Hand-Me-Down Heart
Jessica wasted away a year of kisses to someone who decided they no longer wanted them and now all she wants to do is to make up for lost time. But she isn’t ready to hurt again; her wounds are still fresh and her heart still fragile and shy.
She meets Yuri, and she wasn’t meant to be anyone until she kisses her and makes her feel a stupid kind of perfect. After awhile, her mind tells her that Yuri’s a keeper. Because, Yuri treats her like a proper lady, holds her like she’ll never let go and eats all the things off her plate that she doesn’t like.
Then her chest starts to ache all over again. Jessica thinks it’s the loose stitches that are unravelling her broken heart, when it’s really another kind of pain.
Jessica wishes so badly that Yuri didn’t remind her of how time got away.
Sentiments soon turn into ‘I love yous’ and it feels all too familiar. People say things that lose their meaning like how promises are made to be broken.
She finds herself counting down the days, wondering how long this love will last.
And Yuri notices the little red crosses marked in the boxes of her calendar. She sees how frightened Jessica is because she wears her heart on her sleeve. But Jessica reassures her, rubs the back of her neck and tells her it’ll be different.
Except Jessica isn’t sure whether that’s an empty promise. Jessica opens her hand and Yuri reaches out to her like a child. The clock ticks for Yuri and Jessica worries that one day she will no longer be blind and so foolishly in love. Her kind of innocence won’t last forever, Jessica knows too well.
They try making love for the first time. Jessica isn’t ready despite her own insistence.
She senses Yuri’s first time jitters and tells her that it’s just like normal sex. Yuri gulps and nods, feeling embarrassed that she’s never been this naked and exposed in front of Jessica. Their limbs tangle awkwardly and soft apologies are uttered in between brash kisses.
“What do I do?” Yuri whispers nervously.
Jessica guides her nervous shaky hand down to her taut abdomen and notices how Yuri flushes with the feel of her bare flesh under her finger tips. She tenses when Yuri lowers her hand between her thighs. Yuri looks up and knows something’s off.
This isn’t right, even if Jessica’s trying to make it out to be.
She pulls away and Jessica pleads, “No, don’t,” holding onto Yuri’s hand as tightly as she possibly can.
Yuri shakes her head, rolls to her side of the bed and pulls Jessica’s small body towards her. And suddenly, Jessica feels like she’s the inexperienced one of the two, so small and vulnerable. Yuri’s wraps her strong arms around her small frame and she cries and cries, biting down the tip of her shoulder because she thinks she’s wearing down Yuri’s patience when all she does is take with nothing in return, except the wet teeth marks on the skin of her shoulder.
And although Jessica doesn’t know it, they make a different kind of love that night.
Yuri winces like a wounded puppy when Jessica won’t say it back to her. She’s supposed to understand, but she’s human too. Jessica doesn’t have to stand up on a mountain and proclaim it out to the world; it can be something that’s for her ears only. It hurts her pride when Jessica doesn’t love her enough to form three simple little words that come so naturally out of her own mouth.
As silly and pathetic as it seems, she hopelessly wishes she’d been Jessica’s first love. Hand me down hearts are never as flashy and new.
So when Jessica murmurs a soft apology, Yuri doesn’t reply and continues driving like she never said a thing.
“You have to give me time,” Jessica tugs at the front of Yuri’s jacket, her fringe covering her lowered eyes.
She replies, “But you don’t even try,” her voice small and hurt
“I try really hard.”
“No, you only try to protect yourself.”
“I just don’t want it to crash and burn.”
“Won’t you trust me enough to know I won’t let that happen?”
“That’s what everyone says.”
“Fine,” Yuri sighs.
“Can’t we just take it slow?” Jessica whispers.
Her brown eyes soften when she sees how Jessica’s bottom lip quivers and her chest feels like it’s about to burst from the way Jessica so childishly wipes away her tears with the back of her hand. She doesn’t know whether it hurts more; that she made Jessica cry or because she’s mad that she won’t love her properly.
“Alright,” she settles, “We have all the time in the world.”
“So, are you doing okay? I heard that you and-.”
“I’m fine. I’m over it,” Jessica cuts in, “I’m seeing someone else, someone better.”
“Oh,” her friend replies, unconvinced.
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
Her friend says it in a way that Jessica just knows that she’s telling her that she has only herself to prove.
“She treats me well,” she adds.
Her friend smiles, “That’s great”
Jessica stops talking altogether when she feels like the conversation isn’t going anywhere, wishing she were somewhere else; maybe eating dinner with Yuri instead of having coffee with a friend she hasn’t seen in months.
At least she can count on the fact that Yuri won’t ever patronise her.
“You didn’t have to come over.”
“You were hungry and you sounded like you needed company.”
“I can cook for myself and there’s such a thing called the internet.”
“Whatever, I felt like seeing you,” Yuri simply shrugs.
Jessica smiles, “Well, thank you.”
She doesn’t know what her friend was thinking. Yuri does treat her well; better than anyone else and it would really hurt if she suddenly left. She’s stuck around long enough to make Jessica a little braver and Jessica thinks there won’t be a lot of other people out there who will be willing to wait for her like Yuri has; so she really has to keep her.
She doesn’t let go of Yuri’s hand when she gets ready to leave, she leads her to her bedroom, fingers curled under her woollen jumper onto bare olive skin and presses her lips against the side of her neck.
“Stay,” she murmurs.
Yuri pulls away, tilts her head, “You don’t have to.”
“But I want to.”
“Are you sure? We really don’t have to.” Yuri murmurs between gentle kisses, “I can wait. We have all the time in the world, remember?”
“I-I want this okay?”
And it’s not because she wants to prove her friend wrong. She just knows she likes Yuri a lot, enough to want to hear her breath quicken as she sucks at the pulse point of her neck and to trace silly little invisible love hearts on her ribcage.
For a brief moment, Jessica willingly shows her whole wounded heart to Yuri; allows her to pull the stitches away and seal the cracks with her kisses.
She wakes up and finds herself holding Yuri from behind. She peers over and sees her mouth agape, lightly snoring.
The morning chill bites at her skin and she pulls the covers higher and hugs Yuri closer.
“Stay forever,” she finds herself foolishly saying aloud.
She holds her hand a little tighter, and her smile is less uncertain than it is sure. She doesn’t remember that being so blind and naïve can make her feel so right. But she’s starting to understand again, why Yuri is so pathetically easy to please- because something as simple as holding her hand like this makes her feel almost invincible.
But she still has her pride, and she feels like what she’s going to say next should have been practiced, that this is so unrehearsed.
Like any fool she risks it all and finally puts her heart on the line.
“You’re my second first love,” Jessica whispers with her lips tickling against Yuri’s ear, and her finger twirling around a strand of black hair.
Yuri cracks open a smile and as if on cue utters, “Because first is worst and second is best.”
She replies like she’d expected her to say it all along, and all Jessica can do is blink and nod. Only, Yuri doesn’t mention the part where Jessica is just as well-loved, as she was pre-loved but Jessica doesn’t need any kind of verbal confirmation, she’s known it all along. Jessica's realized she’s actually practiced enough at love to know that they’re the delightful outcome of a curse casted by time.
And that’s when time mends a broken heart.
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A/N Because too much Yulsic is never enough.
reference: Planet New Year- Sarah Blasko