It Ends with Us

more of these moments with him. If he could just always be the guy he was capable of
being in these moments, things would be so much different. For all of us.
I rotated the cookies like Atlas had said to do and when they were finished, I
pulled them out of the oven. I took one off the cookie sheet and handed it to my
father. I hated that I was being nice to him. It almost felt like I was wasting one of
Atlas’s cookies.
“Wow,” my father said. “These are great, Lily.”
I forced a thank-you, even though I didn’t make them. I couldn’t very well tell
him that, though.
“They’re for school so you can only have one,” I lied. I waited until the rest of
them cooled and then I put them in a Tupperware container and took them to my
room. I didn’t even want to try one without Atlas, so I waited until later last night
when he came over.

---

“You should have tried one when they were hot,” he said. “That’s when they’re
the best.”
“I didn’t want to eat them without you,” I said. We sat on the bed with our backs
against the wall and proceeded to eat half the bowl of cookies. I told him they were
delicious, but failed to tell him they were by far the greatest cookies I’d ever eaten. I
didn’t want to inflate his ego. I kind of liked how humble he was.
I tried to grab at another one, but he pulled the bowl away and put the lid back
on it. “If you eat too many you’ll make yourself sick and you won’t like my cookies
anymore.”
I laughed. “Impossible.”
He took a drink of water and then stood up, facing the bed. “I made you
something,” he said, reaching into his pocket.
“More cookies?” I asked.
He smiled and shook his head, then held out a fist. I lifted my hand and he
dropped something hard in the palm of my hand. It was a small, flat outline of a
heart, about two inches long, carved out of wood.
I rubbed my thumb over it, trying not to smile too big. It wasn’t an anatomically
correct heart, but it also didn’t look like the hand-drawn hearts. It was uneven and
hollow in the middle.
“You made this?” I asked, looking up at him.
He nodded. “I carved it with an old whittling knife I found at the house.”
The ends of the heart weren’t connected. They just curved in a little, leaving a
little space at the top of the heart. I didn’t even know what to say. I felt him sit back
down on the bed but I couldn’t stop looking at it long enough to even thank him.
“I carved it out of a branch,” he said, whispering. “From the oak tree in your
backyard.”
I swear, Ellen. I never thought I could love something so much. Or maybe what I
was feeling wasn’t for the gift, but for him. I closed my fist around the heart and
then leaned over and kissed him so hard, he fell back onto the bed. I threw my leg
over him and straddled him and he grabbed my waist and grinned against my
mouth.
“I’m gonna carve you a damn house out of that oak tree if this is the reward I
get,” he whispered.
I laughed. “You have to stop being so perfect,” I told him. “You’re already my
favorite person but now you’re making it really unfair to all the other humans
because no one will ever be able to catch up to you.”

---

He brought his hand to the back of my head and rolled me until I was on my
back and he was the one on top. “Then my plan is working,” he said, right before