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

Parker makes me a green smoothie later that morning. But I can’t catch my breath long enough to even take a sip. She brings me a bowl of ice cream that night, but then I start crying all over again, thinking of fucking gelato.

Every time I manage to stop, all I see, all I hear, is him standing in my room, so angry, saying This is you. Over and over. This is you. I am this. I couldn’t have said it better myself, but he’s always been better with words than me.

I am this . . . disaster, I am this thing that is incapable of not fucking everything up, I am this curse on the people I love. I never thought anyone could hurt me worse than I hurt myself. But knowing that he thinks the same terrible things about me that I do—it’s too much to even process.

I wear his ripped gray T-shirt and lie in bed, sobbing, weeping, hyperventilating, for forty-eight hours straight. And even though all I want is him, I decline his calls, ignore his texts, tell Parker not to let him in. Because I am this, and someone needs to protect him from this, even if it has to be me.

I miss classes on Monday because I can’t physically get out of bed. That night she comes into my room with soup. I ask her to bring me my pills instead. I take all three.

And finally, I sleep, dreamless.

On Tuesday, my birthday, I go to class and work in the library and somehow manage to not talk to a single person all day long. I skip my afternoon therapy session and don’t even answer when the office calls to check in. Instead of calling them back, I pick up a shift at the café. Since I no longer have birthday dinner plans.

I mess up orders and drop a plate and I’m rude to the customers. Halfway through my shift, I say I’m taking a five-minute break, but I’m gone for twenty. Because I start having a panic attack in the bathroom when I wash my hands and catch a glimpse of the plasticky pink scars on my palm and suddenly remember all over again that this has all really happened—he really loved me, he really left me. And then I’m crying on the dirty floor. I avoid eye contact with anyone as I come out and try to act like I’m okay. I exit through the back door and walk down to the convenience store the next block over and buy a pack of cigarettes—legally, for the first time, since I’m now officially eighteen.

The cashier checks my ID and tells me “happy birthday.” And in her next breath, as she slides the cigarettes across the counter: “You know those things’ll kill you.”

“Thanks, I know,” I mumble back, and flash her a big smile. I think for a tiny moment it wouldn’t be the worst thing.

“Need a lighter?” she asks, and I nod.

I consider just walking off and not going back to the café, but assuming I don’t actually die from this invisible knife lodged in the center of my heart, I’ll still need this job. When I get back, Captain Douchebag tells me he’s writing me up. Fine. I take at least three more breaks to smoke in the side alley by the dumpsters, where there’s a decommissioned table with uneven legs and a fading, scraped-up paint job. It’s been almost a year since I’ve smoked, I’m already feeling so light-headed and weak when the back door to the café slams shut.

“Oh, hey, Eden.” It’s Perry, and it occurs to me now that I still don’t know whether that’s his first or last name. He takes a vape pen out of his shirt pocket. “Slow tonight.”

I nod.

“Didn’t know you smoked,” he says.

“Yeah, I quit, but . . . not very well, I guess.”

He looks up at me, like he’s only just now seeing me—he’s never taken a second glance at me before. “So, listen, would you mind if I smoked something a little stronger than this?” he asks.

I shake my head and wave my hand.

“There it is!” He points at me and grins. “I knew you were a cool kid.” And then he takes a different vape out now—this one I can smell right away—that earthy sweet sticky scent. I laugh out loud because the universe has got to be testing me, offering up all my vices in such an organized, obvious way.

“Hmm?” he mumbles as he holds the smoke in his lungs. “What’s funny?” he croaks before exhaling.

“Nothing,” I lie. “Just imagining what Captain Douchebag would say if he came out here right now.”

“Oh, that asshole left an hour ago,” Perry says.

I light up another cigarette. “Then I won’t rush getting back in.”

“So, Captain Douchebag, is that what you kids are calling him these days?”

I shrug.

He nods again, takes another hit.Belonging to NôvelDrama.Org.

“Hey, you want some of this?” I look over at him, and he takes a step closer. He’s easily ten years older than me. I must be giving off some kind of fucked-up sad-girl distress signal hormone that calls them to me like a beacon, a sonar frequency vibration, or something. Hey, here I am, alone, vulnerable, ready to be messed with! Come at me!

“Well, it is my birthday today,” I tell him, in spite of myself.

“Happy birthday!” I watch as his face lights up. “Hold on a minute.” He pops back inside for a few seconds and comes out with an open bottle of champagne and two flutes. He sets the glasses down on the wobbly table and fills them both. He passes one to me and holds his up, saying, “Cheers.” I hesitate, and he adds, “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

The universe wants to test me? Fine. Bring it on. I’ll fail— that’s what I’m best at.

“Cheers,” I say, and we clink our glasses together. Josh would be so disappointed in me—more disappointed in me than he already is. Cigarettes, weed, alcohol, rando. Check, check, check, and check. This is you. It keeps playing in my head. This is me. It’s inevitable.

“So,” he says, passing the vape next. “Boyfriend taking you out later—the tall guy, right?” he asks, bringing his hand up above his head.

“Right,” I say, and take a couple of hits. “The tall guy.”

But the way he’s looking at me, grinning. He knows, somehow, it’s open season.

I lose track of the time while we sit there, lose track of what we were talking about. Don’t even notice when he goes inside. I clean the same table a hundred times, it seems. I sweep the floors, it feels like, forever. From the front window, I can see my building. I imagine my apartment with X-ray vision, like I could even see into my bedroom, my unmade bed waiting there for me, calling to me.

After we close for the night, I’m shaky. Champagne on an empty stomach, cigarettes on a broken heart, weed on a shattered mind. Not a good combination, but I feel mostly lucid again by the time we’re shutting off the lights and turning over the OPEN-CLOSED sign on the door. Perry places his hand on my lower back and asks if I need help getting home. I hate that I know it would be so much easier to go along with it than to try to be strong and stand up for myself.

But as I look at him, this stranger, the expectant smile on his face as he moves closer to me, it suddenly doesn’t feel easy, like it used to. “No,” I say quietly. “Thanks.”

He keeps walking next to me anyway, though.

“What are you doing?” I ask him, stopping on the sidewalk, feeling my heart start pounding in that way that makes me afraid of what will happen next.

“I told you—I’m just making sure you get home okay.”

“I literally just said I didn’t need help.”

“Yeah, but I—”

“Listen, thank you for the glass and a half of old, flat, left-over champagne that you stole from the kitchen. And thank you for exactly eight hits off your vape and . . . oh, let’s see, thank you for telling me happy birthday,” I say, gaining steam. “Really, thank you. So very much, okay? But I don’t owe you anything.”

“Whoa, simmer down. You’ve got the wrong idea,” he tries to argue—he tries to laugh.

“No,” I say. “No,” I shout. “No!” I’m yelling in the street, louder and louder. “No,” I scream at the top of my lungs.

Finally, he holds his hands up and starts backing away.

I cross the street and run up the steps to my building, close the front door behind me, and try to catch my breath. My legs feel boneless and weak as I make my way up the two flights of stairs. And as if I wasn’t already about to collapse, there’s a glass vase over-flowing with yellow flowers in it, sitting next to the door. A card attached, my name in his handwriting.