The Way I Am Now (The Way I Used to Be)

There was so much I wanted to say; I’d been saving up all the things I needed to tell her. So much has happened in this month we’ve been apart. I wanted to tell her how I quit the team. How I’ve been going back and forth between my adviser and Dr. Gupta for weeks now, making a plan to switch my major to psychology. I think she’d really be happy for me about that one. I’d tell her how I managed to work with the financial aid office to cobble together a bunch of smaller scholarships and grants—and even a loan—to replace the stupid basketball scholarship that’s been holding me hostage all this time.

I wanted to tell her how I’ve been going to these meetings, talking, listening, and doing all this thinking. And how strange it is to have so much time, suddenly, without basketball stealing it away from me. How all I wanted to do with it was to spend it with her, even just as friends—I wish I’d thought to at least tell her that. I miss you, I should’ve said, not just as my girlfriend, but as my friend too—my best friend. Because I’m pretty sure that’s what she is.

But she’s not ready.

That’s okay.

I was half expecting her to just keep walking without acknowledging me at all. The fact that she spoke to me to tell me she’s not ready is more than I was even hoping for.

When I get back to the apartment, Dominic is sitting at the table hunched over one of his textbooks, and when he glances up at me, he does a double take. “What the hell happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You went downstairs as one person and came back as someone else. Like the opposite of going out and getting punched in the face.”

“She talked to me,” I answer.

“What’d she say?”

“That she didn’t want to talk to me.”

He squints and holds his hand in the air, teetering between a thumbs-up and a thumbs-down. “So . . . score?” he says uncertainly.

“Yes, because at least she talked to me,” I repeat.

“Straight people really are different, aren’t they?” he says to himself. “Oh, speaking of—do you mind if Luke comes up this weekend after finals?”

“No, sounds good,” I tell him. “So, is it getting serious?” I ask.

He closes his textbook and looks up at me, trying not to smile. But then he nods slowly and says, “It’s very serious. He’s moving here. He just found out he can transfer next semester.”

“That’s amazing. I’m happy for you, man.”

“Thank you, that really means a lot.” He pauses and says, “And all joking aside, I’m happy she talked to you.”

Exam week goes by in a caffeinated blur, as it always does. But that Saturday there’s a gathering on the roof to celebrate the end of the semester. With all the students living in this building, it’s sort of a given that someone’s going to be throwing a party.

I head up before Dominic and Luke—wanted to give them some time alone. Part of me is wondering if she’ll show up or not. These kinds of things were always hit or miss with her. I’m talking with a girl who was in my Intro to Forensic Psychology class last semester—she doesn’t live here, but one of her roommates’ friends does, apparently—when I spot Luke and Eden talking by the edge of the roof. Dominic and Parker are here now too. The girl from my class wanders off to find her roommate, and I go stand by the electric Crock-Pot of hot cider, because that seems like the best place to be either available if she wants to talk to me or to be easily avoidable if she doesn’t want to talk to me.

“Hey.” I turn around to see Parker standing there. She gives me an unprompted hug, which I find oddly comforting coming from her. “It’s been a while since we got to hang out,” she says.

“Yeah,” I agree. “How have you been?”

“Okay. It’s been a weird semester, but I think I’m growing fond of this new roommate-slash-friend role you thrust upon me by bringing her into my life.”

“Good,” I tell her. “I think, anyway.” She stares at me for longer than feels comfortable. “What?” I finally ask.

“I was just waiting to see how long it would take you before you started pumping me for info about her.”

“I wasn’t—”

“No, I know,” she interrupts, smiling. “That’s progress.” She looks behind me and sort of hitches her chin in the direction of something. When I look over my shoulder, I see that it’s Eden standing there. And when I turn back around, Parker’s gone.

“You guarding the cider?” she asks with a laugh.

“Um, I guess,” I answer. “Want some?”

She nods, and I scoop a ladleful into one of the mismatched mugs sitting out on the table. “Thank you,” she tells me as she cradles the mug between her hands and brings it to her face to smell.

“I can leave if you want,” I offer.

“No, don’t,” she says. “We can’t keep avoiding each other forever.”

She drifts a few steps away and then looks over at me like I should be following, so I do.

I’m quick to tell her, “I was never avoiding you.”

“Right.” She nods. “Okay, then I can’t keep avoiding you.”

She leads us over to the wicker love seat with the flattened cushions, where we’ve sat so many other times together. Except this time it’s not with her on my lap or me leaning on her shoulder. We just sit side by side like two normal people and look at each other.

“I like the beard,” she tells me, adding, “It’s not stubble this time, by the way.”

I laugh—God, it feels good to laugh in her presence.

“So what else is new with you?” she asks. “Besides the beard, not stubble.”

“I quit the team,” I tell her.

“Oh my God, Josh. Okay, that’s big.” She smiles at me like she really does know just how big this is for me. “I knew you could do it.”Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

“What, be a quitter?” I joke.

She pushes my arm a little, and it’s the best feeling in the world. Then she looks off into the distance for a moment and smiles again, softer now, and says, “I seem to remember a wise young man once told me that just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean it makes you happy.”

I look down at my mug—that was one of the secrets I told her that night at my house, lying on my couch, while we talked all night. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

“Why not? I remember everything you say to me.”

My heart, flying high, suddenly drops to the ground with a splat.

“I am so sorry about what I said to you, Eden.”

“Oh,” she breathes. “No, I didn’t mean—fuck, sorry—I wasn’t talking about that. Really, I was just saying . . . I know basketball has been a huge drain on you for a long time. I wasn’t trying to—we don’t have to get into all that now.”

“Okay. We can, though, if you want. Whenever you want, we can.”

She looks at me in that way she does, that super-serious way that makes my heart pound in my throat. “I mean, I guess we can. If you want?” she asks uncertainly as she looks around us.

“Yeah, I would like to,” I tell her. “A lot.”

She inhales deeply and looks me in the eye. “Well, I finally realized why you were so mad at me,” she begins.

“We don’t have to do this here,” I tell her. “You could come downstairs.”

She laughs, my favorite of her laughs: the quick, semi-loud spontaneous one that she always means. “Let’s just stay right here, okay? I somehow don’t think going to your place is the best idea.”

“Wait, you know that’s not what I meant, right?”

“I know, but come on, Josh. It’s us, after all.”

Now I laugh, but in my head I’m replaying that word—us— over and over. Us. There’s still an us to her. “Okay. Point taken. You were saying . . . ?”

She inhales deeply and starts again. “I just want you to know that I get it now. Why you were so mad. I know that sometimes I don’t respect myself very much, and somehow, that night, it turned into me not respecting you, too, and I never meant for that to happen. I never wanted to hurt you—I never want to hurt you ever again.” She pauses and reaches out to run her hand along my face. “I really am so sorry.”

I take her hand in mine now. “Thank you for understanding. You always understand. It’s your superpower,” I tell her, and she looks down at our hands, that shy smile. “I think I understand, too, a little better anyway, about why it all happened the way it did. And I never meant to hurt you with what I said to you that night.”

“This is you,” she says, looking up at me.

“What?”

“That’s what you said. This is you. This—the whole messed-up situation—is me.”

God, it sounds even worse when she says it like that. “That’s what I said, but you have to know that’s not true. I mean, I didn’t even believe it when I was saying it, and I don’t believe it now, either. I swear to you, I never thought that. I would never think that about you. Not ever. I need you to know this.”

She looks down at our hands again, and I can see her starting to breathe heavily, sniffing through her nose. Then she sets her mug on the ground, and I start to get afraid that she’s going to leave, but then she takes my mug too and sets it down next to hers. She puts her arms around me, and I can feel her body shuddering, her head tucked under my chin. And I just hold her like that, everyone else around us disappearing.

“Thank you,” she finally says as she pulls away from me. Her hair gets stuck on my beard-not-stubble, and I tuck it back behind her ear. “I guess I didn’t even know how badly I needed to hear that.”

She brings her hands up to her face to wipe her eyes, and I see something there on her arm, poking out from under her jacket. She brings her hand up again to run her fingers through her hair, and I know for sure I see something.

“What is this?” I ask her as I take her hand again and turn it over.

“Oh.” She pulls her sleeve up. “Yeah, I got a tattoo,” she says with a sniffle and a laugh.

“A dandelion?” My heart starts racing. Because. Dandelions. That was our thing. “It’s beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“Does it mean something?” I dare myself to ask.

She breathes in through her nose, gazes out, beyond all the people that are gathered here on the roof, and says, “Well, I guess it’s about being free. And strong.”

“I like that—it’s perfect.”

“And you too,” she adds, quieter.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s sort of about you, too,” she says, making my pulse quicken again. “Just a reminder to”—she breathes in deeply again and exhales before continuing—“to try to be the kind of person you think I am.”

“What kind of person is that?”

“I don’t know, someone who’s resilient instead of destructive. Hopeful instead of . . . you know, feeling doomed or powerless or whatever. Brave,” she adds.

“That’s not the kind of person I think you are. That’s the way you really are, Eden.”

“I’m trying to be.”

I bring her wrist to my mouth and kiss that spot where the dandelion is. She touches my face again. And I can’t resist the urge; I turn my head to kiss her palm now, that spot where she burned herself. Her fingers go to my lips.

“I really want to kiss you,” she says, “but I’m not going to, okay?”

“Oh, okay,” I answer.

“I want us to keep talking.” She takes hold of both my hands. “I want us to be friends again.”

I nod. “I want that too.”

“But just friends for now. Because I’m still not ready to—”

“No, I understand. Really, I do.”

“So, you’d be all right with that?” she asks. “You can do that?”

“Yeah,” I agree. “I can definitely do that.”