After Forever (6 page)

I reached across my body and touched my palm to her shoulder. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t say anything. She flinched from my hand, and then leaned into it. She sucked in a deep breath, sobbed once, then choked, visibly trying to stuff it down, to keep the tears at bay.
 

“It’s okay, Eden.” I whispered it. I wasn’t sure whether I meant that things would be okay, to get her to stop crying, or that it was okay if she did cry. I knew the latter was probably what she needed. I just wasn’t sure if I had the strength myself to comfort her. “It’s—you can cry. I’m here.”

She shook her head, “No, no…” scraping from her throat. But she leaned forward, face in her hands, and swayed toward me, into the chaste touch of my palm on the top of her shoulder.
 

I turned toward her, angling my body toward hers. I rubbed her shoulder, my hand touching the warmth of her back, the fabric of her sports bra. She quaked under my hand, and then turned into me, putting her forehead against my chest. I put my hand on her back, in the center, right over her spine, and held her as she cried. I closed my eyes and stared up at the ceiling, but I saw anyway the curvature of her spine as she bent into my awkward, one-armed hug.
 

The intimacy was disconcerting, right and wrong at the same time, comforting and terrifying, exhilarating and guilt-inducing.
 

She cried for a few minutes, and then the sobs trickled to a stop and she straightened, wiped her eyes with her forearm, sliding away from me, back across the couch, putting several feet between us once more, not looking at me. “Thanks,” she murmured.

“It’s hard,” I said. “No one could go through this without crying.”

She nodded, then got up and vanished into the bathroom. I heard the water going, and she returned with a damp face and less-puffy eyes. “I should go.”

I nodded. She really should. “Thanks for the food.”

“You have my number?”
 

“Yeah.”

“Call if you need anything.” She met my eyes. Hers, so green and so like Ever’s, were conflicted, as if offering something she wasn’t sure she should. “For real. Whatever time it is. Okay?”

I nodded. “I will. Thanks.”

Awkward silence then, our eyes not quite locking, not quite looking away, aware of the moment we’d shared, the vulnerability witnessed, accepted. Holding someone as they cried bound you to them somehow. And we were already bound together, through Ever.
 

She slid her coat on and I stared out the window as she zipped it, facing away from me as she did so. I kept my eyes on the falling snow as she adjusted her shorts, tugging them down with a shimmy of her hips, kept my eyes on the heavy gray clouds thick with snow and darkening with falling night, on the sidewalk going white, on the walls. Anywhere, everywhere, except Ever.

Except Eden.
 

Eden, not Ever.

Fuck.
 

~ ~ ~ ~

Eden

 
I collapsed into bed, on top of the blankets, letting the cool air dry my naked body. I’d taken a long, hot shower when I got home from Cade’s apartment—from Cade and
Ever’s
apartment. It was still her apartment.
 

I tugged the blankets onto myself, but then got too hot and kicked them off. Then I had to put on a T-shirt, because for some reason, when I lay there naked, all I could feel was the simple, innocent way Cade had held me. It wasn’t an arousing memory. He’d held me while I bawled like a baby—how embarrassing—and that was it. Only, I
never
cried in front of guys. When I got dumped, I’d get pissed, I’d scream and yell because I had a hell of a temper, but I’d never cry. Not in front of guys. But I had, in front of Cade. He’d made it easy somehow.
 

But I couldn’t forget the feel of his palm on my shoulder, strong fingers, hard and callused.
 

I forced myself to think of anything else. I hummed the section of the Beethoven sonata I was memorizing. Visualized the notes. Each individual stroke of the bow. Each movement of my fingers on the neck. Anything, everything. I thought of nothing at all.

I tried every trick I knew to get to sleep, but couldn’t. I got out of bed and uncased my cello, sat on my chair, the cushion smooth and cold under my ass, my T-shirt slipping off one shoulder. The dark, varnished wood of Apollo’s sides was cool against my bare thighs, and I felt the vibrations shiver through me as I drew the bow across his strings, not thinking, not playing anything specific, just playing to get my head straight, to give my confused, aching heart a reprieve. I played in the dark, not needing light to know where his strings were, how he felt, how to pull the music from within him, from within me.
 

I played until my wrist and fingers ached. Every note of what I’d played was stuck in my head, and I realized it was the next movement of my solo. I had to turn on the light to find my notes, and I scribbled madly, frantic to get the notation down while it was fresh in my head. When I had it written down, I played it again, and I knew it was brilliant.
 

It was deep, dark, slow and soulful and masculine.
 

It was the music of Cade’s sad amber eyes, the sound of his sorrow.

I still couldn’t sleep, so I put in my earbuds and turned my iPod to shuffle, lay down in the darkness, and listened to “Broken Crowns” by Portland Cello Project.
 

Finally, I felt my eyes grow heavy, focused on that feeling, on the slow floating away, falling under. Still, sleep was long in coming. And my dreams were fraught with strange, disorienting, painful images. Amber eyes, watching me and trying not to, the way mine were drawn to his and to him, in a way I hated and couldn’t quite control. Dreams of Ever asleep, not asleep but in a coma, watching me from behind the veil of the spirit world. She watched me, watched Cade hold me as I cried, and I couldn’t fathom her expression, couldn’t quite see her; she was a silvery translucent ghost whose presence I could only feel as I cried, as I felt the comfort of Cade’s arm around me.
 

Was it disapproval I felt from spirit-her?
 

How could it not be? Spirit-me resolved to be stronger, to keep my tears for my pillow, for the silence of my lonely bedroom.

percentage of miracles

Caden

I was covered in sweat, shaking from exhaustion. Everything hurt. Physical therapy was fucking brutal.
 

I’d withdrawn from school. I couldn’t draw, couldn’t write, couldn’t focus; there was simply no point to going. I had enough money still left over from my father’s life insurance that I could function for a while. I stayed home, read, watched TV and movies, and felt sorry for myself. Eden would come over every day after her last class and we’d go to the hospital together to visit Ever. We’d sit and talk, to each other, to Ever. I’d hobble out into the corridor, try to connect to the shitty hospital WiFi and browse the Internet, idly flipping through the day’s galleries on The Chive or reading articles on Cracked, anything to get away from Eden and to give her time alone with Ever, to talk to her sister.
 

I felt Ever slipping away. I found myself less and less able to keep up the one-sided chatter that Eden seemed to produce so effortlessly.

Maybe it was I who was slipping away. I was retreating, I knew, back into the numb place I’d lived after Mom died, and even more so after Dad had. I was there again, and it was the only way I’d survive. I couldn’t bear to miss Ever. It was too deep a cut through my heart. Talking to her made me miss her. She was there, breathing, heart beating, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t listening. I wasn’t sure if I believed she heard me or not.

I was slipping away.
 

Eden forced me into the present, into feeling. She made me feel strange things. I missed Ever when I looked at Eden, but I also saw Eden for herself, and I saw her as a friend, as a companion in misery, in missing Ever. I didn’t see her as a sister, or as a family member. She was just Eden, and she looked so,
so
much like Ever, too much, and it hurt, but she also looked different enough to confuse me, to hit me where I couldn’t fight it.
 

So I took every opportunity, whenever we were forced to be in the same room, to do anything but look at her, to be anywhere but close enough to touch her, even accidentally. I’d hold my pee for hours rather than let her help me stand up, and I’d make sure to not see her grief so I didn’t have to touch her to comfort her.

It was tense and awkward.
 

Physically, I was a mess as well. I’d had rods and screws put in my leg, which meant being in a cast for three months. It was a long three months. I’d always been active, and to be a couch potato for that long was hellish. I grew dependent on fast food on the way home from the hospital, cafeteria food, easy-to-microwave meals. Unhealthy food.
 

I grew dependent on Eden. She drove me everywhere I needed to go, to the hospital and home, shopping. She was the only person who visited me, and the only person I talked to. Nick Eliot had dropped out of the picture again, as far as I could tell. He’d visited Ever a few times, I’d seen him when I was there, but I had no idea if he’d made any attempt to get closer to Eden as a result of all this.
 

Now out of the cast, I was in physical therapy several times a week, which Eden drove me to as well. She encouraged me when I wanted to quit, which was all the time. Never complained at my snappy attitude and ingratitude.
 

She’d infiltrated every aspect of my life, and I was confused by it, scared of it. I took to silence as a coping mechanism, responding only when spoken to, keeping my distance and my own counsel.
 

At the moment, I was sitting in her car, a two-year-old VW Passat. I was sweaty, stinking, hungry, and irritated. My thoughts were raging out of control, haywire. I thought of Ever, missing her, hating missing her, hating feeling like she was slipping away from me. I hated being so dependent on Eden, hated that I had to see her every day and fight how much she reminded me of Ever and yet how clearly she was her own person, so distinct and so unique that I couldn’t deny having noticed it, having seen it every day for so many weeks.

Finally, as she parked the car in the guest spot of my condo complex, she sighed deeply and shut off the music, turned to face me. “You’re not doing well,” she said. “Emotionally, I mean.” I shrugged, kept my gaze directed out the window. She grabbed my arm and turned me. “Damn it, Cade, talk to me.”

“Why?” I snarled. “Say what? How am I supposed to be doing?”

“Well, tell me what’s—god, I mean, I
know
what’s wrong.” She rubbed at her face. “I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

“Maybe there
is
no way to help me. I
miss
her, Eden. I—she’s slipping away from me. I don’t remember the sound of her voice. I don’t—I don’t remember anything. I can’t—I can’t feel her anymore.”

Eden was silent. There wasn’t anything to say.
 

“She’ll come back.” It wasn’t even a whisper from Eden. “She
has
to.”

“What if—what if she doesn’t?”

“Don’t
say
that!” Eden yelled, her voice an angry shriek. “She
will
! You have to believe. You have to
try
, Cade! You have to talk to her. You have to—to remind her what’s here.”

I heard those last words for hours after she left.
Remind her what’s here.
 

The next day, when Eden picked me up, I had a shoebox under my arm. Blue, with a red and white Union Jack. A Reeboks box. It was heavy, stuffed full. Eden glanced at it but didn’t ask what was in it. Maybe she knew. She took it from me so I could crutch my way to the car. My right arm was healing enough to let me use crutches, but that was about it. My fine motor skills were basically nil, enough to let me open and close my hand, but not enough to hold a pencil yet.

At the hospital, Eden sat in the corner, and I didn’t ask her to leave when I opened the top of the shoebox, revealing dozens and dozens of letters, sheaves of them bound together by rubber bands, a month’s worth of envelopes together in each rubber band. I pulled out the bundle at the back of the box, set the box down, and unwound the rubber band. I found the first letter Ever had sent me. Her handwriting…god, it was so huge and loopy and girly.
 

I pulled the letter out, cleared my throat. “‘Dear Caden,’” I read. “‘How are you? I’m excited to be your pen pal. I’ve never had a pen pal before. I don’t think I’ve written a letter to anyone before, actually. Not unless you count letters to Santa when I was in kindergarten. What should we write to each other about? Would you be interested if I told you about the painting I’m doing?’” I stopped, blinked hard. I could hear her voice. I heard a sniffle and knew Eden did, too.
 

I read the whole letter. The next one. And then I came to the letter in which she first referenced Eden. I stopped, lowered the letter, and made myself look at Eden. “I, um—she talks about you. In a lot of these letters. It might be—I don’t know. It might be weird. It’s—”

“Is she, like, making fun of me?” Eden asked.

I shrugged. “No. Not making fun of you, but it’s just—”

“Private,” Eden cut in. “I get it. Not meant for me to hear. I’ll go get some coffee.”

“It’s not that I mind—”

She waved at me in negation. “I said I get it, Cade. Hearing what someone thinks about you when they know you’re not listening, or whatever, it’s not fun. I’d rather not know.”

“She loved you,” I said. “She wanted you to be happy. That’s all she ever wanted.”

I wondered if she noticed we were both referring to Ever in the past tense.

Eden squeezed her eyes shut and turned away. “I know that. I
know
. She’s my twin. She’s half of me. I know what it was about me that made her so mad. I’m fat. I hate the way I look. I hate that everything I eat goes to my ass. I hate that she could eat a whole cheesecake and not gain any weight, but if I even
smell
it, my ass gets bigger. She hated that I couldn’t just be content with the way I look.” She wasn’t talking to me anymore, not really. “She hated that I was always comparing myself to her. I always have. I always will. She was—fuck, she
is
more beautiful than I am. And I
hate that.” She turned away from me, fists clenched, taking deep, harsh breaths.