From the moment she was born, Caroline had a racing heart. It didn’t matter if she was lying down for hours and not moving, her heart banged against her ribcage and there was nothing she could do to fix it. Her heart was always three steps ahead of her; telling her to hurry up, to not miss anything, to keep going. She worried that one day, the machine inside her chest was destined to overheat.
For as long as Caroline loved Oliver, he could hear her heartbeat, strong and steady, like his own. He heard her heart marching on in his ears, with his two steps behind.
He got used to hearing the world in double-time.
...
When they were ten, Caroline and Oliver sat in a tree.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” she asked him. She always asked him that.
“I don’t know. I don’t really think about when I grow up.”
“Yes you do. Tell me what you want to be.”
“A hockey player,” he lied.
“No, you don’t.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Why do you always bug me with this stuff?
“Because I saw this bird yesterday. He was outside my window and he sang so loud and so clear. He was singing about my life, about what I can be.”
“No he wasn’t.”
“Yes. He was. Trust me, he was. I know it.”
Oliver put his hand on her thigh.
“My heart beat’s slowing down.”
“I know. I hear it slowing down now.”
“Did you know I’m only happy with you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because you don’t worry that much. You are like a blanket of don’t worry.”
“Why do you worry so much?”
“Sometimes I think that I’m just too young and just too smart. That makes me the best candidate for a broken heart.”
People that fall in love as children are damned. Once you’ve been together like that, you are never really apart.
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