My mother smiles at me. “People always say they think Lily favors me.”
“Yes,” he says. “Identical mouths. Uncanny.” Ryle squeezes my knee under the table again while I try and suppress my laughter. “Ladies, if you’ll excuse me, I need to head to the gentlemen’s room.” He leans in and kisses me on the side of the head before standing. “If the waiter comes, I’ll just take water.”
My mother’s eyes follow Ryle as he walks away, and then she slowly turns back to me. She points at me and then to his empty seat. “How come I haven’t heard about this guy?”
I smile a little. “Things are kind of . . . it’s not really . . .” I have no idea how to explain our situation to my mother. “He works a lot, so we haven’t really spent that much time together. At all. This is actually the first time we’ve been to dinner together.”
My mother raises an eyebrow. “Really?” she says, leaning back in her seat. “He sure doesn’t treat it like that. I mean—he seems comfortably affectionate with you. Not normal behavior with someone you’ve just met.”
“We didn’t just meet,” I say. “It’s been almost a year since the first time I met him. And we’ve spent time together, just not on a date. He works a lot.”
“Where does he work?”
“Massachusetts General Hospital.”
My mother leans forward and her eyes practically bulge from her head. “Lily!” she hisses. “He’s a doctor?”
I nod, suppressing my grin. “A neurosurgeon.”
“Can I get you ladies something to drink?” a waiter asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “We’ll take three . . .”
And then I clamp my mouth shut.
I stare at the waiter and the waiter stares back at me. My heart is in my throat. I can’t remember how to speak.
“Lily?” my mother says. She flicks her hand toward the waiter. “He’s waiting for your drink order.”
I shake my head and begin to stutter. “I’ll . . . um . . .”
“Three waters,” my mother says, interrupting my fumbled words. The waiter snaps out of his trance long enough to tap his pencil on his pad of paper.
“Three waters,” he says. “Got it.” He turns and walks away, but I watch as he glances back at me before pushing through the doors to the kitchen.
My mother leans forward and says, “What in the world is wrong with you?”
I point over my shoulder. “The waiter,” I say, shaking my head. “He looked exactly like . . .”
I’m about to say, “Atlas Corrigan,” when Ryle walks up and slides back into the seat.
He glances back and forth between us. “What’d I miss?”
I swallow hard, shaking my head. Surely that wasn’t really Atlas. But those eyes—his mouth. I know it’s been years since I saw him, but I’ll never forget what he looked like. It had to be him. I know it was and I know he recognized me, too, because the second our eyes met . . . it looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“Lily?” Ryle says, squeezing my hand. “You okay?”
I nod and force a smile, then clear my throat. “Yep. We were just talking about you,” I say, glancing back at my mother. “Ryle assisted in an eighteen-hour surgery this week.”
My mother leans forward with interest. Ryle begins to tell her all about the surgery. Our water arrives, but it’s a different waiter this time. He asks if we’ve had a chance to go over the menu and then tells us the chef’s specials. The three of us order our food and I’m doing everything I can to focus, but my attention is all over the restaurant looking for Atlas. I need to regroup. After a few minutes, I lean over to Ryle. “I need to run to the restroom.”
He stands up to let me out and my eyes are scanning the face of every waiter as I make my way across the room. I push through the door to the hallway that leads to the restrooms. As soon as I’m alone, my back meets the wall of the hallway. I lean forward and release a huge breath. I decide to take a moment and regain my composure before heading back out there. I bring my hands up to my forehead and close my eyes.
For nine years I’ve wondered what happened to him. Years.
“Lily?”
I glance up and suck in a breath. He’s standing at the end of the hallway like a ghost straight out of the past. My eyes travel to his feet to make sure he’s not suspended in the air.
He isn’t. He’s real, and he’s standing right in front of me.
I stay pressed against the wall, not sure what to say to him. “Atlas?”
As soon as I say his name, he blows out a quick breath of relief and then takes three huge steps forward. I catch myself doing the same. We meet in the middle and throw our arms around each other. “Holy shit,” he says, holding me in a tight embrace.
I nod. “Yeah. Holy shit.”
He puts his hands on my shoulders and takes a step back to look at me. “You haven’t changed at all.”
I cover my mouth with my hand, still in shock, and give him the once-over. His face looks the same, but he’s no longer the scrawny teenager I remember. “I can’t say the same for you.”
He looks down at himself and laughs. “Yeah,” he says. “Eight years in the military will do that to ya.”
We’re both in shock, so nothing is said right after that. We just keep shaking our heads in disbelief. He laughs and then I laugh. Finally, he releases my shoulders and folds his arms over his chest. “What brings you to Boston?” he asks.
He says it so casually, and I’m thankful for that. Maybe he doesn’t remember our conversation all those years ago about Boston, which would save me a lot of embarrassment.
“I live here,” I say, forcing my answer to sound as casual as his question. “I own a flower shop over on Park Plaza.”
