Page 107 of Pierce Me

“Change takes time and patience,” Eden says calmly, showing me the patience she’s speaking of in action. “And strength. So much strength that it’s exhausting.” Suddenly, all the steam has gone out of me. I reach out a hand to her hunched back, shoulder-blades sticking out. “I should know.”

“Eden, look, I…”

The worst thing is, she’s right.

This is not a good way to live, and next thing you know I’ll need pills again in order to face my life every morning.I wouldn’t have had to do that if she’d been with me from the beginning. She destroyed me.

But for the first time, I reply to the malicious voice spewing the poison in my head. For the first time, I stop being a child.

No. None of this is her fault. I made every single choice. If I made the wrong ones, I still made them by myself. She didn’t ruin my life.I did.

“Jude and Miki have actual plans for their lives, if it helps,” I say quickly, trying to salvage the situation.

“They do?”

“Yeah. They want to do this for a couple more years and then they’re done. We’ve talked about it. This… You’re right, this is no way to live. I’m not strong enough to handle such a huge life. I am no Wes Spencer.”

She smiles. No one is like Wes, I know that; the guy is doing everything and doing it brilliantly. But the fact that she smiles as if she admires him sends a knife of jealously through my heart. What do I have to do to get her to smile like that at the mention of my name?

I shake my head to clear it from these ugly, bitter thoughts.

“Miki… he wants to be a doctor,” I tell her. “Keeps listening to medical podcasts like mad. He’s barely finished high school, but I know that if that’s his dream, he can make it happen. Don’t tell him I told you, it’s his secret. He’s deathly afraid everyone’s going to laugh at him.”

“I can’t imagine laughing at anything less,” she says.

I smile. Of course she can’t; that’s such an Eden thing to say.

“Of course you can’t; that’s such an Eden thing to say,” I tell her and she nods. She sits on the floor by the piano, lifting her knees to her chin and hugging them against her chest. She’s a little ball of a person, again making herself smaller. What made her sad this time? I sit next to her, crossing my legs. “Anyway, Miki’s parents were refugees, and he’s volunteered at refugees camps a ton since he was a kid. He’s been around more pain and suffering and illness than I can imagine. I think he's promised it to himself that he’ll do something about it. He’s using his insane talent as a way of making money to study medicine. And, I think, to open up free clinics eventually, all over the country, for people like that.”

“Wow,” Eden says.

“Yeah. He keeps talking about how privileged he is compared to kids that grow up in war countries.”

Eden just hugs her knees closer to her chest. Her stomach must be concave at this point.

“Imagine that,” she murmurs, her voice dropping so low, I have to strain to hear her. “Growing up not sucking for someone.”

“Ha!” I laugh wryly. “I wouldn’t know either.”

‘I came here for you.’

I get up from the floor and sit on the piano stool. My fingers curl around the lid, knuckles turning white. If I don’t do something, we’ll spend the rest of the day talking, and I’m this close to losing control around her. I knew what I was doing avoiding her all these days. We need to stop talking. Now.

Because if we don’t, then I’ll want more.

I’ll want everything.

Again.

“Wanna write some songs about how much growing up sucks?” I ask her.

“Always,” she says and smiles, getting up too.

My heart stops. It’s as if I haven’t seen anyone smile in the world before. I get dizzy, the same way I get when people start chanting my name, well my ‘name’, when I’m on stage and their voices make the stadium shake.

Her smile is this great of a success.

“Come on.” I pat the empty space next to me.

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