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

Dominic keeps complaining about how long it’s taking to get in, how much of the show we’ve already missed. He’s texting with our friends inside—his friends mostly these days. “They’re saving us spots near the back,” he tells me. When I don’t respond, he adds, “Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“I can feel you brooding from here.” He glances up from his phone at me, the briefest exchange. “Stop it.”

“Sorry, I just don’t get what the big deal is with this band,” I tell him, pretending my mood is over me not being into the concert instead of because of things with my dad. “So, they were kinda famous for a minute in the early aughts.” I shrug.

“And they’re from here,” he emphasizes. “Have some hometown pride, you ingrate.”

I shake my head because I know he doesn’t really care either. That’s not the reason we’re here, at this concert, or here, back home. He’s meeting up with someone—the same someone he’s been texting this whole time—but won’t just tell me that’s the reason he wanted me here.

“At this rate, we’ll miss the concert altogether,” he mutters, “so you might get your wish after all.”

“Well, we wouldn’t have been so late if you didn’t make me change my clothes.”

“You’re welcome for not letting you out of the house like that.” He scoffs and looks at me, finally putting his phone in his pocket. “Sometimes you’re so straight, you don’t even know how lucky you are to have me.”

He reaches up to try to fix my hair, but I push his hand away. “Seriously?”

“You have residual hat hair, man!” He’s laughing as he reaches for me again. I dodge him and ram right into someone.

“Sorry, excuse me,” I say, turning just in time to see the side of her face rushing past. I turn back to Dominic. “Was that . . . ?”

“Who?” Dominic asks.

I look again. She’s moving fast toward the parking lot. The hair is different, but it’s her walk for sure, the way she’s holding her arms crossed tight to her chest. “Eden?” I call, but there’s no way she could hear me in this crowd. “Listen,” I tell Dominic. “I’ll be right back.”

“Josh, don’t,” he says, clamping his hand on my shoulder, no playfulness in his voice anymore. “Come on, we’re almost in—”

“Yeah, I know,” I tell him, already stepping out of the line. “But just give me a minute, all right?”

“Josh!” I hear him yell behind me.

My heart is pounding as I jog after this girl who may or may not be her. She’s walking so fast, then stops abruptly.

I finally catch up to her, standing still in the parking lot. “Eden?” I say quieter now. I reach out, my fingers touch her arm. And I know it’s her before she even turns around because my body memorized hers in relation to mine so long ago.

She’s saying something about having a headache as she spins to look at me.

“It is you,” I say stupidly.

Her mouth opens, pausing for a second before she smiles. She doesn’t even say anything; she just steps forward, right into me, her head tucking perfectly under my chin as it always did. I don’t know why it surprises me so much when it feels so natural, like what else would we be doing besides holding on to each other like this? Her lungs expand like she’s breathing me in, and I bury my face in her hair—only for a second, I tell myself. She smells so sweet and clean, like some kind of fruit. She mumbles my name into my shirt, and I realize I’ve forgotten how good it feels to hear her say my name. As I place my arms around her, my fingertips touch the bare skin of her arms. It’s so familiar, comforting, I could stay like this. But she pulls away just a little, her hands resting at my waist as she looks up at me.

“You’re literally the last person I thought I would run into tonight,” she says, still smiling.

As much as I’ve been worried and upset and depressed over everything that happened, I can’t help but smile back. “Literally the last?” I repeat. “Okay, ouch.”

She laughs then, and it’s the best sound in the world. “Well, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do.” She lets go of me and crosses her arms again as she steps away. I put my hands in my pockets. “I’m not as cool as you are. I get it.”

“As cool as me?” she repeats, this little lilt to her voice. “Yeah, right. No, I meant what are you doing in town? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

“Spring break.”

“Oh.” She looks around and tips her head in the direction of the line. “Do you need to get back or—”

“No,” I say too quickly.

“I mean, if you wanted to—” she says, just as I’m saying, “We could—”

“Sorry,” we both say at the same time, interrupting each other.

She gestures to a wooden picnic table around the corner of the building. I follow alongside her and take her all in. She’s maybe put on a little weight since I’ve seen her last, a little softer somehow, stronger, and God, she looks stunning in the streetlight. Her face and her hair—her everything. In all the years I’ve known her, I realize I’ve never seen her like this, wearing a sleeveless shirt and jean shorts, her feet in sandals. We were always cold months, fall or winter. Seeing her bare arms and bare legs, her painted toenails— parts of her I’ve only known in the context of my bedroom—makes me long for the cold again. I try not to let her catch me staring. She does, though.

But instead of calling me on it, she just looks down at her feet and says, “So, you’re on spring break and you decide to come here of all places? Boringville, USA?”

“Hey, I told you, Eden, I’m a pretty boring guy.”

She gives my shoulder this playful little shove, which makes me want to wrap my arms around her again.

We reach the table, and as I sit down on the bench, she steps up to sit on the tabletop, her legs so close to me. I have the strongest urge to lean forward and kiss her knees, run my hands along her thighs, lay my head in her lap.

God, I need to stop my brain from going there. What is wrong with me? Need to stop it right now. So I promptly step up too and sit on the table next to her.

“Is this awkward?” she asks.

“No,” I lie. “Not at all.”

“Really? Because I’m weirdly nervous to see you. Happy,” she adds, her hands fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. “But nervous.”

“Don’t be,” I tell her, even though I can barely get the words out with my heart pulsing in my throat like this. For me it’s not nervousness; it’s more that every nerve ending seems to be coming alive in her presence, all at once. She looks at me like she always has. Like she really sees me, and for the first time since the last time we were together, I realize I don’t feel quite so lost. And because it’s always so easy to talk to her, too easy to tell her my thoughts exactly as I’m thinking them, no filter, I force my mouth to say something else, instead of those things.

“You cut your hair.”

She runs her hand through her hair, pushing it back away from her face. “Yes, I’m reinventing myself.” She makes a noise somewhere between a cough and a laugh and rolls her eyes. “Or whatever.”

“I like it.”Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

She tips her head forward and smiles in this shy way she only ever does—did—when I would try to compliment her, and her hair falls forward into her face. I reach out and tuck a strand back behind her ear like I’ve done so many times, my fingers brushing against her cheek. And it’s not until she looks up at me that I remember I can’t do that anymore. “Sorry. Reflex or something. Sorry,” I repeat.

“It’s okay. You can touch me,” she says, and my heart again, in my throat, mutes me. “I—I mean, we’re friends now, right?”

I nod, still unable to speak. It’s a lot easier to just be friends with her when we’re not sitting next to each other like this.

She clears her throat and turns her whole body toward me, looking at me straight-on. Now she reaches out, her fingers barely touching my hair near my forehead before she trails the back of her hand along the side of my face. There’s a part of me that so wants to lean into her touch.

“Your hair is longer,” she says. “And you’re growing a beard.”

Now I’m the one smiling, all shy and awkward. “Well, I’m not intentionally growing a beard; it’s just stubble.”

“Okay, stubble, then,” she says, smiling now as she seems to consider something. “I like it. Yeah. It’s very, um, College Josh,” she adds in a deeper voice.

I laugh, and so does she, and all that tension between us just sort of melts away. I know I’m staring at her for too long again, but I can’t help it. This is all killing me. In the best way.

“What?” she asks.

I have to force myself to look away, shaking my head. “Nothing.”

“Then what’s all this grinning and sighing about?” she asks, drawing a circle in the air with her finger as she points at me.

“No, nothing. It’s just that whenever I think about you, I somehow always forget how funny you can be.” Usually, when I think of her, I’m only thinking about how sad she can get and how worried I am about her. But then I’m around her and I remember almost immediately that for all her darkness, she can be just as bright, too. I bite my lip to keep myself from saying all that out loud. Because these aren’t the kinds of things you say to a girl you used to be in love with, while you’re sitting on top of an old picnic table behind a graffitied building while drunk people randomly walk by, with a smelly rock show banging on in the background.

“You think about me?” she asks, suddenly serious.

“You know I do.”

There’s a silence, and I let it sit there between us because she has to know that I think about her. How could she even ask me that?

For once, she’s the one to break the silence. “I wanted to text you back, you know,” she says, like she’s reading my thoughts. “I should have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“It just felt like there was too much to say, or . . .” She trails off. “Too much to say in a text, anyway.”

“You can always call me.”

“Oh, definitely too much to say in a phone call,” she adds, and even though I’m not really sure what that means, I also think I kind of understand anyway.

“I thought you might be mad at me,” I admit.

“What? Why?” she bursts out, her voice high. “How could I be mad at you? You’re—” She stops herself.

“I’m what?”

“You . . . ,” she begins, but stops again and takes in a breath. “You’re the best person I know. It would be impossible to be mad at you, especially when you haven’t done anything wrong.”

But that’s the thing, I’m not sure anymore that I didn’t do anything wrong. “I don’t know, I worried that you might be not just mad at me, but sad or, like, disappointed in me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, the last time we saw each other.”

She’s shaking her head slowly like she really doesn’t know. She’s going to make me say it. “How I kissed you,” I finally announce. “I thought about it later—a lot, actually. And under the circumstances, with everything that was going on, that was probably the last thing you needed. And then everything I said to you. Given the situation, it was pretty messed up, not to mention just the worst, stupid, terrible timing, and I thought maybe I made you feel uncomf—”

“Wait, wait, stop,” she interrupts. “I thought I kissed you.”

I don’t know what to say. I think back to my room, four months ago, and it’s suddenly a blur of hands and mouths and exhaustion and desperation and emotions running high, higher than ever, and now I’m kind of not sure who kissed who, who reached for who first.

But her laugh interrupts my thoughts. It’s loud and sharp and clear. “And here I was feeling like the inappropriate one.”

“Inappropriate?” I laugh too. “Why?”

“Kissing you after you explicitly told me you had a girlfriend—a serious girlfriend,” she adds, using my own stupid words against me. “Could’ve saved myself some shame spiraling if I’d known you were to blame this whole time.”

She’s joking around, I know, but that word. Shame. Her voice sort of snags on it, like a thorn. It’s not a casual word you use if it’s not really there under the surface. So, I know this isn’t the time to confess the whole truth about my girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—or that we broke up that night, because of that night.

“All my fault,” I say instead, laughing along with her. “I take full responsibility.”

There’s a chorus of cheering from the crowd on the other side of this wall, but there couldn’t be anything more exciting going on inside than what’s going on out here right now.

“Well, fuck, Josh.” She throws her hands up. “This is just classic us all over again, isn’t it?”

Classic us. I hate that I love the way that sounds.