I exhale before softly saying, “Talk to your mom, Tyler.”
“Okay.” He lets out a sigh while running a hand through his damp hair, and right then I want to kiss him again.
I want to swing over onto his lap just like I did weeks ago at the pier, I want to crash my lips into his like I did the first time in his room before we left for Meghan’s birthday party, and I want to feel his touch the exact same way I felt it on Saturday.
I want to do all of these things, but I can’t bring myself to.
There’s something in the back of my mind that’s telling me there’s no point. Just because Tyler and Tiffani are clearly not getting back together doesn’t mean that Tyler and I will automatically get into a relationship. We can’t. There’s just no possible way for us to be together, and this hurts me more than anything else. It hurts more than Dad walking out. It hurts more than Alyssa and Holly’s cruel comments.
It isn’t painful.
It’s agonizing.
It’s all I’ve thought about the past few days. I thought about the fact that I’m going home next month. I thought about the fact that our parents would kill us if they ever found out what we’ve been up to. I thought about the fact that this is wrong, and it’s impossible to convince myself otherwise.
I want to be with Tyler. I do. More than anything else. I want to be with him more than I want to get into the University of Chicago. I want to be with him more than I want to be skinny. I’d do anything for it to happen. But it never will, and so there is absolutely no point in wasting our time.
Tyler notices my stare. “What?”
“I would kill to be able to kiss you every day,” I admit quietly. I will myself not to break down. I know putting a stop to us is the best thing to do for us both. It’ll be too hard to keep going. Too complicated. Too wrong.
“You can,” he tells me, and he’s almost whispering as he turns to face me, his eyes studying me delicately, like he’d snap my body in half if he were to narrow them. “Every single day. I wouldn’t mind.”
“Me either,” I murmur. I can feel a dryness in my throat as I build up the courage to just get this over with, to just blurt it all out at once in hope that it’ll hurt less. “But that’s the problem, Tyler. We wouldn’t mind. What about everyone else?”
He takes a moment to process my words and the pained look in my eyes, to understand what I’m trying to tell him. And when he figures it out, I can see the hurt flashing across his face. He has to glance away as he swallows, and when he looks back, his eyebrows are furrowed, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “We can get around everyone else,” he tries, but his voice is weak and he has to pause for a moment while he finds a deeper tone. “We can figure this out. They’ll understand. Maybe not at first, but they will. Seriously. We’ll manage. We’ll…we’ll do it.” He moves his hands as he speaks, as he babbles an endless list of reassurances at me, but none of them are helpful.
“Tyler,” I say, and he stops breathing heavily for a moment while he listens. And it’s then that the tears press at my waterlines, because I know exactly what I’m about to tell him next. I fear that hearing myself say it will only make it feel all the more true. “We can’t be together.”
And it does feel true now. It is the truth.
Tyler grits his teeth to stop his lips from trembling. He shakes his head slowly, his eyes squeezing shut as he exhales through his nose. He just sits there for a while, not really doing anything, just holding himself together as best he can. While he does, the tears roll down my face and I have to quickly dab at my cheeks to wipe them away. Crying always makes things seem worse than they are.
But I think this is the worst this situation could possibly be. So I’m allowed to cry. I’m allowed to stare at Tyler’s quivering lips through blurred eyes and I’m allowed to feel like I’m dying inside. I’m allowed to because I am. My entire body is going numb. My chest is tightening. My heart is contracting.
Tyler finally opens his eyes again. The emerald within them has faded, his pupils are dilated with pain, and he’s inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. He lifts a hand to his hair and pulls on the ends. “You didn’t just say that,” he says, his voice a feeble whisper.
His reaction only makes me cry more. The tears well endlessly in my eyes and fall so quickly that I can’t even keep up when trying to catch them. “We just can’t do this,” I croak. It’s beginning to hurt when I talk.
“Don’t do this. I swear to God. Please, Eden,” he begs suddenly, his voice fast and raspy. It cracks at the end, and he jerks his head toward the window, breathing against the glass. It steams up. “We’ve come this far already. You can’t give up now.”