Lily

Rhys Conner was in my apartment.

Repeat: Rhys Conner was in my apartment.

I wasn’t a teenager anymore; I shouldn’t have been panicking about having a boy in my apartment.

But this wasn’t any boy. This was Rhys.

And he was in my apartment.

Did I say that already?

I felt melty and hot, and my brain had this fog around it that was making everything feel slow and fuzzy.

“Do you want something to drink?” I finally asked, heading toward the kitchen. It was a vain attempt to put some distance between us. Despite Jen’s urging, I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to happen.

“Sure, if you’re having something.” Rhys stayed in the living room, looking around. “Nice place. Got an early start on Christmas, I see?” He nodded toward the fake mini Christmas tree on the table and then at the white fairy lights I’d strung around the room.

I brought over the wine along with two glasses. “You know me.”

His eyes met mine as he took his glass. “I always loved that about you.”

I blushed. Hard.

“I like that you celebrate shit. That you put in the effort. It’s pretty awesome.” He spoke softly as he took a step closer to the tiny tree.

I smiled at the floor, unsure what to say to that.

“You kept it.”

I looked up. He was fingering one of the ornaments. A purple piece of felt with my name stitched on it.

I felt my heart clench.

“It’s one of my favorites,” I said quietly.

His back was to me, but I swear I could see him smile as he ran his thumb over the front.

“How’s the cabin?” He turned back to me.

I took another sip of wine before answering. “I wouldn’t know, actually. Mom ended up selling it a while back.”

Rhys raised his eyebrows at me. “No. You’re serious?”

I nodded. “’Fraid so. I assume you heard she and Lance broke up.”

Rhys took another drink of wine and walked over to the windows. Our apartment looked out toward a small park across the street. “I heard.”

I bobbed my head. “It was for the best.” Then I paused. “Rhys, I know it sounds weird, but Mom actually felt grateful for that night.”

Rhys scoffed, still staring outside.

“No, really. She was horrified by how he treated you. She said in some way she felt lucky that she got to see his true colors before they got engaged. But she also felt really guilty after you left.” I hesitated for a moment, trying to gauge his reaction. “We both did.”

Rhys finally turned to me, a look of incredulity on his face. “There’s nothing for either of you to have felt guilty about. The guy was an asshole. That was on him.”

I pressed my lips together. “I heard he passed away. I’m sorry.”

Rhys sucked in a breath. “Yeah, well, I’m not. He was a dick until the end.”

“You spoke with him?”

“He got pancreatic cancer. My uncle called and somehow convinced me that if I didn’t come see him, I’d regret it. So I ditched an opening to go visit him.”

“And?”

“And he was a jerk. The guy wouldn’t even look at me.” Rhys let out a rough sigh. “Hell, I don’t know why I thought being on the edge of death might make him suddenly not be an asshole. Turns out, that situation just brings out your true colors. He used the time to tell me how worthless I was, that I was a mistake, and that he’d tried to get my mom to have an abortion.”

My mouth fell open. “Jesus.”

“It’s funny; in a way, I guess it did provide closure, though. Made me one hundred percent sure I’d done the right thing in cutting him out of my life.”

I stared at my shoes with no idea how to respond.

“How is your mom?” Rhys took a few steps back toward me.

I looked up, glad for the reprieve. “What? Oh, she’s…she’s good, actually. It took her a while to get back to dating after everything, but she met this really good guy, Hank. He’s retired and has a boat, and they just sail around most of the time. They’re down in Mexico right now.”

His eyes softened. “That’s good. Your mom is sweet. She deserves a good guy.”

We stared at our wine glasses in silence for a moment. I wasn’t sure how to ask Rhys about us. After all, what would I even be asking? I guess at the core of it, I wanted to know if I’d meant anything to him, if Tahoe had meant anything. But that felt so…shallow. And even then, if he said yes? Then what? Did I want to know because it would be some sort of permission to kiss him again?

If I wanted to kiss him again, what did our past matter?

“So,” I said finally. “Are you seeing anyone?”

I swear the corners of his mouth ticked up ever so slightly.

“No one important,” he replied, his eyes sparkling as he took another step toward me, closing the distance between us.

I rolled my eyes and groaned. “Oh my God, typical Rhys Conner, ladies and gentlemen.”

He tilted his head at me. “What do you mean?”

“No one important? Once a dog, always a dog.”

He put his glass down on the coffee table and slid his hands down around my waist. “Hmm, is someone jealous?”

“You wish.” I hoped my sass would counteract the pink flush on my cheeks. “So, you have tons of floozies flocking toward you now that you’re all successful, huh?”

He simply shrugged.

“Oh my God, he doesn’t even try to deny it,” I teased, my voice uncontrollably breathy.

His eyes settled into mine, liquefying my insides. “Okay, okay, there are no floozies, as you so eloquently put it.” He chuckled. “You’ve always been sassier than you look, you know that?”

“Rhys,” I warned as he closed any distance remaining between us, pressing right against me. “What are you doing?”

His eyes moved down to my lips. “God damn, I’ve missed you.”

I swallowed, my chest heavy with need as the wine buzzed in my head. It’d been years, but my body remembered exactly where we’d left off.

“Rhys,” I breathed, “I…I can’t do this again.”

Tilting my chin up with his fingers, he locked eyes with me.

“Do what?”

I hesitated, my blood running fast and hot. “This. Us. I just can’t.”

“Why, Lily?”

“Because it isn’t going to end well.”

He stared at me. “How could you know that?”

“Please,” I begged, pulling away from him. “You have no idea how hard this is for me.”

His forehead scrunched. “No, Lily, this is ridiculous. I finally find you for the first time in years, and you want to dismiss me? Just like that? No. I won’t accept that. Something keeps pushing you and me together. I, for one, want to explore that.”

His words sounded so good, so true, I almost allowed myself to believe them. But deep down, I couldn’t let myself to be overtaken again. It had been so much work to get myself back together after he’d left - both times. I couldn’t give up my peace of mind.

“Rhys, you left me. You always leave me. Why would I think this would be any different?”

“Lily.” He took a deep breath.

I looked at the floor.

“Look -  I made mistakes, okay? We both did.”

I stared at him, my head tilting back. “We both did?”

“You told me that day at the cabin that we couldn’t be together. You basically ended us before we could even begin. How do you think that felt?”

I went silent. He was right.

 “Probably not…not good.”

He sighed. “It’s okay. I understood. You weren’t ready.”

There was an awkward silence for a moment until he spoke again.

“You know, I tried to find you.”

I looked up. “What?”

He crossed his arms and looked off behind me. “That summer. I finally got myself set up. It was a shit-show that year, with me leaving school, and I just had to take care of all that crap. But I looked for you online.”

I pressed my mouth into a line. “I deleted my Facebook profile.”

“Yeah, you did.” He uncrossed his arms and ran his hands over his face. “I figured you were avoiding me.”

“I wasn’t avoiding you.” Okay, maybe I was avoiding him.

“It’s okay. I get it.”

We were silent again as Rhys stared at me.

I stared back at the ground.

“You know I even called Henning once?”

I looked up. “You called my college?”

“They wouldn’t give me your info. Said it was a student privacy issue.”

I still couldn’t believe it. Rhys had tried to track me down. This was new information. Not that it changed anything. Simply him being here brought all these feelings up, new and old. It was overwhelming, and I was having a hard time processing it all.

“Rhys,” I said quietly but firmly. “I need you to leave.”

His face turned stony. “Lily.”

I went over to the door and slowly pulled it open.

He didn’t move. “No. I’m not leaving.”

“Please -  don’t make this harder than it is. I can’t - I can’t think with you here.”

“What do you need to think about? It’s me, Lily.”

“Exactly! And you’re overwhelming. I get flooded around you, Rhys. Please. I just…I just need some time alone, okay?”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Rhys.”

“Lily.”

“Please.”

Rhys came and stood with me at the door. “Fine. Fine. I’ll go now, but I’m not giving up on you, Liliana. This is not going to be the end of us.”

He left.

As soon as he’d turned down the hall, I locked the door, slumped to the ground, and cried.