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“Ready?” Lou yells at Jose, and I roll my eyes.
“You are not going to do anything, Lou,” I say impatiently. “And Jose is my guard, he’s not a cameraman.”
“’S ok,” Jose says softly behind me.
But it’s not ok. And the fact that I’m acting like it’s ok is bothering me.
I chose Lou to open for me in Europe, because right now she’s the only person in the industry I trust. I know she will not actively harm me, which is more than I can say about anyone else right now. Besides, she’s smart and decisive. Once she’s made up her mind, there’s no going back, which to me is synonym with being trustworthy. And despite her appearance, she rarely makes stupid decisions. I wish I could say the same about her friends, though.
Right now, three of them are grabbing her hands, giggling, and tugging her to follow them down a narrow slope towards the water. She, in turn, grabs my hand and Pooh and drags us along. She looks like she’s forgotten that she’s holding my hand, but I don’t want to let go in front of them—I know they’ll gossip about it to anyone who will listen.
That’s literally anyone.
So I stumble along, trying not to say anything; it won’t do any good. Sooner or later, they’ll get bored and order the limos to take us back to the boat. I turn around to nod to the guards to follow us, just in case, when I freeze.
My hand slips from Lou’s, and Pooh, who was resting his little paws between our interlaced fingers, whimpers. She coos at him and he stops, but my shoes slip on the stones, my knees suddenly weak. I barely catch myself from tumbling down the cliff into the waterfall.
One of the other girls is dragging Eden down the path.
No no no no. This is not going to happen.
This girl who looks and sounds like my girl isn’t going to be anywhere near danger right now.
Hot rage flushes my cheeks as I notice that Eden is carrying all the girls’ purses, along with Lou’s shoes, and trying to find her balance on the steep, slippery rocks loaded with all that stuff isn’t easy. She stumbles under the weight, catches herself—and the Gucci purses she’s carrying—and my heart lurches. I nearly jump out of my skin with the urge to run to her and fling all the shoes and purses off her, to grind them into dust.
What is stopping me?
Why don’t I go?
Why do I stay rooted to the spot?
Why do I silently stand here, complicit?
The thought occurs to me suddenly: Maybe I don’t hate my life.
Maybe I hatemyself.Who I’ve become.
This person with no power, no agency. This pathetic little piece of broken glass. Broken glass is shiny too, but it’s worth absolutely nothing.
Eden passes right next to me, hurrying to catch up with Lou and her friends, who are calling to her impatiently, but she doesn’t even acknowledge my presence. And why should she? I’ve been a complete ass to her.
And that’s how it should be.
It’s a millisecond, the moment she passes me. One moment she’s standing next to me, and the next she’s gone. Time slows down. Her shoulder brushes mine and my breath chokes in my throat. I watch her, I can’t help myself. I pray to a God that I no longer believe in that I’m wrong, that this is some freakish coincidence and that she’s not my girl. That she is not my Eden.
She can’t be.
Is this girl that just passed by me, her sleeve almost touching my chest… Is it my Eden? I shudder. It’s all wrong: the hair, for sure. The height. The built of her body. Well, she grew up, of course she’s different. Then there is that triangle of freckles on her nose.
I know these freckles.I used to know them better than my own face. They are like no one else’s freckles.I spent hours studying them, I spent hours kissing… No. Stop that. Don’t think about her that way.
She is not your Eden.
This girl, whoever it is, it’s not her. That girl doesn’t exist anymore anyway, and wherever she is, she is not my girl.
I turn and walk down after the girls, wishing I was back at the boat with my boys.
In the back of my mind, a thought is beginning to take shape:You’ve made a mess of your life. What you have you don’t want, and what you need, you’ve shut out of your life.
