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A dream come nightmare.
Because she is nothing to me and I’m nothing to her. I don’t even pretend to be mad at her anymore, or try to kiss other girls to get some kind of a reaction from her. Nothing.
I’m just polite.
And it’s killing me.
Issy Woo, dead from politeness at twenty-two. I bet that headline is going to make a splash.
We go for a swim at the terrace of the King George Hotel, and then we keep working. We go to sleep randomly in the early evening, having stayed awake for approximately thirty-six hours. My schedule is a mess.
I wake up a few hours later to a night-covered Athens. I climb back up to the terrace, alone. The pool is lit up neon blue from the inside, casting a pale, filtered light on the white loungers. The sky is clear, and a breeze blows my hair away from my feverish brow. I exhale slowly, walking to the edge to look over the city.
It's sparkling with lights—Athens does not have any skyscrapers, in fact it only has a couple of buildings that reach higher than the Acropolis. But it’s always alive, the streets and windows never going completely dark, no matter how dark the night sky gets. This is the last night we’ll spend at this hotel; we’re starting rehearsals at the stadium tomorrow, and we’ll have to move closer to it. I haven’t even had time to have a single swim in the sea, or to see Spencer in Corfu.
But right now, I couldn’t give a crap.
I’ve been writing with Eden for a week. We have ten songs in the works, three of them almost ready to go to production. Eden and I have barely said a single word other than lyrics and music to each other, because I can’t handle talking to her.
I can barely handle being in the same room as her, let alone sitting on the same piano stool. Let alone lying on my stomach on the floor beside her as we both fill out entire papers of chords and words. Our hands brushing when we reach for the same pencil. I am dying a million deaths every day just by looking at her. Just by being near her. Breathing the same air as her. Talking to her about anything, literally anything else than the songs would break me into a million pieces.
The air of Athens at night smells of car fumes, jasmine and ancient poets’ music.
To me, it smells of loneliness and cowardice.
I hate that I don’t talk to Eden, really talk to her, in spite of working with her every single night. I hate myself for it.
All I can do is keep an eye on her from afar. She seems to be eating and sleeping ok, seems to be doing fine in general. Jude and Miki keep her company, and she spends a lot of time in the kitchens baking. God, it drives me crazy that she’s started baking now. And I can’t taste a single bite.
Every evening, when we take a break from writing, she disappears into the kitchen, and sometimes Lou follows her down there. It’s becoming increasingly hard not follow them just to make sure that Lou is behaving herself. But I know I can’t trust myself around Eden, not when we’re not working. Eden in a kitchen, her cheeks dusted by flour, her slender fingers shaping the dough… I get hot all over just by thinking about her like that. I have to stay away to stay sane.
Not that I do stay sane.
Pretty soon, smells of cinnamon and vanilla drift to my room. She brings me muffins, cinnamon rolls and cupcakes every single evening. I say no at first, but then it’s really beyond my powers to resist. So we munch on pastries that taste of autumn and home while we write. And I swear, if I wasn’t already crazy about her, I would fall in love with her for the first time just because of that.
She’s taken up baking and I never knew. She’s taken up baking.
It somehow feels monumental, this little thing she is so good at, that I wasn’t a part of her life when it happened. It makes me want to curl up in my bed and cry. I hope she isn’t doing the same. At first, I stood outside her door every night, listening for any indication that she might be hurting. But she’s not.
Pooh’s in there sleeping with her always now.
Pooh has adopted her, it seems. He won’t let her out of his sight. It would be adorable if he wasn’t so feral about protecting her. He looks all cute and small and fluffy, but if anyone starts so much as raising their voice in Eden’s vicinity, he turns into Cerberus. The little dude keeps following her around, barking up a storm whenever she so much moves a foot away. Eden takes care of the dog almost exclusively, and I love how fiercely protective of her Pooh is, well, in his own way, by growling his little ass off whenever one of us approaches her, even me.
Well, he might have a point.
The first time I saw her sweeping up his poo, I almost went out of my mind.
“Jude will be doing that,” I told her, more sharply than I had meant to. “Or Lou. Or me. Got it?”
She didn’t even turn around, focused on her work. “No,” she replied and I almost burst out laughing.
So much for my efforts at being tough and protective.
Maybe it’s better this way; she obviously doesn’t need me. It’s the other way round. Maybe it always was.
Last night Jude followed her down to the kitchen. I could do nothing about it. I just sat in my room and seethed at the thought of them baking together.
After I’ve gazed at Athen’s blinking lights for half an hour, Skye comes looking for me.
