Page 34 of The Way I Am Now
i’ll make you my special vanilla blob latte
next time you’re here
I keep debating whether I should tell her I’ll be home this weekend. We never did see each other again over spring break. She called, left me a voice mail, which I listened to way too many times over the last few months. She told me she wanted to see me. I gave her excuses—lost phone, broke phone, got sick, had to get a new phone, got busy, had to leave early—none of which were lies, exactly, even if I felt like they were.
She’s been texting pretty regularly, but it’s all light and airy surface stuff like our communication is suddenly quantity over quality. It’s never been this way with her before. I feel like something has changed but I don’t know what or why, and I’m too scared to ask her about it. Thankfully, she doesn’t talk aboutSteve, at least. I don’t think I could handle that yet . . . or ever.
I leave for home the next morning, stop for gas at the gas station I always stop at, twenty miles into the five-hour drive. I look up at the number on the pump. Two. The exact one I used the last time I was driving home, back in December.
It was snowing that afternoon when she called the first time and hung up. I was on my way to practice. She called and hung up four times in a row. I deleted her number from my phone years ago, but I could tell it was her from one breath.
I tried to put it out of my mind as best as I could, but then later that night, we were sitting at our kitchen table, books all spread out, studying for finals, when her next call interrupted us. I answered, but she hung up again, three times.
“What the hell?” Bella said, telling me on the fourth call, “Just ignore it.”
But I couldn’t. “Eden, is this you?” I answered.
And then she hung up on me again.
“Eden, as in your ex-girlfriend Eden?” Bella asked, setting her highlighter down in the binding of her textbook. “What doesshewant?”
I shook my head and stood from the table. I called her back. I was getting so mad while I waited for her to answer and I didn’t even really know why—because Bella was getting upset or because I was starting to care whether I heard her voice or not.
She answered but still wouldn’t say anything, and Bella was right there listening, so I told her not to call back. But then I was immediately relieved when she called a second later anyway.
“Is she stalking you or something?” Bella hissed, sounding meaner than I’d ever heard her before. “Donotanswer that, Josh— she’s messing with you.”
But I did. And when she finally spoke, her voice nearly crushed me. She didn’t sound right at all. She kept saying “I cared.” I didn’t know what she meant, but then she repeated it. “I cared about you. I always cared about you.”
She’d never said that to me before, and hearing it now, this way, it scared me.
“Did you know?” she asked. “Did you know I cared?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I told her the truth. “Sometimes.”
She went off about all these random things she’d lied to me about and what a horrible person she was and how much she hated herself and how I should hate her too. She was being so cryptic and erratic and I was really hoping it was just that she’d been drinking or something, but when I asked her that, she laughed and said no, and I could tell she was starting to cry.
Something was wrong. I didn’t know what, but I knew she wasn’t messing around. I tried to keep her on the phone, but I could feel her getting farther and farther away with every word I said to her. I asked her what she needed, how I could help.
“You can’t,” she cried.
I started getting more than scared because she was winding down, or maybe winding up; either way, I was losing her, quickly. She was saying things like “I’m sorry” and “I shouldn’t have called,” and I tried to tell her it was okay but it was like she couldn’t even hear me anymore.
“I just miss you so much sometimes, and I wanted you to know that I cared. I really did,” she said so quietly I had to cover my other ear just so I could hear her. “And there wasn’t anyone else. Ever. I hope you’ll believe me.”
“Wait, Eden,” I yelled, because I knew—she was done. “Don’t hang up,” I said, even though it was too late.
Bella was watching me as I paced our tiny apartment, frantically trying to call Eden back, leaving message after message. We’d been together for over a year—I was planning on taking her home with me over winter break to meet my parents—but she’d never seen me like this.
“Calm down,” she kept saying. “You’re really overreacting right now.”
But I couldn’t calm down. And I wasn’t overreacting.
“You don’t still love her,” she said at first, suppressing a laugh. She didn’t say it like a question, though; she was telling me.Of course, you’re not still in love with a girl in high school who was never really your girlfriend in the first place. I was trying to tell myself that same thing. I could go months without having her even cross my mind. I was over her. But if that were really true, then how was it that she could call out of the blue after years, and I just crumble at the sound of her voice?
“You’re not,” she repeated when I didn’t answer. “Josh?”
“What, God?” I snapped at her, another thing she’d never seen me do before.
