It Ends with Us

Chapter Seventeen
It’s after seven before I get home. Ryle called an hour ago and said he
wouldn’t be coming over tonight. The confushercackle (whatever that big
word he used was) separation was a success, but he’s staying at the hospital
overnight to make sure there aren’t complications.
I walk in the door to my quiet apartment. I change into my quiet
pajamas. I eat a quiet sandwich. And then I lie down in my quiet bedroom
and open my quiet new book, hoping it can quiet my emotions.
Sure enough, three hours and the majority of a book later, all the
emotions from the last several days begin to seep out of me. I place a
bookmark on the page where I stopped reading and I close it.
I stare at the book for a long time. I think about Ryle. I think about
Atlas. I think about how sometimes, no matter how convinced you are that
your life will turn out a certain way, all that certainty can be washed away
with a simple change in tide.
I take the book Atlas bought me and put it in the closet with all my
journals. Then I pick up the one that’s filled with memories of him. And I
know it’s finally time to read the last entry I wrote. Then I can close the
book for good.
Dear Ellen,
Most of the time I’m thankful you don’t know I exist and that I’ve never really
mailed you any of these things I write to you.
But sometimes, especially tonight, I wish you did. I just need someone to talk to
about everything I’m feeling. It’s been six months since I’ve seen Atlas and I honestly
don’t know where he is or how he’s doing. So much has happened since the last letter
I wrote to you, when Atlas moved to Boston. I thought it was the last time I’d see
him for a while, but it wasn’t.
I saw him again after he left, several weeks later. It was my sixteenth birthday
and when he showed up, it became the absolute best day of my life.
And then the absolute worst.

---

It had been exactly forty-two days since Atlas left for Boston. I counted every day
like it would help somehow. I was so depressed, Ellen. I still am. People say that
teenagers don’t know how to love like an adult. Part of me believes that, but I’m not
an adult and so I have nothing to compare it to. But I do believe it’s probably
different. I’m sure there’s more substance in the love between two adults than there is
between two teenagers. There’s probably more maturity, more respect, more
responsibility. But no matter how different the substance of a love might be at
different ages in a person’s life, I know that love still has to weigh the same. You feel
that weight on your shoulders and in your stomach and on your heart no matter
how old you are. And my feelings for Atlas are very heavy. Every night I cry myself to
sleep and I whisper, “Just keep swimming.” But it gets really hard to swim when you
feel like you’re anchored in the water.
Now that I think about it, I’ve probably been experiencing the stages of grief in a
sense. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I was deep in the
depression stage the night of my sixteenth birthday. My mother had tried to make the
day a good one. She bought me gardening supplies, made my favorite cake, and the
two of us went to dinner together. But by the time I had crawled into bed that night,
I couldn’t shake the sadness.
I was crying when I heard the tap on my window. At first, I thought it had
started raining. But then I heard his voice. I jumped up and ran to the window, my
heart in hysterics. He was standing there in the dark, smiling at me. I raised the