Page 39 of The Way I Am Now
“Yeah, just for the weekend.”
“You weren’t gonna tell me?”
“Oh, it’s just a short trip.”
“But . . . were you going to tell me?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure I’d have the time to see you, so . . .” I drift off, hoping she’ll say something, because how am I supposed to tell her the truth?I’m not sure I trust myself to be around you.
“Eden?”
“Yeah, no, I’m here,” she says gently.
“What if . . . ?”
“What if what?”
“What if we talked in person instead?” I ask her. “Could I come over?”
I hold my breath through the silence on the other end of the line. She’s never let me come over before. I don’t know why I even asked. I should’ve just invited her here.
“It’s okay if you don’t—” I start, but she interrupts.
“Come over.”
I changed my T-shirt and brushed my teeth, and less than ten minutes later, I’m pulling up outside her house. In all the time I’ve known her, I never once picked her up or dropped her off here, never went inside. Her house is really dark, but as I’m pocketing my car keys and walking up the driveway, the front porch light turns on.
She opens the door as I approach, stepping outside in bare feet. She smiles and steps down to meet me just as I’m stepping up, and we kind of awkwardly hug on the stairs, both of us falling into each other and wobbling.
“Hi,” she murmurs as she pulls away and steps aside. “Sorry, I went in for that hug a little too ambitiously, I guess.”
“I don’t mind ambitious hugs if they’re from you.”
That was literally one of the stupidest things I’ve ever said in my life, but she’s wearing shorts again—this time soft pajama-type shorts, and I can see there’s a matching tank top, which she’s wearing underneath an oversize hoodie and I’m having a hard time thinking of anything but that. I follow her inside, trying to conjure up some modicum of chill.
There are shoes lined up in the entryway, so I take the cue and remove mine.
“Thanks,” she says quietly as she stands there shifting her weight from foot to foot, scratching her thigh, looking over her shoulder. She seems oddly, tangibly uncomfortable in her own house. Or maybe she can tell that I’m nervous, and it’s making her nervous too. “My parents are upstairs,” she adds, not quite whispering but letting me know we need to be relatively quiet.
“Oh, okay,” I say, nodding.
“I’m this way.” She leads me into the living room and down a hallway where I can hear muffled TV sounds coming from one of the rooms, a thin line of light under the door. “My brother,” she explains. I momentarily flash back to the New Year’s party my senior year. Rumors had been flying about Eden, and I was trying, unsuccessfully, since I was drunk—the first time in my life I ever drank—to explain that those rumors were just lies. Looking back, I’m sure I only made it worse. So then, when her brother confronted me later that night, I tried to tell him that she wasn’t just some hookup to me, but before I could fully explain that I really loved her, he’d already knocked me to the ground. My first fight. My first black eye. My first hangover.
She closes the door behind us, and I try to take a quick look around without being too obvious. Everything’s very minimal and sparse, more like a showroom than a real room. “So, this is it, my bedroom.”
“It’s different than I thought it would be, somehow.”
She looks around like she’s seeing it for the first time as well.
“I mean, it’s nice,” I backpedal.
“No,” she says. “I know it’s weird. There’s not much of me in here anymore.”
I’m not sure what that means, and I guess it shows on my face because she explains.
“My mom, like, went on this IKEA spree and just totally got rid of everything that had been here before. Repainted and made everything very . . . gray. I guess I haven’t really spent much time putting my own touches back in. Except for my lamp,” she says, moving toward her desk to turn on this small stained-glass lamp, which is the only source of color in the entire room. “I found this at a thrift store. I’m very proud of it. But I’m rambling. Sorry. I guess I’m nervous.”
“It’s okay, I might be a little nervous too.” I pause. “Being here for the first time makes me feel like I’m in high school again.”
