“We can get around everyone else. We can figure this out. They’ll understand. Maybe not at first, but they will,” I splutter, but my voice cracks from the panic that’s flooding through me. It sounds a lot like she doesn’t want to do this anymore. It sounds like she’s questioningus. “Seriously. We’ll manage. We’ll…we’ll do it.”
“Tyler,” she says, then pauses. I hold my breath as I listen, but suddenly, her eyes begin to well with tears, and she blinks rapidly to keep them at bay. There is a flash of complete and utter devastation in her eyes as she whispers, “We can’t be together.”
And it’s like she’s shot me with a loaded gun. My heart explodes intoa million different pieces, lodging in my chest. Why is she doing this? I thought that finally,finally, things were looking up. We had a real shot. But now… I can’t take this. I shake my head in disbelief, pushing her words out of my mind, wishing that she would take them back. My eyes are closed, but I force them open even though they sting.
“You didn’t just say that,” I manage to mumble, but only barely. My voice is so weak.
When I look at Eden, she is crying. Tears are cascading down her cheeks as she tries to catch them, but there are too many and the stream is endless. She doesn’t want to do this, I know she doesn’t, so why is she? Why is she throwing it all away?
“We just can’t do this,” she rasps, and I can see the struggle in her eyes behind all of those tears. My chest heaves.
“Don’t do this. I swear to God. Please, Eden,” I plead with her, fighting with everything in me. My words are laced with desperation. I can’t look at her, not when she’s cutting me off like this, so I have to turn my head to the window, taking deep breaths. I watch the rain roll down the glass, and I just wish it would all stop. I wish the rain would stop; I wish Eden would stop. “We’ve come this far already. You can’t give up now.”
“We have to.”
“Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it,” I say quickly, babbling my words as I twist back around toward her. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel and move one hand to Eden’s knee. I will do anything, absolutely anything. “I’ll make this work.”
Eden’s pained gaze lowers to my hand on her knee, and so slowly, she shakes her head. She can’t look back up at me again as she whispers, “Don’t make this harder.”
She can’t do this to me. I never thought I’d find someone like her.Someone who cares about me as much as I care about her. Someone who I can open up to, someone I trust. Someone I want to be better for. I amin love with her. “I need to be with you,” I whisper, swallowing hard. I grasp her hand and intertwine our fingers, refusing to let go as I lean across the center console toward her. She finally looks back up at me again, but I can see how difficult it is for her. “Don’t you get it? You’re not my distraction,” I tell her. Tiffani was a distraction. The alcohol and the drugs were a distraction. But Eden is so much more than that. She came into my life when I needed her the most, even though I didn’t know it at the time. She is my savior. “This is me, Eden. This. Right now,” I splutter. I’m crying now too, but I don’t even try to fight it. “You’re making me a goddamn mess, but I don’t care because it’s me. I’m a mess. And the thing I love about you is that I’m allowed to be a mess around you, because I trust you. You’re the only one who’s cared enough to figure me out. I want to be your mess.”
“I’m still going to care,” Eden says as fresh tears break free. “But as your stepsister.”
“Eden,” I try again, squeezing her hand. She doesn’t need to do this. We’re in this together; we’ll figure out how to break the news to our parents. And do we really care what anyone else thinks? Because I don’t. “What about last weekend? We… Was all of that for nothing? Has the entire summer been for fucking nothing?”
“Not nothing. We’ve learned a lot,” Eden says. She looks down at our interlocked hands and she squeezes mine back. She doesn’t let go either.
“This isn’t fair!” I yell, slamming my other hand down against the steering wheel. I can’t let it all come to this…to nothing. “I told you everything about me. I told you the truth. I broke up with Tiffani, and now she’s probably already planning how she’s going to ruin my life even more than it already has been, but I don’t care because I thoughtit would be worth it. I thought it would be worth it because I was thinking of you. I was putting you first. You know what the only thing running through my mind was when I walked out of that house right now?I can finally be with Eden.” But that’s not going to happen now, and it really fucking hurts. Finally, I retract my hand from Eden’s and rub my eyes. My expression is blank as I stare out of the windshield at the rain again. “And then you come out here and tell me that you don’t want to.”
“Do you think I want to do this?” Eden suddenly fires back at me, her voice raised with exasperation. “Because I sure as hell don’t, but I’m doing it because it’s better for both of us. I don’t want to see you get worse if this goes wrong. What are you going to do if our parents find out and absolutely hate us? This isn’t the right time. We can’t handle this. You need to fix your life as it is because you need to go to New York, and you don’t need any of this added on.”
“What the hell is in New York?” I question, my voice rising to match hers. We’re both still in tears, but we’re so frustrated that we’re growing angry. Not at each other, but at the situation. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Because your mom wants to,” Eden says, lowering her voice again. She goes quiet, sniffing several times as she wipes away more tears. Seconds pass. We are both silent, and all I can hear is the rain and my shallow breathing. Finally, Eden says, “Whatever there is between us, we have to ignore it from now on. We need to stop this now before we get in too deep.”
Eden’s mind is made up, and it is clear that there is nothing in this world I can do to change it. This is what she wants. I need to respect her decision, and although it is agonizing, at least she isn’t doing this because she doesn’t care about me anymore. She is doing this becausewe are stepsiblings, and things would be too complicated if we were to pursue anything more than that. I’ve tried my best, but it isn’t enough to convince her. I have no choice but to give in. “If that’s what you really want,” I slowly murmur, my eyes squeezed tightly shut, a lump in my throat. “If you really, really want us to ignore this…then I guess I have to.”
I open my eyes and look at Eden one more time. I take her all in, this beautiful girl in front of me. How am I supposed to just forget everything that has happened this summer? How do I pretend that there is nothing between us? I have to… I have to let her go, and I just don’t know how I can ever bring myself to do that. My gaze rests on those plump lips of hers that had me weak at the knees from the very first moment I laid eyes on them. I find myself instinctively leaning closer toward her. I am dying to kiss her, just one last time.
Suddenly, Eden climbs over the center console and swings herself onto my lap. I sense her gulp as she places her warm hands against the skin of my neck, and my eyes never leave hers until she gently presses her lips to mine.
If this is going to be the last time I ever get to kiss her, then I’m making it count. My hands are on her waist, pulling her against me so that she’s pressed hard against my chest. I kiss her so slowly. I’m scared I’ll miss something. I love the way her mouth feels against mine, and I kiss her over and over again until the feeling is ingrained in my mind forever. I never want to let go, and I don’t think she does either. Her hands are cupping my face as her thumbs softly skim over my jaw. She kisses me back just as delicately, like the kiss is fragile and sacred. But that’s because it is.
I can’t hold onto her forever though. It takes everything in me to muster up the strength to pull away from her, and I can’t bite back thesmall groan that escapes me. My eyes are still closed, and Eden’s hands are still on my jaw. I sense her move in closer to me again, the soft skin of her cheek brushing against mine. It feels so nice having her in my arms, and we remain entwined in one another for the longest of moments.
“Stepsiblings,” she whispers, her breath warm against my ear. “Nothing more.”
“Nothing more,” I murmur. I tilt my head down as Eden climbs back over into the passenger seat. All I want is to kiss her again, to feel her skin against my own, to tell her that I love her. But I just can’t find the words. I am destroyed, and there is nothing I can say to change any of this.
I can’t look at her as she leaves either. I rest my hands on my steering wheel and turn to face my window, watching the rain again. It’s grown even heavier. When Eden opens the car door, all I can hear is the thundering of the rain hitting the ground. A few seconds later, the door slams shut, and when I look over, she is gone.
My chest aches as I watch her run across the lawn, back toward the house, but I can’t stare after her for long. It hurts too much to watch her leave like this, so I yank on my seatbelt and finally leave too. I pull out of Tiffani’s driveway, and despite how badly I want to just stomp on the gas and take off, I can’t because of the rain. I’m forced to crawl down the street, huddled over my steering wheel, grabbing it so tightly that my knuckles turn pale.
I glance in my rearview mirror, and I know I shouldn’t have. I can still see Eden. She is standing on Tiffani’s lawn, watching me leave, but she is out of focus amid the rain. She is shrinking and shrinking into the distance behind me. When she disappears completely, I finally break down.
The road ahead is blurry but not because of the rain. My lower lip istrembling; I’m pulling at my hair with one hand, my breathing shallow. Every single piece of my life has been shattered. I thought I was broken before, but now I am unfixable. I feel so lost, so alone. There is only one person I need right now, only one person that I know I can always turn to, and that’s Mom.
I drive home for the first time all week, battling the treacherous rain and fighting back my tears. My life is in ruins, and now I’ve lost the girl who cared about me. The girl who listened to me. The girl who made me believe that maybe I could be okay. The girl I was prepared to be better for. She’s gone, and now I don’t know what the point is anymore. I was finally making progress, finally willing to make better decisions to fix my life, but now it feels like I am all the way back at square one again. No purpose, no motives, no goals.
