Finding Eden

06

He showed me a little more of his life a week later.

The snow was only a light sprinkling when Cade and I walked along Fort Greene park. It reminded me of the confectioner's sugar dusted on the donuts back at the café we visited along the way.

Cade had a raspberry cranberry lime sorbet ("I like to enjoy summer during winter.") and I had a less insane idea of a cappuccino. He didn't have his money so I paid the bill ("It's sort of your rent for staying at mine.") and I caught him eyeing the red velvet cupcakes more than once. There was now a box of four sitting at the bottom of my bag.

"Mm my dad used to take me here. I haven't really been here in a while. Especially not during winter," he said between licks.

I warmed my hands with my drink.

"My parents used to take me here too. Summer picnics and such," I replied.

The ice cream shop had always been a longstanding tradition not only between my parents and me but with my grandparents as well. It seemed suiting that I stringed Cade along.

"So when did you start to dance?" he asked. "I saw some material in your bag the other night," he added when I didn't answer right away.

"Around four. When did you begin playing the guitar?"

"Around four."

"Really? I can't grasp the concept of a four year old with a guitar."

"No, I started on the piano first and branched out," he said, the corner of his eyes crinkled.

I smiled at the image of a younger Cade dwarfed by the piano. There seemed to be a lull in the conversation and when I looked up at him, he had averted his gaze, a knowing quirk on his lips.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said.

In the few days, or weeks, I've come to be familiar with him, I found very quickly that he was only ever honest with other people, never focusing on himself. Aware my silence, he parked his bike near a bench and threw his napkin away and took out his phone.

"Hi, are we allowed to bring guests?" he asked, getting right to the point. He made some small talk and joked around before he hung up and turned his attention to me. "It's your lucky day. You get to come to the studio with me."

"What if I told you I had practice," I frowned.

It was a bit unplanned for him to just take me wherever he wanted me to go. While his whimsical and witty sense of humour was appealing, it didn't suit him when it became a manner of socialising; he was neither eccentric nor quirky but rather too intelligent and too mature for his eighteen year old frame. It became glaringly apparent whenever he was in the lone company of his own skin and whenever he took out his battered pack of cigarettes.

It was funny. He seemed to have a ritual for it, tapping a stick three times on the inside of his left wrist before lighting it with a trembling hand. I only withheld from asking him when I realised that maybe it was a reliance.

"Please?"

I dusted off the passenger seat of his bike before I got on.

***

Everyone held a sort of unobtrusive attitude as they watched Cade flicker around the room, his natural aptitude widely evident as he adjusted and tuned every instrument he touched. Yet he was the one that captured all our attentions and remained completely oblivious. He passed around five or so mediums before he settled down.

And I watched. I watched when he tuned his guitar midway through his song - never pausing to stop - and I watched when he layered his melodies with the pedal by his foot. I watched when sometimes, he would shut his eyes or furrow his brows like something troubled him and then he would look at me and in the briefest moment, I would feel a stirring in my chest. This time around, I didn't mind the feeling.

Then he sang along with the melodies coming from his hands and god I could have been transported to a cathedral, a choir in front of me. His voice didn't hold the range but it held the purity when he wanted and when he chose to sound rough, his voice scraped across the edges of my eardrum. He also developed a slightly different accent when he sang certain words and I wondered if any of his past friends got to memorize the way he said things just to tease him.

The studio owner was a close friend of Cade's sister which he admitted to have fully taken advantage of when he was fifteen and starting in his second band.

Afterwards, he took me by the wrist and introduced me to the synth. HIs eyes lit up when I sat down in front of the keyboard and played a short movement from a Chopin nocturne.

"Didn't know you had it in you," he said.

"I'm not a show-off like you," I said and played a scale as he tried to sync his strumming to mine, frustration appearing on his face as I changed keys every few seconds.

"I'll grant you that."

"You have a nice voice," I said.

He laughed. "Thanks."

It was enchanting, the way he was proficient at what he enjoyed and enchanting, the way he seemed when he was at his natural space. I didn't know much about music and I didn't know much about Cade but I knew a bit more about passion. While what I was good at was also what I ate and breathed, he brought his art form alive, in forms of dancing patterns and alternating rhythms.

"Why did you do this - bring me here?"

"I think we're friends, Eden."

Friends. Never have I considered this until now and a smile bloomed across my face, a genuine smile that made my insides crinkle. It was strange since we came across each other in the strangest of ways and managed to stick. So I laughed, for the first time in ages. It felt bizarre to be laughing and I quickly became conscious of it. When my sudden joy resided, an overwhelming feel of emptiness filled me.

"Yeah I think so too," I finally said.

"Copacetic."

"Copacetic," I repeated after him, the intonation foreign on my slow-learning tongue.

"Do you maybe want to come to one of my classes?" I asked him.

"In exchange for today, I presume? You don't have to Eden it probably isn't the same," he replied, a bit surprised.

In my whole life, I've never interacted with someone other than my parents who would use my name so frequently and sincerely. Granted, I've never interacted with someone like Cade before because I was homeschooled at twelve when I decided to pursue dancing as a profession.

Before I could open my mouth he accepted and requested I open my bag to take out the cupcakes.

("It is rude for a gentleman to ruffle through a lady's bag.")