The Way I Am Now (The Way I Used to Be)

I can feel Dominic staring at me the whole car ride. “Do we need a code word or something?” he finally asks as he parks next to the other cars in the lot behind the football field.

“Code word? What are you talking about?”

“If you need to leave.”

“Why would I need to leave?”

“The whole seeing-your-ex thing,” he says, as if that should be obvious.

“I told you I’m fine.”

“Yeah, and I know you too well to believe that.”

I go to open my door, and he locks it. “Do I need a code word for you to let me out of this car?”

“It’s me you’re talking to,” he says. He gives me that look he’s given me so many times this semester when I’m on the verge of screwing something up. “Can you at least admit you’re not fine?”

“Okay,” I relent. “Did it suck seeing her with that dickhead guy? Sure. But we’re friends; it’s not like we made some kind of promise to each other or anything.”

“I’m just gonna say one thing, and then I’ll shut my mouth, all right?”

I sigh. “Fine. All right.”

“She seemed like a nice girl and all. Cute, I grant you. You know, I’m sure she’s not purposely trying to be an agent of sheer fucking chaos in your life. But—”

“All right,” I interrupt. “Don’t push it.”

“I’m just saying maybe seeing her with another guy isn’t such a bad thing. You can finally move on.”

“Move on?” I laugh. “I have moved on.”

“Yeah, okay.” He squints at me, raising one eyebrow in his signature you’re-full-of-shit look. “I’m just saying you can stop carrying this weird torch you have for her. You’re gonna set yourself on fire with it.”

“I’ve told you before, it’s not like that with us,” I tell him again.

“I mean, she is still in high school,” he continues anyway.

“I know that, D!” I snap at him. “And again, we’re just friends.”

“Maybe, but I still feel like she’s been stringing you along, and meanwhile you—”

“That’s not it,” I interrupt him. “She’s not doing that, Dominic. Not at all.”

“And meanwhile,” he says, louder, talking over me. “You’ve literally blown up your whole damn life over her and she’s with someone else. I just wanna make sure you see it—that’s not cool.”

“It’s not like that,” I repeat. “None of that stuff was her fault.”

“Oh, it’s not her fault you broke up with Bella and wound up on my doorstep without a place to live?”

“No. And, technically, Bella broke up with me.”

“Right, okay, so then I guess it’s not Eden’s fault you spent all of winter break in a black hole, missed one of our most important games of the season, and almost got kicked off the team after you spent one day with her? One day,” he emphasizes, holding up his index finger to make his point, even though the point he’s making couldn’t be farther from reality.

“I didn’t—” But I stop myself because it’s better if everyone keeps thinking I just didn’t show up to the game, instead of what really happened. “That wasn’t because of her.”

“So, it’s just a coincidence you haven’t dated anyone since then? I mean, you never even tried to fix things with Bella—who, by the way, was a very solid person we all really liked.”

“Look, I appreciate you caring, but I just can’t keep talking about it or . . .” I’ll say something I shouldn’t. “I’m fine. Okay? I promise. Can that please be good enough for you?”

He sighs but then nods once and presses the button to unlock the doors. Pops the trunk. We get out of the car, carrying the six-packs we picked up on the way to this stupid impromptu reunion, and we cut across the field, past the giant outline of our old mascot against the brick wall of the bleachers.

That’s when Dominic says, “Oh! How ’bout ‘eagle’? For the code word.”

“Working ‘eagle’ into a conversation won’t sound conspicuous at all.”

“The code word could be conspicuous,” he says, laughing. “Fifty percent chance no one’ll know what that means.”

He got a smile out of me. “You’re mean,” I tell him, and as I look ahead, I can see cell phone flashlights dancing up in the bleachers already. “Those are supposed to be our friends.”

“I’m honest,” he corrects. “And you’re the one who’s laughing.”

“Am not.”

“Well, it’s not our fault our friends can’t all be blessed with brains and bodies like ours,” Dominic jokes in his best drag queen voice, as he calls it, raising the cases of beer into biceps curls.

“Yeah,” I scoff. “Or your modesty.”

“I’m done with modesty!” he yells into the night air, and it echoes against the brick-walled buildings of our high school.

“Who’s there? DiCarlo? Miller!” a voice yells from the stands, perfectly imitating our old coach. “Get your asses up here!” Zac yells.

“This is so stupid,” I groan.

“Now, you be nice.” Dominic laughs, but stops abruptly when he catches a glimpse of Zac. “Oh my God,” Dominic says under his breath. “Is he . . . ?”

“Still wearing his high school varsity jacket?” I finish. “Yes, he is.”

“Never mind. Forget what I said, you don’t have to be nice,” he mumbles as we trudge up the steps of the bleachers.

There are about a dozen people here. A few were there at the concert, including Zac, who I managed to dodge until now. They’re rowdy, drunk already. We’ll be lucky if no one calls the cops on us for trespassing. Most I recognize from school. Zac seems to be the self-appointed ringleader. At one time I thought he was my best friend. But everything changed senior year. After Eden. But most things changed for me after Eden. He called her a slut once after we broke up—even after I confided in him about how much I loved her—and still, more than two years later, it’s the first thing I think of when I see him.

“How does it feel to be back?” Zac says, laughing, spreading his arms out wide like he’s gesturing to some kind of vast kingdom.

“Looks like you never left.” I don’t know if I’m messing with him or trying to start a fight, but he just smiles at me anyway. He doesn’t get it, which is probably for the best.

I turn around and look out at the view. This place that felt so important, so life-and-death, seems small now. It’s really just four brick buildings, an old scoreboard, a tennis court, a soccer field, empty parking lots, and a rusty flagpole in the center of it all.This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.

“Victorious!” Dominic answers. I don’t know if he’s being serious or not now. He might really feel victorious—he wasn’t exactly out back then, not with our teammates, anyway. Being gay and black in a mostly straight, mostly white school, I think he tried to make himself invisible, except for when he was on the court. “Being a big-shot college basketball star agrees with me.”

“I bet,” Zac murmurs, and I can hear the jealousy in his voice without even needing to look at him. “Miller, heads up.” I turn back around just in time to catch the can of beer he’s tossing to me.

I give him a nod and retreat up to the top level of the bleachers. I can see Dominic is making the rounds, working his way over to the one guy he’s really here to see. I’ll go introduce myself to him in a while—after all, Dominic was nice to Eden tonight even though he thinks she’s bad for me. It’s hard to explain her to him, how wrong he is about her, what she means to me, without telling him things it’s not my place to tell.

Three of the guys hop the fence and start racing each other around the track, and two of the girls, who I think must’ve been cheerleaders, follow them onto the field. They start enacting old cheers I recognize from basketball season, only they’re stumbling and laughing through them, falling over each other and screaming. As I look around at everyone in their little groups, I wonder if they’re all pretending to be having fun or if they really are and there’s something wrong with me that I can’t be that person anymore.

I set the beer on the bench next to me and take my phone out. I want to text her, but it’s like she said, there’s too much to say in a text right now. I put my phone away instead.

That girl from the show is not being very discreet about watching me. I wish I could hang a sign around my neck that says STAY BACK 100 FEET. As soon as I have that thought, Zac zeroes in on me and starts climbing the steps. I pop open the beer, and it protests with a carbonated hiss. I take a long swig. I won’t be able to get through a conversation with him sober.

“Buddy,” he says, taking a seat next to me. “Been a minute.”

“Yeah,” I agree. Chug. Chug. Chug.

“So?” he says. “Tell me! What’s been going on with you?”

I shrug, finish the rest of the beer. He pulls another can out of his jacket pocket like magic and hands it to me. “Thanks.” I crack it open.

“What’s with you, man?” he asks, side-eyeing me.

“Nothing’s with me.”

“If you say so.” He takes a giant gulp. “Hey, see that girl?” he asks, pointing at her with the neck of his bottle. “She was asking about you before you got here.”

“Hm.”

“Hm? That’s it, hm?” He snorts through a laugh, keeps drinking. “Big man on campus. Guess you must be swimming in it.”

“Hey,” I warn him, and take another sip. “Come on.”

“Unless living with DiCarlo is rubbing off on you,” he says, cracking himself up.

“Hey!” I tell him, more firmly this time. “Do you see me laughing?”

“Loosen up, bro,” he shouts, reaching around me and squeezing my shoulder.

“God, were you always like this?” I say, more to myself as I shrug him off me.

“Were you always like this?” he comes back at me.

“I’m just not interested, okay?” I answer, so he’ll drop it. And I take another sip, trying to pace myself.

“Okay, okay.” He holds up his hands like I’m the one being an asshole right now. “Saw you talking to that girl at the concert. Was that . . . uh . . . ?” He looks off, snapping his fingers like he’s trying to summon her name.

“Eden,” I answer.

“Right,” he says. “Question, though. Didn’t she kinda screw you over last time? Like cheat on you or something?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“We’re talking about Caelin McCrorey’s little sister, right?”

“Yep.” I watch him as I take another long pull and swallow. “I seem to remember you once called her a slut, didn’t you?”

He chuckles like it’s nothing. “Is that why you’re pissed at me?”

“Who said I was pissed at you?”

“Man, that was a million years ago.” He stares at me, and there’s this weird smile edging onto his face, like he’s half amused with himself, half scared of me. “What is this? Did she say something about me or . . . ?” He trails off. “’Cause it was just a joke.”

She never mentioned a word to me about Zac, but now he’s making me wonder if there’s something more than that one slut cough in the hallway senior year.

“Like what?” I ask. “What would she say about you?”

Before he can answer, the three guys who had been racing around the track are bounding up the bleachers toward us, the former cheerleaders trailing behind them. Dominic is walking over to us now too, his arm around the shoulder of the guy he likes—not so secretly, it seems—and the rest of them are following.

“Dude, did someone just say something about Caelin McCrorey?” one of them asks as they’re approaching. “Did you hear what happened to him?”

“Oh yeah,” another answers. “Heard he got kicked outta school or something, right?”

“No, no. You’re thinking of his friend,” one of the cheerleaders answers. “Kevin, remember? Kevin Armstrong.”

Hearing his name sends a chill up my spine. I try to catch Dominic’s eye. Eagle.

“He didn’t just get kicked out of school. I heard he’s in prison or something.”

“No, he’s not in prison,” someone else answers. “He did get arrested, though.”

My heart is racing. Eagle, I shout in my mind.

“That Boy Scout?” Zac spits, laughing. “What the fuck for?”

I keep drinking. No one seems to know. My heart slows a little. Maybe they’ll drop it.

“I know,” the other cheerleader chimes in now, waiting until everyone looks at her before continuing, louder. “He raped someone.”

There’s an uproar of voices saying things like “what” and “are you serious” and “no way,” but it’s Zac’s voice that breaks through: “Okay, now I want to know who’s accusing him because that’s bullshit!”

I turn to look at him, and I can’t think of one word to say because all my thoughts are preoccupied with restraining myself from knocking him on his ass right now.

“No, it’s true,” the first cheerleader says. “I know the girl. We met her.” She points to the other cheerleader. “Remember? Kevin brought her home over Thanksgiving last year. Jen or Gin, something like that? She was his girlfriend.” So Eden was right; people really have been talking.

“Obviously not anymore,” the other girl adds, snorting through her words before dissolving into laughter.

“Oh, his girlfriend?” Zac shouts, throwing one of his arms forward, all sloppy. “Well, there you go.”

“What does that mean?” I finally say because I can’t restrain myself this much.

“Come on, how’s his girlfriend going to accuse him of rape?”

I clench the now-empty can between my hands. “You realize what a fucking asshole you sound like, right?”

“Whoa, Miller.” Zac nudges me with his elbow. “Chill.”

Dominic gives me a questioning look. He has my back, though he has no idea why; that’s what makes him a good friend. “No really, Zac,” he taunts. “Tell us you’re an asshole without telling us you’re an asshole, am I right?”

People laugh at that, but Zac’s still looking at me like I really had knocked him on his ass. Good.

“Well, it’s not just her,” the cheerleader says. “There’s like at least one or two other girls. I don’t know who they are, but it’s a whole thing.”

“Forreal,” the other girl adds, slurring. “Like I heard there’s’posed to be a trial and everything.”

I spot a case of beer someone has brought up, and gesture for one. I open it immediately. Drink fast. This is too hard.

“Is it terrible,” a small voice says, “that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true?”

Next to me, on the bench below mine, I see it’s that girl who’s spoken. Hannah, the one from the show, the one Zac was talking about. She looks up at me and smiles quickly before looking away.

“Oh my God,” her friend who’s sitting next to her says, gripping her arm. “What do you mean?”

“No! God, no. He never did anything to me,” she responds, “but I was alone with him once after a game, and he totally creeped me out.”

“How?” I ask. Dominic shoots me another look, making me aware that I’m being too intense. “I mean, why, wh-what did he do?”

“Oh, um,” she stutters, blushing like she’s surprised I’m talking to her. “It wasn’t really anything he did, exactly,” she continues. “Just a feeling, I don’t know.” She shrugs. “The way he was looking at me, maybe? Like, weird. Sort of . . .” She pauses and stares off like she’s trying to remember more clearly.

And for a second—a split second, now that I’m really looking at her—I see something in her that reminds me of Eden somehow. I take a drink. It’s not that she looks like her; she doesn’t. It’s something deeper, and I think it must be a shyness in her gestures that reminds me of her. It hits me with way too much clarity as I wait for her to finish talking. Kevin must’ve seen this quality too, whatever it is, in this girl. Just like he must’ve seen it in Eden. Like some part of her is unprotected, vulnerable. The thought that I might be seeing something he saw scares me.

“Predatory,” she finishes with confidence, but then shakes her head and lets out this small laugh. “Whatever, I don’t know. I just know it made me not want to ever be alone with him again. Like ever.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good thing.” I nod, biting back any more words. Someone’s handing me another drink. I’m drinking way too much, too fast, but I take it anyway. Dominic is making some kind of hand gesture, like slow down, but if he had any idea how hard this is right now, he wouldn’t blame me.

“Well, this all makes so much sense,” Hannah’s friend says. “I always thought Kevin Armstrong was super hot. And I’m only attracted to complete psychopaths. So yeah, that tracks.”

Everyone laughs like it’s all a big joke.

I stand too quickly, and the world sways. I have to grab the railing to stay balanced.

“Where you goin’?” Zac yells after me. “Hey, Miller!”

I don’t even acknowledge him. Just concentrate on walking down these steps without spilling my drink. I make it to the bottom, and somehow Dominic is suddenly there, standing in front of me. I turn around to look—wasn’t he just up there with the rest of them? And as I’m turning back to face him, he’s got his hand on my shoulder like he’s steadying me.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie. “I’m gonna fly solo for a bit, that’s all.”

“What?” he asks, looking thoroughly confused.

“You know, the eagle metaphor thing?”

“You are shwasted right now and still using the word ‘metaphor,’” he tells me, shaking his head. “How are you so drunk already?”

“I don’t drink, ’member?”

“Listen, I’m gonna need to sober up a little before I can drive us. You really okay on your own for a while?”

“I’m fine. I’m just—I’m gonna talk a walk.”

“You’re gonna talk a walk?” he repeats.

“Take,” I correct myself, enunciating carefully. “Yes! Go. Seriously. Be with your . . . man,” I settle on after shuffling through “boy” and “friend” and “boyfriend” and “guy” and “guy friend” in my head.

“Oh, he’s my man now? Okay.” Dominic laughs hysterically. “I’m so giving you shit for this later.”

“You’re a good friend, you know that?”

“Okay, okay. You too. Go talk your walk, we’ll leave soon, all right?”

I wander back toward the school, and I don’t really know where I’m going until I’m standing there, this swath of grass between the tennis court and the student parking lot. I go to take another sip but realize the can is empty. I crunch it up and aim for the garbage bin at the entrance of the tennis court.

“He shoots,” I say out loud. “He scores.”

I hear clapping behind me; I turn around.

“Nice shot,” she says. Hannah.

“Oh. Didn’t see you there.”

“Is it okay if I join you?” she asks, pulling a flask out of her purse. “Brought the good stuff.”

“Sure,” I tell her reluctantly, if only to keep Zac away from her.

We sit in the spot I sat with Eden the day she said she’d go out with me. There were dandelions growing all over then; we had this whole thing with dandelions and making wishes. And she was doing her tough-girl routine but let me in just a little bit anyway. I can close my eyes and see her sitting here in the sun so clearly.

I run my hands along the grass. It’s freshly mown. Nothing growing here now.

“I liked what you said back there,” she tells me as she holds the flask out.

I take it from her and bring it to my lips. Whiskey. Small sips this time, I tell myself. I shrug and hand it back to her. “I guess I’m just kinda over this whole scene.”

She nods and takes a much longer sip, scrunching up her face as she swallows it.

“I have to tell you, I had the biggest crush on you when we were in school. I’m sure you didn’t know I existed.”

She passes the flask back to me, and I take a sip before trying to figure out how to respond.

“God, I just totally made that weird, didn’t I?” She laughs and covers her face with her hands, then spreads two fingers to peek at me.

“Uh, no,” I finally say. “No, I’m just not really in a place to—I mean, I’m flattered to hear that, but—”

“But you have a girlfriend, right? Of course you would, why wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t actually, but I’m not—” I stop midsentence because I don’t know how to say what it is. It’s true I don’t have a girlfriend, but I don’t feel quite available somehow, either. “I mean I guess it’s sort of . . .”

“Complicated?” she finishes with a knowing laugh.

“Exactly.”

She takes a big sip, hands it back to me, and as I’m drinking, she looks around and says, “Well, it’s just us here now.”

“You seem very sweet, I just—”

She leans in so fast I can’t stop her. Her mouth is wet on mine, the taste of whiskey strong on her tongue, making me feel even drunker. I’m kissing her back even though I shouldn’t. And it feels good even though I don’t want it to. I haven’t kissed anyone since that day four months ago when I kissed Eden . . . or she kissed me.

She’s climbing onto my lap, her legs straddling me, her long skirt pulling up. She takes my hands in hers and runs them up her thighs. I can’t help but think of Eden’s bare legs earlier. Her skin is so warm. Soft. And now her hands are on my chest, pushing me to the ground. And I pull her down with me. I’m drifting away, my head so fuzzy. I wish I would’ve kissed her tonight. I wish I would have found the right words to tell her everything. She was right there. Right here in my arms. And I let her go. Again.

I feel myself being pulled back to my body as I open my eyes. I’m on my back in the grass now, and it’s not her body pressed up against mine, not her hair my hands are tangled up in. She’s holding herself up over me, and she’s laughing, saying, “It’s Hannah, actually.”

“Wh-what?”

“You just called me Eden.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “My head is—I’m not really thinking clearly. I know your name, I promise.”

“It’s okay,” she says, her hand rubbing against my jeans. “Kiss me like that again, and you can call me anything you want.”

“No, I—I’m not really in a place to—I’m just—” I’m getting flustered, my head feeling so full as I struggle to sit up. “God,” I mutter to myself, “fuck me.”

“Yeah.” She giggles. “That’s kinda what I’m trying to do.” She leans in to kiss me again, and I have to push her hands off me.

“No, really. I can’t.” I scramble away from her and stand up, buttoning my jeans and quickly threading my belt back through the buckle. She looks up at me, so strangely, so confused. “I’m sorry, it’s really not you.”

She doesn’t say anything as she gets up and walks away. Doesn’t even look back.

“It’s not you,” I call after her. “Really.”

It’s not her. She’s not Eden.

I kick at the grass and hit the metal flask, nearly toppling over as I bend to pick it up. I sit back down, take another swig, and pull my phone out of my pocket.