Page 12 of Thanks for Coming Along

"That's Ingrid and I." She said, handing the picture to him. "We thought we had the world figured out. You couldn't tell us anything. We already had all the answers. We were inseparable back then. I basically lived at her apartment." She had spent the majority of her teen years at Ingrid's apartment until she fully moved in with her family in her late teenage years. That was when things with her father had gotten really bad, and her mother was no longer around as a buffer. Just thinking about it made her hands clammy. Those memories were still too painful to talk about.

She pulled out more pictures, while Ronan zoomed the camera lens on various photographs. Eden's flipping off the camera at fifteen, Ingrid in a perfect arabesque on the streets of New York City, then Ingrid and Eden on a rooftop with red cheeks and beanies laughing together.

Then she found a picture of herself and a boy with dirty blonde hair sitting on a dilapidated couch. The back of the picture was labeled "Juilliard, Senior year." Eden felt a pang of nausea wash over her. She had forgotten she still had this picture; it must have somehow missed the pile of photos she had used as fire kindling two years ago.

"Who is that?" Ronan asked, his eyes meeting hers with the question.

"Liam Oliver." She replied and searched his face, but there was no recognition of the name on his face.

"He is my ex fiancé and ex bandmate." She tossed the photo on the floor, discarded it with a flick of her wrist. She wished it was as easy as that, to just wave a hand and erase the entire memory.

"Who did you think I wrote my last album about?" An ironic smile screwed up on her lips when she thought about Liam hearing all the songs she had written about him. She hadn't exactly painted him in the best light, but he deserved nothing less. She contemplated sharing more, but it was hard for her to freely share the last two years of her life. The relentless media scrutiny had stripped away her freedom, leaving her with little control over what she could keep private. Her personal life had become an open book, and the constant invasion of her privacy had taken a toll on her. It was hard for her not to feel the weight of the constant intrusion into her world; it forced her to guard her personal moments closely.

"Do you feel comfortable sharing a bit more about that relationship?" Ronan asked, his voice gentle. Eden paused for a moment, her fingers fidgeting with a loose thread on the sleeve of her shirt. She reminded herself that this was part of the agreement when she had accepted the project. It was bound to be uncomfortable, but she had steeled herself for it. She was determined to finally have the opportunity to share her story.

She had known Ronan for less than 72 hours, but an unusual sense of comfort covered her when she was around him. Her usually guarded self felt oddly at ease, as if Ronan's presence had the power to disarm her. Being vulnerable was something that usually felt unnatural to her, but Ronan's calm and unobtrusive demeanor somehow made it easier. It wasn't lost on her that extracting information from people was his job, and this project was no exception. She tried to brush aside the hint of disappointment that flickered within her at the thought.

"Liam and I started dating during our senior year at Juilliard. We met during a music theory class. After a few months, we formed a band. I already had a small fan base from just performing at bars around the city. Our relationship was… complicated. We were linked not only romantically but also by our careers." Eden paused, wondering how in-depth she should go. She considered sugarcoating the truth, but she had made a decision to be as honest as possible when she agreed to do this documentary. She wanted people to know that they were not alone. If she could get through this, then they could, too.

"He was extremely controlling," she began, her voice tinged with the weight of her memories.

"He wouldn't let me leave the house until he approved my outfit. He isolated me from my friends and manipulated me to the point where I questioned my sanity. He'd say one thing and then completely flip. He was unpredictable." As she spoke, her mind brought her back to a memory.

She saw a flash of dishes flying, hearing the crash as they hit the floor, and the spaghetti splattered across the apartment floor. The memory was so sharp that she could still feel the shiver that had run through her body when she'd accidentally cut her hand on a shard of glass, her blood trailing to the kitchen sink while Liam's angry words echoed around her. She thought about how she had tried to hide the truth about their relationship from her friends. She would put on a fake smile and pretend that everything was great when, in reality, it was far from it.

She blinked slowly, the memory fading but the uneasiness remaining in the pit of her stomach. She saw Ronan's free hand clench against his knees so hard his knuckles were stark white, his other hand holding the camera towards her.

"I can't even imagine what you must have gone through," Ronan murmured gently, his eyebrows furrowed.

"It took me some time to recognize that I was in an abusive relationship. The verbal and emotional abuse had started so gradually, a comment here and there. I didn't even realize how bad it was there until the end of the relationship."

It didn't help that she didn't have any great comparison to what a normal relationship was supposed to look like growing up. Her parents had been dysfunctional on their best day. She had always felt like a nuisance in her childhood home; she was the main source of why her parents fought, and she would get the brunt of it. Once her relationship with Liam was over and she had reflected, she realized their relationship was a carbon copy of her parents in a lot of ways. It was disturbing to her that she hadn't realized when she was in the relationship. It made her doubt her judgment and left her life in shambles. It had taken a while to collect all the littered pieces and put them back together.

"After we graduated, we made a living by doing shows, selling our merchandise, and eventually recording and selling my record. We had started building up a substantial audience. We were selling out shows and moving into bigger venues. I had met my current manager, Sloane, on our tour, and I had ended up getting a record deal." Eden omitted the fact that the deal was for Eden and not the band. The record label wanted Eden andhersongs, not Liam or the other band members.

Eden dug through the box and found the mock-up album Ingrid had drawn on the floor of her Manhattan apartment all those years ago; the sketch was rough but had served as inspiration for the cover of that first album. Ingrid had badly drawn a picture of Eden standing on the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the next day, they had recreated the shot with Ingrid's point-and-shoot camera. Eden could recall the countless arguments she had with Liam about that album cover. He had been angry that it was a picture of only her, pushing relentlessly for the band to be on the album cover. However, something within her told her to leave the cover art as it was, and she had trusted her gut. Looking back now, she couldn't help but feel beyond grateful for having followed that instinct.

"Things were good for a while. We recorded my first album and toured across the U.S. and eventually in Europe. It was the most exhilarating time of my life; I was finally living my dreams. It was euphoria, performing for people who loved my music and had come to our shows to see us perform. Towards the end of our international tour, Liam took me entirely by surprise during one of our shows in Paris and proposed to me. It came out of the blue; we had never discussed marriage or long-term plans. I was so engrossed in advancing my career, and at 23, marriage wasn't even on my radar. The proposal, the crowd chanting 'Say yes,' left me in complete shock." Eden paused, taking a deep breath as her hands trembled slightly. She folded them in her lap in an attempt to conceal their shaking.

"So, I did say 'yes.' I was entirely swept up in the moment, and in retrospect, I should have realized something wasn't right. A few weeks later, TMZ broke a story about him cheating on me with a girl he had met on tour." Eden involuntarily shook her head, like shaking her head could dislodge the memory from her brain.

"The kicker," Eden continued, her voice tinged with resignation, "is that the entire band knew he had been cheating on me, and not a single one of them decided to tell me. They let me say yes to someone who didn't even love or respect me. All for the sake of boosting the band's popularity. As soon as I discovered everything, the band fell apart."

"I'm so sorry, Eden," Ronan replied, shaking his head in disbelief.

"After the band broke up, Liam and I had a huge blowout. He thought it was something we could work past, just a blip in the story of our relationship. But there was no going back. It was obvious he didn't love me." Eden confessed, her gaze briefly drifting out the window before she continued.

"I wrote all the lyrics and handled all the production on the album. Luckily, I had made sure I legally owned the masters to the songs as part of my record contract. That was my one saving grace. So, I set out to find a new band. Beck is someone I've known since my college days. He's an incredible drummer, so I reached out to him, and it turned out he was in between gigs. Finn and Reef are friends of Beck's from his old band," Eden reminisced, her mind wandering back to the weeks following the fallout of her relationship and the break up of her former band. She remembered the fierce determination in Beck's voice when he had told her that he never liked Liam and that if he ever saw him again, he'd beat his ass. A small, sad smile played on her lips at his conviction.

Over the past two years, Beck and Eden had grown surprisingly close. They’d known each other back in college—back when Beck was dating Ingrid—but they lost touch after the breakup. That changed when Beck joined Eden’s band, and they clicked in a way neither of them had expected. Both had endured rough childhoods, and that shared history forged an unspoken bond. Beck was wrestling with his mental health and addiction, while Eden was navigating her own struggles with depression. Their mutual understanding of what it took to push through the hard days brought them together.

"That must have been so incredibly hard. How did you cope with all that? Not only to process a breakup but also to navigate that in the public eye?" Ronan asked softly, his legs almost brushing against hers.

"After TMZ posted the cheating scandal, it felt like the entire world suddenly became obsessed with my life. For the first few months after that, I had paparazzi tailing me everywhere. It was intense, to say the least. I didn't just have to deal with the heartbreak but also the sheer humiliation of millions of people knowing the sordid details of my breakup. Coping with it and coming to terms with what had happened was incredibly hard. There's no rule book on how to properly handle something like that." She paused, her gaze distant as she recollected that dark period in her life. Loneliness and depression had consumed her, pushing away those who genuinely cared about her.

She continued, her voice trembling slightly, "I turned to all the wrong things – people who didn't care about me, alcohol– and spiraled down. It was like being trapped in quicksand, sinking deeper and deeper with no way out except to keep falling." Taking a moment to gather herself, Eden went on, her voice heavy with emotion, "Then one day, I woke up in a stranger's house. I couldn’t remember anything from the night before. I've never been so terrified in my entire life. Not being able to recall a single detail of that night... it's a feeling I wouldn't wish upon anyone." Tears welled up in her eyes, and she brushed them away quickly. Ronan reached out and gently placed his hand on her forearm, casting warmth over her skin. She managed a weak smile, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly through her nose.

"That night, I was fortunate to be safe, but it easily could have taken a different turn," Eden confessed. She quickly brushed away a stray tear that escaped her eye. Ronan's hand still resting on her forearm, a steady and reassuring weight.

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