It Starts with Us: A Novel (2) (It Ends with Us)

I almost missed the note, I was in such a rush this morning. It was shoved under my front door and was caught on the entry rug.

I had Emmy on my hip, a purse and a diaper bag on my shoulder, and coffee in my free hand. I managed to bend and pick up the note without spilling any of it. Supermom.

I had to wait until I got a quiet moment at work to open it. When I unfold the note and see Atlas’s handwriting, I feel a shiver of relief run through me. Not because I thought the note would be from anyone other than Atlas. We’ve been together several months now, and he leaves me notes all the time. But this is one of the first notes he’s left that a small part of me hasn’t dreaded opening, in the off chance the note was from Ryle.

I make a mental note of the significance of this moment.

I do that a lot. Mentally note significant things that are clues my life is finally getting back to normal. I don’t do it as often as I used to, but that’s a good thing. Ryle is such a small part of my life now, I sometimes forget how eternally complicated I used to believe it would be.

He’s still a part of Emmy’s life, but I’ve been demanding more structure from him. He sometimes tries to push back on how strict I am with her visits, but I’m never going to be comfortable until she can tell me in her own words what her visits with Ryle are like. I’m hoping anger management is helping, but only time will tell.

The contact Ryle and I do have is still sometimes terse, but all I’ve ever wanted out of our divorce was my freedom from fear, and I truly feel like I have that.

I’m hiding in my office storage closet, sitting cross-legged on the floor because I wanted to read this letter uninterrupted. It’s been months since I forced Atlas to hide out in here, but it still smells like him.

I unfold the note and trace the little open heart he drew at the top left-hand corner of the first page. I’m already smiling as I begin to read.

Dear Lily,

I don’t know if you’re aware of the date, but we have officially been dating for half of an entire year. Do people celebrate half-year anniversaries? I would have gotten you flowers, but I don’t like to make the florist work too hard.

I decided to give you this note, instead.

They say there are two sides to every story, and I’ve read a couple of stories of yours that, even though they happened the way you said they did, I had an entirely different experience.

You kind of brushed over this moment in your journals, even though I know it meant enough for you to get a tattoo. But I’m not sure you’re aware of how much that moment meant to me.

You say our first kiss happened on your bed, but that’s not the one I count as our first kiss. Our first kiss happened on a Monday in the middle of the day.

It was that time I got sick and you took care of me. You noticed I was ill as soon as I crawled through your window. I remember you taking immediate action. You gave me medicine, water, and blankets, and forced me to sleep on your bed.

I don’t remember ever being sicker than that in my entire life. I do believe you witnessed the most awful day I’ve ever lived through. And I’ve lived through some awful days. But when you’re in it, there seems to be nothing worse in the moment than a horrible stomach bug.

I don’t remember a lot of that night. I remember your hands, though. Your hands were always near me, either checking my temperature or wiping my face with a rag or holding my shoulders steady while I repeatedly had to fold over the side of your bed throughout the night.

That’s what I remember: your hands. You had a light pink polish on, I even remember the name of the color because I had been with you when you painted your nails. It was called Surprise Lily and you told me you picked it because of the name.

I could barely open my eyes, but every time I did, there they were, your slender helping hands with your Surprise Lily fingernails, holding up my water bottle, feeding me medicine, tracing my jaw.

Yes, Lily. I remember that moment, even though you didn’t write about it.

After hours of being ill, I remember waking up, or at least becoming more aware of my surroundings. My head was pounding and my mouth was parched and my eyelids were too heavy to open, but I felt you.

I felt your breath on my cheek. Your fingertips were on my jaw and you traced them all the way down to my chin.

You thought I was asleep—that I couldn’t feel you touching me, watching me, but I had never felt more than I did in that moment.

It was the exact moment I realized that I loved you. I kind of hated realizing something that monumental in the middle of such a shitty day, but it hit me so hard I thought I was going to cry for the first time in years and I didn’t know what to do with that feeling.

But, man, Lily, I had gone my whole life not knowing what love felt like. I didn’t have the love a mother and son should have, or a father and son, or a sibling. And until you, I had never spent that kind of time with anyone unrelated to me, especially a girl. Not long enough to truly get to know a girl, or for them to get to know me, or for us to connect and deepen that connection, and then for that girl to prove to be caring and helpful and kind and worried and everything that you were to me.

I’m not even saying it was the moment I realized I was IN love with you. It was just the first moment I realized I loved something, anything, anyone, ever. It was the first time my heart had ever reacted. At least in a positive way. People had done things to me in the past that made my heart shrink, but never expand like that. When your fingers were trickling over my chin like soft drops of rain, I thought my heart was going to swell so big it might pop.

I pretended to slowly wake up in that moment. I put my arm over my eyes, and you quickly pulled your hand back. I remember craning my neck and looking at your window to see if it was light outside. It almost was, so I started to pull myself out of your bed, pretending not to know you were awake. You sat up and asked me if I was leaving, and I had to swallow before I could get my voice to work. It barely did. I said something like, “Your parents will be up soon.”

You told me you were going to skip school and come back for me in a couple of hours. I nodded without speaking, because I was still sick, but I had to get out of your bedroom before I said something or did something to embarrass myself. I didn’t trust the feeling that was buzzing beneath my skin. It was creating this burning need to look at you and say, I love you, Lily! It’s funny how, as soon as you feel love for the first time, you suddenly have this huge desire to profess it. The words felt like they were forming right in the center of my chest, and even though I was weaker than I’d probably ever been, I had never lifted your window and crawled out of it that fast before.

I shut it and flattened my back against the cold wall of your house, and I exhaled. My breath turned to fog, and I closed my eyes, and after the absolute worst eight hours of my life, I somehow cracked a smile.

I thought about love the rest of the morning. Even after you’d come back to get me once your parents were gone and I spent several more hours being sick at your house, I was thinking about love. When your Surprise Lily fingernails would flash across my line of sight every time you checked my temperature, I’d think about love. Every time you’d walk into your room and adjust the covers, tucking them under my chin, I’d think about love.

And then when I finally started to feel a little better around lunchtime, I stood in the shower, weak and dehydrated from being sick, yet I somehow felt like I was standing taller than I ever had before.

That whole morning and into the rest of the day, I knew something significant had happened. For the first time, I had felt a flicker of what I knew life could be. Before that moment, I never gave much thought to falling in love, or having a family someday, or even the idea of cultivating a successful career. Life to me had always felt like a burden I had to bear. Something heavy and murky that made waking up difficult and falling asleep a little bit scary. But that’s because I had gone eighteen years not knowing what it felt like to care about someone so much, you want them to be the first thing you see when you open your eyes. I even felt a desire to make something of myself because you were the first person I ever wanted to become something better for.

That was the day we laid on your couch together and you told me you wanted me to watch your favorite cartoon with you. It was the first time you had ever snuggled up to me, your back to my chest as we lay under the blanket with my arm wrapped over you. It was hard to focus on the television because the words I love you were still tickling their way up my throat, and I didn’t want to say it, couldn’t say it, because I didn’t want you to think it was too fast, or that those words held no weight for me. They were the heaviest damn thing I’d ever carried.

But I think about that day so much, Lily, and I have no idea if that’s what love feels like for everyone, like it’s an airplane that just fell from the sky and crashed right through you. Because most people, they have love seeping in and out their whole lives. They’re born being wrapped in it and they go their whole childhood being protected by it, and they have people in their lives that welcome their love in return, so I’m not sure it hits people like it hit me—in one small moment, in such a colossal way.

You were wearing this shirt I loved. It was too big for you, and the sleeve was always falling off your shoulder. I should have been watching the cartoon, but I couldn’t stop staring at that stretch of exposed skin between your neck and your shoulder. As I was looking at it, I once again felt that incredible pull to say I love you, and the words were there, right on the tip of my tongue, so I leaned forward and pressed them against your skin.

And that’s where they stayed, hidden and quiet, until I worked up the courage to speak them out loud to you six months later.

I had no idea you remembered that kiss, or all the times I kissed you in that spot after that day. Even when I read it in your journal, you rushed past it in a hurry to get to what you considered our actual first kiss, so I had no idea that it even meant anything to you until the moment I saw your tattoo. I can’t tell you what that means to me, knowing that you have our heart placed in the very spot where I once secretly buried the words I love you.

I want you to promise me something, Lily. When you look at that tattoo, I don’t want you to think about anything other than the words I’ve written in this letter. And every time I kiss you there, I want you to remember why I kissed you there the first time. Love. Discovering it, giving it, receiving it, falling in it, living in it, leaving for it.

I’m writing this letter while sitting on the floor of Josh’s bedroom. My experience with Josh tonight is kind of what sparked my memory. He’s sick with a stomach bug. Maybe not as sick as I was the day I first realized I loved you, but very, very sick nonetheless. He caught it from Theo, who had it a few days ago.

I’ve never taken care of a sick person before, so I have no medicine at all. I think I’m about to make a pharmacy run. I might slip this letter under your apartment door on my way there.

It isn’t fun taking care of a sick person. The sounds, the smell, the lack of sleep—it’s actually almost as bad for the person doing the caring. Every time I check his temperature or force him to drink water, I think about you and how you cared for me with such a gentle parental instinct. I’m trying to replicate that in my care for Josh, but I don’t think I’m as good at this as you were.

You were so young, just a few years older than Josh is now. But I’m sure you felt much older than you were. I know I did. We had been through things no kid should have to experience. It makes me wonder if Josh feels his age, or if he feels older than he should because of all he’s been through.

I want him to feel young for as long as he can. I want him to enjoy his time with me. I want him to know what love is long before I did. And I hope that love has been seeping slowly into him so that it doesn’t hit him all at once like it did me. I want him to grow up with it, wrapped in it, surrounded by it. I want him to witness it.

I want to be an example for him. I want us to be an example for him, and for Emerson. Me and you, Lily.

It’s been six months.

Move in with me.

Love,

Atlas

As soon as I finish reading the letter, I set it down and wipe my eyes. If this is how much I cry when he asks me to move in with him, I have no idea how I’ll survive a proposal.

Or wedding vows, for that matter.

I pick up my phone and call Atlas over video chat. It rings for ten long seconds, and when Atlas finally answers it, he’s lying on his living room couch. He’s smiling through his obvious exhaustion from being up all night with Josh.

“Hey, beautiful.” His voice is barely awake.

“Hi.” My hand is curled into a fist, and I’m resting my cheek on it, pushing down my huge smile. “How’s Josh feeling?”

“He’s okay,” Atlas says. “He’s sleeping, but I think I stayed up so long, my brain is too overwhelmed to shut off now.” He puts a fist to his mouth and stifles a yawn.

“Atlas.” I say his name sympathetically because he does look absolutely drained. “Do you need me to come over and give you a hug?”

“You mean do I need you to come home and give me a hug?”

I smile when he says that. “Yes. That’s exactly what I meant. Do you need me to come home and give you a hug?”

He nods. “I do, Lily. Come home.”