Finding Eden

10

We were lying side by side. I hated to say it but we were co-dependant. First it was I who needed him and now it was him who couldn't sleep with the idea that I wasn't in the room.

He never did let me in his room. He never told me the story of why he had a half-finished portrait of himself leaning on the wall of his room, covered in a black bed sheet or why he had a stack of worn-down records but no record player. But he did tell me of his one and only tattoo when one night, his back was towards me and I traced the upside down cross on his spine with my fingers through the thin cotton t-shirt he was wearing.

"It's Saint Peter's cross," he explained and took off his shirt so I could see the ink. It contrasted against his pale skin and I could almost see wings sprouting on either side of his shoulder blades.

"Oh," I said softly, "I thought for a second you were into the occult." His eyes crinkled at my remark.

I knew of Saint Peter and how he was crucified. He requested to be upside down since he didn't think he was worthy enough to be martyred the same way Jesus was.

I didn't know what to say because I didn't know why the tattoo was there when he was worthy of everything in my eyes. So I stared at the way the dim moonlight created contours on the muscles of his back and how winter had stripped him of his tan.

"I got it two years ago," he said. Cade eventually put on his shirt and turned towards me. "Your turn." His lips lifted up in the corner.

"My turn? I don't have any tattoos if that's what you're implying."

"Tell me a story, Eden," his voice had grown rough around the edges.

His eyes were blinking hazily, one arm behind his head, when I looked at him. There was a small desire in me to place myself in front of him and stare into his molten amber eyes and watch his pupils dilate in the dark. But he was too beautiful an object for me to subject my fantasies upon. I do so anyways and climb on top of him. He tensed under me and his breathing quickened as he peered up at me from under his lashes.

"Eden..." he began.

I heard none of it and placed a kiss on his lips and another on his jaw and another at the place where his jaw ended and his ear began and another on the side of his neck. My head then found its place by the crook of his neck and both our bodies rose as he sighed. A tear trickled out of my left eye and onto the bare skin of his collar. I rubbed it away before he could notice but he was already in that stage of drowsiness, lightly caressing my hair.

Cade was someone who hid pain very well.

There was never time for me to be in a relationship. Being homeschooled, there was also never a selection for me. My pas de deux partners were only flings and the only boy I ever had feelings for moved to Portugal. Lying here in the dark, with Cade falling asleep under me, I felt a deeper stirring in my chest when my eyes laid upon his dark lashes and the immaculate slope of his nose. Then there was the Europe tour. It would last at least one month. What would Cade think? The beating of my heart settled and sank down to my stomach as my mind pondered the possibility of the future.

He woke me up at 4:00 A.M. when he turned on his side, bringing me along with him. He groaned, lashes fluttering and opaque gaze landing on me.

Everything about him eluded me. There was that kind of loneliness I could find in every line of his body. Not the type where he was alone, the type I tend to find in people much more mature than I. It made me wonder why he grew up so fast because someone this young shouldn't be staying up this late, shouldn't be smoking, shouldn't be this sad. Instead of asking, I closed my mouth.

His jaw flexed.

"I'm terrified of you," he murmured, still half asleep. My body froze solid. "You're a dancer...someone like you is not for me. I see it in the way you move and how nothing can change the look in your eyes other than when you are dancing. I can't compare."

"It doesn't have to be that way," I said.

"Oh, but it is," he whispered.

He wasn't like this during the day. He wasn't like this a few weeks ago.

"It doesn't have to be this way," I repeated.

Now I couldn't describe what happened that very moment he opened his eyes, eyes that had the translucency of stained glass windows, and stared right at me. I knew of heartbreak, I knew of it the day my aunt was the one who attended my recital in place of my parents. I knew of it the day I left footprints on the cemetery snow.

This was despair.

(Heartbreaker: a story or event which causes overwhelming distress)