EDEN
I’m disappearing again. It starts at the edges, my extremities blurring. Fingers and toes go staticky and numb with no warning at all. I grip the edge of the bathroom sink and try to hold myself up, but my hands won’t work. My arms are weak. And now my knees want to buckle too.
Next, it’s my heart, pumping fast and jagged. I try to take a breath.
Lungs are cement, heavy and stiff.
I never should have agreed to this. Not yet. Too soon.
I swipe my hand across the steamy mirror, and my reflection fogs over too quickly. I choke on a laugh or a sob, I can’t tell which, because I really am disappearing. Literally, figuratively, and every way in between. I’m almost gone. Closing my eyes tightly, I try to locate one thought—just one
—the thing she said to do when this happens.
Count five things you can see. I open my eyes. Toothbrushes in the ceramic holder. One. Okay, it’s okay. Two: my phone, there on the counter, lighting up with a series of texts. Three: a glass of water, blistered with condensation. Four: the amber prescription bottle full of pills I’m trying so hard not to need. I look down at my hands, still not right. That’s five.
Four things you can feel. Water dripping off my hair and down my back, over my shoulders. Smooth tiles slippery under my feet. Starchy towel wrapped around my damp body. The porcelain sink, cool and hard against the palms of my tingling hands.
Three sounds. The exhaust fan whirring, the shallow huff and gasp of my breathing getting faster, and a knock on the bathroom door.
Two smells. Peaches and cream shampoo. Eucalyptus body wash.
One taste. Stinging mint mouthwash with notes of lingering vomit underneath, making me gag all over again. I swallow hard.
“Fuck’s sake,” I hiss, swiping the mirror again. This time with both hands, one over the other, scrubbing at the glass. I refuse to give in to this. Not tonight. I clench my fingers into fists until I can feel my knuckles crack. I inhale, too sharply, and finally manage to get some air into my body. “You’re okay,” I exhale. “I’m okay,” I lie.
I’m staring down into the black circle of the drain as my eyes drift back over to the bottle. Fine. I twist the cap in my useless hands and let one chalky tablet tumble into my palm. I swallow it, I swallow it good. And then I down the entire glass of water in one gulp, letting tiny rivulets stream out of the corners of my mouth, down my neck, not even bothering to wipe them away.
“Edy?” It’s my mom, knocking on the door again. “Everything all right?
Mara’s here to pick you up.”
“Yeah, I—” My breath catches on the word. “I’m almost ready.”
JOSH
It’s been four months since I’ve been back. Four months since I’ve seen my parents. Four months since the fight with my dad. Four months since I was here in my room. I’ve been home only a couple of hours, haven’t even seen my dad yet, and already I feel like I’m suffocating.
I slouch down and let my head sink into the pillows, and as I close my eyes, I swear I can smell her for just a moment. Because the last time I was here, she was here next to me, in my bed, no more secrets between us. And as I turn my head, I bring the pillow to my face and breathe in deeper this time.
My phone vibrates in my hand. It’s Dominic, my roommate, who practically packed my bag and dragged me out of our apartment and into his car to come home this week. I had to come home sometime.
His text says I’m serious. be ready in 10 . . . and don’t even think about bailing
I start to respond, but now that my phone is in my hand and Eden is on my mind again, I find our texts instead, my last three still sitting there unanswered. I haven’t looked at them in a while, but I keep rereading them now, trying to figure out what I said wrong. I’d seen the article about his arrest. I asked her how she was handling it all. Reminded her that I was her friend. Told her I was here if she needed anything. I checked in a couple of days later, then again the next week. I even called and left a voice mail.
The last thing I wrote to her was should I be worried?
She didn’t respond and I didn’t want to push. Now months have passed, and this is where we are. I type out a simple hey and stare at the word, those three letters daring me to press send.
My bedroom door creaks open with two sharp knocks, followed by a pause and one more. My dad. “Josh?” he says. “You’re home.”
“Yep.” I delete the word quickly and set my phone facedown on the bed. “What’s up?”
“Nothing, I—I just, uh, wanted to say hi.” He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, his eyes clear and focused as he looks at me. “I didn’t see your car outside.”
“Yeah, Dominic drove us home,” I explain, feeling my guard lower, just enough to let my anger start to rise inside me.
“Oh,” he says, nodding.
I pick my phone back up; hope he takes the hint.
“Actually, if you have a minute, I’ve really wanted to talk to you. About the last time you were home. Look, I know I wasn’t there for you when you were dealing with . . .” He pauses, searching for the rest of a sentence I suspect also isn’t there.
I watch him closely, waiting to see if he actually remembers what it was I was dealing with the last time I was home. I make a bet with myself while I wait: If he remembers even a fragment of what happened four months ago, I’ll stay in tonight. I’ll talk with him like he wants. I’ll tell him I forgive him, and I might even mean it.
“You know,” he starts again, “when you were dealing with all that.” “What is this, making amends?” I ask. “Step nine already? Again,” I
mutter under my breath.
“No,” he says, wincing softly. “It’s not that, Josh.”
I sigh and set my phone back down. “Dad, I’m sorry,” I tell him, even though I’m not sorry. But I don’t need him breaking his sobriety again just because I took a cheap shot, either. “Shit, I just—”
“No, it’s okay, Joshie.” He holds his hands out in front of his chest and shakes his head, just taking it. “It’s all right. I deserved that.” He backs up a couple of steps until he can hold on to my doorframe like he needs something to lean on. He opens his mouth to say something else, but the doorbell interrupts him. I can hear my mom downstairs now too, talking to Dominic.
“I don’t know why I said that.” I try to apologize again. “I’m sorry.”
It’s fine, he mouths to me, then turns toward the hallway, greeting Dominic like the picture-perfect father he sometimes really is. “Dominic DiCarlo in the flesh! Good season for you, I hear.” What he doesn’t say is how my season has been shit—he doesn’t need to say it, we all know.
“Keeping this one in line, I’m sure,” he adds in that good-natured way of his.
“You know it,” Dominic jokes, shaking my dad’s outstretched hand. “Someone’s gotta keep him in line.” He’s all cheerful until he sees me, taking off my hat and trying to smooth the wrinkles in my shirt. “Man, you’re not ready at all.”
EDEN
My hands are steady now as they reach for the door handle. Steady as I flip down the visor in Mara’s car and swipe mascara over my lashes. Steady as Steve climbs into the seat next to me and interlaces his fingers with mine, smiling sweetly as he says, “Hey, I missed you.”
My heart has slowed now that the medicine found its way into my bloodstream. Even though I know it’s not a real calm, I guess it’s enough for me to do this for my friends. To be out and acting normal for one last night before I drop another bomb on them. And so I lie and say, “Me too.”
Mara’s boyfriend, Cameron, slams the passenger-side door as he gets in. He kisses Mara and then glances back at me and says, “We’re probably gonna miss the opening act now.”
“We will not,” Steve responds in my place, then leans toward me and kisses my bare shoulder. “I’m glad you decided to come.”
“Yeah, me too,” I repeat, feeling like I should mean it. “It’s about time you got out again,” he says.
“That’s what I told her, Steve,” Mara chimes in, all smiles.
“Think of tonight as a new beginning,” he continues. “You’ll be back in school on Monday, and then we have the last couple of months of our senior year to enjoy. Finally. We’ve earned it!”
“Hell yeah, we have,” Cameron agrees.
They act like I’m recovering from a bad flu or something. Like now that I’m not keeping secrets, things can magically go back to normal, whatever normal used to be. As if finishing senior year is not the last thing on my mind right now. Or maybe they’re right, and I should just try to ignore all the rest of the shit and be a regular teenager for the next two months while I still can.
“Cameron,” I hear myself call above the music, and they all turn to look at me. “We bought the tickets for the headliner, anyway, right? So if we’re late, it’s still gonna be okay.”
Not that I care much about either, but I owed them a little enthusiasm.
He rolls his eyes and turns back around, muttering, “You mean I bought the tickets.” Cameron is the only one not pretending, not suddenly being nice to me just because of everything that happened, and I feel strangely grateful for that. “You can pay me back anytime, by the way.”
Our bickering somehow makes Mara smile, and Steve holds my hand too tightly, both taking this all as a good sign that I still have some fight in me. I clear my throat, preparing to give them the disclaimer my therapist helped me work out during my session this week.
“So, guys, um,” I begin. “I just wanted to say . . . You know it’s been a while since I’ve been around a lot of people, and I might, like, get anxious or—”
“It’s okay,” Steve interrupts, pulling me closer. “Don’t worry, we’ll be there.”
“Okay, it’s just that I might need to take a break and get some air for a few minutes, or something. And if I do, it’s not a big deal and I’m okay, so I don’t want anyone to worry or feel like we have to leave or anything like that.” It didn’t come out as smoothly as I’d practiced, but I said what I needed to say. Boundaries.
Now his nervous puppy eyes are back on me. And Mara squints at me in the rearview mirror.
“I mean, I might not. It’s hard to say,” I add so they’ll stop looking at me like that. “Or I could just get really drunk and we’ll all have a great fucking time.”
“Edy,” Mara scolds at the same time Steve is shouting, “No!”
“Joking,” I say with a smile. It’s also been four months since I’ve done anything bad. Though my therapist would tell me to replace bad with “unhealthy.” I haven’t done any drinking or guys or smoking of any substances at all. I’m still not sure how taking these pills when I get overwhelmed is any different from the other unhealthy stuff. Not sure who decides what’s good and what’s bad. But I’m doing it anyway, following these rules, because I want to get better, be better. I really do.
Walking up from the parking lot, we pass a group of college kids with drinks in their hands, hanging out around this old wooden picnic table that looks like it’s being partially held up by the concrete walls of the building. Their cigarette smoke calls to me as we walk by, and I watch them laughing and spilling their drinks. If Steve weren’t holding on to my hand so tightly, if things weren’t different now, I’d imagine myself drifting toward them, finding an easy space to fit for the night.
But things are different now; that kind of easy doesn’t seem to exist for me anymore.
At the door we’re each issued a neon-pink UNDER 21 wristband that the guy puts on me, grazing the inside of my wrist as he does so. I know it’s nothing, but I already feel somehow violated by that small touch, yet also strangely numb to it.
It’s too tight, the wristband. I tug on it to see if there’s any give, but they’re the paper kind that you can’t tear off or squeeze over your wrist.
Mara doesn’t seem bothered by hers at all, so I try to forget it.
Music’s thumping from the speakers. Everywhere I look people are drinking, laughing, shouting. Someone bumps into me, and I know, I know my body should be feeling something about all this. That old shock of adrenaline, heart racing, breath quickening. But there’s nothing. Except for that disappearing feeling again, except this time it doesn’t kick off a panic attack. It just makes me feel like part of me isn’t really here. And I’m suddenly unsure if I can trust myself to even know whether I’m safe or not with that part of me dormant.
This time I hold on to Steve’s hand tighter as he leads us closer to the stage. Mara takes my other hand, and when I look back at Cameron holding hers, I’m reminded of kindergarten recess, little kids forming a human chain to walk across the street to get to the playground. I hate that I need this now. “You good?” Mara says, close to my ear, as bodies start to pack in around
us.
I nod.
And I am. Sort of. Through the first set of the opening band, I’m good. I even let myself sway a little. Not dance or jump or move my hips or close my eyes and touch my boyfriend the way Mara is doing that makes it look so easy. It’s different, chemically, the absence of alcohol, the presence of this medication clouding my head instead.
By the time the band—Steve’s favorite band, the one we came to see— takes the stage, I feel myself emerging again. Softly at first. There’s that familiar jagged heartbeat in my chest and my breathing comes undone and messy, the bass reverberating in my skull. “It’s okay,” I whisper, unable to hear my own voice in my head over the music. I let go of Steve’s hand. My palms are getting sweaty. And I’m suddenly very aware of every part of my body that’s touching other people’s bodies as they bump up against me.
I look around now, too quickly, taking in everything I missed when we arrived, all at once. I spot our school colors; a varsity jacket catches the lights from the stage. I immediately get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach—I don’t know why I hadn’t counted on seeing people from school tonight. We’re here, after all. But then I see him in clips, flashes, his head back, laughing. Jock Guy. One of Josh’s old friends.
No. I’m imagining things. I close my eyes for a second. Reset.
But when I open them, he’s still there. It’s definitely Jock Guy. The one who found me at my locker that day after school. The one who chased me down the hall. The one who wanted to scare me, wanted me to pay for my brother beating Josh up. I face the front, look at the stage. It’s now. Not then. But I can’t help myself; I look over again. Close my eyes again. Hear his voice again in my ear. I hear you’re real dirty.
My head is pounding now.
I clear my throat, or try to. “Steve!” I yell, but he can’t hear me. I place my hand on his shoulder, and he looks down at me. I cup my hands around my mouth, and he leans in. I’m practically shouting in his ear. “I’m gonna step out.”
“What?” he yells.
I point toward the exit.
“You all right?” he shouts.
I nod. “Yeah, I just feel weird.” “What?” he yells again.
“Headache,” I shout back. “Want me to come?”
I shake my head. “Stay, really.”
He looks back and forth between me and the band. “You sure?” “Yes, it’s just a headache.” But I’m not sure he hears.
Mara notices me leaving and grabs my arm. She’s saying something I can’t make out.
“It’s just a headache,” I tell her. “I’ll be back.”
She opens her mouth to argue and grabs hold of my other arm now, so we’re face-to-face, but unexpectedly, thankfully, Cameron is the one to gently touch her wrist, making her let go of me. He nods at me and keeps Mara there.
I squeeze through openings in the crush of bodies, holding my breath as I struggle against the current. My head is pounding harder now, in time with the music but out of sync with my footsteps, setting me off-balance, the music rattling my chest. I finally make my way through the worst of it, bouncing like a pinball as I fight my way past the line of people still waiting to get in.
I hear my name, I think, over all the voices and music spilling through the doors.
Outside, I go straight for the parking lot, and now I know for sure he’s calling my name. Steve always wants to be some kind of Prince Charming, but if he’s the prince, I’m just another fucking Cinderella, my magic pills having worn away, the spell broken. I’m in rags, the ball raging on without me. And I don’t belong here anymore; I never did. I know already, as I try to catch my breath, the cool air hitting the sweat on my face and neck, there’s no way I’m going to be able to go back in there.
I tilt my head skyward and breathe in deeply, close my eyes as I exhale slowly. In and out. In and out, just like my therapist showed me. There’s a soft tap at the back of my arm. “I said I’m fine, Steve, really.” I spin around. “It’s just a head . . . ache.”
JOSH
Dominic keeps complaining about how long it’s taking to get in, how much of the show we’ve already missed. He’s texting with our friends inside—his friends mostly these days. “They’re saving us spots near the back,” he tells me. When I don’t respond, he adds, “Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“I can feel you brooding from here.” He glances up from his phone at me, the briefest exchange. “Stop it.”
“Sorry, I just don’t get what the big deal is with this band,” I tell him, pretending my mood is over me not being into the concert instead of because of things with my dad. “So, they were kinda famous for a minute in the early aughts.” I shrug.
“And they’re from here,” he emphasizes. “Have some hometown pride, you ingrate.”
I shake my head because I know he doesn’t really care either. That’s not the reason we’re here, at this concert, or here, back home. He’s meeting up with someone—the same someone he’s been texting this whole time—but won’t just tell me that’s the reason he wanted me here.
“At this rate, we’ll miss the concert altogether,” he mutters, “so you might get your wish after all.”
“Well, we wouldn’t have been so late if you didn’t make me change my clothes.”
“You’re welcome for not letting you out of the house like that.” He scoffs and looks at me, finally putting his phone in his pocket. “Sometimes you’re so straight, you don’t even know how lucky you are to have me.”
He reaches up to try to fix my hair, but I push his hand away. “Seriously?”
“You have residual hat hair, man!” He’s laughing as he reaches for me again. I dodge him and ram right into someone.
“Sorry, excuse me,” I say, turning just in time to see the side of her face rushing past. I turn back to Dominic. “Was that . . . ?”
“Who?” Dominic asks.
I look again. She’s moving fast toward the parking lot. The hair is different, but it’s her walk for sure, the way she’s holding her arms crossed tight to her chest. “Eden?” I call, but there’s no way she could hear me in this crowd. “Listen,” I tell Dominic. “I’ll be right back.”
“Josh, don’t,” he says, clamping his hand on my shoulder, no playfulness in his voice anymore. “Come on, we’re almost in—”
“Yeah, I know,” I tell him, already stepping out of the line. “But just give me a minute, all right?”
“Josh!” I hear him yell behind me.
My heart is pounding as I jog after this girl who may or may not be her.
She’s walking so fast, then stops abruptly.
I finally catch up to her, standing still in the parking lot. “Eden?” I say quieter now. I reach out, my fingers touch her arm. And I know it’s her before she even turns around because my body memorized hers in relation to mine so long ago.
She’s saying something about having a headache as she spins to look at me.
“It is you,” I say stupidly.
Her mouth opens, pausing for a second before she smiles. She doesn’t even say anything; she just steps forward, right into me, her head tucking perfectly under my chin as it always did. I don’t know why it surprises me so much when it feels so natural, like what else would we be doing besides holding on to each other like this? Her lungs expand like she’s breathing me in, and I bury my face in her hair—only for a second, I tell myself. She smells so sweet and clean, like some kind of fruit. She mumbles my name into my shirt, and I realize I’ve forgotten how good it feels to hear her say my name. As I place my arms around her, my fingertips touch the bare skin of her arms. It’s so familiar, comforting, I could stay like this. But she pulls away just a little, her hands resting at my waist as she looks up at me.
“You’re literally the last person I thought I would run into tonight,” she says, still smiling.
As much as I’ve been worried and upset and depressed over everything that happened, I can’t help but smile back. “Literally the last?” I repeat. “Okay, ouch.”
She laughs then, and it’s the best sound in the world. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do.” She lets go of me and crosses her arms again as she steps away. I put my hands in my pockets. “I’m not as cool as you are. I get it.”
“As cool as me?” she repeats, this little lilt to her voice. “Yeah, right. No, I meant what are you doing in town? Shouldn’t you be at school?”
“Spring break.”
“Oh.” She looks around and tips her head in the direction of the line. “Do you need to get back or—”
“No,” I say too quickly.
“I mean, if you wanted to—” she says, just as I’m saying, “We could—” “Sorry,” we both say at the same time, interrupting each other.
She gestures to a wooden picnic table around the corner of the building. I follow alongside her and take her all in. She’s maybe put on a little weight since I’ve seen her last, a little softer somehow, stronger, and God, she looks stunning in the streetlight. Her face and her hair—her everything. In all the years I’ve known her, I realize I’ve never seen her like this, wearing a sleeveless shirt and jean shorts, her feet in sandals. We were always cold months, fall or winter. Seeing her bare arms and bare legs, her painted toenails— parts of her I’ve only known in the context of my bedroom— makes me long for the cold again. I try not to let her catch me staring. She does, though.
But instead of calling me on it, she just looks down at her feet and says, “So, you’re on spring break and you decide to come here of all places? Boringville, USA?”
“Hey, I told you, Eden, I’m a pretty boring guy.”
She gives my shoulder this playful little shove, which makes me want to wrap my arms around her again.
We reach the table, and as I sit down on the bench, she steps up to sit on the tabletop, her legs so close to me. I have the strongest urge to lean forward and kiss her knees, run my hands along her thighs, lay my head in her lap.
God, I need to stop my brain from going there. What is wrong with me? Need to stop it right now. So I promptly step up too and sit on the table next
to her.
“Is this awkward?” she asks. “No,” I lie. “Not at all.”
“Really? Because I’m weirdly nervous to see you. Happy,” she adds, her hands fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. “But nervous.”
“Don’t be,” I tell her, even though I can barely get the words out with my heart pulsing in my throat like this. For me it’s not nervousness; it’s more that every nerve ending seems to be coming alive in her presence, all at once. She looks at me like she always has. Like she really sees me, and for the first time since the last time we were together, I realize I don’t feel quite so lost. And because it’s always so easy to talk to her, too easy to tell her my thoughts exactly as I’m thinking them, no filter, I force my mouth to say something else, instead of those things.
“You cut your hair.”
She runs her hand through her hair, pushing it back away from her face. “Yes, I’m reinventing myself.” She makes a noise somewhere between a cough and a laugh and rolls her eyes. “Or whatever.”
“I like it.”
She tips her head forward and smiles in this shy way she only ever does
—did—when I would try to compliment her, and her hair falls forward into her face. I reach out and tuck a strand back behind her ear like I’ve done so many times, my fingers brushing against her cheek. And it’s not until she looks up at me that I remember I can’t do that anymore. “Sorry. Reflex or something. Sorry,” I repeat.
“It’s okay. You can touch me,” she says, and my heart again, in my throat, mutes me. “I—I mean, we’re friends now, right?”
I nod, still unable to speak. It’s a lot easier to just be friends with her when we’re not sitting next to each other like this.
She clears her throat and turns her whole body toward me, looking at me straight-on. Now she reaches out, her fingers barely touching my hair near my forehead before she trails the back of her hand along the side of my face. There’s a part of me that so wants to lean into her touch.
“Your hair is longer,” she says. “And you’re growing a beard.”
Now I’m the one smiling, all shy and awkward. “Well, I’m not intentionally growing a beard; it’s just stubble.”
“Okay, stubble, then,” she says, smiling now as she seems to consider something. “I like it. Yeah. It’s very, um, College Josh,” she adds in a
deeper voice.
I laugh, and so does she, and all that tension between us just sort of melts away. I know I’m staring at her for too long again, but I can’t help it. This is all killing me. In the best way.
“What?” she asks.
I have to force myself to look away, shaking my head. “Nothing.”
“Then what’s all this grinning and sighing about?” she asks, drawing a circle in the air with her finger as she points at me.
“No, nothing. It’s just that whenever I think about you, I somehow always forget how funny you can be.” Usually, when I think of her, I’m only thinking about how sad she can get and how worried I am about her. But then I’m around her and I remember almost immediately that for all her darkness, she can be just as bright, too. I bite my lip to keep myself from saying all that out loud. Because these aren’t the kinds of things you say to a girl you used to be in love with, while you’re sitting on top of an old picnic table behind a graffitied building while drunk people randomly walk by, with a smelly rock show banging on in the background.
“You think about me?” she asks, suddenly serious. “You know I do.”
There’s a silence, and I let it sit there between us because she has to know that I think about her. How could she even ask me that?
For once, she’s the one to break the silence. “I wanted to text you back, you know,” she says, like she’s reading my thoughts. “I should have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“It just felt like there was too much to say, or . . .” She trails off. “Too much to say in a text, anyway.”
“You can always call me.”
“Oh, definitely too much to say in a phone call,” she adds, and even though I’m not really sure what that means, I also think I kind of understand anyway.
“I thought you might be mad at me,” I admit.
“What? Why?” she bursts out, her voice high. “How could I be mad at
you? You’re—” She stops herself. “I’m what?”
“You . . . ,” she begins, but stops again and takes in a breath. “You’re the best person I know. It would be impossible to be mad at you, especially when you haven’t done anything wrong.”
But that’s the thing, I’m not sure anymore that I didn’t do anything wrong. “I don’t know, I worried that you might be not just mad at me, but sad or, like, disappointed in me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, the last time we saw each other.”
She’s shaking her head slowly like she really doesn’t know. She’s going to make me say it. “How I kissed you,” I finally announce. “I thought about it later—a lot, actually. And under the circumstances, with everything that was going on, that was probably the last thing you needed. And then everything I said to you. Given the situation, it was pretty messed up, not to mention just the worst, stupid, terrible timing, and I thought maybe I made you feel uncomf—”
“Wait, wait, stop,” she interrupts. “I thought I kissed you.”
I don’t know what to say. I think back to my room, four months ago, and it’s suddenly a blur of hands and mouths and exhaustion and desperation and emotions running high, higher than ever, and now I’m kind of not sure who kissed who, who reached for who first.
But her laugh interrupts my thoughts. It’s loud and sharp and clear. “And here I was feeling like the inappropriate one.”
“Inappropriate?” I laugh too. “Why?”
“Kissing you after you explicitly told me you had a girlfriend—a serious girlfriend,” she adds, using my own stupid words against me. “Could’ve saved myself some shame spiraling if I’d known you were to blame this whole time.”
She’s joking around, I know, but that word. Shame. Her voice sort of snags on it, like a thorn. It’s not a casual word you use if it’s not really there under the surface. So, I know this isn’t the time to confess the whole truth about my girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—or that we broke up that night, because of that night.
“All my fault,” I say instead, laughing along with her. “I take full responsibility.”
There’s a chorus of cheering from the crowd on the other side of this wall, but there couldn’t be anything more exciting going on inside than what’s going on out here right now.
“Well, fuck, Josh.” She throws her hands up. “This is just classic us all over again, isn’t it?”
Classic us. I hate that I love the way that sounds.
EDEN
It all feels foreign to my body, the laughing, the lightness. It’s making me jittery but in a pleasant, slightly overcaffeinated way. To be with him again, sitting here talking, it feels like I must be making it up—making him up— dreaming or hallucinating or something. Because there’s nothing I needed more tonight than this, with Josh. And God, how I’m not used to getting what I need.
“So, you seem good, Eden,” he says, but his smile is fading.
“Yeah.” I nod, but I can’t quite make myself meet his eyes. “Mm-hmm.” Nodding, nodding.
“You seem good,” he repeats, and I sense it’s more a question than an observation, but I’m not ready to let go of the lightness yet.
“So you’ve said.” I try to keep up this banter that we’re so good at, but he studies me, squinting like he’s trying to see something in the distance, except he’s looking into my eyes. I focus on my hands and not him.
“Come on,” he says softly. “What?”
“Are you good, though?” he finally asks.
I shrug. “I mean, sure. I—I’m doing better, I think. I’m not doing a bunch of crazy shit anymore, so there’s that.” And I hope he knows that by “crazy shit,” I mean I’m not getting trashed and sleeping around with strangers anymore. “Oh, and I quit smoking,” I add.
“Really?” He smiles. “Congratulations. I’m impressed.” “Thank you. It sucks.”
“That’s not really what I meant, though,” he says. “I meant, how are you?
Like, are you okay?”
“It’s not like I really have a choice to not be okay. But I’m trying to be b- better,” I stutter. Jesus. It’s not a hard question, but I can’t seem to answer
it.
“Yeah, but how are you actually doing?” He’s going to make me say it.
“What? I’m not okay, Josh,” I blurt out, almost yelling, but then I rein it
in. “Sorry. But yeah, I’m not. Okay?”
“Okay,” he says gently. “No, I’m not trying to argue. It’s just that you know you don’t ever have to pretend with me. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I’m not pretending anything with you,” I tell him. “You’re the only person I don’t pretend with, so . . .” Not finishing that sentence.
He opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something more, but then he suddenly shifts toward me. I think, for a fraction of a second, he’s leaning in to kiss me. My heart starts racing. But then he reaches to take his phone out of his back pocket. As he looks at the screen, all I can think is that I would’ve kissed him back—again, always. Even with Steve just inside. Even with Josh’s girlfriend existing somewhere. I would have.
“Someone missing you?” I ask, really hoping that someone is not the girlfriend—that he’s not about to leave me to go be with her instead, even though he should. “Do you need to go?”
Please say no.
He glances up at me while he taps out a message. “No. I’m just letting my friend know I’m out here.” He sets his phone facedown on the table now and looks at me with those eyes that have held me captive since I fell into them in a stupid study hall on my first day of tenth grade and have never quite managed to climb my way out. “What about you?”
“What about me?” I ask, unable to even remember what we were talking about.
“Is someone missing you in there?”
“I highly doubt it.” I tilt my phone toward me so I can see the screen. Nothing yet. I set it facedown next to Josh’s phone. “I told them I needed some air. It was getting kind of claustrophobic in there, and the music was giving me a headache.” I decide to leave out the part about spotting Jock Guy. It would be too tempting to tell him the whole story of what happened that day, and I need to focus right now—focus on right now—soak in as much of this as I can, while I can. “I’m not much fun these days, I guess,” I conclude with a shrug.
He keeps watching me as I talk and then reaches out. “Here, can I see?” he asks, gesturing to my hand.
I let him cradle my hand in his, carefully positioning his thumb and forefinger where my thumb and forefinger meet, pinching that fleshy part.
“It’s a pressure-point thing,” he explains, pressing down harder. “Supposed to help with headaches. My mom used to do this for me when I was a kid.”
I close my eyes because this suddenly feels too intense, too much intimacy and realness, too much everything. I can’t take it. I feel my throat closing up, my eyes burning. I could cry right now if I let myself, and I’m not even sure why. But I won’t. I won’t.
“That doesn’t hurt too much, does it?” he asks, easing up for a moment. I shake my head, but I can’t open my eyes yet.
“You sure?” I nod.
He presses down again, silently.
It’s the opposite of disappearing. Like I’m more here than I’ve ever been anywhere at any time in my whole life. It’s all the rest of it that’s disappearing now, not me. After several more seconds, he lets go. Takes my other hand and does the same thing. As he releases the pressure, I take a deep breath, open my eyes, and look at him again. He’s still watching me so closely.
“How does your head feel now?”
Do I even have a head anymore? I think. Because all I feel is the spot where his hands are touching mine. And this is exactly why I never texted you back, I want to tell him. But that wouldn’t be fair, considering all the very unfair things I’ve already done to him. It’s not his fault he makes the pain go away or the world disappear.
“Better,” I tell him. “Thank you.”
We’re sort of lazily gazing into each other’s eyes, and as I feel myself kind of swaying to the muffled music on the other side of this wall and I wonder if we’re both not saying the same thing, one of our phones vibrates. “Is that you or me?” he asks, picking up his phone, and I’m grateful for
the disruption. “Must be yours.” Steve: do u need me?
I write back, no, I’m good
He texts back right away: u sure? Yes.
“Everything cool?” Josh asks. “I don’t want to keep you—well, I mean, I do, actually. But I won’t. If you have to get back.”
“No. I’m not going back in.” I set my phone down again and tug at my wristband. “I didn’t really want to come in the first place . . . but I’m glad I did.” I don’t think I’m flirting; I’m just being honest. I think.
“So am I.”
“Are you sure you don’t have to get back to your friends?” I ask him.
“I honestly keep forgetting the reason I was here to begin with. But I guess you kind of have that effect on me in general.”
But he might be flirting.
“I don’t know how to take that,” I say. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.” He shrugs. “Feels good to me.”
The way he’s looking at me, my God, I can’t breathe. I laugh involuntarily because it’s the only way I’m going to be able to get air in my lungs.
“Why are you laughing?” he asks, but he’s almost laughing too. “I’m being serious.”
“I know,” I tell him. “I am too.”
He nods and seems to understand this is getting to be too much for me because he clears his throat and sits up a little straighter, changing the subject, if there was one. “So, you’re almost to graduation?”
“Yeah. Um, sort of.” “Sort of?”
“I mean, yes, I’m graduating, but I’m actually not in school right now.
Physically, I mean. I’ve been doing everything online.”
But I don’t tell him why I’m not physically in school. How I had a total meltdown my first week back from winter break— some kid ran into me in the cafeteria line, only I didn’t realize that was all that was happening. It felt like more. It felt like I was being attacked. And I just reacted, kicked him in the shin and threw my tray of food at him. Of all the things to spontaneously do, I don’t know why I did that. But I did. And then I ran, backed myself into the corner of the cafeteria, sank to the floor, and started hyperventilating in front of everyone. Even the teachers seemed too afraid to approach me. But Steve was there. He helped me to the nurse’s office, waited with me until my mom came to pick me up.
My eyes refocus now. On Josh staring at me, concern creasing his forehead the longer I go without speaking.
I shake my head, shake off the memory, keep talking as if I didn’t just space out. “Um, I’m thinking about not going back for the rest of the year, maybe getting a jump start on community college while I finish up. Try to, I don’t know, figure out what I’m going to do with my life.”
“No pressure or anything,” he says, that crooked smile of his making an appearance.
“Right?” I try to laugh, but it sounds hollow. He nods in this understanding way, like he gets why none of the colleges I applied to have accepted me. “I really fucked up my grades these past couple of years,” I explain anyway.
“That’s not really your fault.”
I shrug. “It kind of is. I barely studied for the SATs. And then I made a mad rush to submit a bunch of crappy applications to random colleges right before the deadline in February. Hail Mary sort of thing. But . . .”
“Haven’t heard anything yet?” he asks. “No, I’ve heard.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with community college, you know?”
“I know.” I sigh. “So anyway, that’s the plan, at least for the moment. Finish up online and hope my friends forgive me for not coming back. I mean, it’s just easier this way.”
“Which part?”
“School, I guess. It’s easy doing school online and it’s . . .” I realize I haven’t actually articulated what the problem is, not out loud, to anyone else, anyway. “It’s hard there. It’s hard to be there. I think some people kind of know something’s going on with the whole arrest and trial thing and that somehow I’m involved. They’re not supposed to know about me and Mandy. Amanda, I mean. That’s his sister. But fucking small stupid town. People talk. It’s just hard, you know?” I can hear my voice trembling, and now he looks at me like I’m going to break or something. I shrug like I can shake it all off.
“Yeah.” He nods. “That makes sense.” “Thank you.”
“Why are you thanking me?”
“I don’t know, sometimes I doubt myself. And I think maybe I should be better, grateful, over it, or something. Like, I don’t think my friends really get it. I don’t think it makes sense to them, so it’s just . . . validating,” I say, pulling out one of my therapist’s favorite words.
“Well, they know, right?” he asks. “Your friends know what happened to you?”
That lump in my throat is instantly there again. I swallow hard. “They do; it’s just I’m not sure they get why I’m still not . . .” Jesus, I can’t complete a goddamn sentence.
“Okay?” he finishes for me.
I nod, and now there’s no hiding it. I feel my cheeks getting red and my eyes getting full and my blood getting hot under my skin. He reaches out and touches my shoulder, then my cheek, and that pushes me right over the edge.
“Josh,” I groan, pushing his hand away from my face. “I don’t want to be messy tonight.” But I’m folding myself into his open arms anyway. I’m wrapping one hand around his shoulder, the other pressed to his chest. It’s like he said earlier, a reflex. A habit, a good habit I so want to fall back into. I’m closing my eyes, cheek against his neck, feeling his voice vibrating.
“It’s all right,” he’s saying. “You can be messy. I don’t mind.”
In this tiny, delicate space between us, I realize the wild rattling of my heart isn’t because it’s shattering. It’s because this is the best, the strongest, my heart has felt in months. As I open my mouth to tell him that, my lips brush against his collarbone, and I let them linger there a second too long. I hope he doesn’t feel my open mouth on his skin. But he must, because then his hand is on my cheek again, trailing down my neck, and if I open my eyes, I won’t stop myself and I don’t think he will, either, and God, why does it always come to this, why is it never the right time for us?
“I’m fine,” I say as I pull away. “I’m fine. Really.” I don’t know if I’m trying to convince myself or him.
“Okay,” he whispers, letting me float out of his reach.
“I’m really not as fragile as I seem right now, I want you to know. I’m not sure why I’m being so emotional.” I finally dare myself to look at him again now that I’m back in my spot across from him, my side of the invisible line I’ve just drawn on the table, arm’s distance between us. “I mean, I sort of do,” I say before I can stop myself.
“You do what?”
“Know why I’m emotional,” I answer, but even as the words come out of my mouth, I’m not sure what I’m going to tell him, how much of which truth.
“Why?” he asks, then quickly adds, “Not that you need a reason or anything.”
You. You’re the reason.
But I don’t say that.
“We heard from the DA earlier this week,” I begin, instead. “Me and Amanda and Gen—Gennifer, I guess, is her name. His girlfriend. Or ex- girlfriend. Gennifer with a G, that’s pretty much all I know about her, but . .
.” I ramble, stumbling through the words, not sure I really want to be talking about this with him.
“So there’s news about the trial, or . . . ?” he asks hesitantly.
“Yes and no,” I tell him. “This hearing thing we were supposed to have this spring just got pushed back, so now it might not happen until the summer or fall, even.” I still have the text from DA Silverman sitting there on my phone, unanswered, along with the voice mail from our court- appointed advocate from the women’s center, Lane, telling me she was available if I needed to talk about it. I look up at him, realizing I’ve stopped in the middle of the story.
“I’m sorry,” he says, like he really means it.
“I guess Kev—” But my mouth won’t let me finish; I have to clear my throat before continuing. “He has this fancy new legal team that’s representing him now.” I take a breath, look down at my lap, trying to squeeze the wristband over my hand.
He reaches out and places his hand over mine. “That doesn’t change what he did,” he says, and I stop messing with the stupid wristband and take his hand; I know I’m holding on too tightly, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“I’m just starting to wonder if any of this is ever going to happen.” I glance up at him. “If this was all even worth it.”
“Don’t say that. It’s worth it,” he insists, giving my hand this small, reassuring squeeze.
I nod, but I make myself let go of his hand because I’m going to have to sooner or later.
There’s a brief silence between us. He looks down, then out at the parking lot, like he’s trying to think of something to say. “Where did he get money for a fancy lawyer, anyway?” he finally says. “Not his parents—they wouldn’t, not with his sister being . . .” He trails off, not finishing, but some part of me really wants to know what he was going to say.
Not with his sister being . . . what, his victim? Is that what he was going to say? I wonder. Does he think of Gennifer as his victim too? Do I? And what about me—am I his victim?
“No, not his parents,” I finally answer—now’s not the time to try to navigate that ongoing victim-slash-survivor tennis match that’s constantly bouncing from one side of my brain to the other. Their parents are on Amanda’s side, which still seems pretty miraculous to me, knowing the gravitational pull of Kevin.
“It’s some rich university alumni guy—or guys—who are backing him, just waiting to induct him into some kind of Look What We Can Get Away with Hall of Fame.” I try to laugh at my bad joke, pause to catch my breath, to reel in my emotions a little. “I don’t really know. It all has something to do with fucking basketball and—” But I stop myself, immediately place my hand over my mouth. Sometimes I forget he’s part of that whole world too. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t, you’re right,” he interrupts, shaking his head. “No, I get it. Fucking basketball,” he repeats, somehow with more contempt and bitterness in his voice than even I had.
“I didn’t mean, like, all of basketball is bad. Or that sports are evil or anything. Just . . . just this part.”
“Yeah,” he says, his voice tight, narrowing his eyes as he stares off. “The part where they can’t have their team’s name tarnished. Their legacy, their image,” he scoffs, air-quoting with his fingers, like he’s heard these phrases too many times before. “I’m sorry, this shit just makes me . . .” But he doesn’t finish that sentence either. He sighs and rubs the back of his neck, like he might be just as emotional about this whole thing as I am.
“Okay, let’s talk about that instead. Let’s talk about you. Please, really.
Please.”
“Me?” he asks, lifting his shoulder in a half shrug, shaking his head. “No, I don’t want to talk about me.”
“You always let me talk about myself way too much.” “Well, there’s nothing going on with me.”
“Yes, there is.”
He looks at me like I’ve startled him. “Why do you say that?”
I’m not really sure why I said that, but his response tells me I’m right. We’re interrupted before I can try to answer. People suddenly pour out the
doors in droves, shouting and stampeding and disrupting all this sensitive air protecting us in the bubble we’ve created.
“It can’t be over, already,” Josh says, picking up his phone to look at the time.
I look at mine too. “How is it after eleven?” And then I see the series of texts sitting there. Steve: hey r u coming back?
Mara: are you ok
Steve: getting worried now. you OK?
Steve: will u pls respond Mara: steve is freaking out Mara: I kinda am too btw Steve: where are you???
“Shit, they’re looking for me,” I tell Josh as I type out a message but then delete it, unable to decide who will be more understanding, Mara or Steve. “I’m sorry; I wanted to keep talking.”
“No, it’s okay,” he says, squinting at his phone for a moment before pocketing it again. “I think I’m in trouble with my friends too.”
“You can blame me,” I tell him.
He just smiles, shakes his head. “Never.”
People are beginning to congregate around our table now, edging us out. “I guess we should go,” Josh says as he hops off the table and holds his hand out for me to take.
I step down from the bench onto the pavement, still holding his hand as I turn and walk right into Steve.
JOSH
This guy is standing way too close. I’m about to tell him to back off, but then I recognize something in the look on his face as his eyes flash between me and Eden, then down at our hands. She lets go too fast.
I recognize the look because it must be mirroring my own.
“Oh,” I say out loud, my brain processing what’s happening way too slowly.
He says he’s been looking for her, and as she steps away from me, he puts his arm around her shoulder like he’s claiming her. Mine, his eyes tell me.
“Um, Josh, this is Steve,” Eden says. “Steve, you probably remember Josh—he went to school with us.”
“No,” the guy—Steve—says.
Another girl walks up and puts her hand on Eden’s other shoulder. I recognize her; I met her once. “Oh my God,” she says as she recognizes me too.
Eden steps away from Steve. Takes her friend’s arm instead. “I don’t know if you remember—”
“Josh, yeah, of course. Hey.”
“Hi, it’s Mara, isn’t it?” I manage to say.
“Yes,” she answers, smiling. “Good memory.” Then she lets go of Eden’s arm and pulls another guy forward, who raises a hand to wave at me. “This is my boyfriend, Cameron.”
“Oh, yeah.” I don’t know how I’m continuing to speak and breathe when she’s so close now and she’s about to be far and I don’t know when I’ll see her again. “I think we had a class together, didn’t we? Bio or—”
“Chem lab,” he corrects me with a nod.
“Right,” I answer, but it’s hard to focus because I’m watching her twisting her arms together, her fingers wrapping around one another so tight, and I can feel how uncomfortable she is. This guy, Steve, grabs her hand, separating it from her own grip, and he’s staring me down like he wants a fight. I can feel it radiating off him, seeping into my skin.
Behind them, I see Dominic walking toward us through the crowd. As he gets closer, he’s shaking his head and he’s holding his arms in the air. “You missed the whole thing!” he shouts. And because he has this deep, bellowing voice and towers over the entire crowd, everyone turns to stare.
As he comes to stand next to me and sees what’s happening, he gives me a look—an I told you so mixed with sympathy.
“Dominic,” I say, thankful to have something to say. “This is—”
“Eden,” he finishes, so cheerful he doesn’t give a hint at his true feelings about her—or rather, about me and her. “So good to finally meet you.”
“Oh,” she says, surprised, I guess, that he knows who she is. But she offers him a quick smile and a nod. “You too.”
I continue the introductions. “And this is Mara, Cameron, and . . .” I meet Steve’s eye, and I know it’s a dick move, but he’s the one holding her hand right now. “I’m sorry, remind me?”
He clenches his jaw. “Steve,” he hisses. “Right. Steve.”
Dominic takes over, making conversation about school, the concert, normal things. Easy, like it always is for him. I stare at my feet because if I look at her again, I’m afraid I’ll say something dramatic and stupid, like, This guy, really, Eden? You’re gonna leave with this guy? This guy who’s clearly jealous and possessive and angry— but my thoughts suddenly stall out midstream—unless it’s me. Maybe I’m the one who’s clearly jealous and possessive and angry.
When I look up at her again, her mouth is open slightly, and I want her to say something, anything, to let me know what she’s thinking, to let me know what I should be thinking. Because I thought, for a minute there, maybe. But now I watch her take a breath, and just when I’m sure she’s about to speak, she’s interrupted by the rest of the people we were supposed to be meeting up with. A bunch of guys from the old team, some girls I vaguely recognize from our graduating class. They’re all yelling and waving their arms, shouting for us. Eden glances over at them, and I can see her physically turn inward, making herself smaller, and this time when she
looks at me again, it feels like it’s from such an immense distance that it would be impossible to even hear each other if we tried to talk again.
“There’s this after-party,” Dominic tells them, gesturing to the crowd of people clearly eager for us to move along. “You all are welcome to join.”
Steve speaks up, seemingly for the whole group. “We have plans already.”
Mara chimes in. “But thanks.”
“No worries,” Dominic says, clapping me on the shoulder, snapping me out of it. “Ready?”
I nod, even though I couldn’t be less ready.
“Eden?” I manage. “Let’s . . .” Go. Try again. Run away.
“Let’s catch up soon,” she finishes for me. And I want to believe so badly that there’s some deeper meaning in her words, some secret message that I’m not the only one looking for secret messages. As I watch the two of them walking away, there’s too much happening, and it’s like we’re being separated from each other by these opposing currents, carrying us away, losing each other in some kind of devastating natural disaster.
Eden looks back at me like she might turn around and come running to me after all. Steve looks back then, too, a warning. She faces ahead again and doesn’t look back this time.
“So, that was the infamous Eden, huh?” Dominic asks.
But I can’t quite find my voice again until she’s out of sight. My heart sinks into my stomach, and as I watch her disappear, I have the urge to run after her, the fear gripping me like it had the last time we parted in December. When I stood on my front steps and watched her walk away, not knowing whether I would see her again.
“Hey.” Dominic nudges my arm with his elbow. “You cool? Wanna ditch these guys?” He tilts his head in the direction of our old friends. “We can do something else. Really, it’s only gonna be drinking and doing stupid shit like always. I can leave it.”
“No,” I finally say. “Come on, I’m not making you miss this.”
He turns his head to the side and squints at me, trying not to grin.
“What?” I shake my head. “I’m not that oblivious. Your secret admirer’s going to be here tonight, no?” I ask him. I think his name’s Luke, and I only know that much because D slyly asked me once if I remembered him from school. I didn’t—he was a year behind us. But I know he’s the real reason Dominic wanted to come home. They’ve been talking online, although
Dominic has been weirdly quiet about it—and ever since we got to college, he hasn’t been quiet about anything. “It’s that guy, Luke, right?”
“Aren’t you sneaky and perceptive,” he answers.
“It’s the only reason I can think of that you’d insist on coming home this week.”
Dominic laughs and sighs. “I think I might be his secret admirer, though.”
“Oh,” I say. “Like he’s not out, you mean?” “It’s unclear.”
I nod. “Well, drinking and doing stupid shit sounds fantastic right about now.”
“Okay, that’s the spirit!” he says, too enthusiastically. “Let’s go.”
As we approach our old friends, they welcome me back into the fold with open arms and pats on the back and cheers and shoves. One of the girls—I think she says her name is Hannah—introduces herself as I’m passing her and looks at me like I’m supposed to be hitting on her. My mouth is suddenly filled with this bitter taste that makes me feel nauseous.
It’s going to be a long, stupid night.
EDEN
The drive to the all-night diner is unbearable. Steve sits all the way on the opposite side of the back seat, staring through the window. Mara and Cameron keep glancing back at us uncomfortably.
“God, I’m starving,” Mara says, trying to break the awkwardness. “I hope it’s not packed.”
No one responds.
Cameron and Mara exchange a look, and then Cameron adds, “Dude, that second set was sick, wasn’t it?”
Nothing.
We pass through two traffic lights, and he’s still pouting, fuming, acting like I did something wrong.
“Will you say something?” I finally ask.
Steve turns to me now, looking at me for the first time. “You can’t just disappear like that.”
But I am, I think. I’m disappearing all the time. I’m disappearing right now. That’s all I ever do when I’m with you. But what I say is: “I didn’t disappear. I had to get out of there, and I told you that.”
He shakes his head like I’m not making sense. “What?” I demand.
His eyes flick up to the front seat, and then he turns toward me, inching closer. “Did you plan to meet up with him tonight?”
“You’re actually asking me that?” I say, more than loud enough for them to hear too.
“Well, you can’t blame me if that all felt just a little familiar,” he says, still talking low, as if he doesn’t want to embarrass me in front of our friends.
It takes me a second to rewind all my sins of the past couple of years until I land on the memory he must be referencing. “Oh, so you wanna go there? Okay, let’s.”
That night is fuzzy, but I remember the highlights: We were at a dorm party, me, Mara, Cameron, and Steve. Mara had been pressuring me to give Steve a chance. But his sweetness as he talked to me in the crowded hall grew increasingly offensive the more I drank. Like he still thought I was the innocent little band geek he was friends with freshman year. And so I sent him off to get me another drink and hooked up with the first guy who looked at me. Until my brother showed up for some reason—those details are lost—and we had a screaming match in front of everyone. I was exceedingly drunk and terribly mean to everyone, I am told. When I relayed the story to my therapist, she said this sounded like my rock bottom. I can only hope that’s true.
“Edy?” Mara says from the front seat. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that. Right, Steve?”
I ignore her because he definitely meant it like that. “You do realize we weren’t even together when that happened, right?”
“Fine, never mind.” He grabs my hand. I snatch it away. “Forget I said anything.”
“Tonight, which is what we’re actually talking about,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “Josh saw me running out, and he came after me to see if I was okay.”
“You told me not to come,” he argues. “You said you were okay!” “Obviously I wasn’t okay.” How does Josh know I’m not okay, but Steve
—the one I see all the time, the one I’m supposedly in a relationship with— doesn’t? “You know that I’m having these anxiety attacks, which make me feel like I’m actually fucking dying, by the way, and that I wasn’t going to be able to make it through that fucking concert. And you pressured me to go anyway, and now you—”
He starts laughing but not in a ha-ha-funny way; in an angry, I-have-the- moral-high-ground way that makes me want to open the door and jump out of the moving vehicle just to not be sitting next to him anymore.
“What’s so funny?”
“You still didn’t answer the question.” “And I’m not going to!”
“Guys!” Mara shouts. “I’m trying to drive, and you’re giving me middle- school flashbacks of my parents’ pre-divorce fighting.”
“Yeah, can you take it a little easy there?” Cameron says, and I’m about to argue with him until I realize he’s talking to Steve— for once not blaming everything on me.
The car is silent until we tumble into the parking lot over the potholes that threaten to tear Mara’s old brown Buick apart. She pulls into a free spot and slams the car into park, then turns around and says, “We’re going in and getting a table. You two can stay out here and fight or fuck or whatever you need to do. Either way, I’m going to order a banana split. Lock the car up when you’re done.” She tosses the keys onto the back seat, and they go in, leaving us here.
“So, I guess we’re fighting,” Steve says as if he didn’t start it. “Well, we’re not doing the other thing.”
“Right.” He scoffs. “Why am I not surprised?” “What does that mean?”
“You know.” “No, I don’t.”
“Come on, it’s not like I’m some frat bro all hard up for sex, but—” He stops midsentence.
“So, wait, I’m confused. Is the problem that I’m too slutty or not slutty enough for you?”
“Never mind, you’re just twisting what I’m saying.”
“No, I just want to make sure I get it right, Stephen,” I add, using his full name like I used to when we were just friends. “Is this because I didn’t want to give you a blowjob the other day?”
“God, do you have to say it like that?” he whisper-shouts.
“Because you know you asked me at the worst possible time, right? When I was trying to have a serious conversation with you about coming back to school.”
“I know, and I said I was sorry. But it’s not just that.” He rolls his eyes at me and sighs. “Why do I feel like you were more interested in me before we were together?”
I bite my lip, try to keep myself from smiling or laughing, or worse. Because I could hurt him if I wanted to. I could tell him the truth, which is that I was never all that interested in him. But I’m trying to be good. Trying to be happy in my relationship with the age-appropriate boy who my best
friend pushed onto me because she thinks he’s the nicest guy we know. The truth is, he was just there. And I was just there too, trying so hard to be normal, thinking maybe he was the way.
“Before we were together,” I begin, still deciding how honest I can afford to be, “I was interested in fucking anyone with a pulse, so . . .”
“Nice.” He gets out of the car, leans in, looks at me, and says, “That’s great, thank you very much.” Then slams the door in my face. Too honest. I grab Mara’s keys and follow him to the edge of the parking lot, where he’s standing with his back to me.
“Steve!” I yell, marching over to him. “Look, I meant that as, like, do you really want me to be acting the way I was before we were together?”
He swings around so fast that I have to fight the urge to shield myself. “Did you have sex with him?” he blurts out.
“Are you serious? We were only talking!”
“Not tonight,” he snaps. “I mean, have you had sex with him?” “Why?”
“Because he was looking at you like . . .” He clenches his fists as he turns to one side and then the other, like he’s searching for words he’s dropped on the pavement.
“Like what?”
His face twists in disgust as he starts again. “Like he . . .” And I decide I don’t want to know what he was looking at me like, anyway, because it’s pointless to know something like that.
“Like he was concerned?” I finish.
“And I wasn’t concerned? I was texting you all night, Edy!” he shouts. “All right, I’m sorry, I know. Please, Steve, I don’t want to be fighting.” “I don’t either.” There’s a silence, and when he starts talking again, he’s
quieter. “It’s just—he was holding your hand.”
“He was helping me down from the table. And we were just talking.
We’re friends. That’s what friends do.”
He shakes his head as if the things I’m saying don’t even matter and cuts his eyes to me like he thinks he’s catching me in a lie. At this rate, maybe I should’ve just kissed Josh like I really wanted to—significant others be damned.
“But you used to be together, right?” he asks. “He’s my friend,” I repeat, more firmly.
He looks down at his hands, then back up at me, squinting.
“He’s my friend now. And he’s helped me a lot, and he’s really kind, and you were a total jackass to him.”
“I know I was!” he shouts. “But he was being a jackass too.” “No, he wasn’t.”
He scoffs and shakes his head. “You just didn’t see it,” he says, dismissing me.
I hate when he gets mad—it’s dizzying and scary and makes me want to be small and back down. It makes me feel weak, which scares me more than anything else. “You know I didn’t plan to run into him there, don’t you?” I finally say, giving up the last shred of self-respect I was clinging to.
“I know,” he admits.
“Then why are you being like this?”
He turns his head and looks at me like I’m an idiot. “You know, I do realize that you’re a ten and I’m like, what, a three,” he says, softer now, more like his usual self. “On a good day.”
“What?” I laugh. “I’m not a—”
“And that fucking guy. Miller,” he mutters, knowing his name after all. “I mean, Jesus, could he be any taller?”
“Wait, so you’re really just . . . jealous?”
He shrugs and nods, his cheeks darkening, embarrassed now. “And that’s why you’re being mean and insulting me?”
“I’m sorry.” He extends one arm toward me and taps the fingers of my right hand with his left. “I really am. It’s just that, I don’t know, ever since we’ve been together, I feel really insecure. Like you’re gonna realize you’re way out of my league and—”
“That’s not even—” I try to interrupt, but he interrupts me right back. “No, I’m serious. I feel like it’s only a matter of time before I’m gonna
lose you to someone just like him.”
I reach for his hand now, and he pulls me into a hug.
“You don’t need to be worried about that,” I tell him. Because it wouldn’t be someone like Josh—there’s no one like Josh—it would be Josh.
He tilts my chin up as he looks at me, and I can’t tell what he’s really thinking, but he leans down and presses his lips against mine. He wraps his arms around me again and says “I’m sorry” one more time.
I should tell him it’s okay. Not because it is, but more in the spirit of making up. I can’t force myself to do it, though, not when I can close my eyes and still feel Josh’s arms around me.
“Will you stay over tonight?” he mumbles into my hair before pulling away to look at me. “My dad’s at his girlfriend’s house. You could tell your mom you’re sleeping at Mara’s.”
All I want to do is go home, flop onto the couch, and fall asleep with the TV on. But before I can even think of a response or an excuse, he continues.
“It’s just—I feel like we haven’t had any alone time lately. We’re always with Mara and Cam. You know I love them, but I miss just us.”
“I’ll text Vanessa—I mean my mom,” I correct myself. Trying to get back into the habit. My therapist says it will be good for me to start calling my parents Mom and Dad, that eventually I’ll start feeling like we’re family again.
We walk in and I spot Mara and Cameron in a booth near the kitchen. I send Steve over and signal to Mara that I’m going to go to the bathroom. When I get inside, I lean against the sink and wait for her. “A little tense out there,” Mara says.
“Just a little,” I agree. “Honestly, did I do anything that wrong?”
“No—I mean, no, but . . . ,” Mara hesitates, hoisting her bag up on the counter. “It was kinda scary when you weren’t texting back, but Steve was definitely being a little agro jerk. Which is bizarre, because he’s like the king of calm.”
“Not always,” I mutter. Didn’t she remember that day in the hall four months ago when he told me off in front of everyone in our study hall? He called me a bitch, which was fair enough, but then he also called me a slut, and no matter how many times he’s apologized for both, I don’t think I’ve quite forgiven him for that one. “I can’t believe he brought up that stupid party.”
Mara’s lips twist, and she sucks in a breath, hissing. “Yeah, that was a pretty low blow. I guess even big, sweet teddy bears like Steve can be assholes sometimes.”
“Teddy bears are still bears,” I say, but she doesn’t seem to give my statement much thought as she leans forward to wipe the mascara smudges from under her eyes. I’ll have to remember that one for my therapist; she’s great about making me feel smart and insightful.
Mara meets my eyes in the mirror. “So, Joshua Miller,” she says—a question, a statement, a command, an exclamation.
“So.” I inhale deeply, suddenly unable to catch my breath. “Him. Yeah.” “Joshhhh.” She draws out the word, torturing me, and then she smiles in
this mischievous way. “Apparently he just keeps getting more and more attractive, huh?”
“Oh, really?” I ask her, though I can’t seem to wipe the smirk off my face. “Jesus, don’t tell Steve that. Speaking of, I thought you were Team Steve all the way.”
“I am, but . . . damn.” She fans herself with her hand like one of those Southern belles in black-and-white movies. “Who knew he could rock the scruffy look?”
I shake my head, ignoring her eternal fake lusting after Josh, and examine myself in the mirror, thankful I’d at least taken a shower today. “It was weird seeing him.”
“Makes sense,” she mumbles as she presses her ruby lipstick to her upper lip. “It’s been a while since you saw him.” And then her bottom lip. “A lot’s happened.”
“No, but that’s the thing. It was weird that it wasn’t weird. Like, after the initial awkwardness, we just kind of picked up where we left off and . . .” I stop myself before I say something too true. Like how I’ve been on pause these past months while my life has just been moving on without me, and tonight, with him, it was like being unpaused, feeling what it’s like to be alive again, even if only for a little while.
Mara turns around to face me now. “And what?”
I unscrew the top of her tiny expensive pot of lip gloss and dip my ring finger in, dab it against my lips instead of answering, admitting that I’ve been thinking about him way too much ever since I started seeing Steve, comparing everything he does—and doesn’t do—to Josh.
“You wanna go there again, don’t you? And by there, I mean the whole Josh . . . thing.”
“The whole Josh thing?” I ask, almost laughing. “What’s that?”
“You know, the whole steamy-secret-Joshua-Miller-yumminess-passion thing?” she adds, with an exaggerated shiver through her whole body.
“Okay, one: you’re ridiculous. And two: even if I did, it doesn’t matter.” I shrug and toss her lip gloss back into her purse. “Josh has a girlfriend.”
Mara laughs with her head thrown back and then says, “And Steve has a girlfriend, too, don’t forget!”
A waitress comes into the bathroom, probably checking to make sure we’re not doing lines in here or something. “Shut up,” I mutter under my breath. “Obviously, that too.”
As we move toward the door, Mara stops short and turns around to face me again. “I’m Team Edy, by the way,” she says. And she looks at me more seriously than she has in a while—she’s avoided too much seriousness with me ever since I told her what happened. I think she’s trying to keep my spirits up, but sometimes I miss this look.
She gives my hand a little shake. “You know that, right?”
JOSH
I can feel Dominic staring at me the whole car ride. “Do we need a code word or something?” he finally asks as he parks next to the other cars in the lot behind the football field.
“Code word? What are you talking about?” “If you need to leave.”
“Why would I need to leave?”
“The whole seeing-your-ex thing,” he says, as if that should be obvious. “I told you I’m fine.”
“Yeah, and I know you too well to believe that.”
I go to open my door, and he locks it. “Do I need a code word for you to let me out of this car?”
“It’s me you’re talking to,” he says. He gives me that look he’s given me so many times this semester when I’m on the verge of screwing something up. “Can you at least admit you’re not fine?”
“Okay,” I relent. “Did it suck seeing her with that dickhead guy? Sure. But we’re friends; it’s not like we made some kind of promise to each other or anything.”
“I’m just gonna say one thing, and then I’ll shut my mouth, all right?” I sigh. “Fine. All right.”
“She seemed like a nice girl and all. Cute, I grant you. You know, I’m sure she’s not purposely trying to be an agent of sheer fucking chaos in your life. But—”
“All right,” I interrupt. “Don’t push it.”
“I’m just saying maybe seeing her with another guy isn’t such a bad thing. You can finally move on.”
“Move on?” I laugh. “I have moved on.”
“Yeah, okay.” He squints at me, raising one eyebrow in his signature you’re-full-of-shit look. “I’m just saying you can stop carrying this weird torch you have for her. You’re gonna set yourself on fire with it.”
“I’ve told you before, it’s not like that with us,” I tell him again. “I mean, she is still in high school,” he continues anyway.
“I know that, D!” I snap at him. “And again, we’re just friends.”
“Maybe, but I still feel like she’s been stringing you along, and meanwhile you—”
“That’s not it,” I interrupt him. “She’s not doing that, Dominic. Not at all.”
“And meanwhile,” he says, louder, talking over me. “You’ve literally blown up your whole damn life over her and she’s with someone else. I just wanna make sure you see it—that’s not cool.”
“It’s not like that,” I repeat. “None of that stuff was her fault.”
“Oh, it’s not her fault you broke up with Bella and wound up on my doorstep without a place to live?”
“No. And, technically, Bella broke up with me.”
“Right, okay, so then I guess it’s not Eden’s fault you spent all of winter break in a black hole, missed one of our most important games of the season, and almost got kicked off the team after you spent one day with her? One day,” he emphasizes, holding up his index finger to make his point, even though the point he’s making couldn’t be farther from reality.
“I didn’t—” But I stop myself because it’s better if everyone keeps thinking I just didn’t show up to the game, instead of what really happened. “That wasn’t because of her.”
“So, it’s just a coincidence you haven’t dated anyone since then? I mean, you never even tried to fix things with Bella—who, by the way, was a very solid person we all really liked.”
“Look, I appreciate you caring, but I just can’t keep talking about it or . .
.” I’ll say something I shouldn’t. “I’m fine. Okay? I promise. Can that please be good enough for you?”
He sighs but then nods once and presses the button to unlock the doors. Pops the trunk. We get out of the car, carrying the six-packs we picked up on the way to this stupid impromptu reunion, and we cut across the field, past the giant outline of our old mascot against the brick wall of the bleachers.
That’s when Dominic says, “Oh! How ’bout ‘eagle’? For the code word.”
“Working ‘eagle’ into a conversation won’t sound conspicuous at all.”
“The code word could be conspicuous,” he says, laughing. “Fifty percent chance no one’ll know what that means.”
He got a smile out of me. “You’re mean,” I tell him, and as I look ahead, I can see cell phone flashlights dancing up in the bleachers already. “Those are supposed to be our friends.”
“I’m honest,” he corrects. “And you’re the one who’s laughing.” “Am not.”
“Well, it’s not our fault our friends can’t all be blessed with brains and bodies like ours,” Dominic jokes in his best drag queen voice, as he calls it, raising the cases of beer into biceps curls.
“Yeah,” I scoff. “Or your modesty.”
“I’m done with modesty!” he yells into the night air, and it echoes against the brick-walled buildings of our high school.
“Who’s there? DiCarlo? Miller!” a voice yells from the stands, perfectly imitating our old coach. “Get your asses up here!” Zac yells.
“This is so stupid,” I groan.
“Now, you be nice.” Dominic laughs, but stops abruptly when he catches a glimpse of Zac. “Oh my God,” Dominic says under his breath. “Is he . . .
?”
“Still wearing his high school varsity jacket?” I finish. “Yes, he is.” “Never mind. Forget what I said, you don’t have to be nice,” he mumbles
as we trudge up the steps of the bleachers.
There are about a dozen people here. A few were there at the concert, including Zac, who I managed to dodge until now. They’re rowdy, drunk already. We’ll be lucky if no one calls the cops on us for trespassing. Most I recognize from school. Zac seems to be the self-appointed ringleader. At one time I thought he was my best friend. But everything changed senior year. After Eden. But most things changed for me after Eden. He called her a slut once after we broke up—even after I confided in him about how much I loved her—and still, more than two years later, it’s the first thing I think of when I see him.
“How does it feel to be back?” Zac says, laughing, spreading his arms out wide like he’s gesturing to some kind of vast kingdom.
“Looks like you never left.” I don’t know if I’m messing with him or trying to start a fight, but he just smiles at me anyway. He doesn’t get it, which is probably for the best.
I turn around and look out at the view. This place that felt so important, so life-and-death, seems small now. It’s really just four brick buildings, an old scoreboard, a tennis court, a soccer field, empty parking lots, and a rusty flagpole in the center of it all.
“Victorious!” Dominic answers. I don’t know if he’s being serious or not now. He might really feel victorious—he wasn’t exactly out back then, not with our teammates, anyway. Being gay and black in a mostly straight, mostly white school, I think he tried to make himself invisible, except for when he was on the court. “Being a big-shot college basketball star agrees with me.”
“I bet,” Zac murmurs, and I can hear the jealousy in his voice without even needing to look at him. “Miller, heads up.” I turn back around just in time to catch the can of beer he’s tossing to me.
I give him a nod and retreat up to the top level of the bleachers. I can see Dominic is making the rounds, working his way over to the one guy he’s really here to see. I’ll go introduce myself to him in a while—after all, Dominic was nice to Eden tonight even though he thinks she’s bad for me. It’s hard to explain her to him, how wrong he is about her, what she means to me, without telling him things it’s not my place to tell.
Three of the guys hop the fence and start racing each other around the track, and two of the girls, who I think must’ve been cheerleaders, follow them onto the field. They start enacting old cheers I recognize from basketball season, only they’re stumbling and laughing through them, falling over each other and screaming. As I look around at everyone in their little groups, I wonder if they’re all pretending to be having fun or if they really are and there’s something wrong with me that I can’t be that person anymore.
I set the beer on the bench next to me and take my phone out. I want to text her, but it’s like she said, there’s too much to say in a text right now. I put my phone away instead.
That girl from the show is not being very discreet about watching me. I wish I could hang a sign around my neck that says STAY BACK 100 FEET. As soon as I have that thought, Zac zeroes in on me and starts climbing the steps. I pop open the beer, and it protests with a carbonated hiss. I take a long swig. I won’t be able to get through a conversation with him sober.
“Buddy,” he says, taking a seat next to me. “Been a minute.” “Yeah,” I agree. Chug. Chug. Chug.
“So?” he says. “Tell me! What’s been going on with you?”
I shrug, finish the rest of the beer. He pulls another can out of his jacket pocket like magic and hands it to me. “Thanks.” I crack it open.
“What’s with you, man?” he asks, side-eyeing me. “Nothing’s with me.”
“If you say so.” He takes a giant gulp. “Hey, see that girl?” he asks, pointing at her with the neck of his bottle. “She was asking about you before you got here.”
“Hm.”
“Hm? That’s it, hm?” He snorts through a laugh, keeps drinking. “Big man on campus. Guess you must be swimming in it.”
“Hey,” I warn him, and take another sip. “Come on.”
“Unless living with DiCarlo is rubbing off on you,” he says, cracking himself up.
“Hey!” I tell him, more firmly this time. “Do you see me laughing?” “Loosen up, bro,” he shouts, reaching around me and squeezing my
shoulder.
“God, were you always like this?” I say, more to myself as I shrug him off me.
“Were you always like this?” he comes back at me.
“I’m just not interested, okay?” I answer, so he’ll drop it. And I take another sip, trying to pace myself.
“Okay, okay.” He holds up his hands like I’m the one being an asshole right now. “Saw you talking to that girl at the concert. Was that . . . uh . . .
?” He looks off, snapping his fingers like he’s trying to summon her name. “Eden,” I answer.
“Right,” he says. “Question, though. Didn’t she kinda screw you over last time? Like cheat on you or something?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“We’re talking about Caelin McCrorey’s little sister, right?”
“Yep.” I watch him as I take another long pull and swallow. “I seem to remember you once called her a slut, didn’t you?”
He chuckles like it’s nothing. “Is that why you’re pissed at me?” “Who said I was pissed at you?”
“Man, that was a million years ago.” He stares at me, and there’s this weird smile edging onto his face, like he’s half amused with himself, half
scared of me. “What is this? Did she say something about me or . . . ?” He trails off. “’Cause it was just a joke.”
She never mentioned a word to me about Zac, but now he’s making me wonder if there’s something more than that one slut cough in the hallway senior year.
“Like what?” I ask. “What would she say about you?”
Before he can answer, the three guys who had been racing around the track are bounding up the bleachers toward us, the former cheerleaders trailing behind them. Dominic is walking over to us now too, his arm around the shoulder of the guy he likes—not so secretly, it seems—and the rest of them are following.
“Dude, did someone just say something about Caelin McCrorey?” one of them asks as they’re approaching. “Did you hear what happened to him?”
“Oh yeah,” another answers. “Heard he got kicked outta school or something, right?”
“No, no. You’re thinking of his friend,” one of the cheerleaders answers. “Kevin, remember? Kevin Armstrong.”
Hearing his name sends a chill up my spine. I try to catch Dominic’s eye.
Eagle.
“He didn’t just get kicked out of school. I heard he’s in prison or something.”
“No, he’s not in prison,” someone else answers. “He did get arrested, though.”
My heart is racing. Eagle, I shout in my mind.
“That Boy Scout?” Zac spits, laughing. “What the fuck for?”
I keep drinking. No one seems to know. My heart slows a little. Maybe they’ll drop it.
“I know,” the other cheerleader chimes in now, waiting until everyone looks at her before continuing, louder. “He raped someone.”
There’s an uproar of voices saying things like “what” and “are you serious” and “no way,” but it’s Zac’s voice that breaks through: “Okay, now I want to know who’s accusing him because that’s bullshit!”
I turn to look at him, and I can’t think of one word to say because all my thoughts are preoccupied with restraining myself from knocking him on his ass right now.
“No, it’s true,” the first cheerleader says. “I know the girl. We met her.” She points to the other cheerleader. “Remember? Kevin brought her home
over Thanksgiving last year. Jen or Gin, something like that? She was his girlfriend.” So Eden was right; people really have been talking.
“Obviously not anymore,” the other girl adds, snorting through her words before dissolving into laughter.
“Oh, his girlfriend?” Zac shouts, throwing one of his arms forward, all sloppy. “Well, there you go.”
“What does that mean?” I finally say because I can’t restrain myself this much.
“Come on, how’s his girlfriend going to accuse him of rape?”
I clench the now-empty can between my hands. “You realize what a fucking asshole you sound like, right?”
“Whoa, Miller.” Zac nudges me with his elbow. “Chill.”
Dominic gives me a questioning look. He has my back, though he has no idea why; that’s what makes him a good friend. “No really, Zac,” he taunts. “Tell us you’re an asshole without telling us you’re an asshole, am I right?”
People laugh at that, but Zac’s still looking at me like I really had knocked him on his ass. Good.
“Well, it’s not just her,” the cheerleader says. “There’s like at least one or two other girls. I don’t know who they are, but it’s a whole thing.”
“Forreal,” the other girl adds, slurring. “Like I heard there’s’posed to be a trial and everything.”
I spot a case of beer someone has brought up, and gesture for one. I open it immediately. Drink fast. This is too hard.
“Is it terrible,” a small voice says, “that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true?”
Next to me, on the bench below mine, I see it’s that girl who’s spoken. Hannah, the one from the show, the one Zac was talking about. She looks up at me and smiles quickly before looking away.
“Oh my God,” her friend who’s sitting next to her says, gripping her arm. “What do you mean?”
“No! God, no. He never did anything to me,” she responds, “but I was alone with him once after a game, and he totally creeped me out.”
“How?” I ask. Dominic shoots me another look, making me aware that I’m being too intense. “I mean, why, wh-what did he do?”
“Oh, um,” she stutters, blushing like she’s surprised I’m talking to her. “It wasn’t really anything he did, exactly,” she continues. “Just a feeling, I don’t know.” She shrugs. “The way he was looking at me, maybe? Like,
weird. Sort of . . .” She pauses and stares off like she’s trying to remember more clearly.
And for a second—a split second, now that I’m really looking at her—I see something in her that reminds me of Eden somehow. I take a drink. It’s not that she looks like her; she doesn’t. It’s something deeper, and I think it must be a shyness in her gestures that reminds me of her. It hits me with way too much clarity as I wait for her to finish talking. Kevin must’ve seen this quality too, whatever it is, in this girl. Just like he must’ve seen it in Eden. Like some part of her is unprotected, vulnerable. The thought that I might be seeing something he saw scares me.
“Predatory,” she finishes with confidence, but then shakes her head and lets out this small laugh. “Whatever, I don’t know. I just know it made me not want to ever be alone with him again. Like ever.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good thing.” I nod, biting back any more words. Someone’s handing me another drink. I’m drinking way too much, too fast, but I take it anyway. Dominic is making some kind of hand gesture, like slow down, but if he had any idea how hard this is right now, he wouldn’t blame me.
“Well, this all makes so much sense,” Hannah’s friend says. “I always thought Kevin Armstrong was super hot. And I’m only attracted to complete psychopaths. So yeah, that tracks.”
Everyone laughs like it’s all a big joke.
I stand too quickly, and the world sways. I have to grab the railing to stay balanced.
“Where you goin’?” Zac yells after me. “Hey, Miller!”
I don’t even acknowledge him. Just concentrate on walking down these steps without spilling my drink. I make it to the bottom, and somehow Dominic is suddenly there, standing in front of me. I turn around to look— wasn’t he just up there with the rest of them? And as I’m turning back to face him, he’s got his hand on my shoulder like he’s steadying me.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie. “I’m gonna fly solo for a bit, that’s all.” “What?” he asks, looking thoroughly confused.
“You know, the eagle metaphor thing?”
“You are shwasted right now and still using the word ‘metaphor,’” he tells me, shaking his head. “How are you so drunk already?”
“I don’t drink, ’member?”
“Listen, I’m gonna need to sober up a little before I can drive us. You really okay on your own for a while?”
“I’m fine. I’m just—I’m gonna talk a walk.” “You’re gonna talk a walk?” he repeats.
“Take,” I correct myself, enunciating carefully. “Yes! Go. Seriously. Be with your . . . man,” I settle on after shuffling through “boy” and “friend” and “boyfriend” and “guy” and “guy friend” in my head.
“Oh, he’s my man now? Okay.” Dominic laughs hysterically. “I’m so giving you shit for this later.”
“You’re a good friend, you know that?”
“Okay, okay. You too. Go talk your walk, we’ll leave soon, all right?”
I wander back toward the school, and I don’t really know where I’m going until I’m standing there, this swath of grass between the tennis court and the student parking lot. I go to take another sip but realize the can is empty. I crunch it up and aim for the garbage bin at the entrance of the tennis court.
“He shoots,” I say out loud. “He scores.” I hear clapping behind me; I turn around. “Nice shot,” she says. Hannah.
“Oh. Didn’t see you there.”
“Is it okay if I join you?” she asks, pulling a flask out of her purse. “Brought the good stuff.”
“Sure,” I tell her reluctantly, if only to keep Zac away from her.
We sit in the spot I sat with Eden the day she said she’d go out with me. There were dandelions growing all over then; we had this whole thing with dandelions and making wishes. And she was doing her tough-girl routine but let me in just a little bit anyway. I can close my eyes and see her sitting here in the sun so clearly.
I run my hands along the grass. It’s freshly mown. Nothing growing here now.
“I liked what you said back there,” she tells me as she holds the flask out. I take it from her and bring it to my lips. Whiskey. Small sips this time, I tell myself. I shrug and hand it back to her. “I guess I’m just kinda over this
whole scene.”
She nods and takes a much longer sip, scrunching up her face as she swallows it.
“I have to tell you, I had the biggest crush on you when we were in school. I’m sure you didn’t know I existed.”
She passes the flask back to me, and I take a sip before trying to figure out how to respond.
“God, I just totally made that weird, didn’t I?” She laughs and covers her face with her hands, then spreads two fingers to peek at me.
“Uh, no,” I finally say. “No, I’m just not really in a place to—I mean, I’m flattered to hear that, but—”
“But you have a girlfriend, right? Of course you would, why wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t actually, but I’m not—” I stop midsentence because I don’t know how to say what it is. It’s true I don’t have a girlfriend, but I don’t feel quite available somehow, either. “I mean I guess it’s sort of . . .”
“Complicated?” she finishes with a knowing laugh. “Exactly.”
She takes a big sip, hands it back to me, and as I’m drinking, she looks around and says, “Well, it’s just us here now.”
“You seem very sweet, I just—”
She leans in so fast I can’t stop her. Her mouth is wet on mine, the taste of whiskey strong on her tongue, making me feel even drunker. I’m kissing her back even though I shouldn’t. And it feels good even though I don’t want it to. I haven’t kissed anyone since that day four months ago when I kissed Eden . . . or she kissed me.
She’s climbing onto my lap, her legs straddling me, her long skirt pulling up. She takes my hands in hers and runs them up her thighs. I can’t help but think of Eden’s bare legs earlier. Her skin is so warm. Soft. And now her hands are on my chest, pushing me to the ground. And I pull her down with me. I’m drifting away, my head so fuzzy. I wish I would’ve kissed her tonight. I wish I would have found the right words to tell her everything. She was right there. Right here in my arms. And I let her go. Again.
I feel myself being pulled back to my body as I open my eyes. I’m on my back in the grass now, and it’s not her body pressed up against mine, not her hair my hands are tangled up in. She’s holding herself up over me, and she’s laughing, saying, “It’s Hannah, actually.”
“Wh-what?”
“You just called me Eden.”
“Shit, I’m sorry,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “My head is—I’m not really thinking clearly. I know your name, I promise.”
“It’s okay,” she says, her hand rubbing against my jeans. “Kiss me like that again, and you can call me anything you want.”
“No, I—I’m not really in a place to—I’m just—” I’m getting flustered, my head feeling so full as I struggle to sit up. “God,” I mutter to myself, “fuck me.”
“Yeah.” She giggles. “That’s kinda what I’m trying to do.” She leans in to kiss me again, and I have to push her hands off me.
“No, really. I can’t.” I scramble away from her and stand up, buttoning my jeans and quickly threading my belt back through the buckle. She looks up at me, so strangely, so confused. “I’m sorry, it’s really not you.”
She doesn’t say anything as she gets up and walks away. Doesn’t even look back.
“It’s not you,” I call after her. “Really.” It’s not her. She’s not Eden.
I kick at the grass and hit the metal flask, nearly toppling over as I bend to pick it up. I sit back down, take another swig, and pull my phone out of my pocket.
EDEN
We’re dozing to a movie playing on Steve’s laptop when my phone vibrates on the nightstand. I raise my head from its spot on his chest to look at the time.
He tightens his arms around me as we settle back in. But then, in the next beat, suddenly he’s sitting up, dumping me off him. “Seriously!” he shouts, looking down at my phone as the screen darkens. “Why’s he texting you at one thirty in the morning?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Do you really want me to check?” “No,” he says abruptly.
I reach across him and flip my phone over, facedown, pretending I don’t care that he’s just looked at my phone without my permission, that I don’t care about whatever it is Josh has said. Steve is staring at me as if I should have some kind of explanation.
“Are we still on this?” I ask. “Because if we’re going to have this fight again, I’d rather just go home.”
Reluctantly, he lies down next to me. It vibrates a second time, and we both ignore it. The third time, Steve sits up again. “Oh my God, what the hell does he want?”
I reach for my phone, and this time I turn it off, but not before I catch a glimpse of the beginnings of each message lighting up the screen:
It was nice to . . .
I’m sorry if I . . .
Can I see you . . . ?
“I don’t know. I don’t care,” I lie. “Forget about it,” I tell him. Even though I’m already trying to fill in the ends of each sentence, even though all I want to do is stare at the words and overthink each and every one for hours on end.
“Sorry,” Steve says, closing his laptop and setting it on the floor. “That kinda ruined the mood.” The mood was already ruined, though, before we even got here. He lies back down next to me in a huff.
“Again, I feel like you’re blaming me or something. It’s not like I asked him to text me.”
“I know,” Steve says. “I’m not blaming you. I blame him, believe me.”
I hesitate to say the rest, which is, again, we’re friends and friends text each other and I don’t like him thinking he has any say in the matter. But instead of that, I ask him, “Do you still want me here?”
“Of course,” he answers, softening a bit as he looks at me.
“Well, can I borrow a T-shirt or something to sleep in? I hadn’t planned on not going home tonight.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, I should’ve offered,” he says, remembering that he’s supposed to be a nice guy. He jumps out of bed, and I follow him over to his dresser, where he opens a drawer overflowing with his signature nerdy graphic tees, all in various states of unfolded. “Take your pick.”
I sift through until I find the one I’ve seen him wear so many times over the years of being friends, then not being friends, then being sort of friends again, and now this, whatever we’re trying to be now. It’s got a picture of a cat holding up a bone, with the caption I FOUND THIS HUMERUS. I drape it over the front of me and turn to look at him. “How about this one?”
He laughs and nods. “Perfect.”
And I start to relax for the first time since I let go of Josh’s hand earlier tonight. Face-to-face, I think we both realize at the same time neither of us knows quite what to do. We’ve seen each other without clothes a few times before, but it wasn’t like this, just standing in front of each other.
“Um,” he says, nervously pushing his hand back through his hair. “Want me to turn around or . . . ?”
“No,” I say uncertainly as I pull my shirt off over my head and set it on top of the dresser. Except now I’m feeling a little self-conscious just
standing here in my bra, so I start unbuttoning and unzipping my shorts to have something to do with my hands. Steve takes his jeans off and sets them next to my shirt, making us even. Now he’s wearing only his boxers and the band T-shirt from earlier. He reaches for the humerus shirt and raises it up over my head so I can easily slip my arms into it. Thankfully it’s big enough that it falls past my butt.
“Thanks.”
I finish taking my shorts off and reach under the shirt to take my bra off. We get into bed, and he looks down at me, grinning in this shy way that reminds me of the chubby, awkward freshman version of Steve I used to be friends with.
“What?”
“I just never would’ve thought that shirt could look so sexy.”
I reach up to turn off the light, laughing. But he kisses me, hard, swallowing the sound. He moves his hands over the shirt more confidently, more freely than he has ever touched me in the three months we’ve officially been together. He’s usually so timid when things heat up, but the way he’s pulling my whole body closer to him, it sort of takes my breath away. Maybe it’s because of his dad being gone, or Josh, still no doubt in the back of his mind.
I don’t know. Whatever it is, I want to let myself go with it. I don’t want to fight it, don’t want to keep waiting for every last thing to feel right before I get to enjoy this. The kissing and the weight of him, the closeness. He pushes the shirt up my stomach and pulls his own off over his head so we’re skin to skin. He pulls my leg up around his waist, rubbing himself against my hip, his thigh pressing between my legs.
“Do you like that?” he whispers.
I nod in the small space between us.
I don’t care that I don’t love him. I like him; I trust him. Pretty much, anyway. Even if the events of the evening have only shown me that he clearly doesn’t trust me, I try to shove the rest of this night out of my mind. He trails his hand down my stomach, inside my underwear, and groans as his fingers slide against me.
“I have a condom,” he says with his lips to mine. “If you want to try again.”
We’ve tried to have sex three times, but something always goes wrong. The first time I was the one to freak out, the second time he was, and the
third, we were both too nervous and it didn’t last long enough to count it as having happened. I would say yes right now if I thought it would be easy. But these things are never simple with him, and I don’t think I can take one more emotional hit today.
“Wait,” I say, pulling his hand out of my underwear. “Can we just stay like this for now?” I ask him, drawing his body closer with my arms and legs. “This feels really good.”
“I’ll do whatever you want.” He’s kissing me as he repositions himself between my legs so that his whole body is against me now, only a couple of thin layers of underwear between us to dull the sensation of how hard he’s pressing down on me, the friction of our bodies barely absorbed by the fabric. “Is this good?” he asks, breathless.
I gasp, “Yes.”
We’re both breathing heavier and moving faster. And as his hands roam under my shirt now, I can’t get Josh out of my head. I can’t stop thinking about his hands touching me, his arms, his breath, his voice, his body. I open my eyes in the dark to try to remind myself of where I am, but it’s no use because it becomes Josh’s room.
A moan escapes my mouth, and I get scared that somehow he’s going to be able to tell it’s not for him. He thrusts harder, though, and I start to wonder if maybe his head is somewhere else too. I can’t help but think about how if we were really having sex and not unceremoniously grinding on each other, he’d really be hurting me. But we’re not, I tell myself, we’re not, so he’s not. It’s okay.
“God, I’m close,” he’s saying as I’m thinking all this.
I close my eyes again and try now, try so hard, to think of Josh and not Steve. I am a bad person, I know. But I don’t want this to end. I don’t know when I’ll get to feel this way again, and I want to savor it as long as I can. He’s pushing against me so hard, I stretch my arms up over my head, reaching for the wall behind us, just to have something solid to hold on to.
“I’m so close,” he breathes against my neck.
But before I can even consider how close or far I am, he grabs my arms so abruptly, it shocks me back into reality.
“Steve.” That’s too hard, I want to say, but it’s all happening so fast. He wraps his hands around my wrists and holds my arms down against the bed. “Steve?” I repeat, but he’s not looking at me, not hearing me. I push and pull my arms. I try to move. I can’t. I squeeze my legs around him, trying to
make him slow down. I try to call his name again, but my voice is frayed, and I’m not getting any volume.
It feels like something in my heart stretches and snaps like a rubber band, some force rushing toward me like hands pulling me underwater. Dark, freezing-cold water that I can’t see through.
I’m pulled through this murky darkness until I’m back there again. And it’s not Steve anymore; it’s not Josh. My wrists are pinned, twisted together, held so tight I’m afraid they’re slowly breaking. Again. Another hand around my throat. Again. A voice telling me to shut up. Again. I’m drowning. I can’t fight this. I struggle against him. Yell at him to stop—I think I do, at least. Not breathing. For too long, I’m not breathing. I’m drowning, I must be. And then, when I’m sure I’m going to just let go, sink, die, those hands holding me under release their grip, and I break the surface of the dark water, gasping, flailing.
On my feet, I turn the light back on. I’m breathing heavily, coughing, pacing, trying to stave off the memories that just invaded my mind, my body, without warning.
Steve watches me for several seconds, sitting there in bed, a pillow pulled across his lap. “Edy!” he shouts, his eyes wide, like this isn’t the first time he’s said my name. “Edy, where were you just now?”
“Where were you?” I shoot back at him.
“I was here,” he says. “I—I’m here.” And he’s looking at me so innocently, I can’t take it. I turn around and place my hands against his desk, trying to brace myself, and I let out a slow, shaky breath. I look up at myself in the mirror. Clear, harsh edges. No blur, no disappearing acts. I am fully here.
“Please come back to bed, Edy,” Steve says gently.
I meet his eyes in the mirror and have to look away again. “I need a minute,” I manage to tell him between breaths. And then I watch as his reflection gets out of bed and cautiously walks up behind me.
“You’re scaring me,” he says. “Tell me what I did. Please?” “Nothing,” I choke out. “It wasn’t you.”
“It had to be,” he counters. “Everything was fine—good, you said it felt
good—and then something happened.”
I shake my head. He places his hands on my shoulders, slowly turning me around to face him. He takes my hands in his. “Jesus, you’re trembling.”
I snatch them back from him and shake them out. “I’m fine.”
“Is it a panic attack or anxiety attack or whatever?” He freezes, looking genuinely worried. “What should I do?”
“Just—just stay right there,” I tell him, holding my arms out so he doesn’t come any closer. “For a second.” I gasp. “Okay?”
He nods. He doesn’t move. I step back and lean against the desk again. Close my eyes. Breathe in and out. In and out. In and out until my lungs work again.
When I open my eyes, Steve is sitting on the edge of his bed. He’s put his shirt back on.
“Come back, we’ll just cuddle, okay?” he says, as he holds the blanket up for me to climb in. I do. I back up against him, and he wraps himself around me. He’s always good at this part. “I’m not him,” he says softly, smoothing my hair back. “You know that, right?”
If I speak, I might cry, so I just nod. Because I know what he’s talking about. He’s not Kevin. Of course he’s not. But he’s not Josh, either.
JOSH
“He’s a really good guy,” I hear Dominic saying. “Seriously the best guy friend I’ve ever had. He’s just messed up over this girl, I think. Plus, he hardly ever drinks, so he’s just sloppy AF tonight.”
“No, I get it,” someone else responds. “Been there. Well, not over a girl, but—you know . . .”
I open my eyes. Streetlights flash through the car windows. I’m on my side, scrunched up across the back seat of Dominic’s car. I hear myself groan. Every sound echoes in my head.
“Hey, sleeping beauty,” Dominic’s secret admirer guy says, smiling as he turns around to look at me from the passenger seat.
“Sleeping beauty, my ass,” Dominic says. “Do not vomit in my back seat.”
I reach for my phone, the screen blurry as I try to focus. It’s three in the morning. “She didn’t text me back,” I mumble.
“Luke, will you take that from him? We don’t need him drunk dialing his ex.”
“Here, why don’t you give that to me for now?” He’s so polite and gentle, I hand it right over.
“Luke,” I repeat his name. “I’m so rude, I d-did-in’t-introduce myself.” “You introduced yourself, Josh,” Luke replies.
“Like five times,” Dominic adds.
“She didn’t text,” I hear myself say again. “I know,” Dominic responds. “It’s okay.”
The next thing I know, I’m standing, sort of, between Dominic and Luke. They’re holding me up on each side, their arms under mine, and I’m stumbling up my front steps. Dominic is reaching into my pocket for my
keys as if I can’t get my own keys. And I want to tell them they really don’t have to do all this, but I can’t seem to make the words come out.
Then we’re crashing through the door, and I reach out to grab the handle so it doesn’t smash into the wall and wake up my mom, but somehow I trip and we all fall forward on top of each other.
I’m laughing even though I’m trying to be quiet. Dominic is shhshh-ing me. Next they’re spilling me onto the couch.
Then Dominic and Luke are standing across the living room with their backs to me, time skipping forward again, my mom and dad here now in their bathrobes and slippers. They’re all talking too quietly for me to hear.
Now they’re standing over me, and Mom has her hand over her mouth, shaking her head. Dad is looking at me like there’s something seriously wrong with me, as if I’m horribly disfigured or something. I bring my hand to my face with difficulty, feeling around for my eyes and nose and mouth, all of which seem to be in the right place.
I let my eyes drift shut again.
EDEN
He wakes up as I’m reaching over him to pick up my phone, still turned off. “What are you doing?” he asks me, voice all rough and groggy as he squints against the daylight. “Aww, no. Why’d you take my shirt off?”
“I need to get home,” I whisper.
“It’s Saturday,” he groans, reaching for me. “Why are you dressed already?”
“I have to go,” I tell him again softly.
“No, please don’t go. Stay awhile. Come on, when are we gonna be able to do this again?”
I sit down on the bed next to him and let him pull me close because I don’t know when we’ll do this again. If we’ll do this again. My head is resting on his shoulder; his arm is around me. I close my eyes, and I feel the rise and fall of his chest. It would be easy to stay like this. I almost let myself float back to sleep, but then he inhales deeply and says, “Edy?”
“Mm-hmm?”
“Can we talk about last night?”
I’m not entirely sure which part of last night he wants to talk about— Josh, our fight, or our latest sad and humiliating attempt at intimacy—but I feel like the conclusion is going to be the same no matter what.
“Do we have to?” I ask him.
“Well, kind of,” he says, sitting up, making me sit up along with him. He maneuvers around so that we’re facing each other, and he rubs the sleep out of his eyes. “Right?”
“Probably,” I admit.
He takes my hand and kisses it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “What for?”
“Everything.”
“Steve, stop, you don’t have to—”
“No, I knew I was pressuring you to come out last night. I just wanted you there. But that was selfish. And I know I was really out of line when I said that stupid shit about you and . . . him.” I guess he can’t bring himself to say Josh’s name. Sometimes I can’t, either, but I’m guessing it’s for a very different reason in Steve’s case.
“Thanks.”
“And then here, in bed,” he begins but pauses, touching his mouth, suppressing the urge to bite a fingernail. “I feel like I really messed up.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I gave you a panic attack, Edy.”
“It really wasn’t your fault,” I try to tell him, but that’s not entirely true. “Please just tell me what I did so I don’t do it again.”
He’s looking at me so intently, holding his breath, like maybe whatever he’s thinking he did is worse than what actually happened. “It’s not—it wasn’t that bad,” I begin, and he leans in closer. “You just, like, sort of grabbed my arms.”
“Okay,” he says, expecting more from me. “Pretty hard,” I add.
“Oh,” he breathes, his eyebrows squishing together. “I mean, you were holding me down. Really hard.”
“Well, but I thought you wanted it like that.” He looks down at the rumpled sheets, the spot where we were lying as if he’s replaying it. “You were enjoying it, I thought?”
“I—I was,” I assure him. “Until then, anyway. I couldn’t move and I got really scared and I was trying to tell you to stop and I felt like you weren’t listening to me.”
“I did, though. I did stop. I stopped right away.”
I don’t remember that. I don’t remember him stopping. But then, I don’t really know what happened between that being-pulled-underwater feeling and jumping up, already mid– anxiety attack. “You did?” I ask.
“Of course,” he insists, taking both of my hands now. “Of course I did. I swear I stopped the second you said stop. You—you believe me, don’t you?”
“I believe you; I just can’t remember,” I admit, and I’m not sure which one of us is more upset by that realization. “It made me think of . . . what happened. I mean, he did that too. Kevin,” I add, because DA Silverman
told me I needed to practice saying his name with confidence and stop sounding so uncertain.
“Jesus, I didn’t realize,” Steve says, rubbing his forehead. “I’m so sorry.” “I know. It’s—”
“But you know I would let you up. I mean, I didn’t even think I was holding you down that hard in the first place. I figured you could get up if you . . .” But his words fade as I shake my head. I think he’s only realizing right now how easily he could overpower me if he wanted to because he leans over my lap and kisses both my wrists in the place where his hands had been. When he sits back up, his eyes are shiny. “You know I wouldn’t hurt you or try to force you—”
“I know, I know that.” At least, my head knows that. My body hasn’t gotten the message though. “But at the moment, that’s not what I was thinking about.”
He nods and clears his throat like he’s about to say something else, but he hesitates before continuing.
“What?”
“I love you,” he says quietly.
I look down at our hands, and I feel this massive pressure climbing up the back of my throat. Last night I didn’t care about love, but this morning I have to care.
“You don’t have to say it back,” he adds. “But I do, I love you.” Every time he says it, I feel like he’s stabbing me in the heart. “I’ve loved you since Yearbook Club ninth grade, hell, probably even since middle school.”
“No, Steve,” I say, and I let go of one of his hands so I can rub the tears collecting at the corners of my eyes. “You don’t.”
“Don’t tell me how I feel,” he argues gently as he reaches up to touch my face.
“Okay, I won’t tell you how you feel, but can I tell you what I think?” He nods.
“I think you love the person you knew back then, the person you believe I can become again one day. But that’s not the same as loving me the way I am now.”
“Edy, don’t say that. That’s not—”
“No, even that, Steve. Edy. I don’t want to be called ‘Edy,’ and everybody calls me that anyway. But I’m not her.” I can’t hold back now; I
can’t do this halfway. “I’m not her and I—I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
“What are you saying?” he asks, biting his lip, like he’s afraid to let the words out. “Are you . . . ? You’re not breaking up with me?”
I nod, and he lets his head fall into his hands. I hate that this isn’t the first time I’ve made Steve cry. “I’m sorry.” I reach out but can’t quite make myself touch him. “I wanted this to work, I swear, I really did.”
He looks up at me with tears in his eyes. “It could if you tried,” he pleads.
“You think I’m not trying?” My voice breaks over the words, but I continue. “Every minute I’m trying. So hard. Too hard.” And now we’re both crying. “Do you hate me?” I ask him. “Please don’t hate me.”
He shakes his head, and now he leans into me, and for the first time ever, I’m the one to hold him. My arm falls asleep, but I don’t move.
“Steve?” I finally say after our breathing slows and there are no more gasps or sniffles.
“Yeah?” he answers, his voice ragged.
“You really are a ten, you know that, right?” He laughs. “You’re a liar.”
“I am not.”
He looks up at me and smiles. “Can I tell you something else?” He nods.
“I’m not coming back to school.”
He opens his mouth but then closes it.
“I just can’t handle it there,” I explain. “Too much has happened.”
“I know,” he says, laying his head back on my shoulder. “Can we stay like this just a little longer?” he asks.
“Sure,” I answer.
JOSH
I wake up in my bed. The light coming in from the window is so bright it feels like I’m staring directly into the sun. I close my eyes again, and I have this flash of my dad and Dominic walking me up the stairs. Through my bedroom door. Dumping me onto my bed.
Still in my clothes from yesterday, I check my pockets for my phone. Not there. I sit up, and my body is so heavy, my head pounding. I feel all around the bed, look under the sheets, on the floor. I stand up and am immediately knocked back down by gravity.
Slower this time, I stand again. I check my desk, move papers around, toss books on the floor. It’s not here. I start walking toward my door. I’ll retrace my steps. I must’ve dropped it.
My mom comes in first. “Josh, why are you throwing things around?” “I’m not throwing anything; I’m looking for my phone,” I tell her. “Have
you seen it? I think it fell out of my pocket.”
“Your phone can wait,” my dad answers, suddenly there in my doorway. They come inside like they’ve been standing in the hall all morning, just waiting for me to wake up. Mom flips the covers back over my bed and sits down on top of it, patting the spot next to her.
“We need to talk, sweetheart,” Mom says. “Sit down.” Dad nods in agreement and steps forward.
I sit. The last time they sat me down like this was when I was ten and our first cat died.
“What happened?” I ask.
“You tell us,” Dad answers. “What do you mean?”
“Josh,” Mom says, suddenly irritated. “Last night. What the hell happened?”
“Nothing happened.” My head cracks open with each syllable they force me to speak.
“Joshua,” Mom says, pulling out the full name. “You couldn’t make it through the door without—”
“That’s what this is all about?” I try to laugh like I’m not about to die. “You guys are overreacting. I drank too much. Everyone there drank too much.”
“Oh, well, if everyone was doing it”—Mom throws her hands up—“then never mind; it’s fine.”
“It was one night.” I can’t believe they’re coming down on me like this. “It’s not like I was driving.”
“It’s not like you were walking by the end of it, either,” Dad accuses.
I stand up now. I’m not taking this sitting down. Certainly not from him. “Can I not have one fuck-up?” I say, feeling my heart pumping faster.
They just stare at me.
“No, I’m actually asking,” I tell them. “I did nothing wrong in high school, do I need to remind you? I never skipped school, didn’t drink, never did drugs, never even smoked once. Hell, I never even got a detention!”
“You’re not in high school anymore,” Mom says.
“Fine. Exactly. I’m not a kid. I don’t even live here anymore. I’m twenty years old, and this is the first time I’ve ever—”
“This was not the first time you’ve been this drunk, Joshua,” Mom interrupts, standing back up now too. “Though I’m grateful you didn’t come home beaten up this time.”
“Mom,” I begin—how could she bring that up? “That was different.” “Whoa, wait, what do you mean?” Dad says, giving us the time-out sign
with his hands just like he used to do when he coached my peewee games and the ref would call a foul on me. “When did he get beaten up?”
“Winter break. His senior year, Matt,” Mom says, practically pulling the exact date out of her brain. When I got in a fight with Eden’s brother, or rather when he got in a fight with me; it actually wasn’t much of a fight at all since I could barely muster the will to even defend myself.
“Of course you would remember the one time I actually dared to act my age, right?” I snap at her, and her eyes widen with my betrayal—we’ve always been on the same team.
“Stumbling home drunk with bloody knuckles and bruises and a black eye is not acting like any age. It’s acting foolish and dangerous. And no,
you’re wrong. This . . .” She waves her hands over me. “This is all too similar.”
“Why am I just hearing about this?” Dad asks, talking over Mom. “How is this similar?” I say, ignoring him.
“Why am I just now hearing about this?” Dad repeats, louder.
“You were there, Matthew!” Mom yells at my dad. “How could you forget this? That girl’s brother attacked him.”
“Okay, he did not attack me,” I try to say, but she’s focused on Dad now. Of course he doesn’t remember. He was drinking back then, among other things.
“This is all over the same girl as last time,” she tells him, then turns on me again. “Josh, every time you get involved with this girl—”
“Will you stop calling her ‘this girl,’ Mom?”
“So, this is the same girl from a few months ago, too?” Dad says, catching up too slowly for Mom’s rapidly dwindling patience.
“This is not over Eden. It’s not over anything. It’s not even anything!”
She looks back and forth between us, shaking her head as she walks out of my room, muttering, “I can’t with you two right now. I just can’t.”
As she exits, the air in the room feels slightly lighter. I exhale, roll my neck from side to side. “Have you seen my phone?” I ask him, resuming my search under my bed.
“No. Joshie,” he says, all exasperated. “Forget about the goddamn phone and talk to me.”
“Talk about what?” I sit back down on my bed, suddenly dizzy after bending over.
“Dominic said you ran into the girl—this ex-girlfriend—at some concert, and next thing it’s this again, you’re falling-down drunk. So, what happened?”
As I look up at him, meeting his eyes, I have the strongest urge to laugh. Because of course he wants to talk about her now. “Dad, you know her name. If you call her ‘the girl’ one more time, I swear to God—” But I stop myself; there’s no point in arguing. “And besides, I already said this has nothing to do with her. It was a party. There was drinking. End of story.”
“Eden,” he corrects himself. “Okay? I remember her name is Eden. What’s the deal exactly with this g—with Eden?” he asks. Then he steps closer, lowering his voice. “What is it? Just say it, Josh. You can tell me.”
“Tell you what? I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Is she pregnant?”
“What?” I stand up again. “What are we even talking about?”
“Did you get her pregnant?” he repeats quieter, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. He’s looking at me so earnestly, so concerned and ready to step in and help that I do laugh now. “Hey, I’m serious here. Is that what’s been tormenting you? Because we can figure it out.”
“No, I didn’t get her pregnant, Dad. But that was a good guess. Do you wanna try again?”
“I am trying, I promise.”
“You really don’t remember anything I told you, do you?”
He closes his eyes, as if I’m the one hurting him rather than the other way around. My dad has blacked out huge portions of my life, and most of them I couldn’t care less about, but this was one of the big ones I needed him to remember. And it’s clear it’s just not there. He has no recollection of me pouring my heart out to him, telling him everything, begging for advice, reassurance. Of course, it wasn’t until he came over to my side of the kitchen table and put his arm around me that I smelled the alcohol on him. It wasn’t until I stopped crying that I recognized that vacant look in his eye. “I wanted to talk to you about this back in December. I came to you then.
Do you remember at all?” I ask him. “I’d understand if you don’t, since it turned out you were in the middle of a bender at the time.”
“I remember you were very upset. I do remember that. I’ve tried to talk to you about this since, and you’ve pushed me away every time. You didn’t even come home over the holidays, Josh—”
“Yeah, I really didn’t want to see you,” I tell him, not caring if I hurt his feelings.
“And you know what? I understand that,” he says, “but let’s deal with this thing now.”
“Does Mom even know, or does she think you’ve been sober this whole time?”
“She knows about my relapse, yes. But I’m back on track now and . . .” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a token I’ve seen so many times before. “Got my ninety-day chip just last week.”
“You know what, Dad? I don’t care. Get high. Drink yourself to death. I honestly don’t care. I can’t care anymore.” I start toward the door. “I need to find my phone. Do you mind?”
“Joshie, come on.” He holds his hands up like he’s not going to let me pass. “I’m listening now. You needed me and I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry if my not being there is why things have been going off the rails for you lately, but you can’t mess up everything you have going for you because you’re mad at me.”
“Not everything is about you! Believe it or not, I have my own problems that have absolutely nothing to do with you.”
“You’re clearly numbing yourself. You’ve been reckless. You’re throwing basketball away—throwing your future away.”
“Basketball?” I scoff. “Basketball is not my future.”
“And if you’d been kicked off the team for showing up drunk to that game at the beginning of the year, what would’ve happened then, huh? Your scholarship would’ve been pulled. Do you know how many hours I spent on the phone with your coaches, with the dean, with your adviser, to make sure you only got benched for the rest of the semester?”
“I wasn’t drunk,” I lie. I’d been in that black hole, as D called it, all of winter break. I barely left the apartment. I was sick over Eden, over my dad, over me—not being able to do anything about any of it. And I was sick of feeling sick. So, I had some drinks before the game. It worked. I felt better. I didn’t think I was drunk, though. Didn’t think anyone would notice. But Coach did. He noticed right away and had one of the assistants drive me home before anyone else noticed too.
Dad stands there staring at me with his jaw clenched, holding back his words.
“I was sick,” I tell him. He thinks that’s a lie too but I can’t explain why it’s not, so I continue, “And I never asked you to do that—I would’ve dealt with the consequences myself.”
“You were hungover,” he says, thinking he’s correcting me. “Like you are right now.”
“You of all people?” I shout at him. “How can you stand there and lecture me?”
“Because I know better than anyone!” he yells back. “Don’t do this to yourself. God, you’re so much like me,” he mutters to himself. “Please don’t be like me.”
“I am nothing like you; stop saying that!” All the yelling is making my head throb, my heart pound, my stomach queasy. “Dad, move—I’m gonna throw up,” I manage to say, dodging past him.
I make it to the bathroom, and as I empty my entire body, Dad keeps patting my back. “Get it out,” he’s saying, over and over. “Get it out. You’re gonna be fine.”
After I’m sure I’m finished, I sit on the floor with my back against the wall. The cold tiles feel good against my skin. I watch as my dad gets a washcloth from the cabinet and runs it under water from the sink. He wrings it out and then sits down next to me. He places the washcloth on the back of my neck.
“Stop, Dad.” I push his hands away. “I’m only trying to help.”
I toss the washcloth up onto the counter because some part of me doesn’t really want to feel better. I won’t say that, though; that would only make him think there’s even more wrong with me than he already does.
He sighs, and because I don’t want any more lecturing, I open my mouth.
The first thing that comes out is “Mom’s wrong about Eden.” “All right?” he prompts. “I’m listening.”
“None of this is because of her. Okay, maybe it’s partially because of her, but not because of anything she did. She didn’t do anything to me. I just . .
.”
“You what?” he asks, nudging me in the arm. “Tell me what’s going on then. Please.”
“She’s special. I really care about her.” “But?”
“Don’t tell Mom about this, all right? I’m really not supposed to be talking about it.”
He holds both hands up in front of his chest and shakes his head. “You know I can’t promise until I know what it is.”
“She was raped.”
He clicks his tongue. “Jesus.”
“It happened before we were together. And I didn’t find out until after we broke up. A long time after we broke up. She just told me a few months ago and—”
“In December?” he asks.
I nod. “And I’ve just been so . . . I don’t know. I was the first person she ever told about what happened, and I didn’t know what to do or say.” I stop myself from saying, which is why I needed you. “I felt helpless. Hell, I still feel helpless.”
“I’m sorry,” Dad says.
“I guess I just wish I would’ve known earlier about what happened. I feel like I should’ve known, anyway, without her having to tell me. Like maybe I could’ve done something to help her. I don’t know, it’s like a million thoughts running through my head all at once. Like what if I did anything when we were together to make things worse for her? If I wasn’t paying attention or I pressured—”
“Do you mean sexually or . . . ?” For all his faults, he has always been easygoing about this kind of stuff, so I know his question is strictly for clarity—no judgment involved.
I nod. “Mostly, yeah. But other times too.”
“Come on, Josh. You’ve always been a stand-up guy. I’m sure you were a gentleman.”
“How can you be sure? I’m not. There were times I got really mad at her, lost my patience. But only because I didn’t understand what was going on. Now that I do, I’ve questioned a lot of what happened between us. Sometimes I wish I could do our whole relationship over. If I could do it differently, I would.”
“It’s never too late to try again. Right?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, it’s probably better that we stay just friends. It feels too . . . complicated,” I land on, borrowing Hannah’s word from last night. “That is, until I see her, and then it feels like it would be so freaking easy. But now she’s with someone else, and anyway, there’s this age difference—”
“Oh.” He breathes the word, the subtlest interruption, and I can see the worry stitching across his forehead. “How much of a difference are we talking about here, Josh?”
“She’s seventeen. So, it’s not terrible, but it’s—it’s there. We were only two grades apart in school,” I try to explain. “Anyway, she’s about to graduate.”
“All right,” he says, seeming to relax a bit. “Go on, sorry.”
“I want to . . . ,” I begin. “I don’t know, I just can’t . . . I guess I thought .
. .” But I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say, not sure what I want anymore, what I think. “I just thought I’d moved on,” I finally admit.
He sighs and squeezes my shoulder, holding the space for those words to exist for a minute. “Well, it sounds like you’re going to have to find a way
to really move on, bud. A different way than this,” he says, gesturing all around us—this, meaning hungover and half-dead on the bathroom floor.
“Yeah,” I agree.
“Grab a shower. Drink some water. Take a nap.” Dad pats my back again as he stands. “You’re gonna be okay, I promise.” And he leaves me in the bathroom, closing the door gently behind him. “I’ll find your phone,” he calls to me from the hall.
EDEN
I wait until I’m out of the shower, in clean clothes, sitting at my desk in my bedroom, calm and collected, before I finally look at his texts.
It was nice to run into you tonight. I’ve missed talking to you.
I’m sorry if I made things weird with your boyfriend. He seemed pretty pissed. I
hope he understood . . . the way things are between us. Do you want me to tell
him there’s nothing going on? I will if you need me to. I just want you to be happy
Can I see you again before I head back to school?
I’ve missed talking with you too
You didn’t make things weird, they just . . . were
Tell me when/where. I’ll be there.
I wait an hour. I even call. I wait another thirty minutes. As I’m walking up to his house, I’m going over all the times I’ve done this before. In the dark. In the cold. Their house never changes. His cat darts off the porch as I approach, prancing down the steps like she was expecting me. When I reach down to pet her, I see something in the crack between the steps and the shrubbery. And as I get closer, I can tell it’s a phone. I pick it up and turn it over in my hands. Josh’s phone. The screen is cracked; the power is off.
The door swings open before I have the chance to knock. “Oh!” I yelp, jumping back, nearly dropping Josh’s phone.
“I’m sorry,” the man who is basically an older version of Josh says. I’m momentarily muted as I take in the similarities. Same stature, same build, same facial structure, same eyes. If not for his weathered features or his salt-and-pepper hair, slightly different nose, this is Josh. “Can I help you?”
“Oh, um, I found this,” I tell him, holding the phone out. “It was lying in the walkway. I texted him, but I guess he didn’t get it. I called, too. Obviously this is why he didn’t answer.” I’m rambling now, and I can’t seem to stop myself. “But I thought maybe I should just come to see him instead. I wasn’t sure how long he’ll be staying in town and didn’t want to miss him.”
“Eden?” he asks, squinting at me as he takes the phone.
“Oh, right. Sorry, yes. I’m Eden.” I fidget as I stand there, getting so nervous—I hadn’t thought about his parents being here on a Saturday morning. Parents tend to hate me. Like they can smell trouble on me, fear that I’ll rub off on their kids.
“Matt,” he offers, pointing at himself, and I immediately think of the time Josh told me his middle name. Joshua Matthew Miller, he’d said, and I thought that sounded like the best name in the world. “The dad,” he adds when I don’t respond.
“Right, of course. Hi,” I say stupidly. “Is, um, is Josh home?”
The door opens wider, and his mom steps forward. I saw her only once before, when she was picking Josh up from school one day, but I immediately see Josh in her too. The same nose, same pretty mouth. But there’s a tightness in her features, a sharpness in her jaw as she meets my eyes.
“This isn’t a good time,” she tells me.
“Oh, sure. Okay, yeah.” I fumble with my words. “Can you let him know I stopped by?” I ask, and instantly regret it as his mom levels me with the most intense glare I think I’ve ever received from anyone and turns away without another word, leaving his dad there.
“S-sorry,” I stutter involuntarily, as I back away from the door. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”
“No, wait,” his dad says, and steps out onto the porch, pulling the door closed behind him. “There’s no need to apologize, you just caught us on a rough morning here.”
I nod. Of course I understand. I’m having a pretty rough morning myself. I don’t say that, though. I look around, trying to get my bearings, and that’s when I realize his car isn’t here. “Is Josh . . . okay?” I ask, my eyes setting anew on the shattered screen of his phone in his father’s hand.
“He’ll be fine,” he answers, which worries me even more.
I feel my hand go to my heart as it starts racing with my darkening thoughts. “His car’s not here. Nothing happened, right? There wasn’t some kind of accident or—I mean, he’s all right. Right? He’s not hurt or anything?”
“No,” he’s quick to answer. “God, no. Nothing like that. He’s just nursing a pretty wicked hangover this morning.”
“Josh is?” My voice squeaks. None of that makes sense. “But I saw him last night. He wasn’t drinking. He doesn’t drink,” I tell his father, who continues looking at me in a way that’s eerily similar to how Josh looks at me when he seems to think I know more than I’m letting on.
“Well,” he breathes. “He sure did last night.”
“Oh.” I exhale and let my hand fall to my side. “Okay. Will you tell him I came by?” I ask again, pretty sure his mom isn’t going to let him know.
“I can see you care about him,” he says. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah, I care about him more than . . .” I feel a little embarrassed at my honesty, but it makes his dad take another step toward me and I think maybe he’ll tell Josh I’m here after all. “Anyone,” I finish.
But he doesn’t let me in; he nods somberly and sits down on the top step of the porch. “You got a minute?” he asks.
I nod. He gestures for me to sit down. I do. He doesn’t say anything at first, and I start to wonder if I’m supposed to be speaking. I really don’t know the parental protocol here. He pats his shirt pocket and pulls out a soft
pack of cigarettes, which looks rumpled and crushed like it’s been around for a while. “Do you mind?” he asks me, tapping the pack against his palm, a lighter tumbling out.
“No,” I tell him. “It’s okay.”
He pulls a cigarette from the pack and brings it to his lips. Lighting it, he lets the smoke curl around us, and I feel my heart race, longing for that sense of relief.
He takes a deep inhale, holding the smoke in his lungs before saying, “Always trying to quit, but…” He turns his face away, exhaling a long stream of smoke. I’m tempted to ask for one, but then he stubs it out on the concrete step after just that one deep drag. I wonder if I’d have that kind of self-control.
“I remember when Josh was a kid; he loved comic books.” He smiles, gazing into the yard. “We’d always read them together.”
I smile back, but I’m not sure where this conversation is going.
“Every superhero has a fatal flaw,” he continues. “With Josh, he’s always been the kind of person who looks put together. It’s easy to forget that doesn’t reflect what’s really going on inside. I’ve always thought that was sort of his fatal flaw.”
“I get that,” I reply, and he studies me, trying to gauge whether I truly understand or if I’m just being polite.
“He’s become such a good person—probably in spite of me, as you’ve noticed,” he adds quickly. “I’m so proud of him, but I worry about him,” he confesses. “He cares so much about everyone else, wanting to make sure everyone’s okay. But sometimes I think he gets so caught up in that, he forgets to take care of himself. That really worries me.”
I hold my breath, then exhale a short, nervous laugh. “I can’t tell if you’re blaming me or asking me to help.”
“Neither,” he says, standing up, bringing the shorted cigarette with him. “I just thought you should know.”
“Okay.” I stand up too. “Thanks for letting me know.” “It was nice meeting you, Eden,” he tells me.
“Yeah, same.” I take only a couple of steps before I turn around. “Um, maybe don’t tell him I was here, then. I’ll just—I can catch up with him some other time, I guess. A better time,” I add, thinking of his mom’s words.
He gives me a classic crooked Josh smile as he holds up the phone. “I’ll make sure he gets this.”
