The Leaves 03 (Nico) Read Online Free Page A

this was Laguna Beach, not the back of your Uncle Jessup’s garage, but that would have been bad business.
    Quarter after nine, and I was ready to close. Everything I had prepared for the Giger tattoo had been put away. I stood up, trying to think of what I had in the fridge at home to eat, when the bell above the door rang. I thought it would have been Deanna, but it wasn’t.
    Angelica stood, shaking before me.
    “Hi, Nico,” she said, her eyes about to spill over with tears.
    “Come here.” I held my arms out as she ran into them and cried into my chest.
    “Can you… can you make me a heart?” she stuttered.
    “Of course I can.”
    She sniffled into my chest, the poor girl. I wasn’t sure if she had anyone she could really turn to. Angelica looked just like her 44/510
    name: white blonde hair and fair skin, bright blue eyes and the face of a cherub.
    Her rosy cheeks and small but full lips trembled as she spoke. “I’m just having a hard time. It would have been her birthday.” Angelica first came to me about six months after she turned eighteen. Her parents were very conservative, active in their community, and so was their perfect daughter. She had the highest grade-point-average in her school and a scholarship to Stanford.
    That was, until she came home and announced she was in love and engaged to her Marine boyfriend. She also told them she was pregnant.
    She explained that her boyfriend, even though he was older, had insisted they wait until she was eighteen to be intimate. He’d told her, “We have the rest of our lives; what’s a few more months?” The unfortunate part of her story was the absence of her fiancé. He had been deployed 45/510
    a week before she announced her big news, but he was happy and had bought her a very nice ring that she wore with pride.
    After her parents went crazy about her throwing her life away for some jarhead, they relaxed and took her to get a proper check-up. The doctor told her to come back for a twenty-week scan and gave her some general information about how to take care of herself. She said that first kick was amazing. Her fiancé, Rich, called her and Skyped whenever he could and was anxious for that scan, to know what they were having. She went to the long awaited appointment with her mom, who had warmed to the idea of being a grandmother. After a few quiet minutes, the technician left the room and returned with a doctor. He asked her to get dressed and come into his office where they informed her the baby had died.
    Something I didn’t know, but learned through her experience, was at that late stage 46/510
    of pregnancy, you still had to give birth. They do not put you to sleep and wake you up when it was all over. She was given a drug to start labor and delivered her stillborn baby girl, her mom and dad never leaving her side.
    It was fucking terrible to hear it the first time, and even though I didn’t have kids, I could feel it, the heartache. And every goddamn heart I had put on her skin since, it took me days to shake the melancholy that seeped into me. Her fiancé was still coming back to marry her when he got leave, and I hoped to meet him. I respected the fact he hadn’t just proposed because she was pregnant. For every day she carried that child, she got a small pink heart. I did the math, which was roughly one hundred and forty hearts I would eventually put on her body.
    My phone buzzed just as I locked the doors. I looked down and read the message, Nicolas,

    47/510
    We’ll have to wait a few weeks. I’m fine, please don’t worry.
    Deanna
    “Motherfucker,” I breathed and started up the steps to my house. In the door less than five minutes, I was in the shower. I usually came home and listened to classic rock. The Eagles, The Beatles, The Stones… I listened to that music because it reminded me of growing up with my parents, how they sometimes danced in the middle of the living room together like I wasn’t even there. I remembered thinking