| published! under the new title MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE | Eden knows she can't love Truman, the boy with the angelic smile and devilish eyes. Why? He's her best friend Katie's older brother, who she strictly promised she'd stay away from.
But when a...
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E D E N
The problem with having Santana as a roommate was all she did was talk about her ex-boyfriend that cheated on her. Usually I'd be all for the trash-talk session, aside from the little fact that I was the girl he cheated with.
It was Friday night and I was sitting on the couch in our apartment, my laptop on my legs, researching medical cases where patients woke up after being in a coma for years. The sites called them miracle cases. One man woke up after four years and he couldn't remember his wife or kids. I was wondering if that would be Katie, waking up with no memory of who I was, when the door opened and Santana walked in.
She made a dramatic show of sniffing the air, then said, "It smells like a pity party in here."
"Fuck off," I grumbled. We made friendly banter now. That was one new thing we did when we weren't kissing the same guy.
"What's the case this time?" she asked, hanging up her jacket then dropping onto the couch beside me. "Man wakes up after a decade and has to re-fall in love with his wife?" She leaned over my shoulder and read the screen.
"How do people even have the strength to wait years for someone to wake up? It seems impossible," I said.
"At least your husband can't cheat on you if he's in a coma."
I shot out my leg and kicked her off the couch. "Not funny," I said, biting down on the insides of my cheeks to stop laughing.
Santana had cut all her hair off last week. The curls that hung down to her waist were gone. Now it ended just under her chin, and she pushed her hair behind her ears as she climbed back onto the couch.
"Why do we miss the people that hurt us?" she asked.
It was weird. I knew she was talking about Truman, but I instantly thought of Katie.
"Don't know," I said. I took one final look at the internet page then closed it.
"And why do we still love them after everything?" Santana continued.
I could have said that it was our fault. That we were to blame for letting people get close enough to hurt us. That falling in love was a waste of time since most people either end up leaving you by choice or get stuck spending the rest of their life in a hospital bed.
I could have said that miracles don't really happen in real life. They're only read about online or in movies, or in a book where sadness can be spun for profit.
But then I looked at Santana and she was making that face again, the one where her eyes were half closed, and I know that if she opened them she'd be crying. And all I saw was a girl who had just cut all her hair off to try to forget; a girl who moved in with me of all people because she had no where else to go. She had every right to hate me, but she didn't.
