E D E N

When we were seventeen, Katie had a crush on a boy in Art class. He sat in the back row, always with his headphones in. He never spoke in class, or tried to speak to anyone at all. Sometimes, during lunch, we'd see him sitting alone in the back of the cafeteria. He was always reading a book.

"He's mysterious," Katie would say. She wanted to know what his voice sounded like, what the book he read was about.

I think it was because he seemed to lurk in the shadows. Even his footsteps were a secret when he left the building after second period and never returned. That's why Katie wanted him. She always wanted what she couldn't have.

One day, during last period, I got paired up with him for an art project. Katie glared at me until I asked her if she wanted to switch partners. She said yes, standing with her arms crossed and waiting for me to vacate the seat. For the entire class, I could hear her talking to him. What surprised me most was that, when I glanced behind me quickly, he was smiling at her. Talking, even.

We walked home that day in the rain and lay down on our backs on the fluffy carpet in her bedroom. Truman wasn't home that afternoon. I remember because I always looked for him when we entered. It was a bad habit.

In Katie's room, with the door closed, I asked her about the boy in Art class. She shrugged and flipped through her magazine.

"He's boring," she said.

"You liked him yesterday," I pointed out.

"Yesterday I didn't know what his name was," she said, flipping over to lay on her back. "He asked me if I wanted to hang out this weekend."

"What did you say?"

"I told him I'm busy."

I remember sitting there with my legs crossed, completely confused.

"But I thought you liked him," I said slowly. Sometimes Katie gave me this look that made me shrink into myself. When I said that, her eyes narrowed.

"I liked him when I thought I couldn't have him." She threw the magazine onto her bed and stood up. "Now I know he likes me, so I don't want him anymore." Then she walked out of the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

That happened two years ago, and I still think about it much more than I should. All the days I spent staring at Truman while he lay on his couch, or the summers I hid behind the curtains to watch him in the backyard with his friends; I asked myself if the reason I liked him so much was because he was a stranger. That, like the boy from Art class, if I got to really know Truman, I'd grow bored of him too.

Did I only like him because he was off limits? Did I only want him because I couldn't have him? Then I thought back to the Garden of Eden, and Eve wanting to eat the apple because she knew it was strictly forbidden. There was meaning in a name, and mine kept pointing to dangerous temptation.

I had spent years watching Truman, admiring from afar, part of me afraid to get closer. Both because of the promise I made Katie, and this looming fear that if I got too close, I wouldn't like what I'd see. I thought it'd be easier to love him as the boy with messy black hair, who leaned against doorways with a crooked smile and yelled at his little sister to stay out of his room.

Now, he wasn't that simple anymore.

Now, he was Truman: the boy who woke up smiling before the sun had risen; he was the boy that rented out a warehouse to build his sister her dream bedroom while she lay in a hospital bed; he was the boy that always stood a too far away until the day I invited him to come closer; he was the boy that placed my hand over his heart when we kissed so I could feel how quickly it beat for me.

It was easy to convince myself Truman was just Katie's older brother when he was a stranger. Now that I knew him, I loved him. I wasn't sure for how long, if it happened over two years or two nights, but I knew that I did. And that promise I made Katie seemed irrelevant now, because there were no words strong enough to stop me from falling in love with Truman Falls. No amount of pinky promises in the world could stop the inevitable.

That's what was playing through my mind when I rolled down the window to his car and let the fall air blow inside. I wound my scarf around my neck, breathing in the crisp, cool scent. I could feel Truman watching me as he drove us back into the city.

I felt his smile before I turned my head and saw it. "What?" he asked.

It was morning, and the sun spilled in through the windshield. It made his hair look lighter, falling unevenly across his eyebrow.

I stared at him for another second, then blinked. "I'm falling in love with you, too," I said when my eyes opened.

It was a good thing we were at a red light, or I think he may have swerved the car off the road.

Truman grabbed my hand, and his mouth opened up into that heart wrenching smile. It was like the sun peeking through the clouds after a rainstorm. I could feel his hands bursting through my chest, pulling out my heart and holding it in his open palm. It was his now, I told myself. It belonged there, in his hands still stained with light blue paint.

"Yeah?" He said it in that cocky way of his, the one that made it impossible to know this magnificent heart was his greatest asset.

"Yeah," I answered.

"Good," he said.

Then the light turned green.

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