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

He set his briefcase down on the kitchen table and then walked to the
refrigerator and pulled out a beer.
“The electricity has been out,” I said. “I was bored so I decided to bake while
I waited for it to come back on.”
My father sat down at the table and spent the next ten minutes asking me
questions about school and if I’d thought about going to college. Occasionally
when it was just the two of us, I saw glimpses of a how a normal relationship
with a father could be. Sitting at the kitchen table with him discussing colleges
and career choices and high school. As much as I hated him most of the time, I
still longed for 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.