Page 70 of Haunt Me

“I can’t take it anymore. Iamruining everything, and I can’t stop. I love you, Eden. I realized it when you almost died on that highway, and that day I said it to you in a desperate, frantic way. But now I’m lucid and calm and everything is perfectly clear in my mind: I. Love. You. I have been crying nonstop.”

“Because you love me?”

“Because I love you.” I bend at the waist, trying to catch my breath.

“That is the corniest thing anyone has ever said,” Eden observes.

“Isn’t it just?” I agree. “Yet here I am. Loving you.”

“Well, stop it. I won’t… I will never talk to you again if you keep saying it.”

I feel the blood drain from my head, leaving me lightheaded. I stumble, but I catch myself. I look her in the eyes. Knowing the risk, I say:

“I love you.”

I fully expect her to turn around and run away, like she always has in the past, but she doesn’t this time. Well, not at once. She just stands there, looking at me, her eyes growing sadder and sadder.

“What?” I ask her after she’s done a lot of staring. She’s still doing it.

“What what?”

“What are you doing, staring at me, looking so sad? Are you trying to bring me to my knees?”

“I’m saying goodbye,” she says. Her eyes are twin lakes, shining with unshed tears.

“Now who’s being dramatic?” I murmur, but I’m already taking a step towards her, panic coursing through me. I’m ready to chase after her. “I am not losing you, Eden.”

“Then take it back. Say you were joking.”

“I wasn’t. I won’t. I’m done taking things back. I’m desperately in love with you. I’m beyond Heathcliff right now.”

“I can barely be your friend…”

“It’s not enough.”

“Being my friend is not enough?”

“How can it be enough after yesterday? After I have tasted you, after I have lied on the grass with you, my body pressed against your—”

She makes a gesture for me to stop. She looks like she’s about to be sick, or faint. Or both. “That was a mistake,” she whispers, horrified.

“Well, I want more mistakes. I want more,” I say. I’m not being stubborn; I am stating the truth. I have discovered since yesterday that I should really start saying what I want. Going after it.

It’s such a relief to be doing it right now.

“What more do you want?” Eden cries. “You see me every day. You know everything about me, you….” She stops. Bites her tongue.

“You know what more,” I say, my eyes burning into her, traveling down to her lips. Staying there.

“Well, there is nomore. I can’t give you any more, Isaiah, do you understand? It’s either this, what we have right now, ornothing.” Her voice is heaving, her breaths coming close together, and I want nothing but to take her in my arms and make the pain go away, but we have to have it out. There is no other way out of this but through. “I… I can’t go back to nothing. You forced it out of me.”

She is crying again—but she hasn’t noticed it yet. She keeps talking, the pain rising in her voice, the tears beginning to pour down her cheeks, and still she’s trying to talk through it all.

“I only knew the ‘nothing’ before, Isaiah. I breathed ‘nothing’, I lived ‘nothing’. But now… I’m alive. You made me come alive. And you’re asking me to go back to ‘nothing’.”

I don’t pretend to understand what she’s talking about—I’m too stupid to follow her train of thought usually anyway. But I get the pain. I see it. I see how it’s breaking her right in front of my eyes.

“Do you like me even a little bit?” I ask her. “Please tell me that.”

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