The Way I Used to Be (37 page)

We both reach for the butter-pecan syrup at the same time. Our hands touch.

“Eden, I should tell you something up front, right now, okay?”

“Okay?” This sounds important; I balance my fork on the edge of my plate, make sure I look like I'm paying attention.

“I'm seeing someone. I have a girlfriend, and it's serious, so . . .”

“Oh.” I pick my fork back up, stab at the pancake, try to wipe the devastated look from my face, and sound as blasé as possible. “Right, yeah, right, of course.” I carefully cut off a triangle of pancake and stuff it in my mouth. It's hard to swallow.

“So I just want you to know that I didn't come here to—what I mean is that I'm only here as a friend.”

“Sure, yeah, I get it.” Be cool. Eat. Be normal. And for the love of God, don't say anything else. “Does she know you're here right now?” I mumble into my mug. It echoes.

He nods, taking a sip of his coffee.

“What did you tell her, you had to go talk some crazy, lying, stalker girl down off the ledge?” I smile. My face cracks.

“No.” He grins uncomfortably, just slightly. “Not like that anyway. I told her that you were an ex-girlfriend, and I know, I know that's not how you thought of it, but that's what I told her, just for the sake of simplicity. And I told her I thought you might be in trouble and I wanted to see you and make sure you were all right.”

“Wow,” I whisper. I don't know which is harder to believe: the fact that he actually told her the truth, or that after he told her the truth, she let him come anyway. If he were mine, really mine, I wouldn't let him anywhere near someone like me. “And she was okay with that?” I ask in disbelief.

“Yeah.” He shrugs and finally starts eating. Then he looks up at me for just a moment and says, “So
are
you?”

“Am I what?”

“In trouble?”

Just as I'm trying to figure out how to even begin answering that question, the waitress is back, asking “How is everything, guys? Need a topper there?”

“This is really good, huh?” I say after she leaves, pointing at the pancakes with my fork. “Or am I just that hungry?”

“Eden, are you gonna tell me?” he asks impatiently.

“Tell you what?”

“I don't know.” He waves his hand in my direction. “You tell me. Whatever it is you called to say—you don't call that many times unless you have something to say.”

I nod. I do have something to say, many things to say. Too many. “I think I mostly just wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” I admit. “I know it doesn't change what happened. I know it doesn't change anything, but I wanted you to know anyway.”

He takes a bite of pancake. Takes his time chewing. And swallowing. And just when it looks like he's going to say something, he takes another bite. Finally he looks at me, like he's choosing between saying something mean and saying something nice.

“Eden,” he begins, taking a breath. “Look, I knew things weren't exactly how they seemed. I guess I sort of understood that you had issues, or whatever. No, that's a lie,” he corrects right away. “I didn't understand, actually. Not at all. Not back then, anyway, but I do now.” He flashes me a sad smile before going back to his food. “I thought about you a lot, you know, worried about you a lot,” he says with his mouth full, not looking at me.

“Why?” I whisper, afraid that if I speak too loudly, I'll wake myself up from this dream.

“Because you were always so—you just never really seemed okay.”

“I guess I wasn't okay.” I tie my straw wrapper in knots, over and over. “But now?” I laugh. “Now I'm so far past not okay, I don't even know how I got here. You must think I'm out of my mind. I might be.”

“You keep saying that, why? Did something actually happen?” he asks. I watch him watching me squirm, and I know there's no way to get out of this now, not without actually telling him. The truth. He deserves the truth, after all.

I had been waiting for three years for somebody, anybody, to say those magic words. And I've already let the opportunity pass me by once—when it really mattered—I can't do it again. My whole body goes tingly. I panic that I might pass out again.

And I hear my voice, smaller than usual, “Yes. Something really bad happened.”

He's waiting, watching, and looking more and more concerned with every second that passes. “What?” he finally asks. He sets his fork down and leans in toward me.

I look down at my plate, at the puddle of syrup, crumbs of wet pancake. My hands are shaking; I put them in my lap. I open my mouth. “I was . . .”

“Yeah?” he prompts.

I try again. But nothing comes.

“Eden, what?”

I look around. My eyes set on those crayons again. Then back on him, waiting for me to say a word I just cannot say.

“What?” he repeats.

I reach across the table and pull the cup of crayons toward me. I pull out a broken red. I peel the paper back and rip off a corner of my place mat. My hand wants to break as I press the waxy crayon against the paper.
R
, I start to write it neatly, but an ugly word need not look pretty. My
A
becomes a shaky triangle.
P
is jagged. And the
E
and
D
come fast and furious. I look at the word “RAPED” for just a moment before I fold it in half and slide it away from me, across the table, past my plate and his coffee cup. Careful not to let it touch the few stray drops of syrup that have dripped down the side of the bottle, I move it toward him, along with every last shred of trust and faith and hope I have. He pulls the tiny piece of paper out from under my fingers and all I can do is sit there, staring at my lap, my trembling hands digging into the edge of the seat.

He has the word. It's out there. He has it—my secret. The truth. I can't ever take it back now. Can't lie it away. I close my eyes, wait for him to say it, to say the word, to say something. But he doesn't. I force my eyes open and I look at him, looking at me. I can't read his face.

“You—you were—did you—did you tell somebody, did you go to a doctor, I mean—are you okay?” His eyes dart all around me, in a clinical manner, scanning for injuries that aren't visible.

“No, I never told anybody, and I didn't go to a doctor, either. And no, I don't think I'm okay”—my voice falters—“I really don't.” But no, I can't cry, not here.

“Eden, I'll take you. Come on. We can go right now.” He picks up his keys and pushes out his chair like he's about to get up.

“No, no.” I reach across the table and grab his arm. “It's—it's not like it just happened,” I whisper. “It was a long time ago.”

“What?” He pulls his chair back in. “When?”

“Three years ago—almost exactly.”

“Eden, what do you mean?” He's doing the math in his head, I can tell. “That was before we ever—how did I not know this, Eden? Why didn't you ever tell me?”

I just shake my head. There always seemed to be so many good reasons—excellent reasons, in fact—but sitting here across from him, I can't think of a single one.

I look around. The Earth is still intact. I'm still alive. The floor didn't open up and swallow me whole. I haven't spontaneously combusted. I don't know what I thought would happen if I told, if I let that that one word exist, but I didn't expect nothing to happen. Everything is just as it was. No giant meteors collided with the planet and completely wiped out the entire human race. Dishes still clang in the kitchen, the radio still softly hums the oldies station it's set to, the people around us continue their conversations. My heart, it's still beating, and my lungs, I test them, in and out, yes, still breathing. And Josh, he's still sitting here in front of me.

“Eden, who—” he starts.

“Everything still okay?” our waitress asks, suddenly appearing at our table.

“Fine, fine, um, can we just have the check, please?” he asks her.

“Sure. Do you need some boxes?” she asks, looking back and forth between us.

“No, thanks. I'm finished,” Josh says, pushing his nearly untouched plate away from him. The waitress looks confused by his disgusted expression, and then turns to me, her eyes begging us not to give her a hard time about the food.

“No, I'm done too, thanks.” I try to smile at her—we're not those kinds of customers, I tell her silently. She looks relieved.

“All right, well, thank you.” She fishes around in her apron pocket for a few seconds before she finally sets the slip of paper down on the table. “You two have a great day.”

“Do you wanna leave?” he asks me.

I nod. “Um, yeah, I just—I don't have any money with me, I'm sorry.”

“Please”—he bats at the air between us—“it's fine.” His hands are trembling as he pulls two twenties from his wallet and lays them out on the table. I don't even know if he's aware of what he's doing. The waitress is getting an eighteen dollar tip. He's shaken. As we make our way through the tables, his hand hovers over my shoulder, never quite connecting, like he's afraid to touch me.

He walks around to the passenger side door to let me in first. He unlocks it but then stands there, staring at nothing.

“Are you okay?” I ask him.

“Eden, I'm so sorry. I should've—”

“There's nothing you could have done, I swear.” But that might be a lie too. He stands there, close to me, and he looks like he doesn't know what to do. I certainly don't know what the protocol is either, but I step forward and put my arms around him. He hugs me back. We stay like that for a long time, not saying anything, and I feel like we could stay like this forever and it would still never be long enough.

“Let's get inside,” he says, finally letting go. He opens the door for me, closes it too. I watch him jog around the front of the car, and I think about how nice it must be to be his girlfriend. His real girlfriend. They're probably perfect together. She's probably smart and funny and pretty in this wholesome, natural way. And he probably loves her and gives her thoughtful gifts on her birthdays, and he's probably met her parents and they probably love him because, well, how could they not, and they'll probably get married when they graduate and I'm sure they don't play games or lie to each other. She's probably the complete antithesis of me.

He turns the car on and cranks the heat. It takes a long time to warm up.

“Eden, have you really never told anyone?” he asks.

I nod.

“Who did it? I mean, do you know who it was?”

“Yeah, I know who it was.”

“Who?”

I feel the tears working their way up from the pit of my stomach. “I can't tell you that,” I say automatically.

“Why?”

I pull at a strand of yarn that's coming loose from my scarf.

“Why, Eden?” he repeats.

“Because I just can't.”

“Do I know him, is that why?”

My brain fights against my body. I tell it to remain still, to not give anything away, but damn it, it won't listen. I nod. And the tears, they roll down, falling faster than I can wipe them away. I can't do this.

“You can,” he says, as if he can hear the thoughts in my head, “really, you can tell me.”

“You won't believe me,” I sob.

“Yes, I will,” he says softly. “I promise.”

“I know that I've lied about things before, but I wouldn't lie about this, and I know that everyone thinks I'm a slut and I probably am, but this happened before all of that. I mean, I had never even been kissed—you were my first real kiss, you probably didn't know that. I never even held hands with a boy; I had never even so much as given out my phone number! I was just a kid—I—I—” I have to stop, I can barely breathe I'm crying so hard. I look at him, but everything's blurry through my tears.

“I know. I know. Here.” He hands me a McDonald's napkin that was hiding somewhere in the car.

“This isn't who I was supposed to be. I used to be so nice. I used to be a nice, sweet, good person. And now I just—I just—I hate. I hate him. I hate him so much, Josh. I really do.”

“Eden”—he turns me toward him, smoothing my hair back from my face—“look at me. Breathe, okay?” he says with his hands on my shoulders.

“I hate him so much that sometimes, that”—gasp, gasp, gasp. “Sometimes I can't feel anything else at all. Just hate”—gasp—“hate, that's all, that's everything. My whole life is just hate. And I can't—I can't get it out of me. No matter what I do, it's always there, I just—I can't—”

“Who is it? Just say the name, please, Eden. Just tell me.” He's gripping my arms so tight, he's actually hurting me, and all of this pressure builds inside my chest, inside my head. “What's his n—?”

“Kevin Armstrong!” I scream it. Finally. “It was Kevin! It was Kevin.”

His hands ease up. “Armstrong?” He lets go of me. His brain is working something out, I can't tell what. “Armstrong,” he says again. I don't know if the disdain in his voice is because he thinks I'm lying or because he believes me. I open my mouth to ask, but he brings his fists down against the steering wheel. Hard. He mutters something indecipherable, and then, “. . . Fucking son of a bitch . . . that fucking . . .” He shakes his head back and forth, and he wraps both his hands around the steering wheel so tight, I think he might rip the thing right off.

“You believe me, don't you?” I ask, desperately needing someone on my side.

He jerks his head up, and says, “I'm going to fucking kill him, Eden, I swear to God I'm gonna kill him.”

“You believe me, right?” I ask again.

“Eden, of course I believe you, I—I just . . .” He inhales, and exhales slowly, trying to calm himself. “I just—you could've told me—you should've told me. Back when we were together. Why? Why didn't you ever say anything? I would've believed you then, too.”