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

We go out with some of the team after the game to a restaurant nearby. Parker joins, I think to make Eden more comfortable. Lucas drove up for the weekend to be with Dominic. I told them I’d clear out of the apartment—stay with Eden and give them some space.

I wasn’t sure I even wanted to go out tonight; part of me was hoping she’d say no, but now that we’re here, it’s actually nice. I forget sometimes how I love seeing her out like this; I can admire her differently than when it’s just us. I notice new things or remember old ones. Like how she doesn’t seem to have any interest in small talk—something I forget until I see her in social situations like these—to the point of almost coming off as a little rude. But then she pays such close attention when she’s in a conversation with someone, talking about something real. She commits to it and doesn’t let herself get distracted. That was, after all, how she got me hooked on her to begin with. She forced me to be real because she had no use for the other version of me, the one who could make polite chitchat with anyone, all day long, without ever once saying anything that mattered.

She’s deep in conversation with Luke now—from what I can overhear, it sounds like they were in band together in high school. I’d forgotten Eden told me once that she’d played some kind of instrument. I start to ignore my own conversation to join in theirs instead.

I shout over the noisy restaurant, “What did you use to play again?”

Luke points at Eden and says, “Clarinet, right?”

“Yes!” she shouts, delighted. “Good memory. And you were . . . flute, I think?”

“How’d you even remember that?” Luke asks her. “Didn’t you leave band after freshman year?”

I see it in her face—she turns pale, and her eyes sort of get this faraway stare for only a moment. I’ve come to recognize this look. It means she must’ve left after what happened, because of what happened. It passes quickly, and she nods and smiles but reaches for my hand under the table.

Thankfully Dominic joins in just then.

“Wait a second,” he says. “I thought flute and clarinet were the same thing?”

Eden and Luke exchange a look, as if that’s the craziest thing they’ve ever heard, and start laughing hysterically.

Luke shakes his head, leans over, and kisses Dominic’s cheek. Then says, “No, honey. They’re not the same thing.”

I bring her hand up onto the tabletop now and squeeze once before letting go. As she opens her hand, I can see that the pink scars from her burn are almost invisible now.

We’re the first to leave. On the walk home, I look over to see her smiling. Not at me, just smiling.

“It seemed like you had a good time tonight.”

“I actually did,” she says. “I like Luke. Do you know I literally never once spoke to him in school; isn’t it weird how things can change?”

“Yeah,” I agree. “Um, so listen, I wanted to float something by you,” I begin.

“Okay, this sounds serious,” she says, slowing her pace as she glances up at me.

“Serious? I don’t know.” I shrug. “Not really. My parents wanted me to invite you for Thanksgiving.”

“Oh, wow,” she says. “Meeting the parents. That is serious.”

“Is it?” I ask—I thought it was too, but I didn’t want to make a big deal of it. “It seems like it’s the right time, doesn’t it?”

She looks down and smiles.

“So, is that a yes?”

“Yes,” she answers, nodding. But then she lets out this small laugh.

“What?”

“You do know that you once told me that you’d never let me meet your parents, don’t you?”

“ I said that?”

“Yeah. It was during that same conversation when I was being so honest and told you I didn’t want to be your cheerleader or your girlfriend or anything like that.”

I think back and do sort of remember saying that now. But I was particularly furious at my parents then; they were trying to hide my dad’s latest relapse from me. I felt like I couldn’t trust them, and I was so done with their shit by the time I met Eden, I didn’t want them involved in anything that could potentially become important to me.

“Like you said, things change.”

Back in her room, the towel is still lying twisted on the bed from earlier. We don’t even talk about it; we just start taking our clothes off. We don’t need to talk about it. It feels so right, like all the distance and sadness and fear of the past month was never even real.

She doesn’t stop kissing me the whole time. We’re so close, all harmony and rhythm and connection like it was all the time before that one horrible, terrifying night. Breathless, she says my name at one point. I think she’s just saying it at first, but then a few seconds later she says it again. “Josh, I . . . ,” she starts, and she holds my face, looks so deep into my eyes but doesn’t say anything else.

“Yeah?” I ask her, pausing to listen.

But she shakes her head and smiles, whispers, “I love you.”

I say it back. Over and over, I say it back.

I fall asleep so easily, with my head resting on her stomach, my hand on her hip, her arms wrapped around me. I can’t remember a time when I ever felt more at peace, more okay with my life than I do right now, my body rising and falling with her breath.

I wake up in the early hours of the morning and stretch, rolling out of her arms. She’s lying next to me, staring straight up at the ceiling. “Hey,” I whisper. But she doesn’t move or respond. I prop myself up and look at her more closely. Her eyes are wide open, unblinking. I have this intense flush of adrenaline punch through my whole body. Because there’s no life behind her eyes. She looks . . . dead. I grasp her arm now and say her name, louder. She blinks a few times, then turns to look at me. She’s back to life.

“Huh?” she mutters.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she breathes, and touches my face gently. “I was just thinking.”

“What about?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’ll be okay.”

“What will?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

She licks her lips before she speaks, like they’d dried out while she was lying lifeless for who knows how long. “It’s just—I missed some days, I think, with my birth control.”

A cold wave of panic passes over me. “Wait, you think or you know?”

“I ran out the other day and I didn’t have a chance to pick up the refill.”

Now I’m sitting up, looking down at her. I don’t know what face I’m making, but she frowns slightly at me.

“Well, for how long?”

“I don’t know, just a few days, maybe.”

“Shit.” A few days is all it takes—I definitely did my homework on all of this months ago, when we decided to stop using condoms. I mean, it felt logical at the time. If the pill’s more effective, anyway, why do both? But that only makes sense as long as she’s taking it every day, which she swore she would.

“A week, maybe, at most.”

“Shit!” I repeat. “Are you serious?”

She pushes up on her elbows so she’s half sitting, too calm. “Yeah, well, it didn’t feel like a priority since we haven’t been all that . . . active lately.”

“Oh my God,” I sigh into my hands. “What, and you just realized this now?”

She opens her mouth but doesn’t say anything.

“You realized this just now, right?”

“I mean, it’s fine,” she says, not answering the question. “I can get the morning-after pill. It’s easy.”

“Okay,” I say. At least we have a plan. But there’s this feeling in my chest like a screw tightening. “Wait, did you let me . . . when you knew?”

“I—”

“You did.” I realize as I watch her face. “That’s what you were gonna say to me. When you said ‘I love you.’ Jesus Christ, Eden! What were you thinking?”

“Don’t yell at me,” she says, her voice extra quiet. “Please.”

“Why didn’t you stop me?” I yell anyway.

She reaches for me. “I’m sorry, I—”

I can’t help but back away from her. “Can you not touch me right now?”

She turns very still as she watches me climb out of bed; I start getting dressed, grabbing random clothes as I find them scattered on the floor.

“Josh, what are you doing?”

“I need some air,” I tell her. She moves to get up out of bed too. “Don’t follow me.”

But she’s with me on the roof a few minutes later. She comes and stands next to me at the railing where I’m looking out over campus, trying to process what has just happened. The wind blows, and she steps closer to me. When I look at her, I see that she’s wearing my gray T-shirt again, the one with the hole in the collar, and a pair of my boxers. She’s shivering as she places her hand on my arm.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “It’s just that it felt like things were going back to normal. I thought it would be okay. Or, I don’t know, I guess maybe I wasn’t thinking. But it’ll be fine, Josh. I’ve taken plan B before, and everything was fine.”

I turn to face her now. “With me?”

“N-no,” she stutters, and looks down. “You’re not really mad, are you?”

“Yes, Eden. I really am mad.”

“It was an accident,” she argues.

“No, it wasn’t!”

She pauses. I can see her thinking through something. . . . God, why couldn’t she have thought it through this carefully last night? Hot anger rises to the surface now, almost matching my fear. “Well, okay, then it was a mistake. But can I point out that if anyone should be freaking out right now, shouldn’t it really be me?”

“You know what?” I begin, trying to channel some of my dad’s calmness, borrowing one of his lines. “Can you please just give me a little space?”

“Are you serious right now?” she shouts.

“Yeah, I’m serious.”

Her hair blows across her face, so I can’t tell what kind of look she’s giving me. But she turns and walks toward the door. “You’re coming back, though, right?” she calls to me.

I didn’t answer her and I didn’t come back. I went to my own bed instead. I tried to go to sleep but couldn’t. So now it’s 6:45 a.m., and I’m waiting outside the pharmacy before it even opens. What’s amazing to me is how much angrier I’m getting as each minute goes by. I’m not calming down at all; I’m just getting more amped up.

We’ve always been so careful. I’m not the guy who’s careless or has accidents or makes mistakes. I trusted her with this—that was my mistake. Walking up to the register, I feel so ashamed, I grab a bottle of water just to have something else in my hands.

I go directly to her apartment and knock on the door. Parker answers with an eye mask pushed up on her forehead, face all scrunched, one eye closed. All she says is “I hate you.”

Eden is sitting up in her bed when I walk in, arms wrapped around her knees. She stands and rushes over to me as I close the door. When I turn around, she’s there with her arms open, but I can’t.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“Here.” I push the plastic bag into her hands instead.

“What’s this?” She peeks inside and brings the bag back over to her bed. “I would’ve taken care of this myself, you know.”

“No, I don’t actually know that. I don’t know anything.” I’m pacing back and forth in her tiny room. “Please just take the damn pill. I’m not fucking around.”

“Josh, I don’t understand why you’re so mad. It’s going to be fine.”

“How do you not understand why I’m so mad?” I snap.

She scoffs as she takes the box and the bottle of water out of the bag. “So, what, you’re just going to stand there and watch me take it?”

“Please just do it.”

Her hands are shaking as she peels open the box and takes the pill out of the packaging. I reach over to open the water bottle for her. She sets the pill on her tongue and mumbles as she takes the water from me, “Well, you thought of everything.” She looks me in the eye while she swallows. Then she wipes the water from her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Thank you,” I say, and sit down on the edge of her bed, waiting for the relief to come. But it doesn’t.

“I almost didn’t even tell you,” she says. “But I wanted to be honest.”

“A little late for that.” My words are mean. I can taste the meanness in my mouth, but I can’t hold them back.

“Why are you being like this?”

“Why didn’t you stop me? Did you think I wouldn’t stop?”

“No, I just—”

“Then what?”

“It . . . I don’t know, it felt good.”

“It felt good?” I repeat. “Oh, that’s mature.”

“Not felt good, like physically good—I mean it did—but I’m saying it felt good to be together again. To be in that place.” She pauses and tries to reach for my hand, but I pull away. “See? Things have been so off with us. I didn’t want to ruin it by stopping you because then I’d have to tell you I haven’t been keeping up with the pill and then you’d read into it all like you’re doing right now and think I’m even more screwed up than I am—and now here we are.” She throws her hands up and adds, “Here we are, anyway.”

I let my head fall forward into my hands, her explanation still echoing in my mind. I try to understand, but—

“I can’t,” I hear myself say out loud.

“You can’t what?”

“I can’t . . . trust you,” I admit. “I can’t—I can’t do this.” I’m still leaning forward, seeing the floor through my fingers, my hands hot against my skin, I can’t look at her face.

“What are you saying?”

The words tumble out, landing heavy like boulders. “I don’t know, maybe we need to take a break or something.”

“Take a break.” She laughs. “Over this?” I look up, and she has this half grin on her face, full of disbelief, irritation. I guess I’m annoying her, which annoys the hell out of me, sparking something even deeper—she’s not taking this seriously. She’s not taking me seriously.

“Yes, over this!” I shout, and I’m on my feet again.

Now that I’m yelling, I see her getting that far-off look in her eyes, like last night in the restaurant, but now it just makes me angrier.

“No,” she says. “If we’re doing this, then at least tell me the truth. Give me your real reason.”

“You’re questioning my truth when you’re the one who lied?”

“I never lied. I just . . .” She crosses her arms now and says, “Admit it, you’ve been wanting out ever since that night.”

“What night?”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes, but her hands are still shaking, betraying her coolness. “Don’t play dumb,” she says, her voice sharp. “You know what night.”

“This has nothing to do with that night,” I tell her. “Eden, how am I supposed to trust you after this?”

“Because it’s me.”

“Yeah, exactly,” I blurt out. “This is you.”

The way she looks at me—like if I’d just slapped her, it would’ve hurt less—makes me want to die. I try to take it back. “Okay, don’t—don’t look at me like that. You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Yes, it was,” she says quietly, looking down at the pill box and the plastic bag and the water bottle sitting on her bed. She starts putting everything inside the bag. I reach for her, but she ducks away. “No. You want to go, just go.”

“Look, I don’t want to go,” I tell her. Take it back, take it all back right now. I step toward her again, and when she looks up, I can see that her eyes are filling with tears.

“Just go, Josh,” she says, her voice sounding strangled as she wipes her eyes roughly with the heels of her hands. “There’s the door. I’m not stopping you.”

“Eden, don’t—”

“Go!” she shouts, already losing her voice to the tears. She throws the water bottle, but it misses me. “Get out, God!” she yells. “Just fucking go.”

Parker appears in the doorway and looks at me, fully awake now. “Josh,” she says calmly, firmly, “you need to leave.”

I do. But I can’t force myself to go far. I sit down in the hall-way outside her door with my back to the wall. I’ll wait for her for however long it takes, I tell myself. In the meantime, I’m just trying to remember how to breathe. A break. I can’t remember ever saying anything so fucking stupid in my entire life.