“I distinctly remember telling you that being with me wouldn’t meant that there wouldn’t always be rainbows and butterflies between us. I warned you.” I reminded her. I was not prepared for her to affect me as she had. I had too many balls in the air already. I tried to stay away from her. “But let’s not act as if the hurt isn’t mutual. I’m two days fresh out of prison and you had a hand in putting me there.”
She shook her head. “I’m just ready for all this to be over with.”
“You’re ready for what to be over with and why? So, you can go back to your husband?” I sneered. The thought of her running from me to him yet again made me want to hurt them both.
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Of course, you fucking don’t. That would be—”
Whatever else I was about to say died in my throat when she stood from the tub. Every part of her decadent body was covered in bruises and old scars that hadn’t been there four years earlier.
An uncomfortable amount of weight fell, then settled in my chest, making my heart beat funny. Anger boiled in my blood. It was obvious her husband beat her brutally and often. I could not believe Ruth had made it sound as if Eden were asking for it or that her husband and her arguments amounted to a slap here or push there. I could make out knuckle prints in her caramel skin. What she had been going through hit me right in the core.
She raised her arms and posed, meeting my eyes head-on.
“Does it look like I want to go back to my husband?” Her words were meant to antagonize me.
“What-what did he do to you?” My throat clogged with emotion and hatred. I would kill that motherfucker.
She laughed and said, “No more than you did.”
My heart sped up. the accusation incensed me. To have her compare me to him. I wasn’t a saint, by no means, but I hadn’t physically abused her.
“I never beat you, Eden.”
She sighed then lazily stretched towards heaven before stepping out of the tub and walking my way with a tired expression on her face. She stopped at my side and looked up at me.
“No. You never beat me. You did everything else. You wrecked me, exactly how you said you would,” she said. Then she walked past me and out of the bathroom, leaving me behind with my thoughts.
Eden: Wild Times
Present
“I wrecked you. Really, Eden?”
It took him only thirty minutes to follow me from the bathroom. I thought I at least had a few hours. I just knew he would go brood in a corner somewhere and leave me the fuck alone after I told him my truth. But it seemed he was determined to drive me crazy. First, he wouldn’t let me take a bath in fucking peace. Now he wouldn’t let me sleep.
“So, it was all me. You did nothing?”
Here we go with this perpetual victim bullshit.
“What did I do to wreck you, Eden? Tell me. Give me an example, one where we weren’t mutually to blame?”
He suddenly wanted to talk. “Fine.”
I sat up in my bed and made sure I kept the sheet wrapped around me since I was nude underneath the covers. I turned in the direction of his voice. He was sitting in the soft armchair next to the window with his head down, looking lost.
“There really are too many to count.” He frowned and the part of me that always wanted to please King reared her ugly fucking head. “But we had good times.” I volunteered, because he really looked like he needed me to. But when I tried to think of any of the good between us that didn’t included fucking, it was hard.
“Those five days we spent locked away in your hotel. You remember those?” I asked
That was the first time we’d actually talked and had fun together without sneaking around. But even then, the beginning and end of those five days had been disastrous.
Eden: Those Five Days.
Past
“It’s final, Eden.” I glared down at Momma with my fists curled at my side. My whole body shook. I wanted to punch something. No, I wanted to punch her. I hated her. She was so fucking infuriating.
I left her sitting on the couch. I slammed into the kitchen. I went straight to the island, picked up the biggest knife from the butcher block. For a minute I just stared at it, thinking about going back into the living room to slit her fucking throat. She was determined to ruin my life, wouldn’t taking hers be fair? But as quick as the thought came it left. I dropped the knife. I ran my hand down my face and took a deep breath to calm myself.
“This can’t be my life.” I groaned while blinking away tears.
Out of my peripheral, I glimpsed someone. Startled, a sharp gasp forced its way from my throat. Turning, I found King staring at me intently. I hadn’t seen him in a week. Not since he’d forced me to go to the movies with him, claiming he wanted to have an actual date. Which ended up being code for us fucking in the theatre.
He was sitting, leaned back into one of the kitchen chairs, watching me. He was wearing an expensive charcoal grey suit and his glasses were back. He looked like a shady businessman. I wondered why he was dressed up. I wanted to ask him where he had been. I had been wondering about that a lot lately. Where did he go when he left for days and weeks at a time?
He spoke up first. “What were you thinking about doing with the knife, Eden?” His index finger circled the rim of his glass as he watched me with a bland expression, waiting for an answer.
He wouldn’t get one. I shook my head in dismissal. I made my way over to the table and picked up the bottle of brown liquor he’d poured himself a drink from. He held my eyes the entire time without saying a word until I raised the bottle to my lips.
King frowned. “What are you doing?” he asked as he reached out and snatched the bottle from my hand before I could swallow a drop.
“I need fucking a drink,” I said but didn’t bother trying to get the bottle back.
His eyes had narrowed to slits.
“Oh, yeah?”
He picked up the cigarette that lay smoldering in an ashtray next to his arm. After placing it between his lips and inhaling deeply, he picked up his glass, exhaled white smoke. It floated around him like a cloud. He took a sip from his cup, set it down. He watched the thin lines of brown liquid run down the sides of the glass, back to the bottom, then he took another drag from the cigarette. I watched him waiting for what came next.
He said nothing. He cocked his head to the side. He studied me, as if he was trying to see through me, see if I was capable of doing what I had been thinking when I’d picked up that knife. When he dropped his eyes, his gaze travelled down the length of me then back to my eyes.
“Come here, Eden.” His tone was syrupy but dark. It turned my nipples to hard pebbles that strained against my shirt.
I glanced towards the door. Momma and James were still home, plus James had a couple of business associates over.
“It’s okay,” he encouraged waving me over with two thick fingers as he snubbed his cigarette out directly on the Wood of Arditi collection dining table. That table was Momma’s pride and joy. The first time she’d caught King’s father cheating on her she’d guilted him into buying it. She was sure to mention that it cost almost twenty thousand dollars. Imagine that. She had spent twenty thousand dollars on a fucking table, but she couldn’t give me five thousand to cover what my scholarships weren’t for school? Supposedly she and James couldn’t afford another expense now.