After Forever Read online

  going home; cello in the dark

  I stood up, with Nick's help, balanced, twisted in place, and sat down on my couch. Nick Eliot pushed the chair to one side and then stood in the center of the room, looking around.

  "So...you need anything else?" He seemed at once uncomfortable with and interested in where Ever and I lived.

  I'd been discharged, finally, and I'd asked Ever's father to bring me here. I had my papers for the outpatient therapy, and plans with both Eden and Nick to get me there. It would be every other day, initially, and then less frequently as I progressed, hopefully. I'd start therapy on my arm as soon as my stitches came out in a few weeks, but my leg would wait till it was out of the cast, which would be quite a while.

  I shook my head. "Nah. I'm good." I then remembered that I wouldn't be able to get up on my own, at least not easily, and forced my pride to take a back seat. "Well, maybe the remote, and my sketching stuff from my hospital bag? The remote is on top of the TV."

  Nick got me the things I'd asked for, and then stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather coat. "That's it, then? Sure you don't need anything else?"

  I shook my head, because pride was too strong. "Thanks. I've got it." I met his eyes. "And...thanks a lot. I appreciate the help."

  "No problem. So Eden's coming on Thursday to take you for the therapy thing, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay. So. Yeah. Well, I'll see you on Saturday, then."

  "'Bye." And then I was alone. I sat on the couch, arm bandaged and held in a sling against my chest, my leg immobilized in a cast.

  I looked around. I hadn't been back here since the day of the accident, and it was strange. It felt...big, and empty. Silent. No music played; there was no Ever to fill the space. Her things were everywhere. A few of her paintings, framed and hung on the walls. Her favorite red cardigan, hanging on the back of a dining room chair. Her UGGs, flopped over by the door. Clogs beside those, and a pair of fancy shoes, not high heels, but with a kind of wedge. She wore those shoes when we went out for dinner somewhere nicer, usually.

  I realized I'd asked Nick to bring me my sketchpad. It was sitting on the couch next to me, on my right side. I reached for it, fumbled it in my left hand. Dropped it, and finally managed to get it open on my lap. Even flipping the pages to a blank page was tricky with only one hand, but I kept on stubbornly. Getting my pencil case open didn't go so well. I scattered pencils everywhere, but finally got one out.

  It turns out trying to even write my name with my left hand was nearly impossible. I was a child all over again, scrawling in sloppy, uneven letters. Trying to draw would be out of the question, clearly. I'd try, though. It might be months before my right hand and arm were back to where I could use them for art.

  I spent the next several hours working on simply writing with my left hand, teaching the muscles to do what I wanted. All the while, my right hand seemed to be aching in jealousy. It twitched, throbbed, seemingly trying to take over, whispering, I can do that, but yet it couldn't. I wrote my name over and over again, and when I got sick of the sight of my own name, I wrote Ever's.

  Ever Monroe. Ever Monroe. Ever Monroe.

  A thousand times, until my hand ached and I couldn't hold the pencil anymore.

  And then I had to pee.

  I had a pair of crutches, which I couldn't really use without my right arm, but maybe I could mange to hobble over to the bathroom with just one of them. I slid along the edge of the couch, leaned as far as I could, and snagged one of the crutches from where they stood against the wall, just out of easy reach. I centered the crutch in front of myself, gripped it in my left hand, and pulled myself up. Or, tried to. I pulled, strained, pushed up with my left leg, and only managed to get halfway up. I hovered there, leg trembling, arm shaking. Shit. Why was this so hard? It shouldn't be so hard to merely stand up, should it? I pushed through it, forced myself up, then leaned on the crutch, panting. I was legitimately out of breath just from standing up.

  I stared across the condo, which now seemed a hundred miles across. The bathroom was, under normal circumstances, only thirty steps away. I slid the crutch forward, leaned on it and took a step, then swung my cast-encased leg forward. And shit, that leg was heavy. By the time I was halfway to the bathroom, I was sweating and exhausted, and about to piss my pants. Which triply sucked, because there was just no way to hurry the process, and I didn't even have the ability to do the pee-pee dance; every muscle I had was being used to drag my sorry carcass across the fucking living room.

  I got there, finally, only to discover the impossibility of getting even drawstring track pants down when the one useful arm you have is also the one you're using to stay balanced. Actually taking a piss felt like doing a Cirque du Soleil act, balancing on one leg--which meant leaning to one side to offset the weight of the cast--plus aiming...it was a wonder I managed it at all without falling on my ass.

  And then I had to get all the way back across the living room. Which took just as long, and tired me out even further. And of course, as soon as I was sitting down, I realized my stomach was rumbling. Being an invalid sucked.

  I thought of Ever then, lying all but dead in a hospital room, alone, unlikely to wake. My plight wasn't so bad, suddenly.

  After a few minutes' rest, I worked myself to my feet and hobbled into the kitchen, only to discover that most of my food was spoiled. The rest of it required more cooking than I had the energy to do. This time, I stayed on my feet--or foot, as it were--and thought things through. I'd order pizza, unlock the door, and have the delivery guy bring it in to me. I placed the order, found the correct amount of cash, unlocked the front door, and then made my way back to the couch. I flipped on the TV, and started in on the DVR'd episodes of Duck Dynasty and The Walking Dead from the previous two weeks. Even that was nearly impossible to do without losing my mind. Ever loved those shows. They were our shows. Now I had to watch them by myself. When the knock on the door came, I called out a loud "Come in!", expecting the delivery guy.

  I was surprised to see Eden come through the door with a box of pizza in one hand and bags of groceries in the other. "I met the delivery guy at the front door," she said, setting everything down on the dining room table. "I was on my way up with some things for you. Figured you might be out of food that was easy to make."

  There was no reason for me to be so dumbfounded whenever she was in the room. But I was, and I didn't understand why. She showed up, and suddenly I was tongue-tied. It was idiotic.

  "Thanks," I forced myself to say. "Here's cash for the pizza. How much was the food?" I'd kept my wallet in my pocket, intelligently enough.

  She waved her hand. "Please. Don't worry about it. It's just some microwave burritos and ramen noodles."

  "Eden, seriously. How much?"

  "I don't want your money," she insisted, not looking at me as she stuffed burritos into my freezer, bags of shredded cheese into the fridge, and packages of ramen into a cupboard. "Just let me have some of your pizza. I'm starved."

  She had her hair braided tight against her scalp, escaping strands plastered to her forehead and cheeks. She wore a pair of white spandex shorts, cross-trainers with ankle socks, and a black Northface fleece. Then she shucked her coat and tossed it on the table. All she had on up top was a sports bra. Purple. Tight. And... not quite up to the task of enclosing everything it was supposed to.

  "Excuse my appearance," she said. "I was on the way home from the gym. Thought of you." She winced as if she'd said something wrong. "Thought of you, in the sense that I thought maybe the shit in your fridge had gone bad, since you've been gone for a couple of weeks, and it might be hard for you to shop, or cook, and--" She was rambling, clearly embarrassed. "Not that I'm just sitting around thinking of you, or anything...shit. This isn't going well. I'm--I'm just gonna gome. Gome? Go home. I'm going to go home. God, I'm such a fucking spazz." She grabbed her coat and scurried toward the front door. I'd noticed she tended to swear more than Ever, who only cursed when reall
y upset, or in bed.

  "Eden, wait. It's fine. You're--you're fine. Please stay. Have some pizza. I'm--I wasn't looking forward to eating alone anyway."

  She hesitated with the door open and her foot on the threshold, staring down the hallway, as if it somehow held her rescue. "I should go."

  I shrugged. Part of me was screaming, telling me to let her go. Let her leave. The other part was begging me to ask her to stay. She was company. A friendly face. Someone to talk to. "I mean, it's up to you," I said. "Just...I wouldn't mind the company."

  She hesitated another moment, and then shut the door. She shut it slowly, letting it click closed with a certain strange finality. She set her coat back on the table. "Plates?"

  I pointed at the sink. "Cupboard over the sink. There's some paper ones in there. No way in hell I'm doing dishes anytime soon."

  She brought the box and a couple of plates and the roll of paper towels, and then went back for two cans of the soda she'd brought me. We ate in silence, both of us clearly hungry. We finished all but two slices of the large pizza, which kind of impressed me. I'd never met a girl who could eat like that. Of course, the only two girls I'd ever really known were Luisa and Ever, and both of them were light eaters. With all the talk Ever had done in her letters about how Eden was so figure conscious and health and fitness obsessed, I hadn't expected her to eat as much as she did, or be willing to be seen in public wearing what she was.

  There was a thought I'd had, a question that I'd never had the courage to ask. Finally, I couldn't take the wondering anymore. "Eden? Did you know Ever was pregnant?"

  She set her can down and wiped her hands on a sheet of paper towel. "No. Did you?"

  I shook my head. "I was wondering if she'd talked to you about it."

  Ever shrugged. "Not to me, no."

  "Do you think she knew?"

  Ever sighed. "I'd like to think no. I mean, if she didn't tell either of us, then I can't imagine she knew. That's not the kind of thing she'd keep secret. Not from me." She gave me an apologetic glance. "She might have kept it from you for a while, if she was scared to tell you, but...she'd tell me. And I'd have known something was up with her. I mean, we're twins. We know things about each other. We can sense when the other is keeping a secret. Sometimes I can tell when she's upset even when I'm not in the same room as her. That's happened a lot. I'll be in class or practicing and I just--I know she needs me."

  "Did you--did you sense anything, when it happened?"

  She shrugged again, but it was a tiny, uncertain gesture, and she kept her head down, her braid hanging over one shoulder. "Yeah. I knew."

  "You knew?" I asked. "You knew what?"

  "That something had happened." Her voice dropped to a murmur. "I felt...it felt like someone had stabbed me in the heart. I'm not kidding. It was physically painful. I swear I'm not making this up. I haven't--I haven't told anyone. I was in bed. I had a test the next morning, and I'd been cramming for it. I'd been up for, like, forty-eight hours. But I wasn't asleep yet. I'd just...just turned off the light. I closed my eyes and started to drift. And then I felt this...terror. Dread. Like...you know that feeling you get when something bad is happening? Like, right then, in that moment, that feeling you get when you know you can't stop it?"

  My throat closed. "All too well."

  Eden paled. "Shit...fuck. Of course you do. God, I'm so sorry, Cade, I didn't mean to--"

  I waved my hand, focusing on not crying. The memory was so powerful, like icy claws in my gut, dragging horror up from the shadowy depths of my soul where nightmares resided. "It's fine," I choked out. "Keep going." I could sense she needed to say it, to tell someone. I didn't want to hear it. Not even remotely.

  She took a deep breath. "I got that feeling. I was safe in bed, I knew I was, but I sat up and looked around, afraid. I mean, I think I honestly expected to see someone standing over me with a gun or something. Like the building was on fire or...I don't know. Something. It felt like I was in danger. It was that strong a feeling. And then I knew. I knew, Cade. I knew something had happened to Ever. I called her phone. I must have called her phone a hundred times. It kept going to voicemail, straight to voicemail."

  Ever's phone had been in her lap, and it had gone flying. Clean-up crew found it twenty feet away from where we'd first impacted, smashed into pieces.

  Just like her.

  "I didn't know your number. I called Dad, but he didn't answer, either. He was at work. He never answers his cell when he's at work. So I just--I went to the hospital. I knew, Cade. I knew." She blinked hard. Trembled. "I knew. I got to Beaumont about five minutes after the EMS truck. They...they wouldn't let me see her. They wouldn't tell me anything. Just that she was there, and so were you. They wouldn't tell me anything. I freaked out. They had to tell me that if I didn't calm down, they'd call security. I was losing it and I knew it, and I couldn't stop. I was screaming, kicking chairs over, demanding to see her, to know what the fucking hell had happened, but they wouldn't tell me! She's my twin, and I didn't even know if she was alive, what had happened." She was shaking all over, pale skin shivering, shoulders heaving. Barely keeping it together, about to crack.

  I reached across my body and touched my palm to her shoulder. I didn't know what to say. I didn't say anything. She flinched from my hand, and then leaned into it. She sucked in a deep breath, sobbed once, then choked, visibly trying to stuff it down, to keep the tears at bay.

  "It's okay, Eden." I whispered it. I wasn't sure whether I meant that things would be okay, to get her to stop crying, or that it was okay if she did cry. I knew the latter was probably what she needed. I just wasn't sure if I had the strength myself to comfort her. "It's--you can cry. I'm here."

  She shook her head, "No, no..." scraping from her throat. But she leaned forward, face in her hands, and swayed toward me, into the chaste touch of my palm on the top of her shoulder.

  I turned toward her, angling my body toward hers. I rubbed her shoulder, my hand touching the warmth of her back, the fabric of her sports bra. She quaked under my hand, and then turned into me, putting her forehead against my chest. I put my hand on her back, in the center, right over her spine, and held her as she cried. I closed my eyes and stared up at the ceiling, but I saw anyway the curvature of her spine as she bent into my awkward, one-armed hug.

  The intimacy was disconcerting, right and wrong at the same time, comforting and terrifying, exhilarating and guilt-inducing.

  She cried for a few minutes, and then the sobs trickled to a stop and she straightened, wiped her eyes with her forearm, sliding away from me, back across the couch, putting several feet between us once more, not looking at me. "Thanks," she murmured.

  "It's hard," I said. "No one could go through this without crying."

  She nodded, then got up and vanished into the bathroom. I heard the water going, and she returned with a damp face and less-puffy eyes. "I should go."

  I nodded. She really should. "Thanks for the food."

  "You have my number?"

  "Yeah."

  "Call if you need anything." She met my eyes. Hers, so green and so like Ever's, were conflicted, as if offering something she wasn't sure she should. "For real. Whatever time it is. Okay?"

  I nodded. "I will. Thanks."

  Awkward silence then, our eyes not quite locking, not quite looking away, aware of the moment we'd shared, the vulnerability witnessed, accepted. Holding someone as they cried bound you to them somehow. And we were already bound together, through Ever.

  She slid her coat on and I stared out the window as she zipped it, facing away from me as she did so. I kept my eyes on the falling snow as she adjusted her shorts, tugging them down with a shimmy of her hips, kept my eyes on the heavy gray clouds thick with snow and darkening with falling night, on the sidewalk going white, on the walls. Anywhere, everywhere, except Ever.

  Except Eden.

  Eden, not Ever.

  Fuck.

  Eden

  I collapsed into bed, on top
of the blankets, letting the cool air dry my naked body. I'd taken a long, hot shower when I got home from Cade's apartment--from Cade and Ever's apartment. It was still her apartment.

  I tugged the blankets onto myself, but then got too hot and kicked them off. Then I had to put on a T-shirt, because for some reason, when I lay there naked, all I could feel was the simple, innocent way Cade had held me. It wasn't an arousing memory. He'd held me while I bawled like a baby--how embarrassing--and that was it. Only, I never cried in front of guys. When I got dumped, I'd get pissed, I'd scream and yell because I had a hell of a temper, but I'd never cry. Not in front of guys. But I had, in front of Cade. He'd made it easy somehow.

  But I couldn't forget the feel of his palm on my shoulder, strong fingers, hard and callused.

  I forced myself to think of anything else. I hummed the section of the Beethoven sonata I was memorizing. Visualized the notes. Each individual stroke of the bow. Each movement of my fingers on the neck. Anything, everything. I thought of nothing at all.

  I tried every trick I knew to get to sleep, but couldn't. I got out of bed and uncased my cello, sat on my chair, the cushion smooth and cold under my ass, my T-shirt slipping off one shoulder. The dark, varnished wood of Apollo's sides was cool against my bare thighs, and I felt the vibrations shiver through me as I drew the bow across his strings, not thinking, not playing anything specific, just playing to get my head straight, to give my confused, aching heart a reprieve. I played in the dark, not needing light to know where his strings were, how he felt, how to pull the music from within him, from within me.

  I played until my wrist and fingers ached. Every note of what I'd played was stuck in my head, and I realized it was the next movement of my solo. I had to turn on the light to find my notes, and I scribbled madly, frantic to get the notation down while it was fresh in my head. When I had it written down, I played it again, and I knew it was brilliant.

  It was deep, dark, slow and soulful and masculine.

  It was the music of Cade's sad amber eyes, the sound of his sorrow.