The Way I Am Now (The Way I Used to Be)

My words hang there in the space between us, my heart racing while I wait. I keep imagining that I’m missing her answer in the sound of the falling water. But then she starts nodding.

“Yes,” she finally answers.

We stand there holding hands, smiling at each other. I lean down and try to kiss her, but she backs up a couple of steps. I’m confused. She doesn’t let go of my hands and doesn’t stop smiling either. Is she . . . playing with me? She’s changed—it’s not the first time I’ve thought it over the last few months, but it’s the first time I know for sure it’s true.

“No?” I ask her.

She shakes her head.

“No kiss, not even after my big speech?” I joke with her, trying my best to play along.

“You’ll get your kiss, don’t worry,” she says, pulling me by the arm as she moves closer to the fountain. “Come with me.”

She walks me around to the opposite side of the fountain, our footsteps setting off the series of what must be motion-activated streams of water shooting out from the platform and arching over the walkway.

“See that little bench inside?” She points to the metal bench of vines and leaves on the other side of the cascading water. “Let’s go,” she says, holding my hand tighter.

“Go?”

“Yeah, we can make it.”

I look around. There’s no one here and probably no one nearby on a Sunday night when the semester isn’t even in session yet. “I don’t think we’re supposed to—” But before I even finish my sentence, she drops my hand and is racing forward under the tunnel of water. “Wait, what are you doing?” I shout after her.

She outran it, though. She turns and makes this adorable whoop sound from underneath the apple, still dry. “Come on!” she calls, motioning me forward with her hands.

I laugh to myself because I’m going to have to do this now.

“Ready?” she yells. “Go!”

I start but stop.

“Josh, come on! You have to just do it. Run. Now!”

So, I do. I run, either too fast or too slow, and end up getting hit full-on by every single stream of water. By the time I reach her, I am soaked all the way through my clothes.

She’s covering her mouth, laughing. “Oops,” she mumbles through her hand. “Or maybe you should’ve waited.”

“Oh, that’s funny?” I wrap her in my arms, and she lets out this gasp-shriek as my cold wet clothes press against her, my hair dripping down onto her face as she looks up at me.

“Okay, okay,” she shouts. Then she pushes my hair back and slides her hands down my neck, letting them rest on my shoulders. And like always, she takes that small breath of air, slowly letting it out as she kisses me, deeper, more fully.

My hands follow down the curve of her back to her waist, fitting perfectly over her hips. She lets me pull her even closer, raising herself onto her toes to reach my mouth. I tighten my arms around her and lift her just enough for our mouths to find each other. Our kiss deepens, and as I feel the full weight of her body against me now, I just want more of her.

“Hold on to me,” I whisper, and she folds her arms around the back of my neck. I reach down and place my hands under her thighs and hoist them up around my waist. She inhales sharply and lets out this soft breathy cry.

“Okay,” she says, her lips moving against mine. I can feel the muscles in her arms and legs contract all around me. “I’m not laughing anymore.”

“Me neither,” I tell her between kisses, my breathing growing faster, with hers. I feel her lungs expand against my chest as she opens her mouth to take a deep breath. I kiss her neck, damp with the spray of water bouncing off the walls.

“God,” she exhales.

I look up at her, and her eyes are so bright, even in the dark, and I don’t think I have ever wanted anything or anyone, even her, more than I do right now.

She looks at me like she’s going to say something else but kisses me instead. I take a few steps to move us to the wall, so I can get a better grip on her, but as her back presses against the dome shape of the apple, she lets out a short scream. Her whole body tenses and jerks, and I realize I’ve just walked her right into a stream of water, as it now cascades over her.

I pull back and set her down on the ground, and she stands there frozen for a moment, mouth open. “I’m so sorry,” I tell her.

“Cold,” she says, drenched head to toe. “That was really cold.” She gasps as she looks at me. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“I swear, I would not have purposely interrupted what was just happening.” But now I’m the one covering my mouth to laugh.

“Oh, I see,” she says, taking my hands. “You were just seducing me so you could have your revenge.”

“No—” I start to say, but then she pulls me forward into her arms, so that we’re both directly under the water. “Oh!” I shudder. “Holy shit, that is fucking freezing.”

“I know, it is!” She laughs and kisses me once more. “Can you take me home now?”

“Yes,” I tell her, and I hold out my arm.

“Will you stay with me tonight?”

We’re trying to be quiet as we enter our building, but by the time we get to her door, leaving puddles in our wake, our shoes squeaking and squelching, we’re both laughing hysterically.

“Oh my God,” Eden groans, as she wipes under her eye and pulls her hand away with a black smear left on it. “What do I even look like right now?”

“Beautiful,” I answer.

But she just sort of rolls her eyes dismissively and starts taking her hair down. “Will you give me a few minutes?” she asks. “I’m just going to take care of . . . this situation here,” she says, floating her hand in a circle in front of her face.

“You look beautiful,” I try again.

She doesn’t acknowledge what I’ve said, but she does kiss me.

“Okay, I’m gonna run upstairs and take care of this”—I look down at my drenched clothing—“situation too.”

She laughs silently but then says, more seriously, “You’re coming back though, right?”

“Of course.”

“If I’m not out of the bathroom, just come in and wait in my room, okay?” she whispers. “I’ll leave this unlocked.”

Dominic is standing in the kitchen eating cereal when I walk in. “What the hell?” he says, turning to look out the window. “Is it raining?”

“Nope,” I tell him, rushing past without explaining.

I brush my teeth and take the world’s quickest shower to wash the chlorine smell off my skin. I hang my wet clothes on the back of my door and get into clean ones. T-shirt, boxer briefs, because they’re comfortable and I also read somewhere that women find them the sexiest, a statistic I didn’t think I cared about or even remembered before, well, this very moment. I go back and forth about jeans versus shorts—Dominic’s voice in my head telling me cargoes should be outlawed—but if we’re just in her room, sleeping, it can be casual. I decide to go with one of my newer pairs of athletic shorts. I hesitate at my nightstand, not sure if I should bring them. Is it presumptuous or just being prepared? I open the drawer and decide to take one, just in case.

In the kitchen, Dominic is watching me rush around.

“Do I look all right?”

“All right for . . . what?” he asks, this horrified yet baffled expression twisting his face.

“Sleeping over,” I admit.

“Do you really want to have this conversation?”

“No, actually.” I grab a bottle of water from our fridge. “Thank you. Gotta go.”

“Have fun, stud,” he calls after me. “Remember, practice in the morning—don’t overexert yourself!”

I’m back at her door within ten minutes. I knock quietly before I open it and tiptoe through their kitchen, past the straight line of light from under the bathroom door.

I let myself into her room. I would sit, but she has a bunch of clothes spread out on her bed and chair. So I stand in the center of her tiny room instead. It’s dark except for the dim light coming from the small lamp on her desk, and it reminds me of when I was in her room back home. How oppressive it felt in there.

But this room feels like Eden already. I admire her things spread out all haphazardly. She has her laptop open on her desk with a music app on pause and a copy of this year’s course catalog and some other books and papers teetering dangerously close to the edge. But that’s when something else on her desk catches my eye. Three prescription bottles, tucked in behind a tube of lotion and some hair products.

It’s none of my business, God, how I know that.

But, my brain insists.

Because all my stupid brain can think of is my dad and his problems, all the times he would hide pills and bottles—all the times we’d have to hide them from him. She’s not my dad, though. She told me all that stuff was in the past, and I believe her.

The sound of the shower turning off carries through the quiet of the apartment.

“All right,” I say out loud, taking a deep breath and forcing myself to look at something else. Her bookcase. Perfect. I go over, but I can’t seem to focus enough to read a single title. I walk back over to her desk and glance at the closed door once more.

I don’t need to know what they are; I just need to know that they’re hers. Carefully, I reach for the first one, memorizing their exact positions. Her name’s on the label. And the second one. And the third. All prescribed to her. By a doctor in our hometown. Nothing wrong with any of this. It’s absolutely none of my business.

But, again.

Now I do kind of need to know, at least, what they’re not. And I still hear the fan going in the bathroom.

God, I hate myself.

I go back to her desk. The labels don’t say what they’re for, but I also don’t recognize the names, which is a good thing. The only drug names I’m familiar with—because of my dad, of course— are the dangerous pain-related controlled substances. And at least these aren’t that. The first one says to take once a day, the second is one tablet at night, and the third says as needed. All have refills. I set them back down in their spots.

There is no reason for me to fixate on this. It’s not even surprising that she would be on some kind of medication after everything she’s been through. Fuck, I should probably be medicated too.

Just then, the fan shuts off, and I hear the bathroom door creak open. Quickly, I park myself in front of her bookcase, bending down to slide one of the books out, as if I’d been standing here reading the jacket this whole time.

“Hey,” she whispers. “You’re here.”

And as I turn around to see her face, the glorious fruit and flower scents following along behind her, I can almost forget about the things that are none of my business. “Of course I’m here,” I tell her, setting the book down as she starts walking toward me.

But then she stops short, looking at her desk, and my heart starts racing like she might be able to tell I’ve handled the bottles. “I’m sorry it’s so messy in here.” She turns around and gathers up all the clothes from her bed and tosses them on top of the desk, covering all the stuff I am now pretty certain she didn’t want me to see.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

“No, I—I don’t mind. I mean, it’s really not messy,” I lie.

She comes to me now and wraps her arms around my waist. “It is messy, but that’s only because I was super nervous getting ready for an important date with this guy I really like.”

And now I genuinely fucking hate myself. But coming clean wouldn’t make me feel any less guilty and would only make her think I don’t trust her or she can’t trust me. There’s no reason to ruin what has been an amazing night because I’m paranoid that everyone I love is going to turn into an addict.

I clear my throat, breathe her in, and say, “Oh?” As she looks up at me, I lean down to kiss her. “Think you’ll see him again?”

She smiles and lets out a small laugh as she presses her cheek against my chest, her wet hair leaving a damp spot on my shirt.

“Tonight was the most fun I’ve had in a really long time,” I tell her, a different truth, instead. And it was fun, but it was also equally sexy and romantic and meaningful, but I’m not sure how to say all that.

“Hmm, me too,” she sings. “But—”

“But what?” I ask, starting to get worried. Is she already having second thoughts?

“You have to tell me the theme.”

“Oh.” I exhale too forcefully, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“I mean, Italian restaurant. Italian dessert. Italian fountain. That’s the theme within the theme part, right?”

“Right.”

“So, what’s the bigger theme? I still don’t think I got it.”

“You. Being here. Me. Being so beyond happy about you being here. I guess that’s the real theme I was going for.”

“Oh.” She pauses. “Well, then, I guess I did get it, after all.”

“Good.” I touch her cheeks where they’re blushing. “You know, I feel like I’m getting to see this whole other side of you here,” I tell her, moving my hands through her wet hair.

“Really?” She brings her hands up around my neck and looks at me with this easy smile. “You didn’t know I could be fun before?”

“I did, but I’m realizing you’re also kind of . . . wild.”

“Me?” she gasps. “What about you?”

“What about me? I assure you no one has ever once accused me of being wild. Responsible, dependable, sensible?” I count them on my fingers as I list the words. “Yes. Wild? Never.”

“Do I need to replay the footage from that whole steamy fountain kissing scene?” she asks, and her fingers are so light as they dance up and down my arms that I feel momentarily dizzy. “Because that seems to be playing on a loop in my head right now. The part before you walked me into a freezing waterfall, I mean.” She pauses to let her grin disappear before she continues, more serious. “The part right before that was . . . intense.”

I lean to kiss her neck just so she doesn’t see my face turning red, but I pull myself together and look at her again, so she knows. “I never would’ve done that with anyone else.”

“Me neither.”

My hands go to her bare arms. She’s wearing only a thin tank top and shorts, and as I lean down to kiss the other side of her neck, I can’t help but notice that she’s not wearing a bra. She touches my face and brings my mouth to hers while her fingers trail up my stomach, under my shirt.

“Can we take this off?” she asks me as her hands start to push my shirt up. Something in me melts a little at the way she said “we.”

So we do. We pull my shirt off over my head together and let it fall to the floor, but before I can start kissing her again, I feel her mouth planting these soft, warm kisses across my chest and stomach, sending chills through my whole body.

“Oh God,” I breathe. “That feels so good.”

She takes my hands from where I lost my train of thought and left them perched lazily in her hair and presses them against her over the front of her shirt. I raise her shirt just enough to touch her skin, and then her hands are there too, moving my hands up under the fabric, over the gentle curve of her stomach.

“This is okay?” I ask, even though she’s the one who placed my hands there. “Can we . . . ?” I begin, suddenly unable to finish the sentence. “Can we take this off too?”

“Mm-hmm,” she murmurs, her voice muffled as she pulls the shirt off over her head. She brings her arms in front of her chest and moves in close to me before I can really look at her. The feeling of her bare skin, her body pressed against mine, has my heart going so fast. Even though I’ve seen every naked inch of her so many times before, this feels brand-new. Because it’s not only her attitude that’s changed in all this time apart, but it’s her body too—every part of her fuller, stronger, softer, from the arch of her back to the shape of her shoulders, her thighs and hips and waist—I need this minute to prepare myself. I take a deep breath as her fingers work under the band of my shorts, hands roaming gently over my carefully selected underwear, gradually edging the athletic shorts down over my hips.

“Can I?” she asks as she pulls away to let space in between us.

I finally look down at her, and she is so much more magnificent than I remember, all I can manage to do is nod. She slides my shorts down my legs and onto the floor, then quickly slides hers off too, and I hold her hands as she steps out of them. And we stand in front of each other, in only underwear, for the first time in years.

“You are so beautiful,” I tell her, squeezing her hands in mine like we’d been doing all night. “I know you’re gonna keep ignoring me when I say that, but I wish you wouldn’t because I really mean it.”

“Sorry.” She shakes her head but smiles in that rare shy way she does sometimes, only for a moment. “I’m nervous,” she whispers.

“It’s okay, I am too,” I assure her. I’ve had sex with five people in my life—two casual, three relationships, including her—and I feel as nervous as if this were my first time.

“I didn’t think I would be so nervous,” she says.

“We don’t have to do anything tonight.”

She pauses, studying my face.

It’s almost like she’s trying to determine if I really mean that or not—she should know I do, but in case she doesn’t, I add, “Have I ever told you what an amazing kisser you are?”

She grins. “No, you’ve never mentioned that.”

“Well, you are the best kisser in the world—hey, you’re laughing, but I’m completely serious,” I tell her. “And I would seriously be more than happy to just lie down with you here and keep kissing you. We really don’t have to do anything else.”

“I know. Thank you for that.” She inhales deeply and exhales before continuing. “But I want to. I mean, if you do.”

“Oh, I do.” I look down, feeling like I should somehow apologize for not having more control over myself. “Obviously, I do. There’s no rush, though.”

She nods, placing my hands on her hips like she knows how much I love the way they feel. And as she reaches out, running her hands along my face and down my chest and stomach, she’s not even trying to hide the fact that she’s looking at my body. Staring. Gazing. I have the urge to make some kind of stupid joke, like hey lady, my eyes are up here, because standing in front of her like this, under her hands, her eyes on me, it’s intense—that was the word she used earlier—almost too intense to bear.

“You are so gorgeous,” she whispers.

“W-what?” I stutter. There’s literally nothing she could’ve said that would’ve shocked me more. She’s never said anything remotely like that to me before. I almost think she’s joking. But then she lets her hands float down my back and rest on my hips. And it doesn’t feel like a joke at all.

“Do you even know?” she asks, and her eyes meet mine again like she’s expecting an answer.