E D E N
The day I kissed Truman sent the universe out of order. Our kiss started a chain reaction. It was the first bad thing out of many that would soon follow.
It was June, and Katie and I just finished our final day of twelfth grade and it was time to celebrate. Again. Only this time, we traded in ice cream and fruity juices for a party.
I was all in. Excited even, mostly because our parents only allowed us to go if Truman, who was back from college, came to supervise.
I remember laughing and thinking how ironic that was. Truman supervising us. I knew I would be the one with my eyes locked firmly on him. Not the other way around.
I knocked on the door to her house, tugging at the stupid hem of my red dress. The theme to the party was Angels and Devils, and here I was thinking that a party having a theme was the most idiotic thing I've ever heard of in my entire life.
That was, until Truman opened the door.
I expected him to be dressed as a devil, in all red with horns coming out of his head, but turns out this boy excelled in the art of sending me into cardiac arrest.
Instead, there was a halo resting on his brownish black hair that curled around his ears. I honestly did not think it was possible for someone to make all white look hot but here he was, defying all laws.
He looked like an angel, but the look in his eyes as they traveled down my body was anything but angelic.
"Eden..." he trailed off, eyes lifting back up to mine. He whistled, leaning against the door frame. "Devil, huh? I always pictured you as an angel," he said, that lopsided grin on his face.
I should have known then that I was in trouble.
"Funny. I pictured you as the devil." I smiled as he laughed, grin growing.
Truman disappeared as soon as we arrived to the party. I watched him walk towards a group of people, a red-headed girl draping her arms over his shoulders, and then he was gone, lost somewhere in the darkness.
I hardly had time to look for him before Katie grabbed my wrist and dragged me to the makeshift dance floor in the backyard. There were twinkling lights hanging off the fence and I remember thinking it looked magical, and that the night felt infinite as I held my best friend's hand and danced.
We were having fun. And as Katie drank cup after cup of whatever dark liquid that turned her eyes glassy, I laughed.
I thought we were living: dancing in a backyard, drinking things we weren't supposed to that made my head throb and turned my world a spectrum of different colours. Black red purple pink yellow. The hues were everywhere, dancing across the night sky, smiling down at me.
I glanced around for Truman and I spotted him leaning against the shed, talking to the same red-headed girl with hair draping down her body in curls. Even with the darkness, I could see the anger in those hazel eyes of his.
I watched as he stormed off into the house. My eyes shifted between Katie and her brother and it only took a second for me to choose him.
I followed Truman into the house, then a bedroom. I stood in the doorway for a minute, watching as he paced back and forth with his head in his hands. He took the halo off his head and threw it across the room.
It landed somewhere under the window, catching the moonlight.
"Truman?" My voice was soft, and so were his eyes when they met mine. He collapsed onto the bed and I followed. "Are you okay?"
He shook his head. "What are you doing up here?"
"I followed you," I said, wincing a second later at how that sounded.
Truman didn't seem to mind, though. He only smiled, lips tugging up until that dimple claimed its rightful spot.
"You looked upset," I added. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."
I remember feeling his hand flip mine over on my thigh, his fingers dancing across my palm before they intertwined together.
I remember my heart raced first.
The guilt set in later.
"See," he said, squeezing my hand. "I told you you're an angel, Eden."
I wished he was right. The idea of being pure was compelling. But there was nothing pure about the feeling in my heart or the thoughts running through my mind as Truman shifted closer to me.
A voice rang through the hallway, somewhere between a yell and a sob. I jumped away from Truman the same second he swore under his breath.
"Truman!" the voice yelled, sounding far from happy. "I know you're up there!"
Before I knew what was happening, Truman picked the halo off the floor and tugged me with him into a closet. He shut the door behind us and leaned against it. I could feel my heart pounding and thought that if I looked down, I'd see its outline pushing through my skin.
"Who is that?" I whispered.
"Santana," he said. "My ex-girlfriend as of"—he checked his watch—"five minute ago."
"Tru?" she called, heels clicking against the floor. "Where'd you go?" I could see her shadow beneath the closet door, coming closer.
I clutched his hand in mine, not even daring to breathe.
When Santana's footsteps began to fade as they left the bedroom, I reached for the doorknob. Truman's hand was over mine, stopping me from opening the door.
"Wait," he mouthed.
I could hear her walking down the stairs, and then the distant slam of the door closing as she went back to the party. But the way Truman's eyes were shining had my feet planted firmly.
I wasn't going anywhere without him.
Get it together, I reprimanded myself, all the while the promise I had made Katie four years earlier playing over in my head.
Truman took a step closer to me. He paused, then lifted the halo off his head and placed it on mine, gently. One hand pushed my brown hair over my shoulder as the other adjusted the halo.
"There," he breathed. His voice was low, rumbling through me. I could feel it in my chest, mixing with my blood. "Now, you're an angel."
Then, he was kissing me. And it was in that moment I realized that Truman as an angel was fitting because that kiss took me to heaven.
His hands were on either side of my face, holding me to him. It was gentle at first. Soft. Then my back was against the wall and his fingers were burning a path down my thighs from where my dress had tugged up.
His fingers coaxed a storm out of me until I was lightening and our kiss lit up the sky. I was sure it could be seen from all the seas, from every continent.
I told myself to push him away as my hands pulled him closer.
"Eden," Truman breathed against my mouth and I all but lost my mind. I let my fingers curl around his hair, holding on for dear life.
My legs began to tremble and, just when I was sure I couldn't take anymore, Truman pulled back. His forehead was pressed to mine, lips tugged up at the sides into the smallest of smiles.
He brushed his finger against my bottom lip and I felt my chin raise, gravitating towards his mouth. I wanted more. I needed more.
Truman chuckled, taking a step back. "You were right," he said after a moment. "You're definitely a devil."
He lifted the halo off my head and placed it back on his before opening the door to the closet. The light poured in, erasing the sins that stuck to me like glue as he walked out of the bedroom, halo glinting in the moonlight.
I began to run out of the room, back to the party to find Katie and gush about what happened when I remembered one little problem.
The promise I broke.
That was when the guilt begun to set in, slowly eating me alive.
I glanced at my phone to check the time and saw two texts from Katie, saying she was leaving the party with James.
James? Who was James? I rolled my eyes and texted her back, telling her to be safe and call me in the morning.
There was no tomorrow.
There was only that night and the sound of sirens in the background, lighting up the night sky. I stumbled back down to the party and found silence. It was like I was watching a movie and someone hit pause.
No one was moving.
Katie Katie Katie Katie. Her name was being whispered over and over.
I realized something was wrong when I saw Truman kneeling on the grass.
"Truman?" I called, voice wavering.
I walked to him and the ground was shaking. I shouldn't have drank so much. I know that now.
I reached Truman and he was laying down, staring at the sky. Tears were frozen on his cheeks and his eyes were faraway, somewhere between the moon and another galaxy altogether.
"Truman?" I asked again, gentler this time. I tumbled onto the grass beside him, clutching his hand in mine. "What happened?"
The tears on his face turned into sobs until we were both covered in rivers, drowning in our own tears. Our own grief.
I held his hand as we drove through the dark streets to the hospital Katie had been taken to. The speed limit was sixty but we were flying. No red light could stop us from reaching her in time.
The walls of the hospital were too bright. The hallways stretched on forever into a blinding sea of white and I wanted to drown in them, too. I couldn't look at Truman without feeling a tingle in my lips and remembering the kiss that left us locked in a dark room as Katie . . .
It was a drunk driver that hit her.
I can't remember the amount of bones she broke, bones I never even knew were in the human body. Her head took the most damage when her body flew through the windshield.
She wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
She was in a coma, hanging on by life support.
The doctors said that maybe she could still hear us. And I stood there, searching for the words to apologize for kissing him, for not being there for her, but they never came.
I knew Truman felt it, too. The guilt.
His eyes never met mine again.
We couldn't look at each other.
We couldn't speak without our hearts ripping open into a hole big enough to swallow us both.
I wished I could turn back time.
I wished I could go back to the days of belly laughs and blue nail polish. When we drank juice and had our noses buried into textbooks from sunrise to sunset.
But it was too late.
I had decided Katie's fate the moment I left her side at that party.
And I was left wondering why I thought it was worth it, to lose her for a kiss from a boy that was now broken, too.
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a/n: please the star and vote :-)