Fallen Eden (14 page)

“Of course you did,” I replied. “Come on, Casanova. Time for your nap and prune juice.”

LOOSE TETHER

A week had passed and Patrick had played hookie everyday while I’d shown up five minutes early. I should have been irritated, like I was the majority of the time with him, but it was more pity than anything I felt for him. He’d been all but forced into a new area of training for him for a girl who’d broken his brother’s heart.

I wasn’t expecting anything different this morning, but I caught the cadence of voices on the wind the second I stepped out the front door. They were coming from the direction I was heading and they became louder with each step I took towards the greenhouse. The closer I got, the stronger this feeling from deep within became. It was unsettling, but only because I knew only one person who was capable of igniting it. It was that feeling of my heart being tethered to him, winding around him, cinching tight, until I crashed into him.

The voices came to an abrupt halt, as if they’d heard someone approaching. I freeze-framed mid-stride. Seconds passed in silence, just the rattle of brittle leaves shaking in the wind. I felt a string of prayers on my lips: one that is was him, one that it wasn’t, and one that I wasn’t insane and hearing voices.

“Do this one thing for me,” a voice cut through the trees, deafening from the extended silence. Deafening since it had been months since I’d heard this voice. “I’m begging you.”

“This
one
thing?” another voice replied, sounding baffled. “It’s been
one
thing after another with this girl and I was through doing one more thing for her about two months ago.”

I sprinted towards the voices, knowing I should be sprinting the opposite direction, but that tether that connected me to him wound me closer. I didn’t stop to think what I’d do when I saw him or what I’d say, I just ran. Towards him.

And nothing had felt so right in a long time.

My speed fiery and my mind distracted, my foot hooked into a tangle of roots, flattening me face-first into the ground. Twisting my ankle free, I whined—more from being delayed than the pain.

“Bryn?”

How could one word make my heart throb so badly it felt like a bear-trap was crushing through it?

“Are you alright? Where are you?” His voice was urgent, fretful even, and it was getting closer. Brisk footsteps were crunching towards me. My voice caught in my throat, the lump making it impassable.

I wanted to call out to him. I wanted him to fall down beside me so I could feel his body running against mine. I wanted to laugh away the past couple months until we were grabbing at our stomachs. I wanted him.

Another set of footsteps rushed forward, following him. They were close, so close I knew he’d be breaking into view in a few more strides.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Patrick hollered, two sets of footsteps coming to a halt just out of view.

“Get out of my way. Now.”

“Guess what, brother? She stopped caring awhile back,” Patrick replied, not about to back down. “Maybe it’s time you do the same.”

There was silence and, feeling panic rising up, I thrust forward, managing to sprint while limping. I charged towards the voices, not because I had no choice, but because that feeling had died—as instantly as it had appeared. I was a loose tether, nothing to be tied to.

The greenhouse came into view, but only one figure was waiting for me, glaring their disdain at me like I was a parasite.

“William?” I yelled, ignoring Patrick. I rushed behind the greenhouse, desperate to find him. Nothing but emptiness waiting for me. “William?”  I charged around the woods, never feeling like he was so close, but so far away.

“You’re not going to find him,” Patrick called out to me when I jogged past him the fourth time. “He’s gone. Long gone.”

I glared at him as I passed by.

“Besides, why are you so concerned with finding him? Taking a machete to his heart once wasn’t enough for you?”

“William?” I whispered, spinning a few more circles.

“Stop it,” Patrick said, pacing towards me. “Stop saying his name. Stop pretending you give a damn. Because you’re not fooling me.”

“I don’t really care if I am or am not fooling you,” I said, trembling. “I know this might crush the narcissistic world you live in, Patrick, but everyone around you does not live their lives caring about what you think.”

“You don’t care what I think?” Patrick repeated, crossing his arms.

“N. O.”

“You sure about that?” he asked, sounding like he was issuing a warning.

“Positively,” I seethed, vocalizing my frustration.

“Good. Makes my life a heck of a lot easier, not to mention more pleasant,” he said, turning and marching into the trees. “Find yourself another talent trainer. One who you actually care about what they think.”

He vanished a few paces later, swallowed up by the trees or teleporting away, I don’t know, but another rush of sadness hit me when I realized I’d lost two Haywards that day, all in two minutes time.

FIGHT

“Remind me why we’re roaming through this over-priced, open-air market in forty degree weather?” Paul asked, shrugging deeper into his down jacket.

“For the experience,” I answered. “And you can’t get a carrot this fresh in a grocery store.” I handed him one of the carrots in my basket to prove my point.

He turned it over, looking unimpressed. “It’s a carrot. Any one of the fifty stores we passed on our way to get here would have had exactly the same thing. For half the price and double the temperature.” He tossed it back in my basket and ambled to the next vendor who was peddling some kind of liquid steaming from a kettle.

“But we would have missed out on all the stimulating conversation,” I mumbled, wandering over to him.

I didn’t understand how he couldn’t find the cornucopia of noises, scents, and wares of Munich’s oldest open-air farmer’s market, the Viktualienmarkt, enthralling. It was as whimsical as a circus and as comforting as my mom’s strawberry-rhubarb pie. Basically, heaven. I only wished I’d discovered this gem weeks ago.

“So experience thing aside,” I said, fingering through the contents of my basket “dinner will be amazing.”

“Now you have my attention.” Paul grinned and handed me a cup billowing with steam. “Drink this. If my teeth are chattering to the point of breaking, you’ve got to be freezing.”

Of course I wasn’t. It felt like it was sunny and seventy and it would everyday forward. Some people might grow to hate this, resent never feeling the roller coaster of seasons and the fluctuation of temperatures that came with them, but not me. I was comforted in knowing what to expect, what was waiting for me everyday.

“What’s this?” I asked, eyeing the paper cup.

“Moonshine—or at least the German equivalent,” Paul said, his smile curling. “Frederick here”—he motioned to the attendant counting back Paul’s change—“promised if flowers, chocolates, poetry, and groveling weren’t working on a girl,
this
would.” He lifted the cup to his lips and tilted it back. All the way back.

I eyed him with parental disapproval. I didn’t take Paul for the binging type.

“Relax,” he said, crumbling the empty cup and tossing it into the nearest garbage can twenty feet away. Show-off basketball star. “It’s apple cider.”

“Oh. In that case, bottom’s up.” I tipped the cup, feeling the cider spread its warmth all the way down to my toes. It was like taking the first bite of a dozen just picked sweetish-tartish apples. “How can you not love this place?” I asked, taking the last sip.

I hadn’t meant for Paul to answer, but from the bend of his brow, I knew he was getting ready to. “I love being with you. Anywhere with you,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “Even in some crummy, overpriced market where the turnips are more popsicle than beta-carotene.” He smiled, rattling one of them against the metal bar of a vendor’s tent.

“You have no sense of culture,” I said, shuffling through a river of bodies as I headed in the direction of our car parked blocks away. “I won’t make you suffer this medieval form of torture any longer.”

“And the congregation said Amen,” Paul shouted, shouldering up to me. “Besides, you’ve got to get dinner started. From the looks of it, you’ll be washing, peeling, and dicing until your fingers fall off.”

Perhaps I’d gone a little overboard. Our basket was overflowing with leafy, shiny, speckled, dirt-crusted produce fit to feed OSU’s football team during summer training.

“I think I’ll catch up on some shut-eye when we get back since it looks like dinner won’t be ready until midnight.”

I elbowed him. “That’s a good idea. You need to get some more sleep. You’re overdoing it,” I said, trying to bridge a very delicate topic. Whenever I’d attempted to bring up Paul’s health and obvious diminishing element of it, he’d answered me with sealed lips, turning and walking away, or by changing the subject.

“Hello, Miss Obvious,” he said under his breath. “Subtlety isn’t one of your strong points, is it?”

“And facing the truth isn’t one of yours,” I said, looking skyward to keep the tears down. “I know you’re trying to hide it from me, but I can tell you’re getting worse. I can see how some mornings it practically kills you to get out of bed.”

Paul chuckled darkly. “Well, one day soon it will kill me.”

I roared to a stop, grabbing his sleeve. “Stop joking. It’s getting old. You might not care about your life ending in the near future, but I do and I’m not about to let you wallow your way to your grave if something can be done to delay it.”

He wheeled around to me, his expression glacial. “Don’t you start this. Not now,” Paul said, biting at the side of his cheek. “Don’t play the death card now, not after parading around Europe with me, extreme snowboarding, and pretending what’s happening to me isn’t really happening.”

Paul was one of the most laid-back people I’d met; the only other time I’d seen him this upset had been at our meeting in the café in Corvallis. “What are you talking about? Why don’t I have a right to be concerned about you?”

“Because the concern I want from you isn’t the kind that stems from pity. I want you concerned because you care about me,” he said, charging forward down the sidewalk.

“I do care about you,” I said, rushing to catch up with him.

He stopped so abruptly I ran straight into him. “There are two kinds of care,” he said, gripping my shoulders. “I’m talking about one and you’re talking about the other.”

I lowered my eyes. “You know I can’t care for you
that
way.”

“Why?” he said instantly, glaring at the necklace that had bounced its way out of my coat. “Because of him? Because of that loser who was nothing but wrong for you?”

I tried to pretend Paul’s words weren’t cutting me like a knife. I doubted I was doing a good job of it.

“He had his chance and screwed it up. Time to wake up and smell the heartache, Bryn. He’s not coming for you. Move on.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said, my lips trembling.

Paul snorted. “Of course you don’t,” he said, walking away from me backwards. “Looks like I’m not the only one who’s been dodging serious chats.” He spun around, heading towards the car. “Do me a favor, will ya? Don’t bring up my crap again until you’re ready to talk about yours.”

I exhaled, dreading the hour drive home. Paul was right about one thing—the grocery store would have been a better idea—at least in terms of the duration of awkward silence that would follow.

I fished out the car keys, heading towards William’s SUV and the man who—had fate not thrown me a curveball in the form of an ink-haired man who was godlike in every sense of the word—could have been the man I fell in love with.

My shoulders fell in relief when we pulled in the garage. I heaved the door open, eager to be free of the emotions stifling the car’s interior. Paul’s hand closed around my wrist, pulling me back down into the driver’s seat. “So, I don’t want to have any regrets and if I go in the next few hours, I’ll have to carry around the guilt of being mean to you for all eternity. Not the way I want to spend my time in the hereafter. No, thank you.”

I tried pulling away from him. I couldn’t take any more of his jokes or sarcasm or his twisted sense of humor. He was
dying
, not getting an appendix out.

“I’m sorry my attitude towards my advancement to six feet under upsets you. I don’t expect it to be the way you would handle it, or anyone else would, but humor is what’s keeping me from going off the deep-end. You know, that deep-end that reduces men to thick, black eye-liner and crappy, just-shoot-me-now music?” He laughed tightly. “Now that’s enough to kill someone.”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose and inhaled. “Okay. I can accept that. But I can’t accept that you won’t go to a hospital or a doctor or
something.
You’ve got to fight, Paul,” I said, almost a shout. “It’s like you’ve just given up on your life and are letting the runway lights to the pearly gates come at you without even trying to put the brakes on.”

“I have done all those things and there isn’t anything else that can be done. I don’t want to spend my last days strapped to a dozen beeping contraptions in a hospital bed with my arse hanging out of a nightgown.” He smiled at me from the side. “As much as you’d like that, I’m sure.”

“I would like that,” I said. “Minus your . . .
arse
hanging out. You need to be in a hospital. I don’t know the first thing about anything medical, I can’t even read a thermometer properly. I can’t take care of you the way you need to be.” As I said it, I knew there were two ways this was true.

“You already take care of me,” he said, twining his fingers through mine. “Just by being here. And besides, I am fighting, despite what you think. I’m just fighting for something else.”

“How’s that going for you?” I asked, huffing in my seat.

He grinned one of those ear-to-ear ones. “Kind of a losing battle right now, but that’s alright, I’m up to the challenge.”

I so did not want to have this conversation right now. Not that I could imagine ever wanting to have this talk with him . . . “Paul—”

“So how about that dinner you’ve been promising me all day?” he said, popping out of the car. “I need a nap before we talk anymore about death, pathetic ex-boyfriends, and losing battles. Okay with you?”

“Greatwith me,” I said under my breath.