“Yes.”
“You want to start at one of the saddest moments ever.”
“I know I can’t rewrite the history of that moment, but you should never, ever feel like that again. Not because of me. And I promise you, I swear—” Cris paused, looking down at the box. He pointed. “I swear on this pie. I will pay attention. I will listen to you. In fact, I want to say something else, because I want this to be completely clear.” Cris grabbed her hands. “I don’t care if you are a show host or a therapist, autistic or neurotypical. None of it changes one thing about how I feel. And it’s not that I am ignoring what you are, it’s that I see it all and it’s part of the many beautiful, wonderful, amazing things about you. In fact, right now, you’re all I see. Just give this a chance. Please. Because we do make sense, whether it’s in Italy or here. You’ll see.”
“Cris,” she said softly, eyeing the box.
“Yeah.”
“You have to stop talking for one second so I can get a knife.” Ellie looked up at him, her face serious. She needed an excuse to process everything he was saying while trying to calm down. The need for utensils would have to suffice. “But don’t forget what you were saying.”
“Yeah.”
Ellie turned back to the cabinets and pulled out two plates, two forks, and a knife. She pulled two napkins out of the wicker holder on the counter and pointed to the box.
“Outside?” she asked. Cris nodded, picked up the box, and followed her out.
What Los Angeles did not have in starlight, it made up for in the perfect evening sky, a dusky blue turning into navy at its edges. The air was still warm, but a cooling breeze flitted through the fruit trees in the small yard. Ellie flipped on the string of globe lights above the tiny round wooden tea table and chairs that she and Peggy picked out on a Costco spree. She took the box from Cris’s hands and placed the pie on the table along with the plates and silverware. He stood, looking at her.
“Let’s sit, okay?” She pulled a chair under her as he did the same, and their knees banged together. “Ouch.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He rubbed her knee for a second, but quickly pulled away and ran his hands down his thighs.
“It’s okay,” she said. He seemed as nervous as she was. “Um, so let’s go back to whether we make sense.”
“Right.” He nodded.
She had so many thoughts in her head but hadn’t quite figured out which one needed to be said first. She glanced down at the still-tingling spot where his knee had bumped hers and decided that she could start with the truth. “Let me say that I am happy to see you. I probably shouldn’t admit that, but I’d be lying and that’s pointless.” Shepaused, fiddling with the flatware on top of the dishes. “On the drive all the way from New York, I tried really hard to erase the part where you entered my life again, but it didn’t work very well. And I knew I really failed when I saw you on the show because I just kept thinking how odd it was that I wasn’t standing there with you somewhere off camera. It’s the weirdest thing, but I felt like I should have been there.”
“Well, Ben was. I could have gone by myself, but somehow it was like having a little part of you there.”
“With better fashion sense,” she said, the jitters slowly ebbing away. “You definitely shocked me. I know that interview was as far out of your comfort zone as humanly possible. It also made me think that you were being very brave, finally. You were standing up for yourself.”
“It didn’t feel brave; it was terrifying.”
“It never feels brave in the moment. Sometimes people do something because it’s right, not because they think it’s going to make them into some hero.”
“That’s the last thing I want to be.”
“And yet you defended me—pretty nicely, I’ll add. It was very gallant,” she said, craning her head back to look up at the navy blue beyond the lights. “But it didn’t make it easy for me to keep telling myself that you mean nothing to me.”
“I’m not sorry about that,” he said, meeting her eyes.
“Me either. It made me do a lot of thinking.” She paused. When she lay awake in bed two nights ago, she didn’t know if she was looking for a reason to believe what he’d said that morning or if she was still trying to find a reason to resist. It was like what Greta kept saying in Chiavari—what he said might not matter as much if she didn’t have feelings for him. If she was going to figure this out once and for all, she needed to think about what she really felt, not ignore the highlight reelor the bumps in the road, but consider all of it in all its untidy beauty. “I feel like some part of me thought that if I could fix our current catastrophes, it would help me rewrite our past catastrophes. But I forgot that our past is also a part of who we are, even if some of it was a mess. It’s better to accept than rewrite—even when it comes to ourselves, you know?” She looked down and smiled. “I know that’s not what I wanted to hear when everything happened in Italy, but it’s the truth.”
“Ellie, I don’t want you to rewrite any part of you,” he said, holding out a hand.
“And I don’t want you to rewrite any part of you. Or us.” Ellie slid her hand into his.
“Is there still an us?”
“I’m starting to think there was nevernotan us.” Her eyes met his. “The good years, the bad years—our story is far from perfect, but it’s still us. I am tired of trying to have everything perfect, all lined up and predictable. If you love someone, you have to pretty much expect the unpredictable. I think that’s what’ssupposedto happen. I mean, especially now that the dream team just soft-launched their reunion tour ten minutes ago.”
Cris smiled, raising an eyebrow. “I’m really happy about your parents, but I am pretty sure you didn’t get all of this from ten minutes ago.”
“You might be right,” she grinned. “However, my parents do represent significant evidence.”
“Okay, but can we go back to the part where you said, ‘if you love someone’?” He pulled her other hand into his.
