Bosco always said it looked the best.

I knew I was hoping to run into him on my jog, as he sometimes chose to frequent the same park that I did, but to no avail. He was no where to be seen as I continued on. I passed other runners who were keeping up their pace, feeling my heart pumping so hard it put pins in my side. Running faster and faster, I sped through the dry leaves that crackled under my feet, trying to outrun too many things. Things that were a matter of the heart and knew no right or wrong.

It had been two weeks since I had spoken to the man who had fully and completely captured my heart and made it sing, two weeks since I had made love to the only man who made me feel like a woman. Two, long, painful weeks, in which I had to physically restrain myself from calling him as I lay on my bed smelling him on my sheets.

But he didn't want me. He was angry at me because I called it off first. Angry that I had beaten him to the punch. I had to end it before he did. It was a matter of science, I had thought. Men always get their fill and then they leave you in the lurch. I had seen it too many times with my own mother. Always a different guy in her bed, in her life, until they got what they wanted and then moved on. Always moving on.

Well, I wasn't about to let myself love him when I knew full well that he was like all the rest.

If I hadn't ended it he would have. I was stupid to think otherwise. Maurice Boscorelli didn't stick around, nor did he really give a damn about any woman he slept with. He was out for a good time and that was it. He might have known more about sex and playing around, but I knew more about survival.

I knew how to keep my emotions in check, to keep myself so far removed from everyone that it didn't hurt when they went away or died. I knew how to keep that part of myself locked away and only in my deepest, secret heart did I permit myself to think about love.

Love. What a word. What a concept. A thing that had plagued and beguiled humans since Adam and Eve. How tricky and deceitful it could be, making us believe in something real and good when all along it was waiting to disappear and leave us all alone, wallowing in self-pity and regret.

If I hadn't known better, I might have thought that he was crazy about me. I saw the way he had looked at me before Letty's death, with such longing and desire it almost made me blush. I admit that I teased him a few times, batting my eyes and moving in real close when I talked to him. I could feel his heat and I knew that I was getting to him. But what guy wouldn't get turned on by that? They were all the same.

The night that my sister died, I felt a pain so real and crushing that it was hard to breathe. I was always trying to help her, to get her to stop throwing her life away. I wanted more for her because she deserved it. She had never had a chance to become what she had wanted to be when she was a kid. She always wanted to be a nurse. But, like so many others before us, she felt that she didn't have what it took. Someone was always squelching her tender, undeveloped pride. My mother, my father, people in our neighborhood, always making her think she was less than what she was. She turned to drugs and booze and that was the beginning of the end.

Oh, Letty, how can I let you go?

That night Bosco had come to my apartment to see if I was alright. I was shocked to see him there...to know that he cared. Once we started kissing, it was all over for me. The way he tasted, the way his eyes clung to me, as if he wanted to take away all of my pain and bring it into himself, the way he held me tenderly, it was all new to me and it brought me to the realization that I was falling for him. No other man had ever made me feel so wanted and cherished before.

The more it went on, the more I knew I had to end it before I got hurt. Damn him for not just getting up and walking away the second it was over, for staying and holding me in his strong arms and whispering words of comfort in my ear as he stroked my long black hair through his fingers.

Damn him for making me feel when I wasn't strong enough to stop it. And when I told him that he was being clingy, I could see the way his eyes narrowed that he was maybe a little hurt, but I told myself it was for the best. I knew that underneath it all he was just like all the rest. He wasn't tired of me yet but I couldn't afford to be with him any longer. It would just hurt too much when he left.

I arrived home about an hour before my shift. I showered and changed into my favorite jeans and a green slinky long sleeved t-shirt and threw on my black short sleeved vest. I took the subway into work and arrived about fifteen minutes before role call. Dade met me in the hall and told me that Yoshi was out sick. We needed another guy, he said, and could we ask Boscorelli to come on board for the day?

I felt my heart constrict at the thought. That meant that he would have to ride with me all day and just seeing him was hard enough. I didn't want to spend the day with the one man I had fallen for; the one man who made my heart pitter-patter every time I saw him.

Reluctantly, I nodded, trying to keep my emotions in check. It's no big deal, I told myself. Put on the shield and armor and you'll be fine. Just act like you don't care.

I started toward the locker-room to tell him to get his ass upstairs in five minutes or else, when the door was suddenly thrust open and out he came looking like he was in a surly mood.

I swallowed nervously and curled my lip and gazed at him, my face now a mask of deceit. 'Boscorelli, we need you today. Get your ass up there in five or we'll leave without you.' I snapped at him, as I flicked my gaze toward the ceiling for a moment, terribly afraid that he'd see the tortured look in my face from not having him for so long.

He opened and closed his mouth abruptly, and clenched his jawHe looked at me with anger, anger over what, I wasn't sure. Maybe he really did prefer to be working with Faith or maybe he was still angry with me for being so strong. ' Is that an order, Sargent?' He spit out nastily, his cheeks turning a bit red.

I pulled back my shoulders and looked him up and down for a moment, playing my game. ' Yes, Officer. It is.'

Before he could say another word, I spun on my heel and continued down the hall. It hurt like hell to act that way. To let him think that I didn't care, when I did, I did! It hurt to see the way he looked at me, with disgust and not one bit of the tenderness he had displayed to me so many times.

I got to the bottom of the stairs, praying that I would have the strength to finish the day without telling him how much I loved him.