Chapter 7
Eden
If the universe had a dashboard, it would be lit up with flashing neon lights advising me about how fucked up my life is right now.
I envision them being something along the lines of “Absolutely Do Not Engage” or “Danger Keep Out.” But the universe is a petty little bitch and, after twenty-four hours of nervously vibrating with the knowledge that Sloane Bishop is back in town, it decides to plop her directly in my path.
Not even a metaphorical plop, either. More like, I turned the corner to reach the outlook, and Sloane ran straight into my chest with the precise force of a high school gym teacher’s dodgeball.
Her elbow jabbed me in the ribcage, and I made a noise that was both a squeal and a cough.
Sloane hit the ground, as did I. Sloane gasped and stood there frozen until she finally blinked at me with the same startled-hamster eyes that launched my entire queer awakening when I saw a pretty girl for the first time in the school assembly hall.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask her but didn’t, because who the bloody hell wants a soul-searching convo on a dirt trail where anyone could turn up?
I wanted to ask her how she’s doing, like really doing, not the surface-level shit we managed.
I wanted to know where she’s been, what the hell happened two years ago!
But my mouth didn’t cooperate. At least we managed to say something to each other, I guess.
It was clear she was expecting me to go off on her, but I honestly didn’t want to.
There was no need. I could tell she was relieved, if not surprised by my reaction to her talking to me.
For a moment it was like we were eighteen again, trading flirtatious comments in the gym when we should have been pretending to care about cardio.
Then the inevitable awkwardness fell, and Sloane looked like she wanted to run a two-minute mile to escape.
Thirty minutes later I’m on the bench outside the town diner, wondering what the opposite of a “meet-cute” is. Meet-humiliate? Meet-existential-crisis?
There’s only one person I can call who won’t either (A) tell me I need to get over it, or (B) ask for a three-hour dramatic reenactment.
I dial Pia, praying she’s close enough to the phone.
If she’s sitting down, I’ll be out of luck.
It’s like yanking a cork out of a bottle, trying to pry her out of a chair these days.
“Hey, E. Are you calling me to say you love me and you’re bringing me tacos?” she answers.
“Pia. Code Red. Need wisdom and Mum’s busy, so I thought you’d do,” I say seriously, knowing full well she’ll huff. I might be having a crisis, but there’s no reason to lose my sense of humour and the love of winding up my bestie.
She sighs, then muffles the phone. “I don’t know why I put up with you. I’m hormonal, you ass!”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. You were my first call. Can we meet? I’ll spring for burgers and a milkshake.”
The usual is Benny’s Diner, the site of every post-trauma debrief since junior year.
“If you even think about skimping out on the loaded fries, I will make sure my water breaks on your couch.”
Ew.
We both snort, and the tension in my chest eases by about half a degree.
“See ya soon,” she says and hangs up.
By the time Pia arrives, I’ve already claimed our booth and ordered a chocolate milkshake with extra whipped cream.
The server, who is at least eighty, hasn’t changed her uniform since the eighties and remembers everyone’s gossip but nobody’s name.
To be honest, if she didn’t wear a tag, I’d forget her name too, which is bad considering we’ve been coming here for years.
Pia slides—with difficulty—into the seat across from me and clocks my damp, gravel-encrusted top instantly. “Did you run or roll down the trail hill?”
I raise one eyebrow. “Guess who I ran into.”
Pia’s jaw actually drops, which is rare for her. “No. Sloane?”
I nod, and then word vomit the entire story, complete with interpretive gesturing and dramatic reenactments of Sloane’s “apology face.” Pia listens with the kind of patience only available to people who have spent years listening to me moan.
“She said, and I quote, ‘Please don’t do that, Eden. Don’t let me off the hook by being sweet.’” I slurp the end of my milkshake for emphasis.
Pia’s eyes narrow. “Sounds like someone’s regretting her choices.”
The waitress materialises, sets down our veggie burgers, and refills my water glass without making eye contact. Pia waits until she’s gone, then leans in, elbows on the table.
“So. How do you feel?”
I poke at my fries. “Like someone took my heart out, deep-fried it, and then tried to convince me it’s a vegan chicken tender.”
Pia looks at me for a long moment, then snorts so hard she almost inhales her straw. “You’re a mess.” She giggles.
“I know.”
She takes a bite of her burger. “Do you wanna avoid her, or do you wanna see her? Because you are incapable of the third option, which is ‘act like a normal person and coexist.’”
Rude…but true.
I sigh. “I don’t know. Part of me wants to just—see what happens. Maybe it was all just timing, right? Like, maybe she’s not the same person. I mean, I could see she was looking like the Sloane I used to know, before she got ill. Maybe this is my chance to, I don’t know, paint on a fresh canvas.”
Pia gives me a look that says my metaphor was stupid. I want to remind her about the time she started banging on about me diving into a pool and knowing how to swim. I still don’t know what the bloody hell she was on about, even four and a half years later.
“Or…maybe you don’t need to fix or confront anything. Maybe you just live your life and let Sloane Bishop float by like an expensive, limited-edition bottle of sadness.”
“Wow, that sounds bleak.” I cringe.
She grins. “You’ve been bleak for two years.”
We laugh, and it feels like being back in high school, sharing a lunch table bench and the communal trauma of small-town adolescence. Then I go quiet, fiddling with my straw wrapper, and Pia waits because she knows me too well.
Finally, I say, “I just want to be the kind of person who doesn’t fall apart emotionally every time she shows up.
I want to be over it. But the second I saw her, I just…
remembered all of it. Every smile and kiss.
Every morning we woke up in each other’s arms. Then I remember the hard shit, like every panic attack.
Every night I talked her down from the ledge.
Every time I thought she was finally okay, and then she’d vanish for days, and I’d find out she was just hiding out in her dorm room, not eating or sleeping or anything. ”
Pia’s face softens. “You did what you could, Eden. More than most people would.”
“Did I?” I push my plate away, suddenly queasy. “Because sometimes I wonder if I just made it all worse. Like maybe she needed someone who wasn’t going to give in to her every whim, especially when it was fuelled by her anxiety. Someone who—”
“She needed someone who gave a shit. That was you,” Pia interrupts. “If she didn’t want it, she wouldn’t have come back to you every single time.”
I swallow. “Maybe.”
Pia nudges my foot under the table. “Don’t reimagine your history just because you’re feeling messy today. You were good for her. You were good together, even when it sucked.”
We sit in silence for a bit, picking at the remains of our food. Outside, the sky goes from nuclear orange to the bruised purple of dusk. The diner fills up with tired families, school kids on summer vacation, and the oldies who like the early bird special.
Eventually, Pia says, “So. What now?”
I shrug. “We’re going to take some time and then go for a coffee. We’ll either forge something new or…try to finally fucking move on.”
“You can’t move on from Sloane Bishop, E. She’s your endgame, remember?”
I pay the bill and we walk out together. The early summer night is cool and a little damp. Pia hugs me tight in the parking lot. “Call me if you need backup.”
I watch her drive away, then sit back on the outside table again. I think about Sloane’s face, the way her laugh made everything feel lighter for one second before gravity returned. I think about how I am not, in fact, over any of it, and maybe that’s just the way it’s going to be.
I text Sloane for the first time in two years.
Jenna told me she still has her old number.
I didn’t have the bollocks to test it before I knew for sure, because if she’d blocked me I would’ve been crushed.
I send her a perfunctory “Hey. If you want to grab a coffee, let me know.” I stare at the screen for three minutes before hitting send.
Here’s the thing about memory: it’s a hoarder. It’s why we call it a memory bank. My actual self is minimalist, mostly because I’ve always wanted the simple life. However, since the whole Sloane saga, my brain is floor-to-ceiling stacks of emotional bric-a-brac.
Every regret and highlight reel is preserved in perfect bollocking clarity.
It’s fucking awesome…said no one ever. So when the text I sent hasn’t been read after an hour, the only logical next step is to dig through actual, physical memories in my parents’ garage. Because I’m a masochist, apparently.
My parents’ house is quiet. Mum and Dad are probably out at their local watering hole.
I let myself in with the same spare key that’s been in the flowerpot since they moved in.
I step inside, kick off my boots, and head straight for the garage.
It’s weird seeing the garage used for storage and cars.
This was my sanctuary for many years. The place I created some of my best work.
Boxes labelled “Xmas,” “Taxes 2022-24,” and, in my own blocky handwriting, “Eden’s Crap, Do Not Bin!
” are piled up in one corner. The box I’m looking for is stuck behind a dormant rowing machine, which saw roughly two days’ worth of use before Dad decided he’d stick to yoga.
I yank the box out, sit cross-legged on the cold floor, and unfold the flaps.
The smell is old cardboard and a faint echo of Sloane’s perfume. I pull out the first layer: a tangle of novelty medals my friends bought me after my first five-kilometre race. Then it became a thing, and I received more medals after every running event from then on out.
Beneath that, the skull-print cover photo album I bought on impulse at a gas station convenience store.
There’s no reason to pretend this isn’t a Sloane shrine.
The next few items are surgical in their targeting: a crumpled race bib from our first 10K together, the sports-themed pen she “borrowed” from Mr Porter’s office after we graduated high school, and one of Sloane’s t-shirts she left in my dorm room one time.
I flip open the album. Page one: two dorks, standing in front of the finish banner for the high school’s 5K.
I hated running, hated every minute of it in the beginning, but the look on my face in this picture is pure adrenaline, and I’m clutching Sloane’s hand like she’s the only thing keeping me vertical.
Which she was because my ankle was nearly busted by Kiera.
Second page: blurry pictures from prom night.
My hair looked smart, slicked back, and my tux was hot, but the only thing that matters in the shot is Sloane.
She’s wearing a blue dress and an expression of pure delight, even with a slip-on corsage stabbing her wrist. I can almost hear the crap pop playlist in the background, the two of us spinning so fast we almost wiped out on the dance floor, too happy to care.
The next page is a mini time capsule: photo booth strips from my first college visit to Sloane’s dorm.
Four frames: us making faces, us kissing, Sloane with a milkshake moustache, and the last one where I’m trying to hold back tears because I was only a few hours away from leaving her to head back to California. Shit, that was a hard time for us both.
I stop on that page for a long time.
It’s a right old cliché, but the best memories really do hurt more.
All the times I got to be the brave one, the caretaker, the clown—those are harder to let go of than the forgotten video chats and missed calls.
Sloane was, and I’m sure still is, complicated and stubborn, and she was the first person who really saw me, and that’s not something I think I can just move on from.
At the bottom of the box, I find the envelope with her letters.
We thought it would be romantic to try our hand at writing out letters on actual paper.
I got cramps so much during those few months.
I eventually swapped writing for drawing and painting.
I sent her sketches of us together and silly doodles.
That’s my love language, and in the beginning of college, it worked like a charm.
Until Sloane’s letters became less detailed and then less frequent.
I should have seen the signs then that she wasn’t okay.
Opening the very first letter she sent me, I bite the inside of my cheek as I read.
Eden,
I miss you so much, baby. The city is nice, but loud. My roomie is cool, but I wish you were the one sharing my space. I keep picturing your smile. Then I picture other stuff that makes me want to do things. I hate that I can’t reach out and touch you. Why did we think college was a good idea?
There’s more about school and her weird classmate and a funny story about a prank one of the frat bros did, but I can’t read past the first line. “I miss you so much, baby.”
I close the box, swallow the lump in my throat, and stand up. I’ve missed her more than I can describe.
I don’t know if Sloane and I will ever be what we were, or if we even should, but I do know I want her in my life, even if it’s just as a friend.
On my way out, I text her: “Hey. I was cleaning out my closet and found our 10K medal. Forgot how badass we looked. If you ever want to go for a walk, I’m around.”
It’s more than the coffee I suggested. It’s simple, it’s honest, and for the first time in two years, it feels enough.
I leave my parents’ and jog back to my apartment, lighter than I’ve felt in months.