“Is possible,” she admitted, then flinched as Eddie took a furious step toward her.
“It’s possible? We dated for weeks; then you randomly snuck out of my room for no reason and ignored all my calls and texts without telling me anything! What the hell, Bitter?”
It did sound bad when Eddie laid it out like that, and Bitter didn’t dare look over to see Aloe’s reaction. This wasn’t a version of herself she wanted him to meet. Aloe was deliberately tender, so focused on healing, and it made Bitter want to soften her sharp edges so she wouldn’t cut him like she’d cut other people. He smelled like possibility, and it felt delicate, something to cup your hands around, something to protect from a harsh wind. She ran a hand over her scalp and turned to him.
“Let me talk to Eddie alone,” Bitter said. Aloe blinked in surprise, then nodded, his face settling into its usual ease.
“No problem,” he said. “Come and find me in the garden after?”
“Sure.” Bitter felt a little bad about sending him away, but she wasn’t the same person with Eddie as she was with him. For now, it seemed better to keep it separate. Aloe touched Eddie’s arm on his way out and closed the door behind him.
Bitter took a deep breath and faced Eddie. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For how I treated you, how I just … left.”
Eddie looked surprised by the apology. “Really?”
“Yeh. I just—” Bitter paused and pulled together her courage. “I got scared. So I ran.”
“Scared of what?”
It was much harder to be open with Eddie than with Aloe, but Bitter figured it was good practice. She met Eddie’s eyes and tried to be someone better than she already was. “I was scared of you,” she admitted. “Scared you think less of me because I’m not on the front lines like you. Like, maybe it was cute for us to hook up a few times, but at some point you’d look at me and resent me for not being more like you.”
Eddie frowned. “I’m sorry if I said anything that made you feel that way. Why didn’t you say something?”
“It just seemed easier not to. Like, there was so much shit—you could resent me, you could get hurt, and I just … I doh want to be close to all that shit out there. I’m sorry, I just doh want that to be my life.”
“Right.” Eddie folded her hands, and Bitter could tell she was a little offended but was holding it in. “No one was asking you to be out there with us, you know? That’s not the point.”
Bitter raised an eyebrow. “Really? Because it does feel like if everyone’s not out there like Assata, then they not doing enough.”
“Maybe that’s just your own insecurity showing,” Eddie retorted.
“You just said that to me the other day in the street!”
“I was pissed! For a good reason—you were a fucking asshole.”
“Assata trash-talks Eucalyptus all the time. Doh act like it was just that once.”
“And y’all talk shit too! But at the end of the day, who’s sitting inside these nice walls and who’s out there getting tear-gassed, Bitter? It’s not the fucking same!”
“No one asked you to go get fucking gassed!”
“Wow.” A betrayed hurt crept into Eddie’s eyes. “For real, B?”
Fuck. Bitter sighed and took a step toward Eddie, but Eddie backed away. “I’m so sorry,” Bitter said. “I eh mean it like that.”
Eddie’s jaw was set. “You know what I wanna know? What the fuck do you believe? Because I think I’m pretty clear about who I am and what I’m fighting for. Who the fuck are you?”
It was an excellent question. The best question, in fact. Bitter knew she had spent a long time hiding what she actually believed from people, and it was a hard habit to break, even when someone was looking at her with the amount of hurt Eddie had in her eyes. Only Blessing and now Aloe knew the truth about how Bitter did want a better world, but also about how hope had been beaten out of her, how it was safer to curl up in the pessimistic dark because then none of the horrific things would hurt as much because you’d made part of yourself dead to them, dead to anything else. Bitter knew that neither of them wanted her to live in that dark place, but Blessing was careful. She wasn’t the type to barge in and shine a light in places someone had curled over to hide. Aloe was the opposite. He barged in, bulldozing his hope and belief into dusty corners, shaking out the rugs and asking questions about what was underneath. He was clumsy and gentle, annoying and soothing at the same time.
Bitter didn’t want to turn into someone who kept talking about her fear. Fear was fine, but showing it made you weak. She’d learned that in the lost years, when hungry eyes watched her for what she was scared of so they could use it against her, and Bitter had learned it was better to be stoic, to be a blank and unfeeling wall, because if you were entirely armor and no underbelly, then they couldn’t stab you in the soft places. She made a mental note to ask Aloe how he managed to move through the world with that tenderness, what kind of armor it gave him. Who were you? The armor or the person underneath? Was it possible for the two to fuse into one, and if so, how did you describe it to the girl standing in front of you, waiting for an answer?
“I don’t have hope,” Bitter found herself saying. “I don’t know how allyuh does it, just go and keep putting yourselves out there. The police keep killing us and you does get all up in their faces like they can’t kill you too. It eh make no sense. This been going on for years—what makes you think you can stop it? Don’t you want to live?”
Eddie’s face softened as she listened, realization dawning. “Oh, B. You’re scared.”
She said it so gently that Bitter had to bite down on her cheek to stop from bursting into tears. “Yuh think I’m a coward,” she said, her heart sinking.
“No!” Eddie took a stride forward and grabbed Bitter’s shoulders. “B, you’re not a coward.”
“If I wasn’t scared, I go be out there with y’all, right?”
“B, listen to me.” Eddie shook her slightly. “You don’t have to have hope. You don’t have to be out there. You’re important just as you are. You matter.”
Bitter couldn’t hold back the tears then. It had been nice to stay in the bubble of Eucalyptus with Aloe and Blessing, fenced in by Miss Virtue’s assurance that she didn’t have to leave, but Eddie was from the outside world, waist-deep in it, and Bitter couldn’t look at her and pretend that everything was okay. Nothing was okay. “I’m not doing anything!” she sobbed, not resisting as Eddie pulled her into a tight hug. “I cyah stop any of it—no one can, or it would’ve been stopped by now. What’s the point?”
“It’s okay,” Eddie whispered against her head. “You don’t have to be one of us, Bitter. That’s not how any revolution works. Everyone has their place—mine just happens to be out there. Yours is somewhere else.” She glanced around Bitter’s room. “In here, by the looks of it. Making your work. We need the artists too, you know?”
Bitter drew her head back. “Really?” It was the last thing she’d expected someone from Assata to say about someone from Eucalyptus.