JOSH
I left her asleep in my bed this morning. She didn’t even stir when my alarm went off at five. I was so tempted to stay with her. But I’m not quite off the coach’s shit list yet, so I can’t afford to be late to a single practice or workout if I have any hope of playing this season.
The first month of the semester has flown by. Between my practice schedule and Eden working, plus our course loads, it seems like we have less and less time for each other every day.
ChatGPT said:
I get through morning training from six to eight, followed by a team meeting before my first class at nine. I send her a quick “good morning” text on my way, but she’s usually too rushed to reply until after her first class ends at ten thirty. With only an hour between morning classes, it’s straight back to prep for practice.
I hate that we have so little time to relax together. If we weren’t in the same building, I don’t know how we’d manage to see each other at all. She picked up a second job at the café across from our apartment, but the manager is already being difficult about her availability. I don’t know what he expects; it’s a college town, and everyone’s schedules are all over the place. I sometimes go in to study while she’s working on weekends. I tell her it’s just to spend more time with her, which is mostly true, but I also don’t trust that guy. He seems to have it out for her, constantly criticizing her and demanding she come in early or stay late.
I witnessed one incident when she accidentally dropped a mug and it shattered on the floor.
For a moment, she laughed, embarrassed—it was charming and everyone else smiled sympathetically. But as she knelt to clean it up, the manager stormed over, red-faced, and tossed a rag next to her, muttering, “It’s not funny. Pay attention. If you can’t be more careful, you can’t work here.”
The way he said it was over the top, way too angry for a broken mug. I saw her flinch, fear flashing in her eyes for just a second. It made me stand up and walk over, not even knowing what I was going to do, but I felt this intense urge to confront him, to grab his stupid apron and shove him against the wall. It wasn’t a familiar feeling for me, and I didn’t like how quickly it surged up.
“Look, I distracted her,” I told him. “I’ll pay for the mug.”
He didn’t even speak to me; he just glared at us both and walked away.
I squatted next to her and said quietly, “You absolutely do not need to put up with that shit.”
“Please,” she scoffed. “I’ve dealt with bigger douchebags than him. But you should probably go. You didn’t make me drop the mug, but your face is very distracting. Plus, all these girls keep checking you out. I’m getting jealous.”
I looked around. No one was checking me out. But someone was checking her out. A guy in the kitchen was watching her through the window where the servers pick up the food, his eyes lingering for just a little too long. I stared him down until he walked away.
I really want her to quit the second job. Not only because I hate her boss and her creepy male coworkers, but we’re not even one full month into the semester and she’s already running herself ragged. The only nice part of being so busy is that it makes the time we do have feel more special.
Her classes are all on the opposite side of campus. Most days we can at least walk home together, though. Sometimes we can sneak a lunch in. Today I stop by the student union for sandwiches and then have to jog to the library if I want to make it in time to see her at all before I have to head back to the athletic center to get changed for afternoon practice.
I smuggle the paper bag of food in my backpack and head up to the fourth floor of the Arts and Sciences Library. I find her toward the end of one of the aisles, near our spot in the back corner, where we can usually get a few minutes of privacy. I stand there and watch her for a minute. She has a cart of returned books she’s supposed to be shelving, but she’s standing on top of one of those little plastic stepstools, flipping through the pages of a book, before she reaches up to place it in its designated spot on the shelf.
Then she takes down the book next to it and starts skimming the pages instead. I glance at the titles as I walk toward her. Biographies, looks like. She’s so absorbed, she doesn’t even notice I’m standing right next to her.
“Excuse me, miss?” I whisper.
“God!” she yelps, and the book she was holding clatters to the floor. “Shh,” I tell her, bending down to pick it up. “This is a library.”
As she takes the book from me, she smiles and says, “When are you going to stop sneaking up on me?”
“I wasn’t trying to—you’re just very focused.”
She looks both ways before reaching out to pull me closer and leans down to kiss me. “So this is what it feels like to be tall,” she muses, still standing on the stool and a full two inches taller than me. “It’s a whole different world up here.”
“Want me to start carrying around a stool for you everywhere we go?” I ask.
“Why do I think you’re not entirely joking?”
“Hey, if you really wanted that, you know I would do it.” I hold her hands as she steps down and pull her in for a hug. “Hungry?” I ask.
She nods and checks again to be sure no one will see us, as we go to the end of the aisle and make our way to our corner table, which is hidden from view. As I unpack our sandwiches, she leans her head on my shoulder and groans, “I wish we could go home and lie in bed all day.”
“So do I,” I sigh. “You were out cold this morning. How late did you stay up last night?”
“I don’t know,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “I had a lot of reading to catch up on.”
I touch her face; she has these dark circles under her eyes. “Baby, you look so tired.”
“It’s okay, I can sleep in tomorrow; I don’t have to be at the café until the afternoon. Still on for date night tonight, right?” she asks.
“Definitely,” I tell her. “Practice ends at six, but if I hurry I can probably be home by like six forty-five-ish.”
“You don’t have to rush,” she says, covering her mouth as she takes a bite of her sandwich. “Our reservation isn’t until eight.”
“Reservation? Fancy.” I wait a beat, try to judge her mood a little better. “Are you proposing?”
She coughs and widens her eyes at me. “It’s not that fancy.”
I laugh. But if she were, I’d totally say yes.
“You’re insane, you know that?” she says with a grin.
“Me? You’re the one proposing after one month,” I joke. “Let’s at least get it straight; it’s more like three years.” “So, you are proposing?”
She shakes her head, trying not to laugh. “Oh my God, you’re ridiculous.”
I nudge her shoulder with mine. “You love it.” She nods. “Mm-hmm. You’re right, I do.”
We’re kissing when someone clears their throat. “Oh,” Eden says. “Hey.”
“Uh, sorry.” A boy who looks too young to be in college is standing there
—I can see he has the same work-study ID badge Eden has. “We need some help downstairs at the circulation desk.”
“Sure, yeah. Sorry. I was just taking a quick break.” He shrugs and shuffles back down the aisle.
She stands and takes one more bite before wrapping up the second half of her sandwich, trying to stuff it in the pocket of her hoodie. “Obvious?” she asks.
“No,” I lie. “Just make sure you finish that at some point.”
“I will.” She squeezes my hand before walking away, turning around to whisper-shout, “I’m picking you up at seven forty-five— don’t forget.”
I finish my lunch and check my phone. I forgot my dad texted when I was in line at the sandwich shop.
Your mom and I are looking forward to seeing you for your bday next week. The big 21! Tuesday still good? Can’t wait
to meet Eden.
Except I haven’t exactly told Eden that my parents will be here or that they want to take us out for dinner, get to know her. I haven’t wanted to stress her out or put any extra pressure on her. But I’m going to have to. Tonight. I’ll tell her tonight.
EDEN
I sit in the back of the lecture hall so I can slip out a few minutes early without drawing too much attention. I’ve come early to each of my classes this week to explain why, so soon in the semester, I’d have to be out next week. I got the time off cleared with the library and sort of cleared with Captain Douchebag at the café. I traded shifts with someone, but he said he still needed to approve it.
At this point, let him fire me. There are at least five more coffee places in a ten-minute radius of campus. I’m sure at least one of them is hiring.
I walk to my next class, fast, on a mission. This is the last formal explanation I’d need to give. I’m a witness in a court case in my hometown; I have to appear at a hearing next week, so I’ll need to miss class. That was the statement it took me and my therapist the better part of my last fifty- minute phone session to figure out. And that was what I told every one of my professors. Each time, it went over pretty well. No real follow-up questions or concerns. No emotional outpourings on my part.
I have my lines memorized.
I make my way down the steps to the lecture hall floor, where my professor’s standing at the podium trying to connect her laptop to the projector, muttering, “Goddamn thing!” And there’s something so human about her, all frustrated, that reminds me of my mom.
“Um, hi—sorry,” I say as I approach.
She looks up at me and brings her glasses down from the top of her head, puts them on before speaking. “Hello, what can I do for you?”
“My name’s Eden McCrorey. I’m in your World History section this afternoon.”
She nods and glances back down at her laptop, not quite paying attention. “Okay . . . and?” she mumbles, distracted. Again reminding me of my mom.
I take a deep breath. “It’s just that I’m going to have to miss class next week.”
She removes her glasses now and stares at me, as if to say, Oh, really?
I open my mouth to continue, but I realize I’ve already messed up the order of my lines.
“I mean,” I try to start over, “I have to appear as a witness in a trial in my hometown. Or, not a trial.” I stumble and fall over the words. “Yet, anyway. It’s actually just a hearing.” But then I have my therapist’s voice in my head, saying, Don’t minimize, don’t apologize. “Well, not that it’s just a hearing,” I add.
She takes a step toward me and turns her head slightly, like she’s having trouble understanding me. I’m not explaining this right. This wasn’t what I was supposed to say.
“It—it’s just a preliminary hearing,” I stutter. “To see if there’s going to even be a trial.”
I take a breath and pinch the bridge of my nose. Hard. Trying to drive back the tears I’m feeling working their way through my skull. “Um . . . sorry, I just—”
My lungs are suddenly out of air, and I’m having a hard time refilling them.
“Oh,” she coos. “It’s Eden, right?”
I nod, unable to answer her for some reason. And then she’s taking a step toward me, her arms outstretched. I don’t understand. She’s hugging me before I even realize I’ve started crying.
“Oh, sorry,” I sniffle through her poofy hair in my face.
“It’s okay,” she says, and sort of rocks me back and forth. I feel my cheek collapse into her shoulder, I let my weight fall against her. “It’s okay,” she repeats.
Out of nowhere, I’m sobbing like a child in this total stranger’s arms— she’s smaller than me, and I can actually feel my body shaking hers as I clutch the sharp bones of her shoulders. But I can’t stop myself. “Oh my God, I’m really sorry,” I blather, pulling away from her. I pull my sleeves down over my hands and wipe my eyes. But it’s ugly crying, all snotty and gross.
She turns around and goes to her briefcase, rummaging around for a moment before pulling out a tiny rectangular package of tissues. “Here,” she says, pulling one out and handing it to me.
“I’m really sorry,” I repeat. “This is just the fifth time I’ve had to explain this. First time I’ve cried though, lucky you.” I try to laugh.
“It’s quite all right, Eden.” She gives me a frowning smile, a head tilt, and one final pat on the back. “It’s no problem. Why don’t you come to my office hours after you return, and we’ll figure out some way to make up the time?”
“That would be great,” I gasp, my breathing erratic. “Thank you.” Thank you, I silently tell her, for not asking why I’m crying or if I’m okay.
She hands me the whole package of tissues now. “If you need to miss today’s lecture, I can have Lauren, my teaching assistant, send you the presentation.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine, really,” I say by default.
“Self-care is more important than sitting here listening to me bang on for two hours about the politics of ancient Rome. Really,” she says. “Please.”
Say yes, I plead with myself. Just say yes.
“Actually”—gasp, gasp, gasp—“I think that might be helpful if you’re sure you don’t mind. It’s been a really long week.” My therapist would be so proud of me for accepting this small offer of grace.
But now it’s three o’clock in the afternoon and I have nothing I’m supposed to be doing. It’s a strange, unsettling feeling, after months of rushing and endless things needing to be done, to have time. I get a coffee and decide to stop at the store on my way home, thinking maybe I need to stock up on some travel packs of tissues if I’m going to be spontaneously ugly crying in public.
I pass the customer service desk at the front of the store and eye the racks of cigarettes tucked safely behind the counter. I could buy a pack. Just have one, throw the rest away, and feel so much more capable of handling everything right now. I get in line, behind the older woman holding her stack of scratch-off lotto tickets. But I won’t have just one, I know this. And Josh would smell the smoke on my hair, taste it on my tongue. Then he’d worry. I watch as the lady in front of me hands over her winning tickets and the twentysomething cashier scans them, reciting how much each ticket should be worth.
I step out of line. Tell myself I don’t need the cigarettes. I tell myself maybe it’s only hormones—I started on the pill just a couple of weeks ago. I’ve never been on birth control before, and Mara warned me it could mess
with my emotions. I don’t exactly need any more interference on that front, but with the amount of sex Josh and I have been having, I couldn’t risk anything happening. I tell myself it’s this and not that I’m slowly unraveling as the hearing gets closer.
I’m walking up and down the aisles, not even sure what I’m doing. I smell a package of strawberries and set it back down. I pick up a pear and squeeze it gently. I sample a cube of cheddar speared with a toothpick.
I select a bag of organic coffee that is way too expensive and carry it like a baby as I continue down the aisle. And then I see cake and brownie and muffin mixes. I exchange the bag of coffee for a chocolate cake mix.
I’m surprising Josh with a fun dinner at this hibachi place he told me his parents took him to for his birthday last year. I’m trying to do something special to preemptively make up for missing his birthday next week. Of course, I haven’t told him I’ll be gone, because I haven’t told him about the hearing yet. I’ve been telling myself for weeks, Tomorrow. I’ll tell him tomorrow. But then tomorrow never comes.
I take my phone out. It barely rings before my mom picks up.
“Hello?” she answers, sounding alarmed. I can’t remember the last time I called her instead of texting. “Eden, you there?”
“Hi. Yeah. Are you busy?”
“No, not at all,” she says, though I can hear phones ringing in the background at her work. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, I just had the afternoon off and I’m in the grocery store.” “Okay . . .”
“I’m trying to get stuff to make a cake. For Josh’s birthday,” I add. “And I thought maybe you’d have some ideas. I want to do sort of like a peanut butter chocolate flavor.”
“That sounds nice,” she says. “So, things are going well with him? With Josh,” she inserts, making a point to say his name.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “It’s good. Things are good.” “Good.”
There’s a painfully awkward pause.
“Um, so I have this chocolate cake mix, but I don’t see any kind of peanut butter type frosting. I don’t know, I just remember you always made different flavored frostings for our birthday cakes when we were kids.”
She laughs. “Watermelon vanilla. That was your ninth birthday,” she says.
“Right. I remember. That was a good one.”
“Let me see.” I can hear her typing on her work computer. And as I wait, listening to her breathing into the phone, sort of humming to herself as she scrolls, I wish she were with me right now. “Oh, here we go. I think I found something. Yes, this is an easy frosting recipe. All you need is peanut butter, whipped topping, chocolate syrup, and mini peanut butter cups—all of which you should really have stocked in your kitchen anyway, as a college student.”
It takes me a second to realize she actually made a joke. “Oh.” I laugh. “I thought you were serious for a minute there.”
“I am serious! You should have lots of junk food around for all your late- night studying.”
“Okay, I’ll get right on that.”
“I’ll email you the recipe,” she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “Or, I could try to text it.”
“Email’s fine. I can get it on my phone either way.” “Sending now.” I hear her typing again.
“Thanks, I’ll let you know how it turns out.” “Well, let me know if you need help.” “Okay.”
“See you next week. And, Eden?” she adds. “You’ve got this.”
I’m not sure if she’s talking about the cake or the hearing, and I don’t know that I agree with either, but I tell her, “Thanks, Mom.”
A minute after I hang up, I get a notification from my bank that my mom has sent me thirty dollars with the note: For the birthday cake fund!
Since I’ve been away, she’s been surprising me with these small gestures that tell me she really does care that I’m doing all right here.
I decided to buy everything—mixing bowls, a baking pan, a whisk, a spatula, measuring cups—because I correctly assumed we didn’t have any of those things at the apartment.
It feels good to not have to be thinking about anything but whisking the eggs and water and oil into the powdery chocolate mix. To be doing something for someone else.
Parker gets home just as I’m putting the cake in the oven.
“Whoa, what’s happening in here?” she asks, stopping at the kitchen island to run her finger along the inside of the bowl. “I honestly didn’t even
know if that thing worked.” “What, the oven?”
She nods and licks the cake batter off her finger, murmuring, “Yum.” “I’m making a birthday cake for Josh.”
“Aww, roomie.” She gives me these big doe eyes. “That’s really freaking sweet.”
“You’re still coming tonight, right?” I ask her for the twentieth time.
She hesitates. “Actually, I was thinking about staying in because this week has kicked my ass, but okay. You convinced me with this damn cake. What time should I be there?”
“Eight. Sharp. No, seven forty-five. You and Dominic are bringing the balloons with you so he doesn’t suspect anything.”
“So, what you’re saying is I really never had a choice in the matter, did I?”
I smile, shake my head. “Nope.”
“Fine, you master manipulator you,” she says, and drags her bag behind her as she heads to her bedroom. “Grabbing a nap. Wake me at seven fifteen.”
“Okay,” I call after her.
I’ve never had a friend like Parker. But then, I haven’t really had many different kinds of friends at all. I like her, though. She’s not very touchy- feely with emotions or overly polite or warm, but somehow it feels good. She doesn’t seem to mind that Josh is here all the time or that I spend half my time there. She’s comfortable with who she is, and for some reason that makes me feel comfortable too. Like, neither of us has to pretend to be anything other than who we are. Although we have created an alter ego for takeout by combining our names “Kim McCrorey” and “Eden Parker.” We laughed way too hard about it the other night when a delivery guy buzzed up to our apartment and said that he had an order for a Kimberly.
I go to pull up the recipe for the frosting and see that I have a text from my mom:
Hi Eden, Mom here. Remember that you need to let the cake cool for at least
two hours before frosting it. Let it sit out
at room temperature for 30 mins and then you can put it in the fridge for the rest of the time. Love, Mom
If this wasn’t so new for us, maybe I’d poke at her, say something like,
you don’t have to use formal salutations in your texts. But I just write back:
OK, I will. Thx
I follow the directions, step by step, measuring out and mixing in the peanut butter, whipped topping, chocolate syrup, and mini peanut butter cups. I set it in the fridge to chill and sit down on the faded red couch while I wait for the cake to finish baking.
Twenty-three minutes still left on the oven timer. Twenty-three minutes to just sit and do nothing.
My brain jumps on the opportunity to terrorize me with doubts and questions I don’t have answers to. I pull up the emails from Lane that I’ve been avoiding looking at over the past month. She’d offered to hop on the phone with me multiple times to talk through the hearing process. And it’s only right now, at five thirty on the last Friday before everything begins Monday morning, when she’s sure to be out of the office, that I finally feel the urgent need to talk to her. Today’s email from Lane:
Happy Friday, Eden:
Just a reminder that we’re touring the courthouse/courtroom at 8AM Monday. Try to spend some time this weekend reviewing the police report and the statement you gave Det. Dodgson so it’s all fresh in your mind. I know DA Silverman sent over a hard copy, but attached you’ll find a pdf for your convenience.
Make sure you dress in something comfy and natural (modest, for lack of a better word). Think business casual. Let me know if you have any questions.
See you soon, Lane
I wonder if she sent Mandy and Gennifer the same thing. There have been so many times I’ve wondered if the lawyers would really know if we talked, wondered if we could get around the rules. Because on some very deep level, I wanted to know what he did to them, and I wanted them to know what he did to me. Not the details, but more the how of it. I’m not sure why—I guess because I’m still not sure even, all these years later, how it happened to me.
But I resist.
Instead, I search the term business casual and see a lot of blazers over brightly colored tops. I’m thinking anything bright is not the way to go. And I do not own a single blazer.
I finally text Amanda back now. I think about apologizing for taking so long. Trying to come up with an excuse for why it’s taken me a month to get back to her, but she probably doesn’t care about that; she just wants my answer, so I give it to her.
Yes. I’ll be coming back.
I immediately see the three dots beside her name, dancing like excited atoms. I wait for a response. It doesn’t come.
The oven timer goes off. I toss my phone on the couch and run over, opening the oven door and reaching in, forgetting the brand-new set of oven mitts I’d lain out on the counter.
“Shit!” I hiss. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” I whisper as I turn the faucet on and run my hand under the cold water. I look back at the cake sitting there, the oven door wide open like a mouth, and then I watch as two red lines bloom across the palm of my left hand, a bite mark from some kind of rabid animal.
JOSH
She knocks on my door at exactly seven forty-five. I open it, ready, but not prepared for how she looks. “Oh wow.”
She laughs. “Oh wow to you too.”
“Sorry, but you look . . .” She glances down at herself. She’s wearing a dress—the only time I’d ever seen her in a dress before was the first time she ever came to my house. It was supposed to be our first date, except she didn’t want to go anywhere. “You look really . . .”
“Really?”
“Really amazing.”
“You look really amazing,” she says, and pulls me close to her for a kiss. “You ready?”
She leads the way down the stairs and to her car. “We’re driving?”
“It’s not too far, but . . .” She lifts her heel in this adorable way that makes her look like she’s about to dance. “Not in these shoes.”
“Are you sure this isn’t fancy?”
“Oh my God, I’m not proposing, Josh!” She laughs as she unlocks the doors.
I get in and buckle up. “I feel underdressed.” “You’re not, I’m just overdressed.”
“Hmm, well . . . to me, you’re always overdressed.”
“What do you mean?” She side-eyes me as she pulls away from the curb. “I never dress up.”
“No,” I tell her, reaching over to touch her bare knee. “I mean, overdressed as in you’re always wearing too much.”
She gasps, pretending to be scandalized. “Well, I never!” She lets her hand float to her heart, and I notice it’s wrapped in a bandage. “Get your
mind out of the gutter, Miller.” She laughs. “Or at least have the decency to wait until I’ve proposed.”
“Okay, mind officially out of the gutter.” I take her hand and try to see around the bandage. “What the hell happened to your hand?”
“Oh, nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “Just had a little kitchen accident.”
“Did you cut yourself?”
“No, it’s like a tiny burn. It’s fine.”
“Are you sure? That doesn’t look tiny.”
“Yes, I’m sure. I’m tough, you know. I can take a little burn.”
“I know you’re tough.” I bring her hand to my lips and kiss the outside of the bandage, kind of shocked at how upset I feel to know she got hurt in any way. “But still.”
She takes her hand back and touches my face as she glances over at me. “You worry too much.”
“Get used to it,” I tell her. “That’s my whole shtick.”
She smiles but doesn’t say anything. And I’m watching her so closely, I don’t even realize the car has stopped until she turns to look at me and says, “We’re here.”
“Here?” I look out my window. “Wait, we’re going here? The Flaming Bowl. I love this place.”
“I know,” she says with a tiny giggle. “That’s why I brought you.”
We walk in a few minutes before eight. Eden gives the host her name, and we’re directed to the bar area to wait until our table’s ready. I reach for Eden’s hand, but she tenses up and gently pulls away. “Shit, sorry. I forgot.” “It’s okay,” she says softly, and moves to the other side of me, offering
her right hand instead. “I’m not going to break.”
I see Eden look behind me and grin, but before I can ask why, I hear two distinct voices, one in each ear, say in a whisper, “Surprise!”
I jump and spin around. Dominic and Parker are yelping and shouting, “Oh my God, your face!”
“Did you see it?” Parker exclaims, pulling Eden in for a hug as she hands off a bunch of balloons, strings tied together, floating over our heads.
“What . . . what is this?” I ask.
“It’s your surprise birthday party!” Eden shouts, throwing her arms around me.
“My birthday isn’t until next week.”
“I know, that’s the surprise,” she says, laughing. “Are you really surprised?”
“Yes!” I am definitely surprised.
“Thank God you’re finally here. Someone already stopped me to ask where the bathroom was,” Parker says, taking a sip from her tiny ceramic cup of sake.
“Why would someone ask you where the bathroom was?” Eden asks. “Well, because I’m Asian I must work here.”
“Oh my God, what did you say?”
Dominic starts laughing, and so do I. “What am I missing?” Eden asks.
“This happens a lot, you’ll see. So my go-to response is to tell them in Korean I don’t fucking work here, asshole. They walk away real fast.”
“That’s brilliant!” Eden claps and laughs with her whole body.
I look up at Dominic, smiling as he’s watching me watching Eden. “What?” I ask him, moving closer to stand next to him.
He shakes his head and passes me a Coke with lime, which he’s already ordered for me from the bar. “It’s just good to see you happy, that’s all.” He raises his glass. “Happy birthday, man.”
“Thanks.”
All through dinner, we talk and laugh and Eden makes sure she keeps telling everyone it’s my birthday. And the chef keeps calling me “the birthday boy” even while he’s performing all the theatrics of the meal, balancing and chopping and tossing ingredients and setting the whole grill on fire. I would normally feel weird about the special attention—I never used to let my parents tell restaurants it was my birthday when I was younger for fear they’d have the whole staff come out and sing “Happy Birthday.” And that’s exactly what happens. Parker takes a video. I would be embarrassed, with the whole restaurant clapping for me, but I can tell it’s making Eden so happy. And then she kisses me right there in front of everyone— really kisses me—and they all erupt in raucous cheers.
I lean in close and say, “I love you.”
She rests her head on my shoulder for just a moment and says quickly, quietly, “You too.”
After the performance art that is hibachi, we’re left to finish eating. Eden says, “Save room for dessert, everybody.”
Parker sets her chopsticks down and says, “Oh yeah. I got a little sneak peek, and we’re definitely gonna want to save room.”
We all pile into Eden’s car, with our to-go containers and the balloons filling the back seat.
“Thank you,” I tell them again. “This was a really fun birthday surprise.” Dominic says, “It was all your girlfriend.”
My girlfriend, I repeat in my head, I love the way that sounds. “And . . . ,” Eden adds. “There’s still one more thing.”
“More?” I ask.
“Yes, you’re not the only one who can plan multipart dates.”
As we arrive home, Eden instructs Dominic and Parker to escort me to the roof. “I’ll be up in a minute,” she says.
While we wait up on the roof, Parker clears her throat and announces, “So, we’ve been conferring tonight, and we just want you to know that we think you really found a good one.”
“I know I had my share of doubts earlier,” Dominic admits, “but you clearly make each other deliriously happy, so there’s no arguing with that.”
“Not that you need our blessing or anything,” Parker adds. “Just thought we’d give you a little unsolicited feedback.”
Before I can say anything, Eden is backing through the door of the roof, and as she turns around and lets the door fall closed behind her, I see she’s carrying a cake with candles lit all over it. They start singing to me for the second time tonight, and as she sets the cake down on the wicker table, I see that there are tiny peanut butter cups mixed into the frosting.
“Oh my God, you didn’t,” I say. “Peanut butter cups?”
“Make a wish,” she answers, squeezing in next to me on the love seat, draping her arm around my shoulder.
I look over at her and think, I have nothing left to wish for. But I don’t say that. I lean forward and blow out the candles anyway. She kisses me on the cheek, then stands up to get a bag from the corner and pulls out plates and utensils—not paper—that she must’ve brought up here earlier.
“You really planned this all out, didn’t you?” I ask her.
She shrugs, but she can’t hide her smile as she plucks the candles out of the cake and sets them on a napkin. “Okay, since it’s your birthday, you have to make the first cut, and then whoever’s birthday comes next has to take the knife out.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Dominic says.
Parker shakes her head. “Me neither.”
“Really?” Eden asks. “We always did that in my family.”
“I like that tradition,” I tell her. I try to position the knife to make a decent-size slice.
“Bigger,” Parker shouts. “Okay, how’s this?”
“Perfect,” Eden says. “So, who’s birthday is next?” Dominic raises his hand and says, “July.”
“April,” Parker adds.
“Guess it’s me, then. November,” Eden explains, placing her hand over mine on the handle of the knife.
She passes around the plates of cake and distributes the forks, and I can’t help thinking that this is the best birthday I’ve ever had. She watches me as I take a bite. “Do you like it?” she asks.
“It’s delicious.” I take another bite, and now she does too. “But I thought you were anti peanut butter and chocolate?”
“You might have converted me.”
“Josh,” Parker says, “you know Eden made this cake, right?” “Wait, you made this?”
“Well, not from scratch, but yeah.”
“Oh my God, it tastes like it’s from a real bakery.”
She takes another bite. “Okay, it is pretty good. For chocolate peanut butter.”
When we get inside my room, Eden sets her purse on my dresser and slides her shoes off, peels her sweater down her arms and hangs it on the back of my chair. I love that she seems comfortable here. If it weren’t so soon, I’d ask her to move in with me.
“Thank you for tonight.” I wrap my arms around her waist from behind. “You’re so thoughtful, you know that?” I kiss her hair, her neck. “So sweet.”
“Really?” She spins around to face me. “Thoughtful and sweet? No one’s said that to me in a very long time.”
“Well, you are.”
“No, you are,” she says, touching the side of my face with her non- bandaged hand.
“You’re physically incapable of taking a compliment, aren’t you?”
She looks up and smiles in this way that makes me feel almost lightheaded as she brings her arms up around my shoulders. My hands find her hips automatically, and we sort of clumsily sway from side to side a little as we pull each other closer.
“What, are we dancing or something?” she asks. “Why not?” I ask back, rocking her more intentionally. “There’s no music,” she points out.
“Well, there’s music playing in my head,” I joke, committing to this cheesy giddiness welling up inside my chest.
She throws her head back in laughter. “Oh my God, did you really just say that?” She giggles, her whole face lighting up as she moves in to kiss me. “You giant nerd.”
I take her hand from the spot where it’s resting on my neck, raise it in the air, and awkwardly twirl her in a slow circle. As I pull her back in, she pushes up against me, standing on her toes to kiss me again, not laughing this time.
“Look at me,” she says, holding my chin. “I love everything about you.”
I like to think I’m so level all the time, but she can come out of nowhere sometimes, like right now, and say something so wonderful and dizzying it makes me come undone completely. She pulls my shirt off over my head, her mouth on my skin, and I move my hands all over her dress, testing from the top and bottom, trying to figure out which way it comes off. “How do you—I don’t see . . . ?”
“Zipper.” She laughs and turns around so I can unzip her dress. “But wait, there’s a little hook at the top that you have to undo first.”
“I see it.” Carefully, I unlatch the delicate little eye hook and slowly unzip the dress. I trace the curve of her back as the two sides separate. She reaches up to pull her hair out of its clip, and as she runs her fingers through it to shake it out, I can smell her shampoo or whatever it is that never fails to make me want her even more than I always already do.
She moves on top of me as we climb into bed together, her hair falling over my bare skin as she kisses my chest, my arms, my stomach. I don’t know how she can both relax me and turn me on at the same time— something I never knew I was missing out on before her. I can feel her breath as she plants tiny kisses up the center of my body, feel her mouth smiling when she reaches my lips. Then she leans on her elbow, shifting to
the side of me, her hands so warm on my waist as she looks down. “You know I really love you, right?”
“I know,” I tell her, letting my finger trace the shape of her lips. “I really love you too.”
She lays her head against my chest and inhales deeply, arranging herself in my arms. “Can we just lie here for a minute?” she whispers.
“We can just lie here all night.”
She raises her head. “Yeah?” she asks.
“I’m actually really tired,” I admit. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I could definitely rally.”
She releases a short burst of air against my neck, a silent laugh, as she lays her head back down. “I could too,” she says, as she stretches out alongside my body, draping her leg over mine. “But this feels nice,” she whispers.
“It does,” I agree, my arm finding a perfect resting spot along the small of her back.
This would be the time to tell her about my parents coming to visit. I set my other hand on top of hers on my chest, feeling the gauzy bandage underneath. “You burned your hand making my cake, didn’t you?”
“Amateur mistake,” she says. “Forgot the oven mitts.”
I kiss the palm of her hand. “Did you put something on it, like aloe or something?”
She nods. “Yes, don’t worry.”
I wake up to a strange rattling sound I can’t place. I open my eyes and roll over in bed. It takes me a second to remember we’re in my room and not hers. She’s not in bed. I squint as I look across the room.
It’s too dark to see much more than Eden’s silhouette from the moonlight coming in from the window. I’m about to tell her how beautiful she looks, standing there with her back to me.
But then I realize what the noise was.
Pills. I hear the plastic scrape of the lid being twisted back onto the bottle. And I see her arm reach down to stick it back in her purse. She brings her cupped hand to her mouth and picks up an old water bottle on my dresser, tips it to her lips.
When she turns around, I close my eyes. The bed creaks as she climbs in next to me again. Her body feels cold now as she backs up against me and
pulls my arm around her stomach. I feel her inhale deeply and then sigh. “Hey. You okay?” I ask her.
“Mm-hmm,” she hums.
I kiss the back of her neck and pull her closer. “I know it’s not my business, but . . . ,” I start, and she twists around to face me. “What are you taking?” I whisper.
“Oh,” she breathes. “It’s nothing.”
“Well, I’ve seen you do that a few times now, when you think I’m sleeping.” I push her hair back behind her ear, try to be gentle. “I know it’s none of my business,” I repeat. “But are you okay?”
“It’s just to help me sleep.”
“You’re having trouble sleeping again?” “Not again,” she corrects me. “Still.”
How did I not know that? “Oh. I’m sorry,” I whisper. “What can I do?” She curls up to me and says, “This.”
I tighten my arms around her and decide not to mention the other pills I saw in her room.
“It’s not ‘none of your business,’ Josh,” she says. “I was going to tell you; I just didn’t want you to worry.”
“Thanks for telling me now. It actually makes me worry a little less just knowing.”
“Really?” she asks, her voice sounding small in the silence of the night. I nod.
“There’s something else I need to tell you.”
“All right?” I answer, trying to prepare myself to act surprised about the other pills.
“One of the reasons I wanted to have your birthday early,” she begins, “is because I have to be away next week.”
And now she’s surprised me for a second time tonight. “Wait, where?
Why?”
“There’s a hearing. I’ll have to be back home for a couple of days at least. The DA said I should plan for the whole week, just in case.”
“What?” I say too loudly. “But they can’t just expect you to drop everything at the last minute.”
“Yeah,” she whispers, looking down as she runs her fingers along my collarbone, neck, jaw. “I’ve known about it for a few months.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know why she wouldn’t have told me. That’s not the important thing right now, though, so I try to push that out of my head. “I’m coming with you, obviously.”
“No.” She stops touching my face and finally meets my eyes. “It’s really not a huge deal.”
“It is a huge deal.” I sit up now. “Can I just ask, why didn’t you tell me before now?”
She sits up too and pulls the sheet close to her body. “Don’t be mad—” “No, I’m not mad,” I interrupt. “I’m not mad at you at all; I’m just . . .” I
stop myself from saying “worried” and settle on “confused.”
“Things have been so wonderful,” she says, rubbing her head like it hurts.
“Yeah,” I agree. “They have. They are.”
“Well, I didn’t want to ruin it by talking about all this fucked-up shit.” “Okay, but we can’t just ignore it, either.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she snaps at me.
I shake my head. “No, of course not. That’s not what I meant.” She sighs. “I know, sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Jesus Christ. See?” she says, her voice shaking. “This is why. This is exactly why I didn’t want to let this get in.” She waves her hand through the air, this tiny space between us. “It ruins everything.”
“Hey, listen to me,” I tell her, reaching for her hand. “Everything’s fine, okay?”
She starts to shake her head.
“With us, I mean. Everything’s fine with us. Nothing can ruin this.” What I don’t say is that it is already in. It’s always been there. “Let me come with you, though.”
“No.”
“Eden—”
“I won’t be able to do it if you’re there, Josh.”
I can’t imagine what my face is doing right now, but I try my best to wipe it clean of any reaction.
“No, what I mean is, I don’t want you to hear the details. I honestly don’t want anyone to hear any of this.” She pauses and looks at me, waiting, debating. “He’s going to be there. You really want to be in the same room with him?” she asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer. “I don’t.”
“So, you’re just gonna do it alone?” “Yes.”
“What about your mom? I’m sure she’d want to—”
She shakes her head. “She’s testifying too, so she can’t be there for mine; I can’t be there for hers. And I wouldn’t want her to be there anyway. The only way I’m going to be able to do this is by myself.” She stares at me. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“No—nothing. I’m just thinking. Just trying to understand.” Why would she rather do this alone when I’m offering to be there with her? I have so many questions, I barely know where to start. “But I thought your mom didn’t know anything about what happened. She didn’t, right?” I ask, because that would be incredibly fucked up if she did. But what I say is, “What is she going to testify about if she didn’t know?”
“Josh,” she moans, “puh-lease, please, I don’t want to—”
“I just want to help, Eden.” I touch her face, kiss her forehead before she can back away. “I just want to know what’s going on.”
She rolls onto her back and looks up at the ceiling. “My mom didn’t know. But she saw something. Something that she thought was something else.”
“What does that mean?” I ask. “What did she see?”
“The next morning, she saw blood on my nightgown and legs, the sheets.”
Blood. The word echoes in my head. My heart starts racing— no, it races, then stops abruptly, stuttering.
Eden clears her throat and continues, quieter. “She assumed I just got my period. I guess. I mean, why would she think anything else?” she adds, more to herself. “And that morning, I kind of tried to tell her—my brother too—but I didn’t actually tell them. I—I wasn’t clear. I wanted them to guess. I didn’t want to have to say it. I didn’t know how to say it. So, I don’t know. I think they want to know about that morning from my mom and Caelin’s perspectives.”
These are the details. Nightgown. Legs. Sheets. Blood. This is why she doesn’t want me there.
“See?” she asks. “You don’t feel any better knowing that, do you?” “That’s not—that doesn’t matter, I . . .” I try to find the right thing to say,
but I can’t.
“I’m getting tired,” she says, turning to press her back against me, pulling my arm around her again, ending the conversation. She brings my hand to her mouth and kisses my fingertips softly. “Thank you for offering, though, really.”
I try my best to relax, but my whole body is tense now. I hold her while she falls asleep and I try not to think about her blood or nightgown or legs or sheets. Try not to think about her waiting for someone to see, to guess, what had happened. And finally, I try not to imagine what I’d do if I ever found myself in a room with him again.
EDEN
It takes all my willpower to drag myself out of Josh’s bed the next morning. I pull my dress back on and gather my purse and sweater and shoes. He’s lying on his stomach with his arms around his pillow. I sit on the edge of his bed, allowing myself this rare moment of quiet to admire him. I run my hand along his back and lean over to kiss his shoulder, but he’s so tired he doesn’t wake up.
Downstairs, Parker is in the kitchen, stretching, with her earbuds still in
—she’s already been out for a run this morning— drinking one of her healthy green smoothies, looking all glowy and vibrant, compared to me. Dull and exhausted in yesterday’s makeup and messy hair, the zipper of my dress inching down my back with every move I make.
She pulls her earbuds out and laughs when she sees me. “Hey, roomie,” she says. “I see you’re embracing that stride of pride this morning.”
“The what?” I mumble, setting my purse down on the counter and letting my shoes clatter to the floor.
“You know, the trek of triumph, the sultry saunter, the booty-call boun
—”
“Are you just making these up right now?” I ask with a laugh.
“You need to get your nose out of the so-called important lit-tra-ture,” she says, in what I think is supposed to be a British accent. “Pick up a magazine every once in a while, woman.”
“For your information,” I tell her as I pour myself some water from the fridge. “We had a very nice snuggle sesh last night.”
“Snuggles, sure,” she says, lunging forward into a stretch. “You want a smoothie?”
“Ugh, gross. No. I’ll get some coffee at work.”
“Ah, yes. Coffee and no food, the breakfast of champions.”
I open the cabinet and pull out a granola bar. “Happy?”
She brings one arm across her chest and then the other, saying, “I guess.” “Do you need to get in there?” I ask, gesturing to the bathroom. “I have
to get ready.”
“All yours,” she says as she starts to jog off toward her bedroom. “I’m about to hit the pool anyway.”
“Hey, Parker, um, can I . . . ?” I start, not really knowing how to finish.
Turning around, hands poised near her head, about to put her earbuds back in, she looks at me. “What?”
“It’s not a big deal or anything, but I wanted to tell you I’m going to be gone for a few days next week. I just have to go home for something.”
“Oh.” She lets her hands drop and takes a step toward me. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s just—” I could tell her. Right now I could tell her the truth, but something stops me, like always. “Everything’s fine, I’m just letting you know.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” I nod and smile and start pulling back the wrapper of my granola bar. She watches me for a few seconds, until I take a bite and chew and swallow. “Really, that’s all.”
“Okay,” she says slowly, then finally turns to go into her room.
I eat the rest of my granola bar and get into the shower. By the time I get out, Parker’s gone and I’ve worked myself up into a panic just thinking about what’s going to happen this week. My heart is racing and I’m breathing heavy. I walk into the kitchen in a towel, dripping water everywhere, dumping the contents of my entire purse out onto the counter so I can find my pills. I take two. I don’t have time for a fucking anxiety attack right now.
I clock in at 12:02, and Captain Douchebag is standing there at the lockers, waiting to tell me that this is the third time I’ve been late and that I should consider this my verbal warning.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Don’t be sorry,” he snaps at me. “Just get here on time. It’s not that hard.”
He walks away, and as I’m putting my things in my locker, pulling out my apron to tie around my waist, I realize one of the cooks, Perry, has just
caught me rolling my eyes at our manager. But he just nods and laughs silently, thankfully understanding. I sort of shrug and smile in return.
Halfway through my shift, at four o’clock, there’s a girl in line, a little older than me. She’s staring at me. When it’s her turn, she steps up to the counter and smiles in this strange way. Like I should know her, but I don’t.
“Hi,” she says hesitantly, eyes flashing down to read my name tag. “Eden.”
I smile back. “What can I get started for you?”
“Oh, um . . .” She looks all around, confused, as if she suddenly found herself inside a coffeehouse by chance and wasn’t prepared to be asked this question. “Can I just order a . . . ? Oh, I don’t know, what’s your favorite drink?”
“My favorite?” I repeat. “Huh, nobody’s ever asked me that. I guess you can’t go wrong with the pumpkin pie latte. Sometimes I add a little vanilla to it, which I love, but—”
“That sounds great,” she says, her eyes fixed on me so intently I have to look away.
“Great,” I repeat. “For here or to go?”
“Here,” she says, but then quickly adds, “No, actually, to go. I think. Yes, to go.”
“All right, can I get a name?” I ask, marker in hand, tip already pressed against the cup.
“It’s Gen,” she says quietly. “With a G.”
My heart struggles to race, weighted down under the double dose of meds still working through my body. I look at her more closely now, the way she’s been looking at me. I’d searched for her online months ago. In my mind she’s been existing as just a static image on the screen. I recognize her now, but it’s different seeing her in person. “You’re Gennifer?” I breathe. “Gen,” I correct.
She nods, smiles again—I realize she has a very pretty smile, the kind that can cover up all sorts of terrible things. “You wouldn’t be able to take a quick break or anything, would you?”
Perry covers the counter for me while I sit down across from her at a table in the corner.
“Sorry,” she begins. “I was just passing through on my way back for the hearing and I knew you worked here. Your brother mentioned it—I promise
I haven’t been cyber-stalking you or anything.” She pauses and sort of laughs. “I can definitely see the family resemblance.”
“Oh” is all I manage to say. I don’t know why I seem to have forgotten that my brother knows her—they were friends, he’d told me that. They still are, it seems.
“I guess I just didn’t want the first time we met to be in a courthouse. I don’t know, is that weird?” she asks, taking a sip of her latte. “This is really good, by the way.”
“No, it’s not weird,” I tell her.
“I know we’re not supposed to talk, but . . .” She looks through the window, her smile fading. “Do you ever wonder why? Why he would do this—” She starts but stops. “Like, that’s the part I’m stuck on. I even tried to ask him. The next day. I went home that night and told my roommate what happened, and she took me to the hospital. Got the rape kit done and it was so horrible, but I didn’t want to report it right then because I thought for sure there had to be a reason. Do you know what I mean?”
“I . . . Yeah, I think so,” I tell her, because even though I know we shouldn’t be doing this, talking, I desperately want to hear what she has to say.
She sits up a little straighter. “I wanted to believe that he somehow must not have realized or it was some kind of, like, mental break or . . . but it just turned out that I—” She stops abruptly, taking another sip of her latte. “I just didn’t know him. At all.”
It’s strange, this realization slithering through my brain, as I listen to her. I don’t think I’ve ever wondered why. Because deep down, in that place beyond logical thinking, I thought I knew. He did what he did because I had done something to make it happen. I could never quite put my finger on what it was, whether it was just one thing or a combination of things. My head could disagree all day, tell me it wasn’t my fault, but my heart knew, always, it was me.
Until now, maybe.
“I really thought I did—I thought I knew him,” she repeats. “I genuinely trusted him.”
“Me too,” I hear myself say.
She looks at me and tries to smile again, but it doesn’t fool me this time. “Sorry I’m dumping this on you.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I mean, I get it.”
“Yeah,” she says softly. “I thought you might.”
I can only nod because there are too many things I want to say, but none of them are things I’m allowed to tell her.
“I know you have to get back to work; I hope I haven’t ruined your whole day or made you feel—”
“No, you didn’t. I’m glad we got to meet. Like this, instead.”
“I guess I just wanted to tell you face-to-face that I’m really . . .” She pauses, tracing a circle around her cup as she finds whatever word it is she’s looking for. “Thankful. To not have to be doing this all by myself.”
“I am too,” I tell her. “If it weren’t for you and Amanda, I couldn’t have .
. .” I shake my head—I can’t even finish the sentence.
“I have a feeling you could have,” she tells me, as she reaches across the table, sliding her latte receipt toward me, her number already written on it. “For when this is all over, if you want?”
As I watch her leave and get in her car and drive away, I realize there is a version of this where Gen never says anything. She lets it go and just keeps wondering why. Where Amanda stays scared and angry and hurt and continues to blame me for everything. It’s the version where I lose myself forever and never find my way back. And for the first time, I think I understand—in my head and my heart—why we’re really doing this.
For us.
We’re doing this for us. Somehow that makes this all so much more real, more frightening.
JOSH
I’m sitting in bed reading, when I hear Dominic call from the other room, “Your girlfriend’s here!” I look at my phone; it’s not even five o’clock.
She walks into my room and closes the door behind her, still wearing her apron.
“What, did Captain Douchebag let you leave early?” I ask.
She shakes her head and drops her bag on the floor like it was too heavy to hold on to for another second. There’s this faraway look in her eyes as she slips out of her shoes and walks toward me. I set my textbooks down on the nightstand to make space for her, because she’s crawling into my lap without a word, curling up against me.
“Hey, you okay?” I can smell the coffee in her hair as I place my arms around her—she didn’t even stop by her apartment before coming up here. My mind immediately goes to her asshole manager, to that cook who’s always leering at her. “Eden, did something happen?”
“No,” she whispers. “I just missed you.” “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” she mumbles against my neck.
“You would tell me if one of those guys from the café messed with you, right?”
She finally looks up at me, searches my face, clearly has no idea what I’m talking about. “What do you mean, what guys?”
“No, never mind,” I tell her, shaking my head. “Nothing.”
We spend the rest of the weekend in bed, half the time dozing, the other half exploring each other in the daylight for a change. More sleeping, making love, feeding each other leftover cake. Heaven.
Sunday afternoon turns into Sunday night and I know I have to let her go, but I keep wanting just a few more minutes with her. She lets me redress her burn, and I watch her pack her bag. At the car, I try one more time to convince her to let me come.
“I heard you, okay?” I say. “I don’t need to be there in the courtroom if that isn’t going to help, but at least let me be there before and after.”
“You are here with me before.” She takes my hands. “And you’ll be here waiting for me after, right?”
I nod. “I’ll be here.”
“Thank you, that’s what I need from you,” she says, and I try to believe her.
We kiss goodbye, and my heart aches to think of not seeing her for possibly a whole week. It’s kind of scary how attached I am after only a month of being together again.
“You’re allowed to change your mind, okay?” I tell her as I bend down and lean into the car window. “If you decide you want me there, I’m there.”
She smiles and says, “Okay,” even though I have a feeling she won’t change her mind.
I kiss her once more, squeeze her hand, tell her “I love you” one last time.
And then I stand there on the sidewalk, that same helpless feeling I had before burrowing deeper into my stomach, while I watch as the car shrinks smaller and smaller in the distance.
EDEN
Mom drives me and Caelin to the courthouse in the morning for the walk- through. Lane meets us on the other side of the security checkpoint and escorts us to the courtroom we’ll be in. There’s less wood than I expected from all the TV courtrooms, less everything— the space is utilitarian, with no warmth or character or ornamentation of any kind. I can hear all three of us breathing, no one wanting to talk, so the room swallows our breath.
DA Silverman struts in a few minutes later, in her high heels and impeccable suit, which is decidedly not business casual. Behind her are Amanda and her mom, and Gen, looking younger today, somehow, than she had at the café. There’s an older man with her who I assume must be her father.
The parents greet one another like they’re at a funeral, small syllables, all hushed and subtle. Gen steps close to me, and for a second I get scared that she’s going to hug me or something and possibly give away the fact that we’d met the other day. But that’s not what she does; she pulls my brother in for a brief hug.
And he sounds like someone else as he says, “Hey, Gen, Mandy, Mrs. A.” But as Amanda and her mom nod and smile politely back at Caelin, I realize it’s that he actually sounds like himself—his old self, the one I haven’t seen in months. It’s strange to see him here, not just my brother but someone who is something to all these people too.
The three of us—me, Amanda, and Gen—exchange our awkward hellos and look at one another like maybe we’re looking into some kind of distorted fun house mirror at ourselves. We take turns smiling at each other, then frowning and looking away.
“So,” DA Silverman says, her voice cutting through all this emotion taking up all the air. “We just want to walk everyone through what’s going
to happen this week, just to make sure we’re all on the same page, and if anyone has any questions, then we can address them now. We all know testimonies start tomorrow. And as you know, we all must remain separate. We have a private room down the hall where we’ll have you wait until it’s your turn.”
Gennifer’s father, whose name I already forgot, says, “So, there’s no jury at this point, correct?”
“That’s right,” Lane responds, her voice way too chipper. “A hearing is really not all that different from a trial. Think of this as a pre-trial, without a jury. That part comes later.”
“But he’ll be here, in the courtroom, while the girls are on the stand?” he asks.
I see Mrs. Armstrong’s jaw clench. I wonder if Gennifer’s dad realizes that she’s Kevin’s mom too. I wonder what she thinks now, every time she hears her son’s name. It can’t be good.
“Yes,” DA Silverman says, and leads us up to the witness box, tells us to look out. “So, Kevin will be sitting there with his attorney.” She points at one of the tables in front of us. “I’ll be over here on this side.”
“And I’ll be sitting out here,” Lane says, pointing to an area of seating. “On your side, with the detectives who worked your cases and whoever else you’ll have here for you. So, if you need somewhere to look at any time, just look at me.”
I can’t stop staring at the table where Kevin will be sitting. “You all right?” my mom says quietly.
“That’s really close” is all I say. What happened to all those big fancy sprawling TV courtrooms? This is tiny. Claustrofucking-phobic. Stuck in the 1980s. I want to raise my hand. I have a question: Why is that table so fucking close to the witness stand? I want to scream. Who fucking designed this place?
“So, we’ll start the process tomorrow,” DA Silverman says with a self- assured nod. “Just remember to remain calm and be honest. If you don’t know something you’re asked, it’s okay to say you don’t know. Keep your phones close. If there are any changes to the schedule or order, I’ll let you know via text.”
Mom takes me and Caelin for breakfast at IHOP afterward, the same one, off the highway, where Josh brought me that day last December, when he
came for me. This was where I told him about Kevin, about me, about all of it.
We pick at our food in mostly silence.
I’m distracted by the fall decorations everywhere—pumpkins and ghosts and cornucopias—thinking about the way time passes. It felt like it took so long to get to this point, but now it’s here and I barely feel ready at all. Wasn’t it just summer? Just spring? Just winter before that, when I was here last, in that booth right over there by the window, trusting Josh with my heart, soul, mind, everything.
In the car, Mom looks at both of us and says, “You know that your father has never been good at talking about his feelings, but he doesn’t blame any of what’s happening on either of you. You need to know that, both of you. He’s just so angry still,” she tries to explain.
“Yeah, at who?” Caelin asks. “That’s the real question.”
“Not you,” Mom says. And then she twists around to look at me in the back seat. “And not you, either.”
I nod, sort of understanding—that kind of anger, that kind of silence— too well.
I call Mara once we get back home. I was planning on joking with her about business casual. Like, what even is that? I could hear myself saying. Asking her if she has a blazer I could borrow, but when I hear her voice on the line, something changes.
“Hey,” I say. “You busy in a few hours?”
Instead, I ask her to meet me at our playground. The one where we used to play when we were kids and then where we used to hang out drinking and smoking and getting high with randos, all post-Josh and pre-Cameron.
Our giant wooden castle—our private magical realm—still standing after all this time.
When I pull into the parking lot, she’s there waiting for me, sitting on a tire swing that’s shaped like a horse, swaying back and forth, sidesaddle. My headlights shine a spotlight on her. When I get out of the car, she runs and slams into me, full-body hug.
“Oh my God, I’ve missed you,” she whines. “I’m so happy to see you, Edy.”
“I missed you too,” I tell her, and I mean it, but things feel different somehow. It’s only been a month since I’ve seen her, but so much has
changed for me.
We climb up to the highest tower and sit down, crossed-legged, opposite each other. She keeps making this awkward nervous half laugh I don’t know what to make of. “So, Josh being good to you?” she asks. “Treating you like a queen, I hope.”
“He’s being very good to me,” I tell her, but I can’t seem to force a smile right now the way she is. “He really wanted to come with me. Be here for the hearing. But I said no.”
She finally nods, straight faced, and says, “Why not?” I shrug. “I don’t know.”
Mara looks down at her hands. “Edy, can I ask you something?” “Sure.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
I open my mouth to answer but change my mind. “You know, I almost just said ‘I don’t know’ again? Because for so long I really didn’t know. I guess saying ‘I don’t know’ is easier to say than to try to list all the reasons.”
“I want to know all the reasons,” she says. “Because I would’ve believed you.”
“That’s probably the biggest one. You would have believed me, and if you knew, then I couldn’t pretend anymore and I would’ve had to do something about it. And I couldn’t. Or at least, I didn’t think I could.”
She nods but chews on the inside of her cheek like she’s trying to not say something.
“And you were all I had. I didn’t want anything to change.” “It wouldn’t have,” she argues.
“It has, though. You feel it, don’t you? Things are just different now.”
She looks down again. “You never gave me the chance to be a good friend to you. As much as I love you, I’m mad too, and I know that makes me a total bitch. I’m mad because I would’ve been there for you if I’d known.”
“I know.”
“But I understand, too,” she adds. “Who’s to say I wouldn’t have done the same thing?”
I shrug, nod, say, “I guess.”
We sit there for a moment, looking out on this small patch that once held so many things from our childhood, our high school indiscretions.
Somewhere in the distance a car horn honks, a muffled reprieve from the bittersweet reverie of this place.
“Can I ask you for a huge favor, Mara?” “Anything.”
“Will you come to the hearing?” “Of course,” she says, no hesitation. “Really?”
“Yes. What do I have to do?”
“Just sit there,” I tell her. “Let me look at you while I’m testifying. Can you do that?”
She nods.
“I’ll have to go over everything that happened. The details. Like, probably everything that ever happened between me and—” I cough, clear my throat. “Me and him. Me and Kevin,” I finally say. “But especially what happened that night, I guess. It’s just that, he’s going to be there, and I don’t want to accidentally look at him and then freeze or break down or fly into a rage or something.”
“Would it help if you told me now?” she asks. “Like as practice?” “Maybe.”
I tell her about the Monopoly game earlier that night, how he flirted with me, even though I didn’t really understand that was what he was doing at the time. I tell her about how I woke up to him in my bedroom at 2:48 in the morning—I looked at my clock because it didn’t make sense, why he’d be in my room. How I thought at first, he must be playing some kind of joke. How he climbed on top of me and covered my mouth, pinned my arms down. How he was crushing me, hurting me, how he told me to shut up. He put his hand around my throat. He wasn’t laughing. He was serious. It wasn’t a joke.
Mara’s squeezing my hands so hard.
“Then what happened?”
Mara stares at me and nods, her eyes wide, unblinking, from across the room now.
“He pulled my underwear down my legs and yanked my nightgown up so hard it ripped,” I say. “And then he shoved it into my mouth.”
“Why did he do that?” DA Silverman asks.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see his lawyer’s white-haired head pop up, his hand rising in the air, but I keep my eyes on Mara. “Speculation,” he says.
“What happened then, with the nightgown in your mouth?” she asks instead.
“I was trying to scream, but I couldn’t.” “And what do you remember next?”
“He was kicking at my legs, trying to separate them. I got one of my arms free and I hit him, but he just held me down harder, tightened his hand around my throat. He kept telling me to stop, to hold still. I didn’t, though, and he was getting more and more angry.” I clear my throat.
“Was he yelling?”
“He was whispering, but directly in my ear. His face was right next to mine, and he said, ‘fucking do it,’ and I remember that because I didn’t know what he wanted me to do.”
“Can you tell us again how old you were then, on December twenty- ninth?”
“I had just turned fourteen in November.”
“And Kevin was a few weeks away from turning twenty years old?”
I look her in the eye. Was that true? Was he that old then? I don’t know. But I don’t have a chance to answer because his lawyer does that hand-raise thing again, this time laughing. “Your Honor, relevance?”
“Had you ever had sex before?” she asks instead. “No. I had never even kissed anyone.”
“Again.” Hand. “Relevance?”
She spins on her heel and looks directly at White Hair, practically spits the words “I’m trying to establish why, when the twenty-year-old man told the thirteen-year-old girl to ‘fucking do it,’ she didn’t know what that meant.”
Now he stands. Takes off his tiny wire-framed glasses and shakes his head, even lets his mouth hang open for a moment as if he has no words to express how deeply he objects. “Your Honor . . .” is all he says.
“Withdrawn,” she says, and turns back to me. “After he said ‘fucking do it,’ what happened?”
I lock eyes with Mara. “He forced my legs apart. I—I was getting weaker. I couldn’t breathe.”
“Because of the nightgown in your mouth?”
“Yes, and because he was squeezing my throat tighter and tighter.” “What do you remember happening next?”
“He . . . um . . .” I close my eyes. I picture the wooden play-ground. Just me and Mara. The softness of the night all around us. Mara’s hand holding mine.
“Do you need a break?” I open my eyes. “No.”
“What happened next?” she repeats.
“He raped me,” I finally say, the word sounding too small and simple to convey its own meaning.
“Okay, and did he hurt you?” “Yes.”
“Did he know he was hurting you?”
“Your Honor.” He raises his hand and stands up now. “Again, speculation.”
“I’ll rephrase. Could you indicate to him in some way that he was hurting you?”
“I was crying. I mean, I couldn’t speak or yell because he was still choking me, and I couldn’t move because he was holding me down, but I was crying, and I didn’t know until later, but I was bleeding. He knew he was hurting me—he wanted to hurt me.”
White Hair raises his hand again, almost bored now, not even bothering to look up from his folder. “Move to strike everything after the first sentence, ‘I was crying.’ She’d already answered the question.”
I see Mara’s face turning red.
I want to look at the man so badly, want to make him look at me as he deletes my words from the record. But I keep my eyes on Mara, let her be angry for us both. I know for sure I’ve made the right decision now. I couldn’t have had Josh here listening to this. And I couldn’t do it alone, either.
“Do you know how long he was raping you?” “Five minutes.”
“How do you know?”
“I looked at the clock when I could move again. I remember thinking it felt like hours. I thought the clock had to be wrong.”
“And what happened next?” she asks. I think hard, trying to put the events in the right order, but my brain keeps skipping ahead to the end.
“What’s the next thing you remember?” she rephrases, somehow reading my mind.
“He let go of my throat and he ripped the nightgown out of my mouth and I started coughing and he kept telling me to shut up. He was moving my hair out of my eyes—it was stuck to my face because my face was wet from crying. He wanted me to look at him.”
Hand raise.
“He said, ‘Look at me,’” I correct myself. I was catching on now— emotions are not allowed here, feelings aren’t facts. “He told me to listen, and he held my face so that I had to look into his eyes.”
“He told you to listen—what did he say?” “He said, ‘No one will ever believe you.’” “Then what? Did he leave?”
“No. He sat up but was still kneeling between my legs, staring at me—at my body. I tried to cover myself, but he moved my hands away. He made me promise that I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”
“And did you promise?” “Yes.”
“Why?”
“He said that if I told anyone, he would kill me. He said, ‘I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill you,’ and given what had just happened, I believed him.”
“So did he leave then?”
“No.” I hear my voice shaking, I feel my throat caving in, just like it had that night.
“What happened next?”
I can’t even look at Mara—I’d left this part out at the wooden playground. I cough, try to clear my throat. “He, um . . . he kissed me. And then he got up, put his underwear back on, and told me to go back to sleep.”
“And then he left?” “Yes.”
“Thank you. Nothing further.”
I let myself exhale. I let myself think maybe I was doing okay. But then his lawyer stands up, buttons his jacket, and smiles at me, just like Kevin had smiled at me that night, in between shoving his tongue in my mouth and putting his boxers on—I had forgotten to say that. He kissed me, smiled at me, and then he got up. Too late.
“Good afternoon, Eden,” he begins, pretending to be a human being. “I’ll keep this brief; I just have a few questions.
“How long have you known Kevin?”
“Since I was like seven or eight. That was when my brother became friends with him.”
“And didn’t you have a crush on him?” “What?”
“A crush.” He shrugs. “You know, a playful infatuation.” “Maybe when I was younger, but that doesn’t mean—” “Just yes or no.”
The thing about a crush is that you have them because, on some level, it’s unattainable, and if you’re being honest with yourself, you wouldn’t really want it anyway even if you could have it. But all there’s room to say here is “Yes.”
“And that night, you said you wanted to play a game with Kevin.
Monopoly, right?”
I didn’t say I wanted to play a game with him—it was his idea. When had I said that? Did I say that today? I can’t remember. But wait, why is this even important?
“Eden, can you answer the question?” “We played Monopoly.”
“The board game?”
Of course the fucking board game. I look at the DA, are these serious questions? I thought we’d be sticking to what I said in the police report.
“Eden?”
“Yes, the board game Monopoly.”
“And that night when you were playing, didn’t you tell Kevin that you wanted a boyfriend?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you did ask if Kevin had a girlfriend, right?” I shake my head. Where is this coming from?
“I don’t—” I close my eyes, try to remember. “No. No, we were talking about my brother having a girlfriend. He was on the phone with her and that’s why it was just me and Kevin. He was the one who got the game out,” I add, remembering more clearly now. “Monopoly.”
“Right, and then you asked if Kevin had a girlfriend.” “Maybe I—”
“Yes or no.” “Y-yes.”
“You said earlier that you were fourteen at the time?” “Yes.”
“And did you know how old Kevin was at the time?”
“He was almost twenty,” I say, repeating what the DA had said. “So, he was nineteen, right?”
“Right.”
“But did you know at the time how old he was? At the time?”
Except now I’m doubting myself. Did I think he was eighteen, nineteen, twenty? “I mean, I really don’t know if I knew exactly.”
DA Silverman stands up and sighs. “Is this going anywhere?” “Did he know how old you were at the time?”
She sits down and then shoots right back up. “Speculation, Your Honor.” “Did you have a conversation about how old you were?”
“Well, he knew I was in ninth grade.”
“Yes or no—did you have a conversation about age?” “No.”
And so it continues for what feels like hours. Pointless questions mixed in with important ones, always with right or didn’t you tacked on to the end. Dissecting all of my sentences into smaller and smaller fragments until they barely make sense anymore.
“One last question, Eden. Did you ever say no?” “Say no?”
“Did you ever verbally say no at any point that night?”
“I couldn’t speak. He covered my mouth immediately, and then he—” “Did you say no?”
“I fought him, I hit him, I kicked him, I—” “But did you ever say the word no?”
I look at Mara, then Lane, then the DA. “I—I already said I couldn’t speak.”
“Your Honor, please instruct the witness to answer the question.” “Please answer the question,” the judge says.
“No, but—”
“Thank you,” he says, and smiles again, like I’d just handed him a fucking cappuccino or something. “I have nothing further.”
And as he turns around and walks back to the table, I make the mistake of watching him—this old, frail, white-haired fossilized monster—and as he sits down, my eyes drift too far until I realize I’m looking at him. Kevin. And he’s looking at me. He has me pinned like a dead insect mounted on a foam block, with only his eyes, like he had that night.
I hear this sound in my ears like the ocean. I close my eyes. I’m going. Leaving my body. Disappearing. Gone. The next thing I know I’m in the bathroom, Lane there, telling me how great I did. “Great” is the word she used. It echoes in my head. Great great great. And she’s smiling at me in the mirror.
I look at my hands—I’m washing them at the sink. I’ve torn my bandage up into ribbons, the tape peeling off, the two red welts on my palm, only just starting to scab, now picked over and bleeding in patches. I don’t remember doing that. I don’t remember leaving the courtroom.
“How does that fucking lawyer sleep at night?” Mara says. “I want to go,” I say out loud to no one in particular.
Lane touches my shoulder, and I flinch. “Sorry, honey. You did really well, I mean it.”
“Whatever, I don’t care. It’s over. I just wanna go.”
JOSH
Eden called me last night at midnight to tell me happy birthday. She said she thought through what I’d said to her about doing it alone and she’d asked Mara to go with her. I stayed on the phone with her until she fell asleep. She didn’t say so, but I could tell she was really nervous. I wished she would’ve just let me come.
I’ve been distracted all day waiting for word from her. I spaced out during our team meeting this morning, and Coach reamed me out in front of everyone. Even Dominic pulled me aside in the locker room to ask what was going on with me.
“Nothing,” I told him. “I’m just tired.” Which was true; even after Eden finally fell asleep around two o’clock and I hung up the phone, I couldn’t sleep at all.
I texted her before afternoon practice to check in.
When I get out at six, I still haven’t heard from her. I call and leave a voice mail.
“Hey, just me. Thinking of you. Hope everything’s going okay. Well, call me when you can. I love you. Miss you.”
On my walk home, I’m barely paying attention to anything— not other people or traffic or street signs—I’m staring at my phone the whole time.
“Josh!” my mom’s voice calls out to me, laughing. “What are you doing?”
I look up. I’ve walked right past my building, past my parents, waiting on the front stoop, each holding coffee cups from Eden’s work.
“Head in the clouds much?” Dad says as he steps closer and hugs me.
Mom stands now and passes her coffee to Dad. She places her hands on my shoulders and holds me at arm’s length, smiling as she studies me for a moment. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”
“Happy birthday, Josh,” Dad echoes.
I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever been happier to see them in my life.
“You look tired,” Mom says as we walk up to the apartment. “Are you getting enough sleep?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” she repeats, her voice an octave higher than usual.
And as I glance back, I see her looking at my dad, all wide-eyed. “Mom,” I groan. “I’m fine.”
I unlock the door to my apartment and let them in. “So, where’s Dominic?” Dad asks.
“He went to get dinner with some of the other guys on the team.”
Mom says, in her best casual voice, “And what about Eden, where’s she?” Then looks all around like she’s searching for evidence of her having been here.
I sit down on the couch in the living room, and they follow. “Listen, she’s not gonna be able to make it tonight.”
“What?” Mom shouts as she sits down on the couch next to me, then adjusts her volume. “She’s not going to make it for your birthday?”
“We celebrated on Friday. She had to go out of town.”
“Out of town?” she repeats, like that’s the most absurd thing she ever heard. “In the middle of the semester?” She shakes her head. “Joshua.”
“No, don’t say my name like that.” “Like what?”
“Like I’m naive or getting taken advantage of or being lied to or something. I’m not. It’s not like that.”
“Well, tell me.” She crosses her arms and looks at my dad like he should be getting upset along with her. “What’s it like, then?”
I glance up at my dad, sitting on the ottoman next to the couch. He gives me a half smile, a nod, sort of squints, drawing his eyebrows together, tilts his head in Mom’s direction.
“What’s this?” Mom asks, not missing anything. “What’s going on with you two?”
Dad sighs. “Just tell her, Joshie.”
“Dear God, tell me what?” she says, clutching the collar of her shirt. “She’s not pregnant, please tell me she’s not preg—”
“No!”
“Thank you thank you thank you,” she whispers into her clasped hands.
“Why is that the first thing you guys jump to? Do you really think I’m that irresponsible?”
“No,” Mom says. “But shit happens, Josh. You can be careful ninety-nine percent of the time and all it takes is one—”
“Oh my God, please,” I say, raising my voice. “All the safe sex talks are scarred into my memory for life, I assure you. Can we drop this now?”
“Not until you tell me what’s going on,” Mom insists. “I don’t like this. I have to be honest. I don’t like this girl for you, Josh, I just—”
“Fine,” I relent. “Just please stop saying that.”
So I tell them everything. And by the time I finish, they’re sitting on either side of me on the couch, Mom’s arm around me, Dad’s hand resting on my knee. When I look up at Mom, she has tears running down her face.
“Sorry,” she says, wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “That’s a lot, Josh.”
“I know,” I agree, “it’s been a lot for her.” “Well, for you too,” Mom says.
“No, come on.” I shake my head. “I’m not comparing anything I might be feeling to what she’s going through.”
Dad speaks up. “No one’s saying you should compare anything, but just acknowledge, all right, this is not an easy thing to be dealing with in any relationship.”
I nod. I know he’s right. But I don’t know how to explain that when we’re together it doesn’t feel hard. When we’re together it feels like we can handle it—could handle anything.
We order food and stay in. D and Parker join us. Parker shows my parents the video from the hibachi restaurant of everyone singing “Happy Birthday.” Eden kissing me at the end, with total abandon. Everyone cheering.
“Let me see that.” Mom takes the phone and watches the video two more times, smiling by the end of it. “You look happy, Josh,” she says quietly.
They leave to go to their motel at eleven. Outside, at the car, Dad says, “Come on, group hug.” And they both wrap me in a giant hug. A different day I might’ve said something stupid like aren’t I getting a little old for this, but not today. Today I just let them and feel grateful.
“You need more rest.” Mom jabs her finger into my chest. “Hear me?” “Yes.”
“We love you,” Dad says.
“Love you guys too.”
I watch as they drive away, my dad’s arm darting out from the passenger- side window to wave at me all the way down the road. I walk down to the end of the block and back again, just to burn off some of this anxiety I’ve had building up in me all day. I pull out my phone again, just in case I’ve somehow missed her.
Still nothing.
Upstairs, I try to fall asleep, but I toss and turn.
EDEN
It’s almost midnight when I wake up on the couch in the living room, in the dark. Josh just texted me a minute ago.
I hope you’re sleeping well right now. Talk tomorrow? I love you
I call him back. He answers right away.
“Hey,” he says, and I want to start weeping at the sound of his voice. “There you are.”
“Hi,” I whisper, throat scratchy and worn from all the talking earlier. “I’m sorry. I lay down after I got home, and no one woke me up.”
“It’s okay. How . . . ?” He pauses. “How are you? How did it go?”
“It was a fucking shit show.” I force a bitter laugh only to not start crying again.
“Eden, baby . . . ,” he says so softly, I let his voice wrap around me. “I can be there in the morning if you—”
“No, don’t worry about it. It’s over.” “What do you mean?”
“No, it’s not over, but my part’s done. My mom and Caelin go tomorrow. I was thinking of staying one more day and coming back Thurs—” I start coughing and reach for the room-temperature glass of water sitting on the side table next to me.
“You okay?” he’s asking as I pull the phone away from my face.
“Yeah, sorry,” I croak, and swallow most of the glass in one gulp my throat is so dry. “Thursday,” I finish. “Early Thursday.”
“Hey, are you getting sick?” he asks.
“No, I don’t think so. My throat just hurts like hell from talking so much. I was talking for hours today. It felt like they asked me a thousand questions.”
He makes a sound I can’t quite decipher.
“I won’t keep you, okay? I’m glad to hear your voice though, even if it’s scratchy.”
“Wait, Josh.” I try to laugh, but I just end up coughing again. “Don’t hang up. I’m not trying to get off the phone. Tell me about your day. How was your birthday?”
“Oh,” he says. “It was fine. I mean, last weekend was really the main event. With you. Best birthday ever.”
“Mmm.”
“You sound exhausted.”
“I wish I was there with you right now,” I whisper. “So do I, you have no idea.”
“Josh?”
“Yeah?”
“I know it’s dumb, but could you stay on the phone with me again tonight?”
“It’s not dumb.” I hear some shuffling and the creaking of his mattress. I close my eyes and can picture him getting settled in bed. “I just put you on speaker.”
“I love you,” I tell him. “I love you too.” “Thank you.”
“For what, loving you?” he asks, a small laugh in his voice. I smile—it hurts my face. “Yes.”
JOSH
I wake in the morning to my five o’clock alarm, as usual. Still dark out, I see a text already sitting there from my mom.
Is this her?
With a link to an article in the local paper. The headline reads THREE WOMEN TESTIFY AGAINST BASKETBALL MVP IN PEOPLE V. ARMSTRONG. I quickly
scan for her name. Not there, thankfully. They haven’t listed any of their names. There’s a highlighted pull quote, enlarged in bold: “Harrowing . . . if true.”
It’s that ellipsis that gets me. Harrowing—dot dot dot—if true. Like someone pushing me from behind. Dot dot dot. Harder, harder, harder.
Now I’m off.
There are other articles, and I find each and every one. One put out by a college paper, titled HE SAID, SHE SAID, BLAH BLAH BLAH. Another calls the “lack of physical evidence shocking.” Here I make the mistake of scrolling down to the comments.
Some commentators are restrained enough to write just a word or two, like “LIARS!” or “poor guy” while others write longer comments. “Five minutes, really? Sending a college kid to prison for something that lasted five minutes! Smh, what is this country coming to?” And then there are the tirades that span multiple paragraphs, some longer than the damn article itself, full of hate and typos.
I feel sick to my stomach.
I only hope she hasn’t seen any of this bullshit.
There’s a knock on my door. “Hey, you awake?” Dominic. “Leaving for the gym. You coming?”
I click the power off on my phone. “Yeah,” I call back.
I work out harder than I have in a while. I can’t tell if it’s anger, sadness, or what that’s fueling me. All I know is that something has crawled inside me, and it’s making me want to fight it. Coach walks by and gives me a nod of approval.
Part of me wants to stand up and tell him I couldn’t give two shits about this fucking team right now. That they’re so stupid to think that any of this matters at all. But then I think of my dad, freshly sober, spending hours on the phone trying to save my ass from getting kicked off the team. And I just work harder. Because I don’t know what else to do.
She can’t get back soon enough.
EDEN
Thursday morning, freshly showered, I sit at my kitchen table. In my dining room with my brother, my mother, my father, sipping orange juice from a glass I’ve used a million times before. Bacon, pancakes, coffee.
Mom asks if I want sugar and cream. I do, but I shake my head no.
Dad is asking who wants eggs. I don’t. But when he comes into the dining room holding the skillet in one hand, scooping up a portion of scrambled eggs, smiling at me, I hold my plate out and take them anyway.
Then we’re all sitting here. Chewing. Forks scraping against plates, awkward silence descending over us. I poke at my syrup-soaked pancake. Neither Mom nor Caelin said a word about how it went for them in court yesterday, but I could see their telltale puffy and bloodshot eyes this morning.
“What a fuckin’ week, huh?” I say, just to break the tension.
Caelin laughs, spitting out the sip of juice he’d just taken. “Perfect timing,” he mumbles into a napkin.
Mom scoffs and says, “Edy, good God.”
“So, when you headed back to school?” Dad asks, pretending the tension isn’t happening at all. “Do we at least get you for the weekend?”
I take a sip of my plain coffee, let it burn the roof of my mouth. “I think I’m gonna head out pretty soon, actually. Maybe I can make my last class today, and then I won’t have to miss tomorrow.”
He nods but doesn’t say anything.
“I just don’t want to have so much to make up.”
“And I’m sure you want to get back to Josh, too,” Mom adds. “Your brother showed me his picture online—”
“Mom,” Caelin interrupts. “I didn’t show her,” he says to me. “She needed help searching for him on the team website—”
“Oh, fine,” Mom interrupts him back, tossing her napkin in his direction. “I was snooping.”
“Stalking,” Caelin mutters through a fake cough. Dad actually laughs.
“Anyway, he’s a very cute boy,” Mom says. “I don’t blame you for wanting to rush back to him.”
“Well,” I begin. “I really do have work to make up.” She grins at me from across the table.
“So, Eden,” Dad says. “When do we get to meet this very cute boy?” “Maybe after you all quit calling him a very cute boy.”
“Hey.” Caelin holds his hand up. “For the record, all I’ve ever called him is a decent guy; I never called him a very cute anything.”
And just like that, we’ve had our first semi-normal family interaction in years. I send a silent thank-you across the state to Josh, who’s probably walking to his first class right now, for being so damn decent and handsome, he let my family salvage our last morning together.
After breakfast I help clean up, start the dishwasher, try not to act like I’m in a hurry to leave. I pack up a bag of fall clothes, my soft scarf and matching gloves, a heavy coat, and some of my long sleeves and sweaters from the back of my closet. I have to pull out my old clarinet case to get to my boots, and as my fingers fit around the handle, I have this vivid flashback of freshman year, carrying this thing with me everywhere I went. I set it on my bed next to my other bag and open it up.
Like some kind of time capsule from another life, I find the sheet music I was working on when I decided to quit, the booklet still folded open to the exact page. I take each item out and hold them in my hands for a moment: the plastic case for my reeds; polishing cloth, soft against my fingers; the tiny screwdriver everyone always needed to borrow from me because no one else ever had one; the tube of nearly empty cork grease that Mara once mistook for lip balm; the mouthpiece, barrel, bell, upper joint, lower joint . .
. all the pieces of the clarinet disassembled and put away neatly. Exactly as I’d left them, not knowing that would be the last time I played.
I’m not sure why, but I take it with me, along with my fuzzy socks and warm clothes.
I say my goodbyes. Caelin hugs me for the first time in months. Dad tells me he just transferred two hundred dollars into my account, for which I am wholeheartedly thankful. Mom walks me out to the car, tells me, “Take care
of yourself. Be safe. And let me know when you hear anything from the DA, okay?”
“I will.”
The drive home, back to Josh and my new life, which has nothing to do with this old one, feels so long. Too long. My eyes just want to close. I only make it an hour and a half before I have to pull off at a rest stop. I push my seat all the way back and pull one of my big sweaters from the bag in the passenger seat, wrap myself up in it.
Just as I’m feeling myself fading to sleep, I’m back in the courtroom, eyes locked on Kevin’s. Then I’m back in my old bedroom, that night, with him looking down on me.
My eyes snap open.
The tree I’m parked beneath is letting the fluttering light filter through the windshield onto my face. It feels so gentle, I allow myself to close my eyes again. The judge is telling me I’m dismissed. “Dismissed.” That was the word. How appropriate, I thought, even then.
How had I forgotten this part?
But I can’t move. Not until Kevin’s dickhead lawyer whispers something to him, making him break eye contact with me. I see Lane and Mara standing up, waiting. DA Silverman nodding, watching me as I step down from the box.
I stare straight down at my feet, but I still feel his eyes on me the whole time.
When I wake up, I’m in the shade now, cold and somehow more exhausted than I was to begin with. I pull my seat upright again and put the sweater on all the way, trying to gather some warmth around me. I dump my travel mug of cold plain coffee from my house and go inside the rest stop for something with sugar and caffeine and calories.
It gets me through the rest of the drive. I make it home in the middle of the afternoon while everyone’s still gone for the day. I trudge up the two flights of stairs with my arms full, unlock the door, make it to my room, and sit down directly on the floor.
Breathe. I need to breathe.
I lie flat on my back, close my eyes, and concentrate on the hard floor under me, find the points where the floor supports my body, like my therapist told me.
I place my hand on my stomach and feel it expand and contract with each breath. In and out, over and over. I’m nearly asleep when I hear my phone vibrating from my bag, and I realize I never texted to let anyone know that I made it home.
I sit up too quickly and pull my purse down on the floor, digging through it until my hand finds my phone. But the text waiting there isn’t from Josh or my mom; it’s from DA Silverman.
I have news . . .
No.
I won’t open it. I can’t. Whatever it is, I don’t want to know yet. Either our case is dead or it’s moving forward. And I can’t know either of those things right now. I stand, leaving the phone there on the floor. It lights up again, and I kick it away from me this time. It skids across the floor and under the dresser, out of sight.
I lug my bags onto my bed, start unpacking. Keep my hands busy—that’s another tip my therapist gave me. I can still hear the vibration of my phone, rattling now, shoved up against the baseboard.
I open my laptop, cue up my moody sad-girl playlist. Florence + the Machine croons out in a darkly lyrical dance. But I can still feel the phone vibrating—inside my chest now, somehow. I turn the volume up.
I put away all my clothes, literally fold every article of clothing, even my bras and underwear. I match up every last sock with its mate and divide half a drawer for all of Josh’s clothes I’ve found lying around. I hang up my sweaters in the closet and line my boots up with my other shoes. Carefully, I slide my clarinet case up on the top shelf of the closet. Next, I organize my desk. Move my hair and makeup stuff over to my dresser. I line up my meds in a row, rounding them out with the packet of birth control pills and the bottle of Tylenol I’ve been popping like candy all week for my never- ending headaches.
I had an in-person with my therapist on Wednesday. She asked how I’d been feeling with the new meds, and I had to admit that I forget to take them a lot, so I couldn’t be sure if they were really helping much. When she asked me why, I didn’t tell her it’s because I keep them hidden half the time; I just shrugged. The thing is, I know Josh is literally the last person on
the planet who would make me feel weird about any of it—he understood about the sleeping pills, as I knew he would. It’s me.
So I decide—force myself—to just leave them there, out in the open. My playlist comes to an abrupt end, plunging me into silence.
I look around. Everything’s in order here. Bed made. Books lined up in neat rows. My life ready for me to dive back in. But I don’t dive. I drag myself over to my bed. I don’t even have the energy to lift the covers. I lay my head on the pillow, curl up inside my sweater, and face the wall, just waiting to feel normal again.
JOSH
After practice, Coach calls us all together for a meeting in the locker room. There’s a tightness, a tension in the air. Everyone’s tired and hungry and ready to go. I just want to get to my phone to see if she’s texted me back yet.
“All right, guys,” Coach begins. “Quick announcement. This is coming down directly from the dean. We’ll be talking to all the teams, so don’t feel special. Okay, I’m sure some of you have heard about the sexual assault case involving a student athlete over at Eastland U.”
My heart starts racing.
“Obviously, there’s no tolerance for this kind of thing at Tucker Hill,” he continues, looking down at his clipboard, reading. “Zero tolerance for any form of harassment or so-called ‘locker room talk’ on this team or any team on this campus. Got it?”
I look around. There are heads nodding.
Someone raises a hand. “Uh, Coach, has someone complained, or . . . ?” “No. Thank God. The dean wanted us to preemptively talk with you all,
as a reminder that this shit won’t fly here.”
Okay, so this is just a general PSA. I start to relax.
Coach squints at his clipboard again. “THU will be issuing a formal statement regarding its commitment to . . .” He trails off, skipping ahead. “So, basically, the moral of the story is eyes are on teams like ours right now, and we can’t afford any bad press, gentlemen.”
Bad press, so that’s really all that matters here.
“Such bullshit,” I hear someone mutter under their breath. When I look up, Jon, one of the bench players, has a stupid shit-eating grin on his face. He leans in to the guy next to him, whispers something, and I see both of
them Jell-O-shaking with silent laughter. Something inside me picks up like a swelling wave, and I can feel my fists tightening at my sides.
Coach dismisses us, and I look around—I completely missed the end of the meeting.
I try to shake off this feeling.
I’m finishing getting dressed at my locker, checking my phone—still nothing from her—when I hear Jon’s dumbass guffaw over the bank of lockers.
“You know she wanted it, and then when he didn’t want a relationship, she decided to screw his career.” That wave returns now, and I can feel my face getting red. “That is exactly why you don’t dip your dick in crazy.”
I know I shouldn’t, but that wave is pushing me down, and someone else, this other version of myself is rising up instead. I walk around the corner and see Jon toweling off his hair as he regales two freshmen benchers with his opinions.
“I dunno, man,” one of them is bold enough to pipe up, “I read there were three girls he did it to. ”
“Yeah, well, maybe he’s attracted to psychos,” Jon says, and shrugs. “Bitches probably want a payout! You know how the pussy is. ”
I can’t even hear the rest of his sentence because the wave is pushing at me as I step behind him, too close, it pushes past my chest, into my throat, out of my mouth. “Hey, do you ever just shut the fuck up?”
Jon turns, stupid mean grin still on his face, and behind him, the freshmen’s eyes go wide—I must be looking like something scary to them.
“Sorry, my bad, did I upset your delicate sensibilities?” he says, patting my shoulder in mock comfort, the spot he touches radiating heat, practically vibrating. I know I should leave, but the other Josh has a point to make.
“No, I’m sorry, do you have some kind of problem with not sexually harassing women, or what?”
“Fuck off,” he mutters dismissively. “You know what my problem is?” “No, what’s that?” I challenge. “Please, tell me.”
“You.” Somehow this makes the wave retreat. Me, I can deal with that. “Me?” I cross my arms. “Okay.”
“Yeah, with you half-assing every practice and wasting a starting spot on the team, and now you’re trying to make me look bad?” He looks at the crowd, which has suddenly gathered around us, and I can’t tell if they’re on his side or not.
“You make yourself look bad all on your own.”
“And you shouldn’t even be here!” he shouts. “Not after what you pulled last season. Everyone thinks so.”
Dominic walks up then, interrupts. “Hey, speak for yourself, Jon—why don’t you just take off, all right?”
“Why? It’s true,” he argues. “No, it’s not,” Dominic says.
“Whatever.” I grab my bag and close my locker. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Sure, but you have time to push your woke agenda about a bunch of bitches crying rape? Please, you’re so—”
And that wave is back—a tidal wave now—no fighting it. It is the buzzing in my head, a tingling in my limbs, this sick rush of adrenaline pulsing through me.
It’s oddly quiet for a moment.
And then sound erupts all around us, yelling, shouting.
It takes me a second to process why Dominic is standing between us. Why someone’s holding my arms. Why Jon is on the floor. Why Coach is storming in here, screaming, “Break it up, you assholes!”
He drags us both into his office.
“What do you wanna do?” he’s asking Jon. “You can lodge a complaint if you want—it’s within your rights.”
Jon looks at me, sort of smirks, like this is all just an amusement to him. “Nah,” he finally says. “It was just a shove. It’s really not a big deal.”
“Fine.” Coach stands, points to the door. “You go,” he tells him.
I start to stand as well, but Coach presses down on my shoulder. “You,” he orders, through clenched teeth, “siddown.”
He closes the door behind Jon and throws his clipboard against the wall, making me jump.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he yells. “I swear, it’s one step forward, twenty steps back with you. Every damn time. Tell me something, do you even want to be on this team?”
I clench my jaw shut so I don’t say it: No. “Huh?” he yells. “Well, do you?”
“Yes,” I lie.
“Then screw your damn head on right, get your priorities straight!” he shouts, the veins in his neck throbbing. “You’re on thin ice—paper thin.
One more incident, you’re suspended. I don’t care how talented you are. I don’t give a shit what’s going on in your personal life. When you’re here, you don’t have a personal life!” he yells. “You understand me?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
It’s dark in Eden’s room, but I can see her lying on her bed. I’m relieved at first. She’s here, she’s safe. But the way she’s curled up in the fetal position, lying so still, gives me that full-body rush of adrenaline chill again. I feel unsteady as I walk toward her.
EDEN
I wake up to the click of my lamp being turned on. It’s dark outside my window. I hear the door latch shut, then his light footsteps behind me. The quiet swish of sneakers being removed. He doesn’t need to say a word for me to know it’s him. The sigh in his breath might as well be a fingerprint.
The bed sinks as he climbs in softly. He moves my hair and touches my waist as he eases in beside me, bending his knees into mine, fitting himself around me like a missing puzzle piece. He slowly moves his arm so that it’s resting on top of mine.
“Hey,” I breathe, pulling his arm around me tighter.
“Sorry,” he whispers, kissing the back of my neck. “I was trying not to wake you.”
“No, it’s okay,” I say, my voice still worn and raspy. “What time is it?” “It’s, like, almost eight.”
“Mm.” I stretch out a little and clear my throat. “I’ve been asleep all afternoon.”
With his face in my hair, he breathes in and says, “God, I missed you.” He grips my sweater in handfuls, pulling me so close. There’s something about it, the way he’s holding me like he’s scared I’m going to float away, that makes me nervous.
“Josh?” I turn around to face him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He touches my face and smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Nothing’s wrong,” he repeats, this sadness in his voice. “I just really missed you.”
I kiss him. “I missed you too.”
He wraps both arms around me, pressing me to his body, kissing my hair, my forehead, my cheeks.
“Wait, let me look at you.” I pull away from him enough to see him more clearly and take his face in my hands. “Aw, your beard is back.”
“Stubble,” he corrects, and finally he gives me a small but real smile. “Okay, fine, stubble,” I repeat. “I like it.”
“College-era me, right?” he asks, the slightest laugh in his voice.
“More like sexy-era you,” I tease, though I’m really not joking at all. He buries his face in my neck and laughs.
“I love when you get all shy.”
“Shy?” he repeats slowly, letting his head rest on my chest, like he’s trying to remember what the word means, whether it’s a good or bad thing.
“It’s very cute.”
“Okay,” he says quietly.
“Hey, are you really all right?” I ask him.
“Yeah.” He raises his head to look at me then. “I’m more concerned about how you are.”
“You just seem kinda sad.”
“No, I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep much while you were gone and, I don’t know, I was worried when I didn’t hear from you earlier.”
“Oh. Sorry, my phone—” I glance over toward my dresser. “It’s under there. I forgot to pick it up. Sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry.” He takes my rebandaged hand in his and kisses it— examines my haphazard placement of Band-Aids for a moment but doesn’t comment on it. “I’m glad you were resting.”
“I’m glad you came,” I tell him, running my other hand over his face. “So, how are you feeling?” he asks.
“Okay.” I prop myself up so I can kiss him. He nods like he wants more from me. “Better now that you’re here.”
He kisses me softly, quickly, like he’s consciously not wanting it to get too steamy.
“You don’t want to kiss me,” I say. “What, do I have bad breath or something?”
He scoffs. “No, come on.”
He rolls onto his back, and I try to tell myself he’s not moving away from me; he’s making room for me, inviting me in. So I kiss him. I kiss him deeper and deeper. He holds on to me, his hands on my hips, but he’s not giving me much.
I push his shirt up and kiss his stomach—that spot that always makes him squirm. He at least lets out a little sigh, a deep breath in, a small groan. I move on top of him and sit up, one knee on either side of his hips, and pull my sweater off. The T-shirt I wore underneath starts to come off with it, but he reaches out and pulls it down, his fingers barely grazing my skin as he covers my stomach back up.
He gazes at me and opens his mouth like he wants to say something. “What?”
“Nothing.” He places his hands on my thighs, watches as I take my T- shirt off.
He sits up now, with me in his lap, and kisses me once, lets his forehead rest against the center of my chest. I reach around behind me to unfasten my bra, but his hand catches mine and brings it back around the front, holding it in his.
“Eden.” He breathes my name out slowly. “Hold on, don’t you wanna talk?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, just to catch up, you know?” he says so gently. “You’ve been gone.”
“Oh,” I say. “My God, am I being like a horny teenage boy right now or something?”
He cracks a smile and shakes his head. “I mean . . . I wouldn’t say it like that.”
“I’m sorry, okay,” I tell him, scooting so I’m sitting a bit farther back on his thighs instead of right up against him. “Yeah, please. Talk to me.”
“No, I meant I want you to talk to me.” “What about?”
He turns his head, sort of tips his hands open toward the ceiling. “Everything. What happened while you were gone, with the hearing and all? How it was being home. I mean, do you know what happens next? You haven’t really told me anything.”
I climb off him now. “Eden, don’t—”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t shut me out,” he says, reaching for me.
“I feel like you’re the one shutting me out right now,” I tell him. He squints at me. “How am I shutting you out?”
“You, like, clearly aren’t interested in having sex with me,” I mumble as I pull my sweater back on over my head and shove my arms through the sleeves. “What, am I too sad and pathetic?”
“No, who said anything like that?”
“Too damaged? Too messed up?” I continue, gaining steam. “What, tainted?”
“Hey!” he says, his voice stern. “You know that’s not what I think.” He pauses, his chest moving in and out as he breathes heavier. “Don’t put words into my mouth—that’s not what we—we don’t do that.”
“Well, I feel like you’re rejecting me or something.”
I climb over him to get out of the bed. I walk to my dresser, have the urge to take one of my pills. Then I have the greater urge to open up the top drawer and sweep them all inside, close it up tight.
“I’m not rejecting you; I’m just not going to have sex with you when I have no idea where your head’s at right now. I’m worried about you, okay?” I look over at him, sitting there, so in control of his emotions, so perfectly rational all the time, always doing the right thing. I sit down in my desk chair, try to slow my racing thoughts, try to calm myself, try to feel the
chair under me, feel my feet on the floor. “I know, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he says, moving to the edge of the bed, reaching for my hands. “I just feel like I’m in the dark here.”
“I don’t want to talk about the hearing.”
“Okay.” He reaches for the arms of the chair now and pulls me toward him so we’re facing each other. “That’s fine, just tell me how you’re feeling, then?”
“I feel . . . ,” I begin, closing my eyes, letting him take my hands again. “I feel like . . .” I search my brain for anything, a concrete thought, a fleeting image. “A pumpkin,” I tell him. That’s stupid.
“A pumpkin?” he asks. He draws his eyebrows together like he’s not sure if I’m being serious or joking. I don’t really know at this point either.
“No, not a pumpkin, but like a jack-o’-lantern. You know?” “Okay,” he says, nodding.
“Like someone drew a face on me and carved it into my skin. Scooped out my insides. Just hollowed out, everything scraped clean. And then lit a fire in me and left me out in the cold. And I just . . .” I stop because I’m hearing myself and I feel my mouth twitching, like I could either start
bawling or laughing, and I don’t know which. Because I don’t know if I’m being ridiculous or if this is actually the perfect sloppy metaphor for the way I feel right now.
“And you what?” he asks, giving my good hand a tiny squeeze.
“And I just, I don’t know, want to feel human again,” I finish. “As soon as possible.”
His eyes get really deep as he watches me. And then his beautiful mouth just sort of collapses at the corners. He stands and pulls me up out of the chair too. Holds me close, pressing my face against his chest, kissing my hair.
JOSH
As we stand in the middle of her room, I can sense it—that hollowed-out feeling—coming out of her and crawling into me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper because I don’t know what else to say.
“You didn’t do anything,” she mumbles into my shirt, hugging me back like somehow she knows I might need her arms around me right now just as much as she needs mine.
“I’m still sorry.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me, Josh.” She looks up at me, her eyes so full and open. “Please.”
“No, it’s not that I feel sorry for you. I just feel sorry that you’re having to go through all this. It’s not fair. And I wish I could do something to—to help or to make it easier.”
“You do help, though.” She sets her head against me again. “You do make it easier.”
“What do you want to do tonight?” I ask her. “Are you hungry at all, or do you want to go back to bed . . . watch a movie? It’s whatever you want.”
“Could we lie back down?”
As we get undressed, she starts taking her pants off and looks up at me with this small, mischievous grin. “I promise I’m not trying to have sex with you again; I’m just getting into pajamas.”
“Stop,” I groan, folding my jeans over the back of her chair. “You know why I said that.”
“I’m just messing with you.” She takes her sweater off again and hangs it on the doorknob of her closet, walks over to her dresser in a mismatched bra and underwear, looking so beautiful I almost wish she would try to have sex with me because I need to feel human again now too. She pulls out one
of my T-shirts I hadn’t even realized I’d left here. “Can I wear this?” she asks.
“Sure,” I answer, trying not to sound too enthusiastic about seeing her in my clothes. But as I watch her take her bra off and slide on my old beat-up gray T-shirt with a hole in the collar, my feet won’t let me not go to her. “By the way, I pretty much want to have sex with you constantly.”
“Oh, constantly?” she repeats, laughing as she gently pushes me away. “I’m not kidding. I think about it way more than I should.” I follow her to
the bed. “Truly, you’d be offended if you knew.”
She’s smiling as she pulls back the covers and climbs in first, but then she looks up at me with her eyes narrowed, like she’s confused about why I’m saying this.
“So, I would never reject you,” I tell her as I climb in beside her. “Oh,” she murmurs.
I kiss her the way she was kissing me earlier—deep, serious. “Never,” I repeat. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispers.
As we lie here, she curls up around me, her head on my chest, her arm and leg draped across me. I start to feel more like myself than I have all week. We breathe in and out together, and I can feel her drifting to sleep when her phone vibrates from somewhere in the room, muffled. I look around and notice that she’s cleaned, rearranged things.
The phone keeps going off. She sighs loudly. “Do you need to check that?” I ask her.
“I don’t want to,” she whines. “It might be important.”
“I know it’s important, that’s why I don’t want to get it.” She rolls off me and says quietly, “It’s under the dresser.”
I don’t ask why it’s under there; I just get out of bed and tell her, “I’ll get it.” But as I walk up to her dresser, my eyes go directly to the pills lined up on top of it. I glance back at her. She sees me seeing them.
“My full pharmacy,” she explains. “Insomnia, depression, anxiety.”
I nod. “Okay,” I say because I don’t know if there’s anything else I should say. I’m happy she’s not hiding them anymore, but I can’t say that without letting her know that I knew about them already. I kneel down and press my face to the floor, see the phone all the way against the wall, glowing. I reach for it and pull it out, trying not to look at the screen.
I walk back over to her and hand her the phone, but she’s just staring at me. “Does that bother you?”
“What?”
“Those,” she says, gesturing to the dresser, the pills. “No, they don’t bother me. Why would they bother me?” “Because of your dad.”
“You need them, Eden. It’s totally different.”
“Yeah,” she whispers sadly, holding her phone facedown against her chest. “I do.”
She curls up to me again and breathes deeply, finally raises the phone.
I glance down. There’s a whole screen full of notifications she’s missed. Texts from me, her brother, Mara, someone named Lane, two missed calls from her mom. And a text from “DA Silverman.” This is the one she opens. “Sorry.” I kiss her head, close my eyes. “I’m not looking, okay?” I tell
her.
“You can.” She tilts the screen toward me. “It’s happening.”
I have news and wanted to make sure
you’re the first to know: we’re going to trial. Congratulations, you girls did it! I’ll be in touch when I know more, but plan for sometime in December, possibly January. Talk soon.
“Eden, this is really good,” I start, but she clicks the phone off, reaches over me and tosses it onto her desk. She shakes her head and pulls herself against me tighter, tucking her head down so I can’t see her face.
“Eden?” I try to get her to look at me. “Baby?”
She’s clutching my shirt, breathing heavy, sniffling. And then I feel her body start shaking. She’s crying. “I can’t,” she gasps, finally looking up at me, tears streaming down her face. “I can’t do it again.”
I kiss her forehead, try to wipe her tears away. “Yes, you can.” “No,” she breathes. “I can’t. I really can’t.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, even though I don’t know that for sure. I don’t know if it’s okay or if she’s okay or if it will be okay. But I say it anyway.
She keeps repeating it: I can’t. She says it over and over until it doesn’t even sound like words anymore, just breathing. And then, after what feels like forever, she finally stills, falls silent. I think she’s asleep, but then she says, her voice clear, calm now. “His lawyer asked me if I ever said no.”
I raise my head. “What do you mean?”
“Like he assumed I was given a choice. Like I could choose to say yes or no. And I couldn’t explain that there was nothing to say yes or no to—there wasn’t a chance to say it—but he just kept interrupting me.”
“Fuck,” I say.
“But just because I couldn’t say no doesn’t mean I said yes, either.” “I know that.”
She kisses me, then touches my face, just looks at me.
“I love you,” I tell her, and I start to worry I’m saying it so much she’s going to stop believing that I mean it.
She smiles and closes her eyes for a moment. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Josh.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “Back atcha.”
“It’s sort of scary,” she whispers, like it’s a secret, “how much I need you.”
“Don’t be scared,” I tell her, even though it scares me, too, how much I need her. “You won’t ever have to be without me. I mean, unless you wanted that.”
She looks me in the eye now, holding my face steady in her hands. “I would never want that.”
I wake up to her moaning in her sleep. She’s thrashing. Having a nightmare. “Eden?” I whisper.
“No,” she moans, kicking my leg under the blanket. “No.” “Hey, hey, hey, Eden?” I try. “Eden, wake up.”
I touch her face, but she turns away from me. “Stop,” she says, her hand flopping lifelessly against my stomach. “Please,” she whimpers, crying with her whole body.
I touch her arm now, try to rub it gently. “Eden,” I repeat, louder this time.
She starts coughing, gasping, and then her hand goes to her throat, all the veins and tendons in her neck visible like she really can’t breathe. I’ve got to get her to wake up somehow. “Eden!” I shake her shoulder.
Her eyes fly open, and she bolts up, swinging at me. She scratches my neck with one hand, my chest with the other. I grab her arms. “Eden, stop.”
She screams, “Let go of me, let go of me!”
I do, but she hits me over and over. She’s breathing so heavily, gasping for air. I back up against the wall, but then she’s backing up too, about to fall right out of bed, so I lunge forward to grab her again. She’s kicking me with both her feet. This time she cries just one word: “Mom.”
“Eden, wake up!” I shout, but she doesn’t hear me.
She yells, “Stop.” I don’t know what to do—she’s going to hurt herself. But I let go of her arms, and I can do nothing but watch her fall. The sound is terrible—she hits the desk and her lamp crashes down, part of the glass shade breaking, but it’s still on, lighting her at this severe angle that makes her look haunted. She looks up at me like I pushed her or something, like it hurts her to look at me.
“Eden?” I scramble to get down on the floor with her, but she flinches away when I reach for her. She looks around the room: at the lamp, me, her skinned knees bleeding, the palms of her hands scraped. “Eden,” I repeat. I kneel next to her and she holds her arms out, but I can’t tell if she’s reaching for me or trying to keep me away. “Hey, it’s just me. It’s just me. You’re okay.”
“What?” her voice squeaks. “What happened?”
“You were having a nightmare. You—you fell out of bed,” I stutter, trying to give her the gentlest version of the truth.
Parker’s pounding on the door now, which makes her jump. “Eden?” Parker calls. “Eden, are you okay?”
Eden looks at me like she’s not sure how to answer, but I don’t think I should answer for her because I don’t know either.
“Eden!” She knocks some more. “I’m coming in.”
She opens the door, and her eyes go to the broken lamp, then to Eden, huddling against the wall, arms around her knees, then to me, crouching next to her. “What’s happening in here?” she says to me, then to Eden, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I—I’m okay,” Eden tells her.
Parker narrows her eyes at me. “Did you fucking hit her?”
“NO!” we both shout at the same time.
“Oh my God, Parker, no,” Eden says, seeming to snap out of it, the focus coming back into her eyes. “It’s okay, really. I was having a bad dream. I fell.”
“You were screaming,” Parker says.
Eden shakes her head. “I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t remember that.” “I’m gonna go get something for these cuts, okay?” I tell her. “I’ll be
right back.”
Parker follows me into the bathroom. “What the fuck, Josh?” she mutters under her breath.
“It’s like she said, she had a really bad nightmare. I was trying to wake her up, and I freaked her out even more. That’s all.” I open the medicine cabinet, where I’d found the bandages for her hand last week. I get Band- Aids and a tube of ointment. “I swear to you I would never hit her.”
“Did she hit you, though?” she asks. “No!”
“Josh, look at yourself,” she says.
I close the cabinet and look in the mirror. I’m bleeding. Scratches on my neck, my chest. The red welts of early bruises on my arms and chest and stomach. I look down at my legs. Marks on my thighs and shins. “I’m fine. She didn’t even know what was happening.” I turn away from her to wet a washcloth in the sink. My hands are shaking.
“Josh,” Parker says. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t want to leave her by herself,” I tell her instead of answering, because the answer is No, I’m not fucking okay. “It’s gonna be fine.”
“Okay,” she says, not convinced.
Back in Eden’s room, she hasn’t moved; she’s just staring at the floor. I reach for her lamp and set it back on her desk because it hurts to look at her like this too. I set the Band-Aids and ointment and washcloth on her desk and reach my hands down to help her up, but she doesn’t even look at me.
“Eden?” I sit next to her on the floor. “Can you hear me?” “What happened?” she asks again, finally looking at me. “You were just dreaming, okay?”
“No, I wasn’t—this was different.”
“Let’s get you up. Hold on to me, all right? Arms around my neck.”
She lets me help her up off the floor and set her on the bed. “I’m just gonna clean these real quick,” I tell her, reaching for the washcloth and
pressing it against her knee.
“Oh my God, Josh.” She touches my neck, presses her hand against my chest. “I scratched you. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her as I apply a row of Band-Aids to one knee. “That was fucking stupid of me to try to wake you up like that. It’s my fault, I’m sorry.”
“I thought you were him—I didn’t know.”
“No, I know.” I bring the washcloth to her other knee, and she draws in a sharp breath. “Does that hurt?” I ask her.
She takes the washcloth from me, folds it over to the clean side, and brings it to my neck, dabbing at it gently, her hands shaking so badly. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m fine,” I tell her as I finish putting Band-Aids on her other knee. “I promise.”
I get up and put my shirt on. She’s already freaked out about the scratches; she doesn’t need to see the bruises, too. “Do you want to keep the light on still?”
She shakes her head and gets back into bed.
I turn the lamp off, avoiding the broken glass.
Lying back down next to her, I feel uneasy. Afraid. Not of her, exactly, but of the things haunting her. She lays her head down in the spot she always lays her head down in and drapes her arm across me the way she always does. But everything feels different.
“I love you,” she says. “Josh?” “Yeah?”
“I love you,” she repeats. “I love you too.”
“Are you mad?”
“Of course not,” I tell her. I’m a lot of things right now, but mad—at her, anyway—isn’t one of them. “Eden, does that happen a lot? Having nightmares like that, I mean.”
“Sometimes,” she answers. “It hasn’t been this bad in a long time, though. I know I scared you. I’m sorry.”
“Will you stop apologizing?” But then I worry I might sound too harsh. “Really, you don’t have anything to be sorry about.”
“Okay, I’ll stop,” she whispers. She touches my chest in the spot where she scratched me and kisses my shirt—it stings as the fabric rubs against
my open skin.
“Eden, can I ask you something else?” “Mm-hmm,” she mumbles.
“Are you getting help for all this? More than the meds. Like counseling or something?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I have a therapist back home. We talk once a week.” “Is it helping?”
“Mostly, I think.” “Good, I’m glad.”
She gets so quiet for so long, I think she’s fallen asleep. But then she raises her head to look at me and says, “What about you?”
“What? Sorry, what about me?”
“Have you ever seen anyone—I mean, for the stuff with your dad? Or just in general?”
“Oh.” I think back to the Alateen meetings my mom brought me to when I was in middle school. “When I was younger, I went to a few group meetings but . . .”
“But what?” she asks me.
I shrug. “They just weren’t for me, I guess.” But as we lie here, I remember more clearly. That’s not what happened. The meetings conflicted with basketball and I stopped going.
“Hey, you should really try to sleep, okay?” I tell her. “I’ll be here the whole time.”
EDEN
His alarm goes off at five, like every other morning. Except he doesn’t wake up to it. And he’s not holding me like he was when we fell asleep. He’s facing away. I reach across him for his phone and snooze the alarm.
I whisper his name and touch his shoulder, run my hand along the side of his face. Nothing. “Josh?” I repeat, slightly louder.
He flinches awake. “Oh, what, what’s wrong?” “Nothing, nothing. Your alarm went off.”
He takes a deep breath in and rolls onto his back, at least a little closer to me. “How is it morning already?” he groans.
“I know.” I prop myself up next to him and look down at his face. My eyes travel to the cuts on his neck—they look even worse. I lean in and kiss the red lines as softly as I can.
He reaches up and touches my face, my hair. “It’s okay,” he whispers, reading my mind.
I lie against him, and he kind of tenses up before he puts his arm around me.
“I technically still have the day off,” I tell him. “So I’m gonna try to get a call with my therapist today.”
“Okay, that sounds good.”
“Would you—no, never mind.”
“No, what?” he asks. The alarm goes off again. “Dammit,” he says, reaching to turn it off. “Would I what?”
“Would you . . . ?” I was going to ask if he’d be on the call, to tell her what happened, to tell me what happened too, but I feel like it’s not fair to ask him to relive it. “Would you just hold me for a few more minutes before you go?” I ask instead.
“Yeah, come here,” he says—of course he does. He rolls onto his side and wraps me up in his arms.
“Tighter,” I say.
He pulls me closer, kisses my hair, and whispers, “I love you.” And for nine blissful minutes, things feel okay.
But then the alarm blares again. He sighs. “I gotta get up, baby.”
I watch him as he gets out of bed and turns my lamp on. He reaches into his bag for clothes, and even as he takes his shirt off, I notice he’s keeping his back to me. “Josh?”
“Yeah?” he answers, still turned away.
I get out of bed and step around to the front of him. He quickly picks up a pair of joggers and sort of holds them in front of his body like he’s trying to cover himself.
“What are you doing?” I ask, reaching for the pants. “Eden, don’t—” he says, but then lets go of them.
And then I see what he’s hiding.
“Oh my God,” I mumble, my hand over my mouth. “Did I—” I swallow hard. I feel the tears already swelling up under my eyes as they take in the dark purple bruises all over his arms, chest, stomach, even his legs. “Did I do this to you?”
“Come here come here come here,” he says, pulling me in and holding me tight. “Shh, it’s not your fault, okay? I’m fine.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head back and forth. Because this looks too familiar, the bruises up and down his body, just like my own bruises the next morning. I reach for my chair and have to sit down because my legs feel weak.
“Please look at me.” He kneels on the floor in front of me. “You had no idea what was happening, okay? You weren’t here; you were there.”
I slide down to the floor too, touch the bruises. “What did I do?”
“You were just trying to get away from me—from him, I mean,” he explains, but I still can’t believe it.
“How could I have done all this?” I say out loud. But the other part of the sentence that I don’t say out loud is: How could I have done all this to him, my love, the one person I feel safe with, when I couldn’t do anything to defend myself against Kevin that night? And then I realize the difference, as
he watches me with those soft, dark eyes. Josh wasn’t fighting me off. He was just taking it.
“I grabbed you. I was trying to help, but I didn’t know what to do, Eden. So, I grabbed you because I . . .” He let his hands float down my arms, to these reddish-purple rings around the forearm on my right side and my wrist on the left. “Eden, I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you. You were falling, and I was afraid you were gonna hurt yourself, and I know I made it worse.” He looks at me, his eyes filling with tears now. “I’m so sorry,” he belts out quickly as he hunches forward and covers his face with his hands.
“No, I’m sorry, Josh. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry,” I tell him over and over. I pull him toward me, and I know I will never forgive myself for this. We collapse onto the floor in each other’s arms, both of us crying now. “I’m trying, I swear,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says. “I am too.”
JOSH
It was just a week ago we were in my room dancing to no music, celebrating, and now I’m here on the floor, afraid that I’m losing her all over again.
We stay like this, tangled up in each other, for so long the sun comes up. “Josh?” she finally says, repositioning herself so she’s sitting with her
back against the side of the bed.
I sit up straighter too, and she starts touching my face so gently, the only thing I want to do is crawl back into bed with her and sleep this all off.
“I want you to know,” she begins. “I’m going to tell Parker about the trial and everything. I can’t stand her thinking even for one second that you would do something to hurt me. I’ll explain it all to her, okay?”
“You don’t have to do that,” I tell her. “Not on my account. Really.”
“No, I’ve wanted to tell her for a while, anyway. I just couldn’t find the right time—but this is the right time, I know.”
“Only if it’s what you want to do.” “It is.”
I take a few breaths, practice the words a couple times in my head first. “You might get upset,” I start, “but you should know I told my parents about the assault—the trial and everything. I know I’m not supposed to be talking about it, but—”
“No, it’s okay,” she says so quietly I can’t tell if there’s any uneasiness behind the words. “It’s okay.”
“Is it, though?” I ask. “Is it okay?”
She nods. “I mean, I trust your judgment—God, I trust your judgment more than mine. I know you’re not going to be telling people you don’t trust, who don’t need to know, right?”
“Right. No, of course,” I assure her. “It was just getting hard to keep it a secret.”
“I get it. It’s been a secret for too long. It’s just . . .” I wait, but she doesn’t finish.
“Hey, I know you’re probably worrying about getting to practice,” she says. “Go, really, you should go.”
“Okay,” I tell her even though practice is the farthest thing from my mind right now, but I’ll go if that’s what she wants. “Are you sure you’re gonna be all right here, alone?”
“Of course, yeah,” she says. She even smiles. “I promise. I think I’ll probably just go back to sleep for a bit.”
I’m shaky as I get to my feet. Almost weak, brittle feeling, as I take her hand and help her up off the floor. Dizzy as I get dressed and lean down to kiss her. Scared as I say “I love you.” Unsteady as I leave her room and close the door behind me.
I make it to morning practice almost forty-five minutes late. Jon shakes his head when I walk into the gym. “Seriously?” he says out loud, looking around.
I don’t even have the strength to get mad at him or try to defend myself, so I say nothing.
Dominic calls me over to the bench press. “Yo, Miller. Spot me.” When I get over there, he says, under his breath, “Are you crazy showing up late after yesterday?” I barely have the energy to put two words together, though, to explain.
“I know” is all I can manage.
“I told Coach you had a last-minute problem with an assignment.” “Thanks,” I tell him.
I grip the bar with both hands—thankful I’m not so shaky anymore, my blood pumping back through my body again—and help him with the lift- off.
“Got it,” he says.
We take turns spotting each other, and I feel grateful that somehow he knows I shouldn’t be alone right now. I keep catching him watching me too closely, but thankfully, he waits until after practice to ask me, when we’re alone in the locker room.
“Parker called me in the middle of the night, you know. She was really scared. By the time I got down there, I guess it was over, whatever happened, but . . .” He gestures to the scratches on my neck; I pull my collar up. “Be real with me, what’s going on with you? First you start a fight with Jon. Now whatever this is with Eden?”
“I didn’t start that—”
“No,” he interrupts, holding up his hands. “He was being a total prick, I know, but you laid hands on him first. That’s not you.”
“I know,” I sigh. “It’s all just a long, complicated thing, I don’t know . .
.”
“I got time.”
So, we skip our first classes and get breakfast instead. I tell him
everything that’s been going on. With me, with Eden. The trial. Last night. Everything.
“Damn, that’s some heavy shit.” He shakes his head. “I had no idea.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly want you to, but I just feel like I’m in over my head. Like, I’ve honestly never been so scared in my life. I don’t know what to do. If this happens again, what do I do?”
“This is only a question, I’m not trying to be a dick,” he says, prefacing something I’m sure I’m not going to like. “But is she worth all this to you?”
“Of course,” I answer right away—there’s no question about it.
“No, I mean really, because this is a lot. A lot for anyone, even you.” “Dominic. Stop. She’s worth it.” But I feel myself getting all emotional
again—angry, sad, it’s becoming harder to even know the difference anymore. “You know, this is all happening because literally everyone in her life has treated her like she’s not worth it for so long.”
“I get it,” he says. “I do. I really do.” He pauses. “If you’re in this for the long haul, maybe you need to talk to someone too. Because you know I got your back, but I have no clue what to tell you in this situation.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You know I love you man, but as your friend, can I be honest?” “Yeah, okay.”
“You’re starting to spiral again,” he says. “Like before.”
