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“I don’t care,” I say fiercely, biting my lip to keep my voice from shaking. “Do you hear me? I don’t care.”
“I left you… I hurt you.”
“I don’t care!” I shout, crying too now. “You can hurt me all over again, whenever you like. Do you understand me, Eden? Do whatever you like. You can do whatever you want to me, and I’ll always come back to you. That’s the last thing you should be… I don’t care. It doesn’t matter now, what happened all those years ago.”
“It does matter.” She falls apart right here in my hands, while I’m holding her, and I just watch her crumble, helpless, powerless. “I let you down completely. How can you even stand to look at me? How have you been able to stand the sight of me all these weeks—”
“You saved my life!” I scream, interrupting her. I can’t hear another word of this. I know it’s the narrative I’ve been feeding myself endlessly for years and years. I know. And it is disgusting. I see what I have been doing so clearly for the first time, and I hate it. “Eden. Eden. You kept me alive all those years ago. I’m here just because of you, do you hear? You kept me alive, you kept me sane. That’s the only thing I should be remembering from that time. That’s the one thing I should have been holding on to. What you did for me. You…”
I can’t help it.
I’m kissing her again.
I bend down, cutting myself off, and catch her mouth with my lips. Hers were already tipped up, swollen and red, waiting for me, half-open. How could I concentrate on anything else but them? My whole body is on fire, hard and dissolving, as if I’m being reborn and torn to pieces all that the same time, within this very kiss.
This time, I kiss her hard, with hunger and desperation. Our teeth almost clash, but my tongue cushions the movement. She sighs against my lips and sits up on her knees to reach my mouth better. I tip her chin up and move my mouth with hers, tasting her, letting her consume me.
There was no way I could stop myself from kissing her this time. There was no other way to show her what is burning inside me.
The words just turned into a kiss, that’s what happened.
We pant against each other hungrily, turning our heads to the side so that we fit better, and Eden melts like butter in my arms.Still?I think, smiling into her mouth.I still make her crazy? She still swoons for me?I remember her turning to putty in my hands every time I so much as touched her, back then.
Is it still the same?
It is for me. I can’t breathe, but I don’t want to.
I taste her lips again and again. I cup her neck and tilt her head to fit mine, tasting her hungrily. For a few moments, there is nothing but heavy breaths and moans in the air.
“What do you need, Eden?” I ask her again, as I catch more tears falling from her eyes as we kiss. “Tell me what you need and I’ll do it.”
And she answers, like before: “You.”
I kiss her and she kisses me back until I don’t know where she ends and I begin. She goes weak against me, and I catch her in my arms. I sling her knees over my arm, cradling her body, and press her against my chest. I used to do this exact same move all these years ago, but now that I’m bigger it’s so much easier to pick her up, I do it in one fluid move, not having to break our kiss for a second. Not having to break a sweat.
She sighs against my mouth and I know she’s remembering too.
“I got you,” I whisper into her mouth, and her lips stretch against mine in a small smile. I lean back on my haunches with her cradled against my chest, and relish the feeling of breathing easily for the first time since the club.
Since I saw her.
I made her smile.
I made her smile once before, all those years ago, and it had been the start of everything. Could this be a start as well?
Is it too late to believe in God?
“Help,” she murmurs, her voice dragging with sleep. “The nightmares are coming.”
“I got you, Eden.” I pull her into my body more tightly as my heart shatters. She sighs into my neck, sounding exhausted and barely awake. I let her rest against me, as I rub her back and kiss the top of her arm. “I won’t let them come, I promise.”
And then I start to sing. I want to sing one of my songs to her, but nothing fits. So I start a new one. I weave it out of nothing, like a golden thread. I vocalize as the music comes to me note by note, singing it quietly, softly, only for her.
And then I realize that this music isn’t new: it’s been sitting in my head since the moment I saw her that first day on the yacht. I haven’t consciously thought about it until now, but I’ve been making it in my head for weeks now.
“That’s why you’re an idol, Isaiah,” Eden murmurs into the crook of my arm. I thought she was asleep—her breathing has calmed down.
“Why?” I ask, and the song stops. I miss it already.
