“Okay.”
Grace searched his eyes for how he really felt. He glanced around like they were being watched. She looked back down. The vitalized ink swirled, almost too eager to complete the form.
The last question revealed itself: Do you understand the objective of the procedure?
The goal was to have your heart weighed. To have the organ plucked from your chest like a swollen cherry and placed on a set of golden scales. To goad the blood-soaked flesh into exposing its imprints, the names of those you’d loved scrawled along striated muscle. To have a machine divulge whom you loved the most, whether you wanted to admit it or not.
Every heart tells a story.
“You ready?” Grace asked.
Marcus replied, “Yeah.”
A line pulsed at the very bottom of the page. Prepare yourself for your heart’s true story.
Grace was certain she already knew her story. The largest name imprinted on her heart—aside from Mama’s and Daddy’s and her little sister Serenity’s—was Marcus’s. But her hands still shook, and she didn’t know why.
“Finished, right?” he asked.
She nodded.
They walked together to return the clipboard to the woman.
A door swung open, and a man appeared. “Grace Williamson?”
Grace raised her hand like they were in school and the teacher had called her name from a roster. She turned to Marcus. “I guess I’m first. It’ll be okay, right?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
Grace kissed his cheek. It was warm with a deep flush she couldn’t see beneath the rich brown of his skin. He always carried too much heat, like he’d swallowed the sun. It was one of the things she liked most about him. She’d never grow cold when she was with him.
He took her hand and squeezed it.
She thought maybe she should just turn around, pull him forward, and walk straight out the door. Maybe she didn’t need to know. Maybe everything would be fine and her worries would drift away like rain clouds after a summer storm.
But maybe not.
Grace took a deep breath and released his hand.
* * *
Marcus scoured the waiting room for water. The answer he’d just given Grace about everything being okay lay thick and heavy on his tongue like cane syrup. He always told her those sorts of things, even if he didn’t believe them. That was what you were supposed to do. His pops always made sure his mama was good, even if he had to wrap a little lie inside something sweet.
“You got dragged here too?” the man beside him asked.
Marcus flashed a false smile and mumbled something that wasn’t yes and wasn’t no, either.
When Grace had asked him to do this, he’d said what he always said to her: Sure. It was more reflex than real, mostly muscle memory. He didn’t know how to say no to her. He didn’t know if he had ever wanted to. When she cried, her hazel eyes appeared green, and her brown skin flushed pink, and he couldn’t handle it. He’d seen the same thing happen with his mama. Those tears haunted him. He’d say just about anything to make Grace smile, to keep her smiling.
“My girlfriend thinks I’m cheating,” the man said. “Yours too?”
“Nah,” Marcus replied.
He’d never do that to Grace.
He’d never behave like his pops.
He’d leave her first.
Even if he had to see those tears.
Marcus’s eyes darted around the room as more and more people disappeared behind the door Grace had gone through. He wondered what was happening to her.
“I didn’t even love that chick,” the man adds. “That shouldn’t show up on my heart, right?”
“I don’t know.” Marcus knew what his heart would show: that he loved his mama and his sisters and his brother and his pops and Grace.
Always Grace.
But he didn’t know if that would be the case forever, and he wasn’t sure if the test would show that. If his curiosity about being with someone else might affect his love for Grace.
Marcus didn’t consider himself a person with secrets. Grace probably knew all there was to know about him, and there wasn’t much. His favorite things: the smell of a fresh pair of sneakers straight out of the box; the hum his grandfather’s old albums made when he first put them on the record player; the way his dog waited for him every day like he was the best person in the whole world. She knew about the weird stuff going on between his parents ’cause his pop kept making mistakes, and she’d told him all his nightmares about drowning in the new pool on his block. She knew he sometimes worried that his little sister and brother might not return from school or that his parents’ fights would get so big they’d turn into a hurricane and destroy everything. Or that maybe he couldn’t be the perfect son, the one his mama counted on to put things back together.
He told Grace most things worth telling.
The man beside him loudly unleashed all the details of his affair while Marcus tried hard not to listen. The story of betrayal boomed like thunder, its rattle hitting him in the chest, excavating his greatest fears.
“Marcus Tucker?” an attendant called out.
Marcus leaped up, happy to be able to escape the man.
“Good luck,” the man said.
“Yeah, okay. You too, I guess,” Marcus replied. He didn’t believe in luck and wasn’t sure he needed it. He needed something else.
He ducked through the door and followed the attendant down a hall. Brass lanterns painted stripes across the floor. Marcus counted them as he walked. It was the only thing that kept him from panicking.
He felt like he was about to be outed in some way. That every half-truth he’d ever told was about to be laid bare and given air, a monster growing from it. He had always told himself he wouldn’t be like his pop. He might not be perfect, but he wouldn’t outright lie, the big kinds of untruths that were just too-small Band-Aids over hemorrhaging wounds.
No, he’d never do that.
But when did a lie become a lie? Was wanting to love someone else wrong? Was wondering about it the same as not telling Grace the truth?
What exactly would his heart show?
Would it betray him?
And her?
His stomach fluttered as they stopped in front of a door marked number three. That was a lucky number, or so he’d always thought. Gram said important things came in threes. Birds of good fortune. Auspicious news. Storms. Nightmares.