Finding Eden

new year's

Hey guys! Since it's been exactly a year since I posted the first part, I'd thought I'd show you guys something in Cade's POV, a short story I wrote a few years before I wrote Finding Eden. Enjoy!

***

THE YEAR BEFORE

One foot under.

I wake up with twelve inches of snow over my winter coat—at least it felt that way—on the lawn chair of my friend's house. It's the day after New Year's Eve, also known as January 1st. There are beer bottles strewn across the backyard patio and I shake the snow off of me and head indoors.

Everyone's passed out on couches and I feel way better about not drinking last night. It takes me a while to locate my car keys and I take a swig out of the orange juice from the fridge before I re-lace my shoes and head back home.

"Cade?"

It's Chloe. She's gray today. Not in the color way but in the temperament way.

I remember I kissed her during the countdown.

"Hey," I say.

She's in my friend's pajamas, an oversized cableknit and striped yoga pants.

I remember they're sleeping together.

"Fuck," I say.

Two feet under. A wave hits against my thigh, turning me cold. Guilt claws its way up the chambers of my veins and rears its hideous head in the cavern of my heart. Metaphorically speaking, it's a lot prettier than it sounds, especially when I force down a swallow. I climb the steps up, by two, Chloe trailing after me, and turn to the right, where Trent would be sleeping.

"Cade. We broke up," she says, always knowing exactly what to do.

"Oh."

It works, it stops me in my place, dumbly looking confrontational at the bleak morning hour of 2013—no, 2014 now.

"Can I bum a drive back?"

"Aren't you going to get dressed first?" I ask.

"Can't find my dress," she replies.

"I see. I'm going to warm up the car first, alright?"

It buys me time. I wonder if she still wants to kiss me, the way I still want to kiss her. It takes five minutes of me shivering in the car seat, before she tumbles out of the house, a shawl around her shoulders. She's starting to look grayer but I keep my head facing forward when she climbs in.

"Could you, uh, put on some music?"

I ease out of the driveway and comply to her request. Pulaski At Night fills the speakers and she smiles a little.

"I'd like to go one day," she says. She's got a tube of lipstick in her hand and I can't help but stare. It looks like a bullet.

"Where else would you like to go?" I turn on my blinker and get out of this neighborhood.

Trent's the only friend I have that lives in the suburbs. He regularly asks me to swing by and we ride on his golf cart and aim golf balls into the lake.

"Venice. Before it sinks under," Chloe replies.

Three feet under.

Sharks are swimming by my heels now, as I feel myself digging into the sand. I want to tell her that she'd be long dead before Venice becomes Atlantis but someone cuts me off and I honk at them—for ten seconds.