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Eden rests her chopsticks on her plate, tipping her head to look at me, like she’s trying to read my intentions. Good luck with that. I’ve been a closed book for years. Not that anybody’s tried reading me that hard.
“Okay.” She nods. “I’d like that.”
“Good.”
Because I’m on a roll, and she actually looks comfortable for once, I move to the next topic in my book of easy-going conversations.
“Why is it so important to you?” I ask, my voice low. “The environment, the protests, the petitions. Why put yourself through all of it?”
Eden pauses, her expression shifting. Then she pushes a hand through her hair. It’s messy, sun-streaked, and still damp at the ends from her earlier shower.
“Because the future matters,” she says simply. “Because one day I might have kids. And they’ll have kids. And they all deserve clean air. Clean water. Forests to run in and oceans that aren’t full of plastic. Temperatures that aren’t hotter than hell. They deserve the kind of childhood I got, with grass under their feet and bees in the garden and stars you can actually see at night.”
Her voice doesn’t rise this time. It wraps around me like something warm I didn’t know I needed.
I can’t look away from her lips. Or the way her fingers twist together, as if she’s trying to hold all that passion inside yet failing beautifully.
“And let’s not forget the other inhabitants of this world,” she continues. “Animals haven’t contributed to global warming, but they’re sure as hell paying the price for it.
A sudden memory rushes into my brain. Of me at the age of seven or eight, with my nanny. It was some kid’s birthday at my private school and the party was at the L.A. Zoo.
He had a cake shaped like a tiger. Jesus, it’s weird the things the brain keeps.
Leona, who’d been more like a parent to me than my mother and father, even though she was paid to take care of me, had hated the place. I remember her standing in front of the elephant enclosure, her face tight, her arms folded.
“They don’t belong here,” she’d muttered under her breath. “None of them do.”
At the time, I didn’t get it. I just wanted another slice of cake.
But now, listening to Eden talk about displaced animals and habitats ruined in the name of progress it makes me think Leona would have liked her.
Eden looks at me for a beat too long, her brow furrowing.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m waiting for your witty-yet-sarcastic comeback.”
I lift a brow, pushing the past away. “I’ve decided to give the sarcasm a night off.”
Her eyes narrow slightly, like she’s not buying it, but she lets it go.
“You okay?” she asks, quieter now, like she can sense I can’t quite stop the memories.
“Yeah.” I nod. “I’m absolutely fine.”
It’s a lie, but only a small one. A manageable one.
She watches me for another moment, then says, “Do you ever think about the future? What it will be like?”
I raise a brow. “That’s a loaded question for a guy who can barely think about tomorrow.”
She laughs, soft and surprised, and it warms something in my chest.
“I mean it. Do you ever wonder what kind of world you’re leaving behind?”
I look at her. The flushed cheeks from the heat of the food, the way her curls are frizzing from the island humidity, the earnest set of her mouth.
And for a second, I forget every reason I’m supposed to keep her at a distance.
