It Ends With Us (23 page)

Ryle brings his hands up and covers his mouth. I can hear the air rushing through his fingers as he releases his breath. He stands up straight, allowing himself a moment to soak in all
I’ve just said.

“My turn,” he says.

He pushes off the car and takes the three steps toward me that previously separated us. He puts both hands on my cheeks and looks me dead in the eyes. “If you don’t want to be with
me . . . please tell me right now, Lily. Because when I saw you with him . . . that
hurt
. I never want to feel that again. And if it hurts this much
now, I’m terrified to think of what it could do to me a year from now.”

I can feel the tears begin to stream down my cheeks. I place my hands on top of his and shake my head. “I don’t want anyone else, Ryle. I only want you.”

He forces the saddest smile I’ve ever seen on a human. He pulls me to him and holds me there. I wrap my arms around him as tight as I can as he presses his lips to the side of my head.

“I love you, Lily.
God,
I love you.”

I squeeze him tight, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “I love you, too.”

I close my eyes and wish I could wash away the entire last two days.

Atlas is wrong about Ryle.

I just wish
Atlas
knew he was wrong.

“I mean . . . I’m not trying to be selfish, but you didn’t taste the dessert, Lily.” Allysa groans. “Oh, it was
sooo
good.”

“We’re never going back there,” I say to her.

She stomps her foot like a little kid. “But . . .”

“Nope. We have to respect your brother’s feelings.”

She folds her arms over her chest. “I know, I know. Why did you have to be a hormonal teenager and fall in love with the best chef in Boston?”

“He wasn’t a chef when I knew him.”

“Whatever,” she says. She walks out of my office and closes the door.

My phone buzzes with an incoming text.

I sigh, relieved. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to do the surgery today, but knowing how much he was looking forward to it makes me happy for him.

I open my laptop and check my email. The first thing I see is an inquiry from the
Boston Globe.
I open it and it’s from a journalist interested in running an article about the
store. I grin like an idiot and start emailing her back when Allysa knocks on the door. She opens it and sticks her head in.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” I say back.

She taps her fingers on the doorframe. “Remember a few minutes ago when you told me I could never go back to Bib’s because it’s unfair to Ryle that the boy you loved when you
were a teenager is the owner?”

I fall back against my chair. “What do you want, Allysa?”

She scrunches up her nose and says, “If it isn’t fair that we can’t go back there because of the owner, how is it fair that the owner gets to come here?”

What?

I close my laptop and stand up. “Why would you say that? Is he here?”

She nods and slips inside my office, closing the door behind her. “He is. He asked for you. And I know you’re with my brother and I’m with child, but can we please just take a
moment to silently admire the perfection that is that man?”

She smiles dreamily and I roll my eyes.

“Allysa.”

“Those
eyes
, though.” She opens the door and walks out. I follow behind her and catch sight of Atlas. “She’s right here,” Allysa says. “Would you like
me to take your coat?”

We don’t take coats.

Atlas glances up when I walk out of my office. His eyes cut to Allysa and he shakes his head. “No, thank you. I won’t be long.”

Allysa leans forward over the counter, dropping her chin on her hands. “Stay as long as you like. In fact, are you looking for an extra job? Lily needs to hire more people and we’re
looking for someone who can lift really heavy things. Requires a lot of flexibility. Bending over.”

I narrow my eyes at Allysa and mouth,
“Enough.”

She shrugs innocently. I hold my door open for Atlas, but avoid looking directly at him as he passes me. I feel a world of guilt for what happened last night, but also a world of anger for what
happened last night.

I walk around my desk and drop into my seat, prepared for an argument. But when I look up at him, I clamp my mouth shut.

He’s smiling. He waves his hand around in a circle as he takes a seat across from me. “This is incredible, Lily.”

I pause. “Thank you.”

He continues smiling at me, like he’s proud of me. Then he places a bag between us on the desk and pushes it toward me. “A gift,” he says. “You can open it
later.”

Why is he buying me gifts? He has a girlfriend. I have a boyfriend. Our past has already caused enough problems in my present. I certainly don’t need gifts to exacerbate that.

“Why are you buying me gifts, Atlas?”

He leans back in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest. “I bought it three years ago. I’ve been holding on to it in case I ever ran into you.”

Considerate Atlas
. He hasn’t changed. Dammit.

I pick up the gift and set it on the floor behind my desk. I try to release some of the tension I’m feeling, but it’s really hard when everything about him makes me so tense.

“I came here to apologize to you,” he says.

I wave off his apology, letting him know it isn’t necessary. “It’s fine. It was a misunderstanding. Ryle is fine.”

He laughs under his breath. “That’s not what I’m apologizing for,” he says. “I’d never apologize for defending you.”

“You weren’t defending me,” I say. “There was nothing to defend.”

He tilts his head, giving me the same look that he gave me last night. The one that lets me know how disappointed in me he is. It stings deep in my gut.

I clear my throat. “Why are you apologizing, then?”

He’s quiet for a moment. Contemplative. “I wanted to apologize for saying that you sounded like your mother. That was hurtful. And I’m sorry.”

I don’t know why I always feel like crying when I’m around him. When I think about him. When I read about him. It’s like my emotions are still tethered to him somehow and I
can’t figure out how to cut the strings.

His eyes drop to my desk. He reaches forward and grabs three things. A pen. A sticky note. My phone.

He writes something down on the sticky note and then proceeds to pull my phone apart. He slips the case off and puts the sticky note between the case and the phone, then slides the cover back
over it. He pushes my phone back across the desk. I look down at it and then up at him. He stands up and tosses the pen on my desk.

“It’s my cell phone number. Keep it hidden there in case you ever need it.”

I wince at the gesture. The
unnecessary
gesture. “I won’t need it.”

“I hope not.” He walks to the door and reaches for the doorknob. And I know this is my only chance to get out what I have to say before he’s out of my life forever.

“Atlas, wait.”

I stand up so fast, my chair scoots across the room and bumps against the wall. He half turns and faces me.

“What Ryle said to you last night? I never . . .” I bring a nervous hand up to my neck. I can feel my heart beating in my throat. “I
never
said that to
him. He was hurt and upset and he misconstrued my words from a long time ago.”

The corner of Atlas’s mouth twitches, and I’m not sure if he’s trying not to smile or trying not to frown. He faces me straight on. “Believe me, Lily. I know that
wasn’t a
pity
fuck. I was there.”

He walks out the door, and his words knock me straight back into my seat.

Only . . . my seat is no longer there. It’s still on the other side of my office and I’m now on the floor.

Allysa rushes in and I’m lying on my back behind my desk. “Lily?” She runs around the desk and stands over me. “Are you okay?”

I hold up a thumb. “Fine. Just missed my chair.”

She reaches out her hand and helps me to my feet. “What was that all about?”

I glance at the door as I retrieve my chair. I take a seat and look down at my phone. “Nothing. He was just apologizing.”

Allysa sighs longingly and looks back at the door. “So does that mean he doesn’t want the job?”

I’ve got to hand it to her. Even in the midst of emotional turmoil, she can make me laugh. “Get back to work before I dock your pay.”

She laughs and makes to leave. I tap my pen against my desk and then say, “Allysa. Wait.”

“I know,” she says, cutting me off. “Ryle doesn’t need to know about that visit. You don’t have to tell me.”

I smile. “Thank you.”

She closes the door.

I reach down and pick up the bag with my three-year-old gift inside of it. I pull it out and can easily tell it’s a book, wrapped in tissue paper. I tear the tissue paper away and fall
against the back of my chair.

There’s a picture of Ellen DeGeneres on the front. The title is
Seriously . . . I’m Kidding
. I laugh and then open the book, gasping quietly when I see
it’s autographed. I run my fingers over the words of the inscription.

Lily,

Atlas says just keep swimming.

—Ellen DeGeneres

I run my finger over her signature. Then I drop the book on my desk, press my forehead against it, and fake cry against the cover.

It’s after seven before I get home. Ryle called an hour ago and said he wouldn’t be coming over tonight. The confusher-cackle (whatever that big word he used was)
separation was a success, but he’s staying at the hospital overnight to make sure there aren’t complications.

I walk in the door to my quiet apartment. I change into my quiet pajamas. I eat a quiet sandwich. And then I lie down in my quiet bedroom and open my quiet new book, hoping it can quiet my
emotions.

Sure enough, three hours and the majority of a book later, all the emotions from the last several days begin to seep out of me. I place a bookmark on the page where I stopped reading and I close
it.

I stare at the book for a long time. I think about Ryle. I think about Atlas. I think about how sometimes, no matter how convinced you are that your life will turn out a certain way, all that
certainty can be washed away with a simple change in tide.

I take the book Atlas bought me and put it in the closet with all my journals. Then I pick up the one that’s filled with memories of him. And I know it’s finally time to read the
last entry I wrote. Then I can close the book for good.

Dear Ellen,

Most of the time I’m thankful you don’t know I exist and that I’ve never really mailed you any of these things I write to you.

But sometimes, especially tonight, I wish you did. I just need someone to talk to about everything I’m feeling. It’s been six months since I’ve seen Atlas and I honestly
don’t know where he is or how he’s doing. So much has happened since the last letter I wrote to you, when Atlas moved to Boston. I thought it was the last time I’d see him for a
while, but it wasn’t.

I saw him again after he left, several weeks later. It was my sixteenth birthday and when he showed up, it became the absolute best day of my life.

And then the absolute worst.

It had been exactly forty-two days since Atlas left for Boston. I counted every day like it would help somehow. I was so depressed, Ellen. I still am. People say that teenagers don’t
know how to love like an adult. Part of me believes that, but I’m not an adult and so I have nothing to compare it to. But I do believe it’s probably different. I’m sure
there’s more substance in the love between two adults than there is between two teenagers. There’s probably more maturity, more respect, more responsibility. But no matter how different
the substance of a love might be at different ages in a person’s life, I know that love still has to weigh the same. You feel that weight on your shoulders and in your stomach and on your
heart no matter how old you are. And my feelings for Atlas are very heavy. Every night I cry myself to sleep and I whisper, “Just keep swimming.” But it gets really hard to swim when
you feel like you’re anchored in the water.

Now that I think about it, I’ve probably been experiencing the stages of grief in a sense. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I was deep in the depression stage the
night of my sixteenth birthday. My mother had tried to make the day a good one. She bought me gardening supplies, made my favorite cake, and the two of us went to dinner together. But by the time I
had crawled into bed that night, I couldn’t shake the sadness.

I was crying when I heard the tap on my window. At first, I thought it had started raining. But then I heard his voice. I jumped up and ran to the window, my heart in hysterics. He was
standing there in the dark, smiling at me. I raised the window and helped him inside and he took me in his arms and held me there for so long while I cried.

He smelled so good. I could tell when I hugged him that he’d put on some much-needed weight in just the six weeks since I’d last seen him. He pulled back and wiped the tears off
my cheeks. “Why are you crying, Lily?”

I was embarrassed that I was crying. I cried a lot that month—probably more than any other month of my life. It was probably just the hormones of being a teenage girl, mixed with the
stress of how my father treated my mother, and then having to say goodbye to Atlas.

I grabbed a shirt from the floor and dried my eyes, then we sat down on the bed. He pulled me against his chest and leaned against my headboard.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.