“Do you know how long it took me to calm Dean down last night? Do you have any idea at all?” Rachael flashes her eyes back to me, her expression irate and her tone sharp. “Because for three hours straight,” she continues, “I had to watch one of my best friends cry. Do you know how shitty that was? Watching him cry because you thought it was okay to cheat on him?”
“I didn’t think it was okay,” I murmur. Looking away from her, I prop my elbows up on the table and bury my head in my hands. I exhale deeply against my palms, squeezing my eyes shut. I’m too ashamed to meet her gaze. I can’t justify my decisions and my actions, but I can at least try to explain the reasons behind them, so that’s exactly what I do. “I was involved with Tyler before I was involved with Dean,” I admit, my voice muffled by my hands. A lump grows in my throat. “All of this started two years ago when I first met all of you. Back then, it just wasn’t possible for things to go any further between Tyler and me, so I gave up on him. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to.” It still feels unusual talking to people about my relationship with Tyler. Being so open about it . . . It feels odd. Keeping all of this a secret has become far too familiar by now. I tilt my head further down, my words still murmured and quiet. “And then I realized I liked Dean too,” I admit. “But there was always something still there with Tyler. I’ve ignored it for a year and half, Rachael. I tried so hard to ignore it, honestly, I did.” Swallowing the lump in my throat, I run my hands through my hair. Slowly, I lift my head and glance sideways at Rachael. She’s listening carefully. “But then I came over here and I . . . I realized that I really do love Tyler. And that I want to be with him. We were going to tell Dean today, but Tiffani beat us to it.”
Rachael doesn’t say anything for a while. She only glances between the window and me, her lips occasionally twitching. “I can’t believe you’re even saying that.”
“Saying what?”
“That you love Tyler.” She quite literally shudders as the words leave her lips. “Like, what the hell, Eden?”
I groan under my breath and reach for my latte again, taking a long sip to buy time as I try to piece together a logical explanation. I can imagine it being hard for someone to comprehend unless they’ve ever been in the same situation under the exact same circumstances. “Let me put it into perspective for you,” I say. Leaning forward and shifting to the edge of my chair, I look at her hard as I place my mug back down. “Imagine your parents are divorced. Then imagine your dad got married to, say . . . Stephen’s mom.”
Rachael tries to suppress the blush that rises to her cheeks, gnawing on her lips as she listens to me. Using Stephen to get through to her is the only thing I can think of. The only thing that’ll make sense to her.
“So that means Stephen would then be your stepbrother. But would you really view him as your brother? No blood relation,” I clarify with great emphasis, and then fold my arms across my chest. “He would literally just be some stranger who you’re forced to consider a sibling. You can’t help it if you fall for him, can you? What if that person is The One, and the only thing stopping you from being together is some fucking marriage certificate between your parents? Because that’s what’s happened to Tyler and me,” I say, “and it sucks, Rachael. It really sucks.” I let out a long breath as I shake my head, saddened by the reality of it all. If my dad and Ella weren’t together, being in love with Tyler would be totally fine. But they are together, so being in love with Tyler is considered unacceptable. Glancing away from Rachael, I fix my eyes on the sidewalk outside again as I slump back against my chair.
“I’ve looked at the two of you as siblings for years,” Rachael says quietly, “so obviously it’s freaking me out. Why didn’t you say anything before? I’m your best friend. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was scared,” I admit with a shrug. I still am scared, just not as much as I used to be. The thought of keeping my relationship with Tyler a secret forever is definitely scarier than the thought of telling our parents. “I felt ashamed of it too. I felt like I was doing something wrong, but I’m over that now. I know it’s okay to feel the way I feel about him.” I glance sideways at her to gauge what she’s thinking, and I’m relieved to find that she no longer looks as angry as she did when she first arrived. She just looks overwhelmed by it all, like there are a hundred questions running through her mind that she’s dying to ask. And she does.
“Do your dad and Ella know? Your mom?”
“We’re telling them when we get home,” I say. I try not to dwell on this thought for too long. I might not be quite as nervous or apprehensive about it anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m still not dreading it. If I overthink it too much, I’ll end up thinking of everything that could go wrong.
“And then what?” Rachael presses, tilting her head. Our voices have risen from low whispers to relatively normal levels. The churning and the steaming and the clicking of the coffee machines are giving us no choice. “You’re gonna get together?”