“Nah, I doubt it. They don’t seem the type.”
Lily kicks off her heels and pulls one of her legs into her seat, making herself more comfortable. “How many serious relationships have you had?”
She’s going there. Okay. “Define ‘serious.’ ”
“I don’t know. More than two months?”
“One,” I say.
“How long were you together?”
“A little more than a year. I met her while I was in the military.”
“Why’d you break up?”
“We moved in together.”
“That’s why you broke up?”
“I think living together escalated the realization that we were incompatible. Or maybe we were just at different points in our lives. I was focused on my career, and her focus was on which outfits to wear to the clubs I was too tired to go to with her. When I got out of the military and moved back to Boston, she stayed behind and moved into a loft with two of her friends.”
Lily laughs. “I cannot picture you in a club.”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m single, I guess.” My phone rings with an incoming call from Corrigan’s, interrupting us before I’m able to throw her own question back at her. “I have to take this,” I say.
“Go ahead.”
I answer the call over Bluetooth. It ends up being a freezer issue that requires me to make two more phone calls before I’ve got it sorted out and a repair technician on the way there. When I’m finally able to give my attention back to Lily, I glance over at her and find her asleep, her head limp against her shoulder. I hear a dainty snore coming from her.
The coffee never kicked in, I guess.
I let her sleep all the way to the restaurant. We pull in about ten minutes to seven. It’s dark, and the restaurant looks crowded, but we have a few minutes before I have to check in for our reservation, so I let her rest.
Her snore is as endearing as she is. It’s delicate, almost too light to hear. I take a quick video I can use to tease her with later, and then I reach into the backseat and grab her journal. I know she said not to read it in front of her, but technically I’m not. She’s asleep.
I open it to the first page and begin reading.
I read the first entry, completely captivated. I feel like I’m breaking a rule reading this, but she’s the one who brought it.
I read the second entry. Then the third. Then I log into my reservation app and cancel our reservation because unless I wake her up this very second, we’re going to be late. I’d rather our table go to someone else, because Lily looks like she’s been needing this sleep for a while.
And I want to read another entry. I’ll take her somewhere else for dinner once she wakes up.
Every word she wrote is taking me right back to when we were teenagers. There are so many times I want to laugh at the things she says and how she says them, but I stifle my laughter so that I don’t startle her.
I eventually read a passage that I’m almost positive is leading up to our first kiss. I look at the clock and we’ve already been sitting here for half an hour, but Lily is still sound asleep, and I can’t stop in the middle of this entry. I keep reading, hoping she stays asleep long enough for me to get to the end of this one.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
I held my breath, not knowing what he was going to say.
“I got in touch with my uncle today. My mom and I used to live with him in Boston. He told me once he gets back from his work trip I can stay with him.”
I should have been so happy for him in that moment. I should have smiled and told him congratulations. But I felt all of the immaturity of my age when I closed my eyes and felt sorry for myself.
“Are you going?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I wanted to talk to you about it first.”
He was so close to me on the bed, I could feel the warmth of his breath. I also noticed he smelled like mint, and it made me wonder if he uses bottled water to brush his teeth before he comes over here. I always send him home every day with lots of water.
I brought my hand up to the pillow and started pulling at a feather sticking out of it. When I got it all the way out, I twisted it between my fingers. “I don’t know what to say, Atlas. I’m happy you have a place to stay. But what about school?”
“I could finish down there,” he said.
I nodded. It sounded like he had already made up his mind. “When are you leaving?”
I wondered how far away Boston is. It’s probably a few hours, but that’s a whole world away when you don’t own a car.
“I don’t know for sure that I am.”
I dropped the feather back onto the pillow and brought my hand to my side. “What’s stopping you? Your uncle is offering you a place to stay. That’s good, right?”
He tightened his lips together and nodded. Then he picked up the feather I’d been playing with and he started twisting it between his fingers. He laid it back down on the pillow and then he did something I wasn’t expecting. He moved his fingers to my lips and he touched them.
God, Ellen. I thought I was gonna die right then and there. It was the most I’d ever felt inside my body at one time. He kept his fingers there for a few seconds, and he said, “Thank you, Lily. For everything.” He moved his fingers up and through my hair, and then he leaned forward and planted a kiss on my forehead. I was breathing so hard, I had to open my mouth to catch more air. I could see his chest moving just as hard as mine was. He looked down at me and I watched as his eyes went right to my mouth. “Have you ever been kissed, Lily?”
I shook my head no and tilted my face up to his because I needed him to change that right then and there or I wasn’t gonna be able to breathe.
