The Heart Principle (The Kiss Quotient 3)

It doesn’t work that way. I immediately fall into the same mental trap as before, only it’s worse now. I play in horrid, never-ending loops all day, and when I stop to rest, my mind is battered and drained in a way I’ve never experienced. Still, I’m determined to forge through. I tell myself that I will finish this, even if it’s the last thing I ever do.

I end up pushing myself so hard that I burn out even worse than I did previously. I lose days and weeks. I lose functionality. This time, in addition to grief and rage, there’s anxiety, desperation. The Richter piece is trapping me, ruining my life. I want to be free. Why can’t I get free?

If I can’t play my way free, there’s one other way . . .

From there, I plummet into pure darkness.

But there’s a light that keeps me from falling too far. That light is Quan. When I get up in the middle of the night, nauseated and silently sobbing and tempted, so tempted, to set myself free in the only way I believe I can, he senses something is off. He wakes up. He holds me. He asks me what’s wrong.

I know he’ll believe me. I know he won’t look down on me and tell me to pull up my big-girl pants and tough it out. So I tell him the ugly truth of my thoughts and fantasies, and he cries as h

e rocks me from side to side.

FORTY-THREE

Anna

With Quan’s urging, I start seeing Jennifer again. She refers me to a psychiatrist. I go on medication that saves my life.

I start to feel . . . optimistic. There are days when I even feel good. Drugs don’t clear my creative block, though. When I pick up my violin, I still play in circles, so I set it down. I understand now that I’m not healed enough to play. I have to give my mind time.

I have trouble focusing enough to read anything of significant length, so I find my way to poetry. A poem can be as short as two lines, sometimes even one, but there’s an entire idea contained there, an entire story. That’s perfect for someone like me. I quickly fall in love with rupi kaur’s work, reading a page here, a page there, as I move about my day, sometimes as I fall in and out of sleep while watching documentaries, specifically the “Cape” episode of David Attenborough’s Africa documentary. I watch it for the two-minute scene where butterflies mate above the treeless peak of Mount Mabu in Mozambique. I’m fascinated by the vivid colors and patterns of their iridescent wings and the dizzying number of butterflies fluttering in the blue sky. It looks like a world apart from the one where I live, one that I can only dream of going to.

When Quan discovers my new special interest, he surprises me by creating a butterfly garden on my tiny balcony. He puts pots of milkweed out and trains passion vine to twine around the railing. As spring turns to summer, my plants blossom with vibrant color, and the butterflies come. It’s just like in Mozambique.

I sit on my balcony for hours, basking in soft rays of sunlight and watching as butterflies dance about me. They’re not shy or afraid of me. Hummingbirds try to compete with them for nectar, and I laugh when my small butterflies battle against their larger opponents and win. Caterpillars hatch from tiny eggs and eat voraciously, chewing through each milkweed leaf in neat rows like when people eat corn on the cob typewriter-style. I name them all. Chompy, Biggolo, and Chewbacca, to name a few, and I bring Rock outside so he can hang out with us. I’m careful not to put him underneath the plants, though, and he’s grateful. He doesn’t want his new friends to poop on him.

Together, we observe as the monarch caterpillars form green chrysalises, darken, and then break free to reveal wings of dazzling orange and black. Later in the season, a different type of butterfly visits my passion vine. The Gulf fritillary is sometimes known as the passion butterfly. On the outside, its wings are plain brown and pearly white, but when they open up their wings, they’re the sweetest tangerine color. Passion butterfly caterpillars aren’t cute like my monarchs. They’re dark and spiky, almost poisonous-looking, and their chrysalises are camouflaged to look exactly like dried-up leaves. But when I poke one, it wiggles and squirms, very much alive.

It seems dead, but it’s just in transition.

I wonder if it’s a metaphor for me. Am I also metamorphosing and changing into something better?

FORTY-FOUR

Anna

It’s slow, but I feel myself healing. I catch up on my bills, pay late fees, sign up to autopay as much as I can. I clean my apartment. It turns out that decorative black ring around the bathroom sink isn’t supposed to be there. (It’s mold.) I do the laundry. I start to use my exercise clothes for their intended purpose, but nothing drastic. I jog for ten minutes a day and increase the duration little by little. Now and then, Quan and I visit my mom, but we can’t drop in unexpectedly. At any given moment, chances are slim that she’s home. She’s not working as much as she used to, but she spends most of her time traveling with her friends. They’re currently planning a trip to Budapest.

As the seasons change again, I experience an odd sort of restlessness. It takes me a while to realize that I want to listen to music. But not classical music. I want something completely different. I want . . . jazz. For weeks, I listen to all the jazz I can find, everything from Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane to modern artists like Joey Alexander, and eventually, eventually, eventually, I am inspired by their musicality. Eventually, I want to play.

This is when I finally let myself pick up my violin again, but I do it carefully. I ease into it, only allowing myself to play scales at first. I rediscover my joy of patterns. I rebuild the calluses on my fingertips. I play simple songs from my childhood to see if I can.

FORTY-FIVE

Quan

Today, over a year after turning down LVMH’s offer, Michael and I are meeting with their new head of acquisitions. Apparently, several women accused Paul Richard of sexual harassment and the company replaced him.

“I’m so happy to meet you both in person,” Angèlique Ikande says, smiling broadly as she shakes my hand and then Michael’s. With her white pantsuit and statuesque build, she looks like a corporate Wonder Woman.

“Likewise,” I say as I motion for her to join us at the restaurant table.

She folds her tall body into her seat and asks the waitress for a glass of sauvignon blanc before regarding us for a thoughtful moment. “I’d like you to know that I think my predecessor is a complete ass.”

Michael breaks into laughter, and I can’t help grinning as I lift my glass and drink to that statement of hers. I’ve been wondering about the purpose for this meeting, but Michael and I haven’t allowed ourselves to muse about it out loud. Paul Richard left a really bad taste in our mouths, and neither of us is over it. Angèlique, however, is totally different. She’s not stuck-up. Everything about her screams competence and honesty. It’s hard not to like her.

“You might not be aware of this,” she says, “but the MLA deal was my project, and Paul stuck his nose in it at the last minute. On behalf of LVMH, I’d like to sincerely apologize for his actions. But that’s not the only reason why I’m here. The first thing that I want to do as the new head of acquisitions is finish what I started. I’d like nothing better than to bring MLA under the LVMH umbrella—and that means both of you. To let you know how serious I am, I’m upping our original offer by twenty percent.”