The Way I Used to Be

“I SEE THEY PAINTED your room,” I say, standing in the middle of my own personalized twilight zone. I sit down on the edge of his bed and unlace my boots.

“Oh yeah, I forgot they did that. So, you can have the bed. I’ll just go crash on the couch or something,” he says, fidgeting in the doorway.

“Oh.” I shouldn’t be disappointed. I shouldn’t be surprised. “Yeah, sure.” But I am.

“Is that not—I mean—well, is that okay?”

“I don’t know, I was kind of thinking you might stay with me, but if you’re not comfortable—I mean, I could take the couch, too, if you want.”

“No, I’ll stay,” he says, entering his room cautiously.

Awkwardly, we lie down next to each other, neither of us wanting to point out the obvious clumsiness of the situation. Side by side we stare at the ceiling. The lightning bolt crack is still there, exactly as I remembered it. I turn my head to look at him and my body moves on its own, its muscles having long ago memorized this routine. He tenses when I place my hand on his chest.

“Sorry, can I?” I ask, realizing that while in my mind we are still intact, in reality I no longer have permission to do this, to touch him. At all.

“Yeah,” he whispers. I watch his throat move as he swallows hard. He’s nervous. He’s probably worried I’m going to try something. I’m a little worried about that too.

I lay my head in its old spot.

And I fall asleep easy, so easy somehow.

I’m facing the other way when I wake up. Josh—Joshua Miller—is spooning me. I press my face into the pillow and breathe it in—it smells so clean, like him, like his sheets and clothes and skin always smelled. With his body molded to mine like this, I get the feeling that his arms are the only thing holding these broken pieces of me together. And I don’t ever want him to let go.

I feel him press his face into my hair and kiss.

I close my eyes. Want to freeze this moment, want to stay just like this, and never have to do or think or feel or be anything else at all. His hands seem to move purposefully. I shouldn’t turn my head, shouldn’t twist my body around to face him, but I do. And his mouth finds my mouth. The warmth of his body is something I could never remember properly—that is something that has to be felt, in the present.

“I miss you,” he whispers, his lips moving against mine.

“I miss you, too,” I echo.

“Eden, it could work this time,” he says softly, inching his face away so we can look at each other, brushing my hair behind my ear. “I know it could. We could make it work.”

I start to nod. Start to smile. But “this time”—“this time,” he said. I don’t want it to be this time, though; I just want it to be then. I just want to go back. I want to start over and not become who I became. “This time”—those two words like a one-two punch in the gut.

“Your girlfriend,” I remind him. And myself.

“I know, I know,” he whispers, closing his eyes like it hurts to even think about having to hurt her. “But I love you, I still love you,” he whispers, coming in to kiss me again.

I feel my hands push against him. “I can’t. You can’t either. You’d hate yourself for it and I don’t want to be the reason you hate yourself. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I can’t just keep hurting people.”

“I know, but—” He holds on tighter. I feel like I might fall apart if he lets go, if I make him let go. “All I ever wanted was for you to let me know you—and now you are. . . .”

His hands, his arms, can hold the pieces in place temporarily, maybe even for a long time, but he can never truly put them back together. That’s not his job. He’s not the hero and he’s not the enemy and he’s not a god. He’s just a boy. And I’m just a girl, a girl who needs to pick up her own pieces and put them back together herself.

I sit up. Out of his arms, I’m still here. I didn’t crumble to dust. I let my back rest against the headboard. I stare at my hands—these steady, capable things—capable of things. I try to figure out why everything suddenly feels different. Lighter. Why I feel like, for once in my life, I might really have some control over what happens next. That things will happen next, instead of this perpetual nightmarish loop my life seems to be cycling.

He sits up too and moves next to me, waiting for me to say something. Waiting for me to explain what the hell is going on. I look at him and it’s like the first time I’m really seeing him.

He looks puzzled. “What is it?”

“I always thought that somehow you’d be the one to save me, you know, all along, all those years ago, even. I think that’s why I called. Maybe I wanted this to happen. I wanted you to come and, you know, rescue me or whatever.”

“So let me,” he says, like it’s easy, like it’s possible.

“You can’t, though. Nobody can.”

“That’s not true, Eden.” He reaches for my hand, and strangely, that, too, feels like the first time he’s ever touched me. It feels new, tingly, electric almost. It’s like the first time anyone has ever touched me. Which, in a way, is true—I’ve never really been this person before.

“No, I just mean, I can’t keep thinking of myself as someone who needs rescuing.”

He opens his mouth, but pauses, “Okay, I get that. I do, but just let me—I don’t know, let me help you.”

“You are.”

“I can do more, though. I’ll be with you—really with you—if you’d just let me. We have something, Eden. We do. You can’t deny that.”

“Remember that day when you came over to talk to me?” I ask him.

He looks at me blankly.

“Remember, I was sitting in the grass by the tennis courts and you had just gotten out of practice and you were waiting for your mom to come pick you up?”

“I . . .” He stares hard at his ceiling, trying to recall this moment that was so fresh in my mind. “I guess,” he finishes uncertainly.

“You were telling me about dandelions?”

He thinks for a second. “Right, yeah.”

“Before you left, you gave me the in-between one, that’s what you called it. Remember?”

“Oh God, yeah,” he says with a laugh. “That was pretty stupid, huh?”

“No, it wasn’t. I kept it. I still have it.”

And now he looks at me like maybe it’s the first time he’s really seeing me, too.

“I thought it was really sweet,” I continue. “But of course I couldn’t bring myself to tell you that. I loved it—” My mouth shuts out of habit, not used to sweet words exiting, but I make it open again, for the important part. “I mean . . . I loved you.”

He nods, only once. “Past tense,” he states matter-of-factly, not looking at me.

We sit in silence like strangers.

“Eden, this isn’t gonna happen, is it? Us, I mean.”

“I wanted it to—I really did, but . . .” I shake my head gently. “I think you’re right, though. We do have something. I’m just not sure what.”

There’s a brief moment of silence for what we’ve lost. And in that moment, it ends. Finally. The past of us officially comes to an end.

“Eden, I think I’ll always have feelings for you, you know that, right? I don’t know that they’ll ever go away, but—” He stops. “But I’ll be your friend. I mean, I want to be your friend. Do you think that would be okay?”

“Yeah. That would be okay,” I say with a laugh. “That would be very, very okay. That would be perfect. I think I want that more than anything in the entire world.”

“Okay. Friends.” He grins and knocks his shoulder into mine.

“Friends.” I smile. I have a friend.

He smiles back, but only briefly. “Eden, I know you don’t want to hear this, but as your friend, as someone who cares about you, I really think you need to tell someone about this. I mean someone besides me, someone who can do something. Like the police.”

And suddenly the reality of it all comes crashing down like a storm inside of me—it feels like someone’s taking my internal organs and twisting them into demented balloon animals.

I guess it shows on my face, because he says, “I know it’ll be hard, but it’s important.”

He gives my hand a squeeze and says the one thing I really need to hear: “They’ll believe you, don’t worry.”

There’re probably a million things I should say to him. I’m sure there are some things he wants to say to me, too. But we just sit, side by side on his bed, in silence. We sit like this for a long time, just being together, not really needing to give voice to all those unsaid words, just knowing and accepting the truth of what we really mean to each other. There’s not enough language, anyway, for these things.

He kisses my cheek on his front porch. Even his cat comes outside to see me off. He offers to drive me to the police station, then he offers to drive me home, then he offers to walk me home, but I need to walk myself. And I have one other person to talk to before I can go to the police.

I take one step off the porch and turn around. He stands there with his hands in his pockets. “Josh, are you okay? I mean, how is everything?” This should’ve been my first question, not my last.

He smiles. “Yeah. I’m good, basically.”

“Good. I’m glad. School’s good?”

He nods. “School’s good, yeah.”

“And how’s your dad? You know, with his problem?”

He forces a smile, looks off somewhere above my head, trying to find the words. “He’s—you know, it’s just”— he meets my eyes, and I understand—“it is what it is, right?”

I nod, stand there for a second, take a breath as I try to memorize him, and then finally I turn away.

“Hey,” he calls after me as I’m halfway down his driveway. I stop and turn. “You’re gonna call me, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” I’ve never answered any question so honestly in my life.

“And you’re gonna speak this time, right?” He grins.

I smile. “Yes.”

He nods, takes his hand out of his pocket, and waves good-bye.