15-05-2021-052358It-Ends-with-Us

hours. Let’s just say we both kissed a lot. We both laughed a lot. We both loved
a lot. We both breathed a lot. A lot. And we both had to cover our mouths and
be as quiet and still as we could so we wouldn’t get caught.
When we were finished, he held me against him, skin to skin, hand to heart.
He kissed me and looked straight in my eyes.
“I love you, Lily. Everything you are. I love you.”
I know those words get thrown around a lot, especially by teenagers. A lot of
times prematurely and without much merit. But when he said them to me, I
knew he wasn’t saying it like he was in love with me. It wasn’t that kind of “I
love you.”
Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come
in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger
and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them
things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto
the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once
been there, long after the tide recedes.
That was what Atlas was telling me when he said “I love you.” He was
letting me know that I was the biggest wave he’d ever come across. And I
brought so much with me that my impressions would always be there, even
when the tide rolled out.
After he said he loved me, he told me he had a birthday present for me. He
pulled out a small brown bag. “It isn’t much, but it’s all I could afford.”
I opened the bag and pulled out the best present I’d ever received. It was a
magnet that said “Boston” on the top. At the bottom in tiny letters, it said
“Where everything is better.” I told him I would keep it forever, and every time I
look at it I’ll think of him.
When I started out this letter, I said my sixteenth birthday was one of the
best days of my life. Because up until that second, it was.
It was the next few minutes that weren’t.
Before Atlas had shown up that night, I wasn’t expecting him, so I didn’t
think to lock my bedroom door. My father heard me in there talking to someone,
and when he threw open my door and saw Atlas in bed with me, he was
angrier than I’d ever seen him. And Atlas was at a disadvantage by not being
prepared for what came next.
I’ll never forget that moment for as long as I live. Being completely helpless
as my father came down on him with a baseball bat. The sound of bones
snapping was the only thing piercing through my screams.