Chapter 18 Eden #3
Rhys got off the couch and followed her. But as soon as he left, Daisy turned to the rest of us and said, “Rhys is cheating
on her. They’re breaking up. That’s why she’s upset.”
Everyone started talking at once, in shock.
I was shocked too, even if I’m secretly a little glad that she’s finally getting out of that relationship. I could see how
much it was limiting her, even if she couldn’t.
But despite the flood of big news crowding my brain—Aunt Elena was getting remarried! Georgia was probably breaking up with
Rhys! Everything would be different from now on!—the loudest thought of all was:
Tomorrow I’ll be spending the entire night with Leo, alone, just the two of us. (Camping.)
So yeah, I’ve thought about it.
But that’s a lot different from actually doing it.
I shiver again.
“We could unroll our sleeping bags,” Leo suggests. “It’ll warm you up.”
“It’s so early, though. There’s no way I’ll fall asleep.”
“You always were a night owl.”
“Yup. You remember everything about me. I get it.”
He’s quiet for a minute. Then he starts unrolling his sleeping bag, not looking at me. “Anyway, the sooner we fall asleep,
the sooner we can wake up in the morning and get out of here. Which is what you want, right?”
Of course that’s what I want. To get out of here as soon as humanly possible. To make this “whole night together” end quickly.
So I don’t know why his comment—or his sudden return to coldness—stings so much. My emotions are completely scrambled around
Leo, and there’s nothing I can do about that.
We push our sleeping bags to the opposite sides of the tent, but we’re only about eight inches apart. I lie still, feeling
my body slowly warm up, listening to the rain falling on the sides of the tent. But the idea of trying to fall asleep right
now is mathematically improbable. Torture. My mind is racing, my heart is racing, I’m wide awake.
Plus, there’s definitely a twig underneath my back, below the tarp.
“Are you sleeping?” Leo whispers beneath the sound of the rain.
“Nope,” I say.
“Are you absolutely miserable over there?”
I swallow. “Yup.”
I hear Leo sigh. “I’ve never seen anyone suffer this much in nature.”
“What can I say, I’m an anomaly.”
“That’s true, you are an anomaly. But can you admit there’s something at least sort of beautiful, lying here listening to
the rain fall? It’s sort of . . . relaxing, no?”
Relaxing? I wish. I’m desperately thirsty from all the salty chips, but won’t let myself drink from my canteen. The last thing I need
is having to pee in the middle of the night.
“Tell me again why you signed up for Boundless Horizons?” Leo asks.
Now it’s my turn to sigh. “I didn’t. My parents did.”
“But why? They thought it would be good for you?”
“I guess. They think that if I’m learning survival skills in the woods I won’t be partying all summer in the city? I don’t
know. Their logic is beyond me. It’s just their chosen punishment.”
“For what?”
I sigh and blink my eyes. “I guess they’re disappointed in me.”
“Really?” he whispers. “Why would they be disappointed in you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I have zero life skills besides flirting and fashion?”
He laughs softly. “Those skills are valid.”
“Leo, I don’t need you to be nice to me. It’s obvious that you have a very negative view of me as a person, so let’s not force
this whole friendship thing.”
“I don’t have a negative view of you.”
“You said earlier that I’m untrustworthy.”
“Well, you did try to prank me with a pepper spray bottle,” he points out.
I shift around in my sleeping bag to face him, but I can’t make out his expression in the dark. “Is that what you meant? Or
were you talking about sophomore year, too?”
He’s quiet. “Sometimes I swear you misunderstand me on purpose. Like you’re always looking for reasons to hate me, or think
less of me. I always felt that way, even when we were together. Everything I did was suspicious to you.”
“What?” I ask, truly shocked.
“You were so mad about your brother not making varsity, and you really blamed me for that. Which wasn’t fair. I’m not the
coach. I had no real say over his decision. And anyway, your brother was talented, but he didn’t want the spot. He wasn’t
a serious player.”
“That wasn’t your judgment to make, though,” I tell him.
“It was just my opinion, Eden, and it turned out I was right. He dropped out to focus on music. My opinion didn’t come out of nowhere.”
“But at the time he really wanted it. And you were dating me. And he’s my brother. So you should have been loyal, instead
of gossiping about him behind our backs.”
He shakes his head—I hear his hair rustle against the sleeping bag. “I wasn’t gossiping. The other guys were. A lot of guys
on that team were jerks, you know. A couple of them had already bullied Jesse. I didn’t think he’d be happy on the team anyway.”
I prop myself on an elbow—which causes my head to hit the side of the tent. I blow my bangs out of my face. “Hang on. Jesse
was bullied?”
“You didn’t know?” Leo asks. “I guess that’s good. Maybe I managed to protect him from the worst of it.”
I lie back down, reeling. “Okay, so let’s say you didn’t do anything wrong with Jesse. There’s still the much, much worse
way you behaved after Becca Johnson’s birthday party.”
“The way I behaved? What did I do?” Leo asks. Now he’s the one propping up on an elbow.
I prop myself up again too. Now we’re in a face-off. “You dumped me. When I was so alone and scared. If what you say is true,
and you cared so much about my little brother not getting bullied by older kids, then what in the hell did you think was happening
to me?”
“You were bullied?” he asks, and his sincerity hits me like a punch to the gut.
“How could you not have known that? I got attacked online for months. For something that didn’t even happen.”
He shakes his head. “I’m really sorry, Eden. I truly didn’t know that.”
“How? You were my boyfriend! How did you not know that was happening? It was possibly the worst thing that had ever happened to me!” I feel hot all over, just reliving the tiniest sliver of that humiliation and pain.
“I was at an away game. I came back and you were avoiding me. Yes, I knew there were rumors about you being into someone else. I didn’t know about the online stuff. As you may remember, I had all those restrictions on my phone, and I didn’t even have an Instagram account. I still don’t.”
“But you had to be pretty oblivious to not realize something was wrong.”
“I did realize something was wrong. I just thought that what was wrong was us. You were always angry at me, always withdrawing and blaming me for things. And then the party happened, and it seemed like
the last straw.”
“Because you believed everyone. You thought I cheated on you, and your pride couldn’t take it.”
He sighs, searching my face. “I didn’t think you cheated on me. But honestly, I did think that you wanted to. That you could
be into someone else? That someone else could be into you? Of course I believed that.”
“Seriously? You looked down on me then, just like you do now.” I try to choke back the tears, but the truth feels so raw and
vulnerable as I hear myself say it out loud.
“Eden. Is that really what you think?”
“Why else would you believe the worst about me?”
“I didn’t. I believed that you were out of my league.
You were so effortlessly beautiful and funny and weird and unique.
You still are. I was a nerdy Boy Scout. Soccer was the only cool thing I did, and it was my whole life, and you don’t even like sports.
I was always waiting for you to move on.
So yeah, maybe I was a bit susceptible to believing those rumors.
And I truly am sorry for that. If I had known you were hurting that badly, I would have done things differently.
At least, I like to think that I would.”
His words are so comforting and surprising, I just don’t know what to make of them. “But how could you have not seen how much I was hurting?” My voice is low, trembling.
He sighs. “I feel awful. But I didn’t know. And Eden? You didn’t tell me.”
I let this sink in, but it’s too much. I lie back down, blinking away tears. The rain is pattering more lightly now. “You
walked away so fast, that day in the library. So cold. Like you’d become a totally different person.”
Leo is lying down again, too. “I’m sorry, Eden,” he says. “I was caught up in my own hurt. I thought, okay, the time has come,
she’s totally over me. Let me just make this as clean as possible. I didn’t want you to see how upset I really was.”
“You were upset?” I roll over to look at him.
“I was completely devastated. I tried to hide it. That’s why I had to avoid you so intensely, for so long. I couldn’t trust
myself to be normal around you. It was hard for a while.”
“But then you moved on. You dated other people.”
“So did you,” he points out.
“But that’s different,” I say.
“How?”
I sigh, searching for the words. “Because I moved on, but I didn’t. Some part of me never recovered. I guess that’s why I
did the stupid pepper spray thing. I would’ve gone further with my sabotage plans, too, if that hadn’t backfired so badly.
Even after two whole years, I still wasn’t completely over it after all.”
He laughs softly.
“Are you laughing right now? What’s so funny about all this?” I ask, wiping a tear from the corner of my eye.
“It’s just, you know—same.”
“Same?”
“Seeing you on orientation day for Boundless . . . I thought I was over you too, but it quickly became clear that I wasn’t.
That I’m . . .” He clears his throat. “That I’m still not.”
“You mean you hadn’t gotten over what happened between us? Our breakup?”
“No, Eden. I mean I haven’t gotten over you, period. You still have the same exact effect on me that you always had.”
“Which is what? That I make you crazy?”
He laughs again. “Yeah. In the best way.”
“Why are you saying all this now?”
“Because unlike the immature kid I was two years ago when I hid my feelings from you, after the party last weekend, when I
realized how hurt I was . . . something clicked. I realized I didn’t want to keep avoiding the painful stuff. I wanted to
be different. I wanted to see if we could get past the past.”
“Get past the past,” I repeat. “I don’t know if that’s possible, Leo. It’s part of us now.”
He stares at the top of the tent, and sighs.
“But,” I say, turning toward him again.
He rolls toward me. “But?” Even in the darkness, I can see the hopeful smile on his face.
“I guess there is such a thing as forgiveness.”
“Is there?”
“Yes, Leo. There is. And I forgive you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really,” I say. And I mean it. I had no idea what his side of the story was. And he’s right: I never asked. I was just as judgmental as he was. We both made assumptions. We were both wrong. It doesn’t make it okay. But it makes me
see how much I’d like things to change.
“Pinky swear?” he says, pulling one arm out of his sleeping bag and reaching it toward me.
“Pinky swear,” I say, catching his pinky. But before I can pull my hand away, he takes it and holds it, lacing his fingers
through mine.
We lie like that for a while, scooching our sleeping bags even closer to each other, neither of us willing to let go of the
other’s hand. Eventually we’re close enough that I can easily nuzzle my head into his shoulder.
The smell of the rain, minerally and fresh, and the smell of Leo, citrus and smoke and him—it may be the most delicious, comforting blend of scents I’ve ever experienced. And despite the part of me that knows if I
tilted my face upward the tiniest bit, we’d be kissing, I stay where I am, just breathing in this moment. Listening to the
rain fall. Feeling Leo’s chest rise and fall underneath the sleeping bag.
And before I know it, I’m asleep.