#so recommend

eddie is sixteen years old when he decides he doesn’t have a heart, and he's thirty two when he decides he doesn't want a heart, anymore, not if having a heart means you have to deal with so much pain, and heartbreak.

some days, it felt like he was swallowing glass, jagged edges tearing into the tender skin of his throat and reminding him that any happiness he's ever had - shannon, christopher, buck - was only ever temporary, because eddie had never deserved to have someone take care of his heart. no, eddie diaz's heart was always destined to crumble like dust, alone and unloved and undeserving of any more chances than the ones he had already wasted.

ao3 link

a gentle heart is tied with an easy thread

Eddie is nine, when he starts to properly learn about the functions of a heart. He was aware he had once, of course – the way his heart would thunder in his chest when he’d run around with his friends, his sisters, was too loud to ignore – but he started to learn about how it really worked, the things it was supposed to do, in grade school science.

They’d started with the basics, Eddie remembered – explaining how the heart pumped blood around the body and kept everything working. As the years went by, and science got more complex, he learned more – about blood, and arteries, and how essential the heart was in keeping the body alive.

Eddie was fifteen years old when his grandfather had died of a heart attack. He’d stayed late, in the school library, that afternoon, pouring over biology textbooks and trying to understand how a heart could attack – how an organ so vital could just stop working. Adriana had been the one to come and get him, saying they needed to get home and pack for their flight to Los Angeles, and Eddie had borrowed the textbook, and he’d read it cover to cover, over and over again, trying to understand how one of the most magnificent organs in the body could just stop beating.

There were plenty of reasons you could have a heart attack. A heart attack was caused when one – or more – of your coronary arteries becomes blocked. Coronary heart disease – that’s what it was called. One person dies every 36 seconds in the United states from cardiovascular disease. 36 seconds wasn’t a long time. Eddie had lost count of the number of 36 second intervals he’d lived through, on that flight from El Paso to Los Angeles, counting from 1, to 36, softly under his breath, wondering whose grandfather had died in the 36 short seconds it took.

High blood pressure. That was a risk factor, according to Eddie’s textbook. High blood pressure – tobacco. (“That old fool smoked until the day he died,” Ramon Diaz had said, quiet, a sad, fond smile fixed in place as he spoke to Eddie’s mom about his father, unaware that Eddie was listening in to their conversation.)

Obesity. Lack of physical activity. Less of a problem, Eddie decided – his grandfather had been an active man, walking and talking, always a man of the people. Family history of heart attacks. Eddie hadn’t asked about that one – but he’d made a mental note to take care of his own heart, after that.

Age.

(“It was his time, Eddie,” Abuela explained, tears shining in her eyes as she hugged Eddie close – always her favourite, named for the grandfather they were about to bury. “His heart was strong – and full of love. But age comes for us all.”

His heart couldn’t have been that strong, Eddie decided – not when it decided to stop beating. He kept that thought to himself, swallowing his uncertainty as he approached the open casket, his grandfather lying still, body pillowed by cream silk. He looked peaceful, Eddie realised – as though slipping away from this life had been an ease, in the end, his face slack and his skin cold, his heart long since come to its final standstill.

Eddie’s first experience of death had been a peaceful one –

He only wished it had stayed that way.)

no creasing after a full day of makeup

no separating either!!!!