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

Part 2 – July

I’m sitting behind the front desk at the athletic center, scanning in a student ID every few minutes, making sure the picture in the database matches the person entering the building. The afternoon sun is streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows, making me tired.

Fridays are always dead here, especially during summer sessions, so I finally have a chance to study. I’m wading my way through the chapter on research methods for my psych class, when I hear Coach’s telltale key chain jingling down the hall. I straighten up, take a sip of coffee, try to look more alert than I am.

As he walks up to the desk, he says, “Bright and early Monday morning, yes?”

“Yes,” I agree, “see you Monday.”

“Tell your father hello for me,” he adds.

“Will do, thanks, Coach. Have a good weekend.”

I’ve almost earned my way back into my coach’s good graces. He got me this work-study position for the summer, I think, mostly to keep tabs on me. He’s tried hard to make sure there’s been no time for study, no time for anything, except working my ass off to prove myself. Which has meant basically being errand boy for the whole department. Someone needs lunch, I go get it. A visiting bigwig donor or VIP needs to be picked up at the airport, I’m their chauffeur. Gym equipment needs cleaning, I’m the janitor. Struggling athlete requires tutor—that’s me too. He did at least let me take the weekend to go home; I told him it was a family thing, and I was thankful he didn’t press me for details.

I guess I deserve the punishment, considering what I did.

But every morning when my alarm goes off at the crack of dawn for practice, I have this tug-of-war in my head. Between the part of me that knows I’m lucky to have this chance and wants to follow through on my commitment. Because I made a commitment to take the scholarship and play on this team. Plus, I know it makes my dad happy. Then there’s the other part of me that just wants to sleep in every once in a while, wants to be a regular student, here to get an education instead of play a game I rarely enjoy.

Most of the guys on the team only take three classes during the semester because there just aren’t enough hours in the day for any more than that, but I’ve forced myself to take four this last year, against my adviser’s recommendation. This summer, I’m trying to get at least two more classes under my belt; otherwise, I’ll end up in college for an extra year at this rate, and I do not want to be playing any longer than I have to.

It’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting into, all the stupid sacrifice and pressure. But to be so burned out after two years and still not be even halfway through makes me want to leave it all behind some days. Basketball, school even. But this morning before class, my psych professor asked me something I hadn’t considered before and haven’t stopped thinking about since; she wanted to know if I’d be declaring a minor this fall.

“A minor?” I repeated—I’ve barely declared a major as it is. Sports medicine was something Bella talked me into freshman year, and it seemed logical at the time. She was pre-med—still is, I’m sure—and she made a very convincing case.

“A minor in psychology,” Dr. Gupta clarified when she saw I wasn’t computing what she meant. “You have all the prerequisites already.” I’ve taken two classes with Dr. Gupta, and another psych class last semester to fulfill a social science requirement. I had my AP Psychology credits from high school, so I didn’t need to take any extra intro-level courses to start taking psych classes—it made sense. After all, I’m interested in the subject, but it wasn’t part of some larger plan. Just sort of happened. So, I didn’t know how to answer her.© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

“Think about it,” she told me. “Let me know if you have questions.”

But now that I’m sitting here, really thinking about it all, Bella’s argument was mainly that I played a sport and she was studying medicine, so we would be able to take some classes together.

I take my phone out—she texted me at the beginning of the week. The first time I’ve heard from her since we broke up in December. She wrote:

Are you on campus for the summer?

Want to get a drink sometime, catch up?

I’ve been putting off responding because I’d feel bad if I said no, but if I said yes, I can foresee what would happen. She’d take me back even though I hurt her, and I’d let myself go along with it because we made sense on paper. And that rational part of me, the one that keeps my commitments even when I don’t want to, does sometimes wonder if I threw away a good thing with her. It wonders what would’ve happened if I hadn’t answered Eden’s call that night. I’m 99 percent sure Bella and I would still be together and I wouldn’t have found out about what happened to Eden and I’d be blissfully ignorant about my dad’s relapse and I never would’ve screwed up basketball last winter, and these last seven months would’ve been smooth sailing, everything going as planned.

But even as I reread her text now, I’m reminded of the things off paper that didn’t work.

She asked if I wanted to get a drink because she doesn’t even know I don’t like to drink. Because I’d never told her. And I never told her because then she’d ask why and I’d also have to tell her about my dad and how the handful of times I’ve been drinking in my life, I’ve drunk way too much and ended up massively regretting it and being terrified that I’m more like my dad in that way than I want to admit. Because even though we lived together and we got along and I genuinely liked her—loved her, I thought—there still were things I could never say to her. Not like Eden.

I leave Bella’s text sitting there and switch over to Eden’s text from this morning, the one that made me literally laugh out loud in the locker room.

At work rn, perfecting the art of latte foam

design

She sent a picture of a wide-rimmed mug with the Bean logo from back home—she’d mentioned a couple of weeks ago she got a job there.

I know, I know. a lot of baristas go for the

obvious heart or rosette, but my signature

shape is . . . the blob.

It’s very blobby (sp?). Starbucks has

nothin on the Bean

thank you.

i’ll make you my special vanilla blob latte

next time you’re here

I keep debating whether I should tell her I’ll be home this weekend. We never did see each other again over spring break. She called, left me a voice mail, which I listened to way too many times over the last few months. She told me she wanted to see me. I gave her excuses—lost phone, broke phone, got sick, had to get a new phone, got busy, had to leave early—none of which were lies, exactly, even if I felt like they were.

She’s been texting pretty regularly, but it’s all light and airy surface stuff like our communication is suddenly quantity over quality. It’s never been this way with her before. I feel like something has changed but I don’t know what or why, and I’m too scared to ask her about it. Thankfully, she doesn’t talk about Steve, at least. I don’t think I could handle that yet . . . or ever.

I leave for home the next morning, stop for gas at the gas station I always stop at, twenty miles into the five-hour drive. I look up at the number on the pump. Two. The exact one I used the last time I was driving home, back in December.

It was snowing that afternoon when she called the first time and hung up. I was on my way to practice. She called and hung up four times in a row. I deleted her number from my phone years ago, but I could tell it was her from one breath.

I tried to put it out of my mind as best as I could, but then later that night, we were sitting at our kitchen table, books all spread out, studying for finals, when her next call interrupted us. I answered, but she hung up again, three times.

“What the hell?” Bella said, telling me on the fourth call, “Just ignore it.”

But I couldn’t. “Eden, is this you?” I answered.

And then she hung up on me again.

“Eden, as in your ex-girlfriend Eden?” Bella asked, setting her highlighter down in the binding of her textbook. “What does she want?”

I shook my head and stood from the table. I called her back. I was getting so mad while I waited for her to answer and I didn’t even really know why—because Bella was getting upset or because I was starting to care whether I heard her voice or not.

She answered but still wouldn’t say anything, and Bella was right there listening, so I told her not to call back. But then I was immediately relieved when she called a second later anyway.

“Is she stalking you or something?” Bella hissed, sounding meaner than I’d ever heard her before. “Do not answer that, Josh— she’s messing with you.”

But I did. And when she finally spoke, her voice nearly crushed me. She didn’t sound right at all. She kept saying “I cared.” I didn’t know what she meant, but then she repeated it. “I cared about you. I always cared about you.”

She’d never said that to me before, and hearing it now, this way, it scared me.

“Did you know?” she asked. “Did you know I cared?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I told her the truth. “Sometimes.”

She went off about all these random things she’d lied to me about and what a horrible person she was and how much she hated herself and how I should hate her too. She was being so cryptic and erratic and I was really hoping it was just that she’d been drinking or something, but when I asked her that, she laughed and said no, and I could tell she was starting to cry.

Something was wrong. I didn’t know what, but I knew she wasn’t messing around. I tried to keep her on the phone, but I could feel her getting farther and farther away with every word I said to her. I asked her what she needed, how I could help.

“You can’t,” she cried.

I started getting more than scared because she was winding down, or maybe winding up; either way, I was losing her, quickly. She was saying things like “I’m sorry” and “I shouldn’t have called,” and I tried to tell her it was okay but it was like she couldn’t even hear me anymore.

“I just miss you so much sometimes, and I wanted you to know that I cared. I really did,” she said so quietly I had to cover my other ear just so I could hear her. “And there wasn’t anyone else. Ever. I hope you’ll believe me.”

“Wait, Eden,” I yelled, because I knew—she was done. “Don’t hang up,” I said, even though it was too late.

Bella was watching me as I paced our tiny apartment, frantically trying to call Eden back, leaving message after message. We’d been together for over a year—I was planning on taking her home with me over winter break to meet my parents—but she’d never seen me like this.

“Calm down,” she kept saying. “You’re really overreacting right now.”

But I couldn’t calm down. And I wasn’t overreacting.

“You don’t still love her,” she said at first, suppressing a laugh. She didn’t say it like a question, though; she was telling me. Of course, you’re not still in love with a girl in high school who was never really your girlfriend in the first place. I was trying to tell myself that same thing. I could go months without having her even cross my mind. I was over her. But if that were really true, then how was it that she could call out of the blue after years, and I just crumble at the sound of her voice?

“You’re not,” she repeated when I didn’t answer. “Josh?”

“What, God?” I snapped at her, another thing she’d never seen me do before.

“Hey, don’t yell at me,” she said, standing from the table. She walked over and stood directly in the path of my pacing, studying me. “Why are you freaking out over this?”

“Bella, just give me some space. You don’t understand. Something is seriously wrong, okay?”

“Well, help me understand, then.” So practical, she waited, standing there in front of me, like I could explain Eden to her. Like this was one of our Advanced Calculus problems we could figure out if we just put our minds together. But I could never explain Eden to anyone, not even myself.

“Okay,” Bella said, crossing her arms as I stood there, silent. “I can’t believe I have to ask you this, but is there something going on with you and her?”

“Bella, come on” was the best defense I could muster. Because of course there was something going on with us, there always had been. We never ended. We barely began.

“It’s not a trick question, Josh, just tell me the truth,” she demanded.

The truth was too complicated, though, to be able to tell Bella, who, I was just realizing at that moment, didn’t understand that I was complicated too.

But the truth about us was also simple. Eden was angry and I was sad, and we shouldn’t have worked but we did. We worked like we weren’t too damaged to work. Maybe only sometimes, when other things weren’t getting in the way. Like all that sadness, all that anger. And other people and bad timing and petty teenager shit. Of course, there were also her lies. The secrets I always knew she was keeping from me.

But in spite of all that, I called her back anyway. I left my girlfriend in our new apartment in the middle of the night—in the middle of a fight—anyway. I remember thinking, even at the moment, I shouldn’t be willing to throw everything away for her. I shouldn’t be able to not listen when my girlfriend cries actual tears, pleading with me to stay. To feel her pulling my arm and to keep going anyway. To hear her, and believe her, when she gives me the first and last ultimatum of our relationship: “Don’t you dare go to her, not if you want to come back here.” And to not even be able to say I’m sorry and mean it. To close the door on her and get in my car anyway.

All because she called me. All because I was scared. Scared because it had suddenly occurred to me that maybe I was now the one who was angry and she’d turned sad—too sad, maybe.

I left her a voice mail while I stood here at the gas station, in this spot, freezing, in the middle of the night. I told her I was coming and then I prayed to all the gods in all the universes that by the time the tank was full, she’d have called me back and told me to turn around. I wanted her to be lying. I wanted her to call me back and tell me she was fine. She didn’t need me. She didn’t care. She never did.

I wanted to believe that her phone call was not her saying goodbye—in a permanent way. Because, of the many things I was not sure about when it came to her, I was sure about that. She was capable of it. I don’t know why I knew that, but I just did. And even though I’d gone without her for so long, I didn’t know if I could go on without her in the world.

“Please, Eden,” I whispered, the words coming out in a white cloud of cold. “Just fucking call.”

The gas lever pops, and I’m suddenly thrust back into the daylight, into the heat, the sun beating down on my neck and shoulders. I look down at my arms, goose bumps rising on my flesh, a shiver running down my spine.

I transfer the pump back into the cradle and watch as the numbers on the screen flash and reset to zero. I take a breath and try to shake off the cold I didn’t realize was still lingering in my bones from that night.

I get in the car and pull out my phone to text Bella back:

I don’t think meeting up would be a good

idea for me. But I hope you’re doing well,

Bella. I’m sorry.