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Lou: It doesn’t feel real. I’ve dreamed my whole life about doing all these things with someone. More than I’ve dreamed of stages andRolling Stonecovers. And I’ve had tons of friends, but never this. Not that I’m trying to force myself on you as a friend or anything.
Eden: You definitely are forcing yourself as a friend on me.
Lou: I definitely am.
Eden: Well, I can only tell you that I only recently discovered that I have two sisters. And I have never ever had a friend, in my life. I have no idea how to do this—just a warning. Since we’re ok with being weird and everything. Is this too weird?
Eden: Do you want to delete my number now?
Eden: But in case you don’t, force away.
Lou: I am not about to delete anything. Listen, let’s take it slow, ok? Cupcakes first?
Eden: Cupcakes first and last and always. I’m out in the hallway… Oh wait, I see you, turn around.
twenty-two
I start writing a new piece by myself, and I get stuck by the second word. I text Eden, and she’s there a minute later, her cheeks scarlet red, dimpling from a smile she can’t hide.
“You ok?” I ask her.
“Your… Lou came to my room an hour ago and apologized to me,” she says. She sounds shell-shocked.
I jump up so fast I overturn the piano stool.Lou did what?
“Yeah, she said she was a jerk to me and that she’s sorry. She begged me to forgive her and to give her a second chance,” Eden goes on, and I flinch at the words ‘second chance’. “Then we baked cupcakes and she gave me Pooh.”
I can’t have heard that right.
“She what?”
Eden makes a helpless gesture. Pooh is following her, but then again, he’s always following her. Except now Lou has given him to Eden? He’s hers? He looks adoringly up at Eden—but then again, he always looks adoringly up at Eden.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“I said that I was no stranger to people being jerks to me,” she replies, and I want to hide beneath the floorboards. “I also said that I was no stranger to second chances either. So I gave her one. She said she wanted to be my friend. Then we baked cupcakes together. She’s actually pretty cool. Wait, is it weird that your girlfriend wants to give me a dog and—?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I interrupt her. “And that little dude is already yours, I don’t think she had much to do with that decision. It was all his.”
“Oh.”
Oh what?
“You… Lou is not your girlfriend?”
“Nobody is my girlfriend,” I say, intelligently. “I mean, I don’t have a… I’m single, I…”
“Yeah, I got that.”
Smooth, Isaiah. Smoother than smooth.
“Am I being a jerk to you, Eden?”
“You know you are.” But she says it without bitterness, as a matter of fact. As if she expects no less from me. That stings.
“Oh?” I pretend it doesn’t hurt to breathe. “Just because I’m ignoring you and not showing any interest in you apart from your work, I’m a jerk?”
“Yes.”
