april-may 2018 : 2 years and 4 months ago

When Lily was a kid, her parents took her to church every week without fail. Sunday School was kind of weird in hindsight. She remembered how at the end of each year - because everything in life apparently needed to be a competition - the teachers would give all of the kids "awards" for which "Fruit of the Spirit" they showed the most in class - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control. The only one Lily never got was self-control.

But now she was thinking that she ought to march back in there and ask for a self-control award ten years late. She earned that freaking award moments ago when she used every last atom of self-control she had to put on her seatbelt instead of what she wanted to do: lean over and kiss Liam the second they were alone in the car.

Now she was too busy having her daily internal crisis about him to talk much.

She told herself that this was gonna happen - that she was gonna think she had the situation under control and then start falling for him faster than she anticipated she could. But of course she had to be dumb and go let it happen, anyway.

He wasn't at all the brash person she thought he might be after their first encounter. Not that he wasn't smooth; he sometimes pulled comments out of nowhere that made her heart flutter in ways it never had. But he listened much more than he talked. He made her feel seen in a way she hadn't before. And he called her Lils. She still had no clue how he came up with that or why he decided to let it stick, but every time he said it a warm feeling sprouted up in her heart and spread all the way out to her fingers and toes like she was being wrapped up in a cozy blanket. Lily was a short name, so no one had bothered to come up with a nickname for her before.

And yet she had no clue if everything between them meant the same to him as it did to her. Was this just fun for him? She couldn't blame him if he wasn't as serious about it as she was. It wasn't like he was obligated to want the same things out of whatever this sometimes-flirting sometimes-not relationship was as she did. But she was longing for someone who would be there for the long haul, who wouldn't run away when life got hard.

She was too attached to the idea of what they could be to ask him what they were, even though she was setting herself up to be hurt further by waiting. She didn't know how to ask. Or how to explain that she was a mentally-unstable mess. She was scared of the infinite number of things he didn't know about her.

And how much she didn't know about him.

She noticed the scar on his wrist for the first time when she pulled him up off the bench.

It was a tiny white line. That was all. She shouldn't have been fazed, but that tiny white line carried a lot of connotations with it - connotations that other people had planted in her head.

Just as she was on the verge of completely forgetting about those rumors about him, they all came swarming back into her consciousness. What he did or didn't do to Caroline Davis or what she did or didn't do to him or what he did or didn't do to himself.

He seemed so gentle, like he wouldn't hurt a fly. But no one thought it was a coincidence that he had shown up at school with a bandaged wrist at the same time everything supposedly started going downhill for those two. Something clearly happened there and it was just enough to plant the seed of doubt in Lily's mind. She never saw any issues in people until it was too late. She wanted to ask about it, but she was too apprehensive to do it here in the car where she couldn't step away if his answer wasn't what she wanted to hear.

So she watched out her window instead. They were on this stretch of road where you could see the downtown skyline lit up in the distance. The light almost appeared to vibrate like the city had a heartbeat of its own, pulsating from all of the activity bustling within it. It had a way of drawing you in and tempting you to take big chances and leap into the unknown like you had nothing to lose. There was something comforting about the two of them being separate from that, here in their own little bubble of the car where they could take life as slowly as they needed to.

"Do you believe in God?" she wondered out loud.

Liam glanced over at her for as long as he could pull off while driving, looking mildly perplexed. "Where did that come from?"

She shrugged. "Isn't that the sort of deep stuff you're supposed to bring up when you go driving just to talk?"

"Fair." His features relaxed as his confusion slowly transitioned into contemplation. "Do you?"

Lily's feelings about the subject were complicated, but it was ironically one of the few conversations she wasn't nervous to have with him. He didn't come across as the type of person who would judge someone for that. And she wanted to learn about him.

"I believe in a god," she explained. "I was raised Catholic, but I don't know...I haven't been to mass in a while. I have a hard time showing up and singing the songs and getting invested in that way. I guess I don't really know how much I believe in that God."

She stared down at her shoes, her voice growing a bit quieter. She wasn't sure how far she actually intended to go with this, but the thoughts seemed to naturally come out of her as soon as they sprung to mind. "I'm never confident in how to decipher what's true versus what's just made up by people, you know? Maybe I just don't have quite enough faith for that."

For some reason, the corner of Liam's mouth turned up into a tiny smirk.

"What's funny?" she questioned.

He shook his head. "I'm not making fun of you," he promised. "I just don't think that distrusting the trainwreck that is humanity means you don't have any faith."

"Oh...thanks?"

"I don't know if I believe in God," he continued, his pointer finger delicately tapping the steering wheel. She wondered if he even noticed himself doing it. "But I believe there's some sort of meaning out there. Meaning to the stuff that happens to us."

Lily pondered this for a moment. "Why? Why is there meaning if there's no god?"

"I don't know," he confessed, surprising her with his lack of hesitation to be completely honest about it. "I've always struggled with the 'why do bad things happen to good people' question. I guess everyone does. But I don't think I have it in me to believe that the universe is just cold and dark and out to get you. To me it seems so much harder to be happy in a world like that than to hope that things happen for some sort of reason."

Something changed in his voice as he kept speaking, a certain seriousness inching into his tone that told her that he'd thought long and hard about this. She watched him while he talked, noticed the way he subtly straightened in his seat yet his expression grew a little more tired. She couldn't stop herself from being fascinated by him, couldn't tell her brain not to study the exact contours of his eyes, his cheekbones, his nose, his lips. Conversations held in the dark always felt more intimate than they were. She wished she could see his eyes better in the dim light. She wanted to see what was behind them, to get a glimpse into that complex mind of his and understand why he felt this way.

Because she when she listened to his voice, somehow so soft and so firm at the same time, what she heard was that he fully believed in what he was telling her but that life had made it difficult for him to keep believing it.

"Maybe it's just that we have to create the meaning for ourselves," he considered.

The thought seemed to comfort him a little. Lily watched as a hint of lightness made its way back into his expression and took the darkness away.

They got to a stoplight and he looked back over at her. "I don't think that would be such a bad thing," he admitted quietly, but there was a twinge of urgency in his voice like he needed to hear that someone agreed with him. "Do you?"

"No," she murmured. "I don't."

The turning of the stoplight pulled Liam's attention back to the road and ushered the conversation away. He glanced at the time. "Do you have an exam in the morning?"

"Yeah."

"We should probably go back then."

Lily wanted to stay out with him all night and pretend that she didn't need any sleep. But he was right; she had to rest. Exams week wasn't the right time to be irresponsible.

Having met their deep conversation quota, the two of them grew quiet again as he drove her back to campus. She felt so close to him when he told her how he was feeling, but the distance between them grew back more and more with each second of silence.

Had that distance not grown back, their interaction right before she got out of the car might have gone differently.

She reached for her phone that she had set in the center cupholder at the same time he reached over to pass it to her. The back of her fingers brushed against his for the shortest moment, sending a flurry of happiness throughout her body before he quickly retracted his hand. The giddiness faded. Her confidence wavered. She wished he hadn't pulled away.

She took off her seatbelt and grabbed her purse out of the floorboard.

"Lily-" he stopped her before she could open her door.

"Yeah?"

"Do you, um-" He swallowed. "Would you wanna do something this weekend?"

That tornado of doubt and confliction from the beginning of their drive rushed back to her in an instant. She panicked. "Oh, I'm tied up with Henry's graduation stuff this weekend."

That was partial truth and partial lie - she was tied up with Henry's graduation, but only on Friday.

The brief flicker of disappointment she had to watch in his eyes when she turned him down pained her more each time it happened. "Maybe some other time," he offered.

"Yeah, of course."

He wiped the defeat off of his expression and gave her a small smile. "'Night, Lils. Good luck on your exam."

"'Night, Liam," she mumbled. "Thank you."

She opened the door and walked away.

Izzy passed Lily a Sharpie so that she could label what felt like the billionth cardboard box full of her belongings. A bittersweet feeling blossomed in her chest as she stared at the sealed box. Despite how tiny her first little dorm room was, she was gonna miss it. Her parents were coming this afternoon to help her move out after her last exam and as excited as she was to have her own bedroom back for the summer, she didn't feel ready to leave here just yet. Certain things felt unresolved.

"I'm so lost," Izzy declared. "You said no? Why?"

Lily jammed the lid back onto the Sharpie and tossed it aside. Packing was so tiring. At least Izzy was nice enough to help her while Katie was in an exam. "What if I think I know him and I don't?"

"How are you ever gonna find that out if you refuse to see him?"

"I-" Lily faltered. She didn't have an answer to that part. "I don't know. But I already like him too much-"

"What's the problem with that?"

"What if I'm missing something and all that terrible stuff people say about him is true?"

Izzy lowered herself down onto the floor next to her. "If the rumors really bother you that much, then ask him," she said gently. "Go talk to him this weekend. He's a good guy, but he's not gonna wait around on you forever. You gotta go see him. He likes you, you know."

A lump lodged itself in Lily's throat, but she wasn't sure if it was a happy or sad one. She obviously enjoyed hearing Izzy agree that he liked her. But she was also weighed down by a wave of dread. Izzy was also right about the fact that she couldn't sit here and do nothing forever.

The end of the school year signaled that she was running out of time to take whatever this was to the next level. Sure, she and Liam had each other's numbers and would both be in town over the summer, but they wouldn't be on campus to see each other anymore. If she wasn't intentional about talking to him soon, whatever these feelings were that they harbored towards each other were gonna fizzle out and he was gonna find some other girl to make him happy.

Lily felt her throat tightening, her eyes watering. She put her head in her knees and prayed that she wasn't about to show up to her exam looking like she'd been crying. "I know he does," she mumbled. "I know he does now, but he wouldn't..."

She forced herself to lift her head and wipe at her eyes. No crying over stupid boys. "He's perfect," she blurted. "How am I supposed to work with someone like that?"

Liam was attractive and he was kind and he was literally asking her out, so it should have been as simple for her as just saying yes. But she loved the way he looked at her, so she didn't want him to stop doing it.

And if he knew enough, he was inevitably going to. Because that was how her life worked. She was the girl that got left behind because she was too much of a mess. Because she could barely even handle herself some days, so the logical assumption was that she certainly couldn't give anyone else a fulfilling enough relationship to be worth the trouble of dealing with her.

She couldn't even blame Jacob anymore for breaking up with her. She had been constantly unfocused, constantly overly-emotional. He was moving forward in life at a speed she couldn't handle back then. She didn't even know if she could handle it now. She was too paralyzed by constantly questioning herself. If Liam saw far enough into her mind, he was going to realize he made a mistake.

She didn't want to be his mistake.

"I think you just give him a chance to make it work," Izzy finally answered. "Everyone has a piece of themselves they wish they could get rid of. You just don't know what his is."

Henry was surprisingly quiet at dinner considering that the whole point in being here was to celebrate his graduation. Lily supposed he was just tired from the busy day. Graduations were always excruciatingly long and the fact that his was held outdoors didn't help. It was so hot this afternoon that she felt like she was melting, so she couldn't imagine how uncomfortable all of the graduates must have been in their black caps and gowns.

Dinner was just the six of them - his parents, her parents, him, and her. She heard him mention that he was doing a separate thing with his friends tomorrow night, but she didn't intend on asking much about it. If she had to guess, they were probably going bar-hopping or something equally rambunctious that she unfortunately wasn't legally allowed to participate in.

But she was plenty content to hang out with him here. They all had dinner at his parents' house, but he asked her ahead of time if she would want to stick around afterward to watch a movie or something. Her parents left just a few minutes ago, his parents were cleaning up in the kitchen (she offered to help, but they were too nice to let her), and she was scrolling through movies on Netflix, sitting on the couch between Henry and the cat.

"What do you wanna watch?" she asked. "You should pick."

She handed him the remote, but he set it down on the cushion beside him instead of doing anything with it.

"Can we go outside for a minute?" he asked, dropping the volume of his voice enough that his parents wouldn't be able to hear.

A knot of apprehension formed in her stomach. "Is everything okay?"

"Of course," he assured her with a small smile. "I just wanted to talk."

Phew. He made her nervous for a second there. Lily didn't know what he needed to talk about that he didn't want his parents overhearing, but she figured it could be any number of things.

She gave Beary one last scratch behind the ears before forcing herself up off the comfy couch. He gave a little disappointed meow when she moved.

"I'll be back in a minute," she murmured as if he could understand her.

Henry turned the porch light on for them on the way out the door. When she was a kid, she hated this house because it made her think of him. But it had become like a second home to her over the course of high school. It was a safe haven on days where she was too exhausted to talk to her parents about how therapy was going or just needed the comfort of a purring cat.

She thought they would sit on the front steps and talk like they sometimes used to. This was their spot. Countless McFlurries had been devoured right there while they chatted about whatever their little teenage minds were concerned about. But Henry didn't stop on the porch, instead walking down the steps and into the driveway.

The gesture made her realize how much had changed in the past couple of years and how odd it felt to be back here at his parents' house tonight. What used to feel like home had reverted to that place you only went to at the holidays. The thought made her sad, but there wasn't anything to be done about it. She and Henry weren't doing anything wrong. They were growing up.

And, she was about to realize, growing apart.

"So what-"

She came to a halt five feet or so away from him. He had turned back around towards her and suddenly looked more uneasy than she had seen him in a long time, his head tilted slightly downwards like he was trying to avoid looking directly at her without her noticing.

"Henry?" she asked quietly.

He met her eyes and opened his mouth as if to speak, but then faltered and closed it. She was watching him, waiting for an explanation. When he finally spoke up, he opted for the rip-the-Band-Aid-off approach.

"I'm moving."

She didn't know what she expected, but it wasn't that. "What? Where?"

"Seattle."

It was as though the whole world stood still for the second after the word came out of his mouth. Every cell in her body stiffened up, yet her mind was blank.

Seattle.

Seattle?

But that meant-

She wasn't quite processing what he said. "You've got to be kidding."

Henry nervously ran a hand through his hair, something he only did when he was starting to get really anxious. "Why would I be kidding?"

Because that's crazy? she thought, but she struggled to speak. She could barely even breathe.

It was like all of the breath in her lungs was attached to a string. Somewhere along the way, she had given the other end of the string to Henry instead of keeping it for herself. And he just abruptly yanked it out of her without warning.

So maybe he hadn't been super talkative about what his post-graduation plans were, but she had assumed that he was applying to jobs around here and wasn't making a big deal out of it until he heard back from someone. Not this.

"Like, Seattle Seattle?" she stammered. "On the other side of the country Seattle?"

There was no way. This wasn't supposed to happen. They were meant to stick together, to be at each other's sides, to always have each other's backs. He was the constant in her life. He wouldn't just...leave her behind, would he? They weren't something he could just move on from...

Right?

The trepidation and guilt on his face told her otherwise. He was tense, looking at her like he was waiting for her to punch him.

"It's a good job-"

She stopped him. Her life axis had just been so dramatically lurched that she was dizzy, the neurons in her mind firing off a million little alarms but not helping her piece together an explanation as to why he was doing this to her. She could not care less about the freaking job right now. "When?"

Henry took a breath and tried to regain a neutral composure. "In three weeks," he said simply.

All of Lily's remaining calm went out the window.

"In three weeks?!" she shrieked. "And you're just now telling me?!"

Desperation finally slipped into his voice as he begged with her to understand. "I didn't want to stress you out during exams-"

"Oh, because I'm definitely not stressed out now or anything," she snapped.

Red-hot anger was rapidly rising up and taking control of her as her brain began to put the pieces together and Henry pitifully, silently stared at her. No, it wasn't just anger; it was resentment. She crossed her arms and fought back frustrated tears for the second time this week, pulled right back to being a scared little fifteen-year-old who thought she was about to lose him to college in Chicago.

"I was right all along," she realized bitterly.

Henry frowned. "What?"

All of her indignation came bursting out. "You know what I mean, Henry!" she scoffed. "Just admit that you're doing what you wanted to four years ago! You only stayed because you thought I was too fragile to possibly handle anything on my own-"

She waited for him to deny it like he had all this time, but what she got was somehow worse. He shook his head in exasperation like he couldn't believe she was making him say this. "Of course I stayed for you, Lily. I was scared-"

"You shouldn't have done that."

"-But I never thought you were fragile," he pressed, trying to take a step towards her. She stepped back. "And I wasn't lying. It wasn't just for you. I meant what I said when I promised that I had everything I wanted-"

"But you don't anymore," she cut him off, her voice wobbling as she tried to resist the growing hoarseness in her throat. Her body wanted to cry and she was doing everything she could to hold it back. "Got it."

Henry's eyes started to shine with tears, too, but she watched as his jaw tightened and he regarded her with an expression that was starting to become stiff. "Lily." She almost recoiled at the terse way her name fell from his lips. She also kind of watched to punch him for it. "I love you more than anything in this world, but-"

"But what?"

"But I don't know who I am anymore, okay?"

He stepped back with a frustrated sigh, getting irritated that he couldn't find the words he was searching for. He started to lift his hands like he wanted to put his face in them, but then let them drop defeatedly at his sides.

"I-I don't know how to explain it, but-" He swallowed, facing her with mournful eyes. "But I don't think I know who I am without you and Sarah and I need to go figure that out."

A tear finally slipped down Lily's cheek, but she refused to acknowledge it. Henry was looking at her like he desperately needed her to understand, but she couldn't. All she felt was betrayed.

Her throat felt raw and only as wide as a needle, but she choked out words. "I didn't realize I was such a problem to you." She tried to steady her voice, but her composure continued to dissolve as she went on and the second, third, tenth, twentieth tears slid down her face. "You should have just told me. I could have stayed away and saved you the trouble of going two thousand freaking miles just to get away from me-"

"That's not what this is. You're not a problem, Lily, and this doesn't have to change things between us if you don't let it-"

"If I let it?! Are you serious right now?"

Henry's eyes were blazing with something other than sadness now. "Yes, if you let it," he repeated, but this time his voice was dripping with a kind of irritation he had never directed at her. "You're only getting mad at me because you're afraid of rejection and that's what you think I'm doing right now even though I'm telling you I'm not-"

Lily couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Because I'm afraid of rejection?!" she shouted indignantly, nearly hysterical and no longer thinking about who might hear them. "Well whose fault might that possibly be, huh? Who put the crazy idea in my head that I was gonna get rejected?!"

Henry's expression deflated, anger morphing into hurt. He didn't say anything immediately this time. He took a breath in. And then out. And then spoke, his voice now trembling like hers had been. "I have tried so hard every single day for five years to make that up to you and I'm not gonna stop, but I can't give you anything more if I don't have anything left." A tear streaked down his face. "I can't. So I need this, Lily. I need to go."

There was nothing else she could say to him. She was too mad and too heartbroken and could feel the shaking of her lungs like they were about to burst and she knew what was coming so all she could do was turn away from him so that he didn't have to watch when she finally cracked and started sobbing.

"I'm not trying to hurt you, please-" she heard and then he had rushed over and his arms were suddenly around her to hug her and calm her down like he always did.

But for the first time ever, she didn't want it. She despised it. The comfort of his hugs was that he was always going to be there to give her another one when she needed it. And now he wasn't.

"Let go, Henry," she seethed, struggling against him.

He was willing her to give into him like she always did, but she wasn't having any of it. He didn't get to crush her like that and then try to make her feel better about it like it wasn't his fault.

"Lily-"

"I said let go of me right now."

She dug her nails into his arm and he abruptly let go of her. Dying to get away from him, she stomped straight towards her car and got into the driver's seat, disregarding the fact that she didn't say goodnight to her aunt and uncle and Beary.

He chased after her. "I'm not leaving with you mad at me."

Lily couldn't find the sympathy he was reaching for. As she looked at the tears that stained his face just like hers were, she only felt cold.

"Then don't leave." She slammed the car door shut.

She should have known from the beginning that their collision was bound to be catastrophic. She cared too much about him. He cared too much about her. She didn't think anything could hurt more than the trajectory they had once been on as two parallel lines, never interacting with one another.

But that night, their perpendicular paths felt so much worse.

Because everything that met eventually had to crack and splinter apart. And neither of them were prepared for just how much it would hurt. 

____________________

It's fine. Everything is totally fine. My characters' lives are going so well. We definitely did not just watch Lily's trust issues go from bad to worse. Nope. Not at all. 

Reactions? Did you remember from the last book that Henry was gonna move away? Are either of them in the wrong here?

Thanks for reading <3