Free After Forever by Jasinda Wilder Page A

wasn’t mortified that she’d heard my confession. As if she hadn’t learned that, with Ever in a coma, I was still somehow able to go on having physical needs as if she were fine, as if my life hadn’t ended with hers. I shouldn’t want anything but for her to wake up. I shouldn’t be so selfish as to want her to wake up so she could satisfy my desires.
    Eden wouldn’t quite look at me. “I can go, if you’re—if you need more time.”
    “No, I was done. I was gonna go.”
    She held up a vase of daisies. “I’ve already been today. I just wanted to drop these off. She likes daisies. She always says they’re—”
    “Happy flowers,” I finished.  
    “Yeah. Happy flowers.” Eden set the vase on the windowsill, where the flowers could get the most sunlight.  
    Neither of us moved to leave, and neither of us spoke or looked at each other. Tense, thick silence hovered between us, freighted with the things we knew about each other that we shouldn’t.  
    “I’ll see you—”
    “Do you want to grab some dinner?” Eden spoke at the same time as me. I gestured for her continue. She swept her fingers through her hair, flipping it back over her shoulder. “I was just thinking, you know, we’re—there’s no reason we can’t talk, right? Hang out? We’re…in some ways, we’re all each other has.”
    I hated the reminder. “Yeah. That’s true.” I hated how part of me jumped at the opportunity to be around her. It wasn’t her, really. It was anyone. I spent far too much time alone, and Eden and I were bound together, like she’d said. “Sure. That sounds good.”
    We ended up at a little Italian place in Birmingham, sharing a loaf of bread and sipping red wine while we waited for our orders to come up. Conversation was easy as long as we stayed to light, neutral topics. We both liked the same kind of movies, and generally kept the talk to actors and actresses, favorite scenes, quoting lines from movies we’d seen a thousand times. There was always a layer of awkwardness, a constant thread of tension, the feeling that somehow this wasn’t quite acceptable in some subtle way. It was just dinner and conversation, though. Nothing else.  
    Dinner that night turned into dinner at that little Italian place twice a week, Sundays and Wednesdays, after we visited Ever. We ate, we had a couple glasses of wine, and we talked. We never lingered after the meal was finished. It was company, companionship. The chance to interact with someone who knew what the other was going through. We shared an unspoken commiseration, a missing of Ever Eileen Eliot Monroe. We knew, we felt it, but we never acknowledged it out loud. We never discussed meeting twice a week for dinner; it just happened, all by itself.  
    And then one Tuesday, Eden asked me if I’d drive to the restaurant. She didn’t feel up to it, she said. She seemed…out of it. Lost in her head. I drove, and as soon we sat down at our usual table in the corner by the window, Eden ordered not a glass of merlot, but a bottle. That was unusual. One, maybe two glasses apiece, that was it, always.
    I glanced at her. “Are you okay?”
    She shrugged, ripped a piece of bread off and dipped it in the oil, all without meeting my eyes. “Yeah. Fine.”
    “That’s convincing.”  
    She waited until the server poured the wine and left to respond. “Sorry. Just…I had a bad day. No big.” Except her eyes, downcast, conveyed otherwise.
    “How about the truth, Eden? I’m your friend. You don’t have to act fine with me, of all people. I’m the least okay person on the planet, probably.”
    She laughed, a sniffling giggle. “Quite a pair, aren’t we?” She took a long sip of the wine. “You want the truth? I got dumped.”
    That stung in a way I didn’t dare examine. “That sucks. What happened?” I hadn’t known she was seeing anyone.
    “The usual.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Guy seemed nice. Guy seemed cute. Guy seemed nice and cute until he