Eden by Joanna Nadin Page B

day— the first day. I thought it was her. I really thought…”
    “Sorry to disappoint,” I say.
    “Oh, but you didn’t,” he insists. “You don’t.”
    “I miss her,” I say.
    “I miss her, too. But—”
    “But what?”
    “We…” But he trails off. And then we are wrapped in silence, waiting for the next step, the inevitable step.
    And I could take it. I could wrap my fingers in his hair, pull his face down towards mine. I could close my eyes, wait for his breath, warm on my wet skin, his lips on mine.
    But in the distance the four o’clock ferry sounds its low lament across the bay, and the silence is shattered, the moment gone.
    “I have to get back,” I blurt.
    And without waiting for an answer, without waiting to see if he follows me, I swim hard and fast back to the boathouse. I haul myself up on the deck, then, still dripping, my shorts and shoes in my hands, I run away.
    Away from the possibility.
    Away from the what ifs.
    What if we kissed?
    What if he loved me?
    What if I loved him?
    I run barefoot, stones digging into my soles, their sharp edges tearing into my skin. I run as if my life, my soul depended on it. Maybe it does. He is – he was – Bea’s. That’s a lifetime of Hail Marys or an eternity in hell, surely. I run without looking back, and without looking where I’m going.
    And I run, of course I run, straight into Tom.
    I panic, scrabbling for the shoes that I’ve dropped on the ground, as I scrabble for something to say.
    “Hot, huh?” I manage, the words sounding like the panting of a dog.
    Nothing.
    “I— I went swimming.”
    “No shit.”
    I play a last desperate card. “We could go some time. Together. Maybe.”
    But it’s not enough. He laughs, a short, mirthless sound. “Who is he?” he demands.
    “Who’s who?” I try, as I go through the moments in my head. Replaying them, trying to work out what he’s seen. How much he’s seen.
    “Oh come on, Evie. Don’t treat me like that. I saw you. You and him.”
    I feel my fear – of being found out, of Penn having to leave, of losing this— this whatever it is – turn to bitterness and anger. “It’s none of your business. Not any more.”
    “What are you saying? That we’re not friends any more? That it would have been my business, if what— if…”
    “Say it,” I say. “If you hadn’t kissed her. Just admit it. Jesus.”
    “Yes, I kissed her. Because I was drunk and confused and I couldn’t have what I really wanted. All right? Happy now?”
    “No,” I snap. “No, I’m not happy. It was the next day, Tom. Like, hours later.”
    “I know,” he blurts. Then quieter, “I know,” he repeats.
    “We both made a mistake, OK? It was … it was never meant to be. For any of us.”
    “You mean that?”
    Do I? Ten days ago, a week, it would have been a lie, a big fat lie. But now. I think of Penn, of what he is, and what he might be.
    “Yes. We were friends. That’s all.”
    “We can still be.”
    I look up at him from under a curtain of dripping hair. “If you were my friend, then you’d leave me be.”
    He shakes his head. “Fuck’s sake, Evie.”
    The word digs into me, biting. Not because I haven’t heard it before – Bea and I practised it, rolled it in our mouths, the delicious forbiddenness of it – but because I have never heard Tom say it. Not once. Not when his gutting knife slipped and he sliced into the top of his finger, his blood coagulating on the scales of a dead bass, mixing with its own. Not when I told him about the divorce. Not when he saw Bea with John Penrice the day after she’d kissed him.
    I’ve gone too far, and I need to pull it back in, before it – this row – becomes a thing I cannot control at all.
    “Have you told Julia?” I ask.
    “No.”
    “Don’t,” I say. “Please. It’s— he’s a friend of Bea’s. From uni. His name’s Penn. Will Pennington. We’re just— We talk. About her, OK?”
    He pauses, and I wonder if he believes me. If he knows