The Way I Used to Be

by Amber Smith

  “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 yo
u then, too.”

  God, I almost wish he didn’t just tell me that. I wish he’d said that he wouldn’t have believed me, because then I could feel justified in not telling him. I just look down at my hands, shake my head.

  “There were so many things that never made sense. About you, about what happened between us. God, it seems so obvious, I should’ve known. Eden, I was with that guy like every day. I mean, we were on the same team. Kevin Armstrong, I—”

  He reaches out and takes my hand. I lean my head against the headrest and close my eyes. Breathe. Just breathe. “I’m so exhausted,” I whisper.

  “Do you want me to take you home?”

  “I can’t be there right now,” I tell him, my voice so quiet.

  “School?”

  I open my eyes. “You’re kidding, right?”

  He smiles an equally exhausted smile at me. “I think we both probably need a little rest. We could go to my house. My parents are already at work. Just to sleep, I promise,” he adds. “Then we’ll figure out what to do, okay?”

  “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.