Ever since she was little, they’d called her a heartbreaker.

Her mother called her ‘my little heart’.

So, in a twisted amalgam of the two, somewhere along the road she got the idea that the only heart to break would be hers.

Ever since she was a teenager, they’d joked about getting her a stick to keep the boys away with.

Her friend joked she was ‘one of the guys’.

So, in a state of disorientation, she masked her face in a lack of makeup, covered her eyes in reflective glasses, and shielded her heart with stone containing a radius of two consecutive phone calls.

She didn’t want her heart broken.

It was her coming-of-age. A speech was made about her greatest quality; her genuine openness – she should be proud.

She was proud, but it was because she’d fooled them. Officially a woman, and never had a crush.

It was exactly one summer later that she met him.

She was reluctant, shamed – but he convinced her that crushing was different from breaking.

He didn’t call her his heart, nor did anyone give her a stick to beat him back with. But he did call her beautiful, and everyone said they were made for each other.

She wondered if he was a heartbreaker, too, and why he wasn’t scared of having his heart broken.

It was fall when she found out.

It was winter when she met her. The girl was his heartsaver.

Despite her best efforts, her heart broke.

It was summer again when she found another him, from their childhood, when she’d quickly pushed him away after he called four times.

He called her a heartbreaker, picked up a stick of his own, and as he was waving it threateningly at her; she blinked as though opening her eyes for the first time and asked him what he thought a heartbreaker was.

He told her it was someone who hurt someone else, on the inside, in a way that would hurt forever until a new person healed it.

She smiled, and was glad she’d gotten a heartsaver of her own.

Two years later, she had her first true boyfriend.

He was nothing like the other two hims – but he was also different from the other men she’d dated since the second him.

Two months later, she told him about heartbreakers.

One moment later, he laughed and walked out of the room.

Five minutes later, he returned with a roll of duct-tape and a bouquet of yellow roses, her favourite. He told her he might not be a heartsaver, but he didn’t plan on letting her heart break anyways, even if it meant he spent every last dime he had on wrapping it with duct-tape.

Ever since she was little, they’d called her a heartbreaker.

Ever since she was little, she’d failed to avoid it.

But it was worth it, it was worth it all a million times over, because it all lead up to the man sitting across from her at that very second, commenting that they could use the duct-tape for kinkier things too.