Chapter 36

Elana

Taking a leap of faith when it comes to the heart can be one of the most difficult decisions a person will ever face. It wasn’t like picking a house or a school. It was making a decision that could cause you physical pain or raise you up, bringing happiness and contentment for the rest of your life. For me, I knew that making a decision about a person was way more serious than where I laid my head at night. One thing that Lillie’s death taught me was the fact that you didn’t take your houses and cars and clothes with you when you died. What was important were the feelings you left with other people, the lives you changed by the emotional decisions that you made along the way. At that moment, I was standing outside the door to Dolly’s, and I had never felt more unsure about anything I had ever done before.

I took in a deep breath, grasped the handle to the door, and walked inside, straightening my shirt and starting to unbutton my coat. The place was busy, but not as busy as the first time we’d been here. This time though, instead of feeling overwhelmed with the memories of the past, I was feeling extremely intimidated by all the emotions that could possibly lead to the future. I scanned the room with my eyes, landing on the same booth that we had sat in last time we came. He was looking down at the menu and hadn’t seen me walk inside yet, so I breathed deeply, gathering my emotions before I started across the floor.

As soon as I stepped forward, Ollie looked up, our eyes locked, and my knees began to shake. Just seeing him made my heart flutter, and I thought about all the notes and the letter he had sent me. Still, I couldn’t get caught up in his romantic gesture. I needed to remember the facts, the actual things that happened. I knew love could blind you, and I didn’t want to be the girl that ignored the signs until ten years down the road when it was all too late. He smiled at me as I approached, taking off my coat and scooting into the booth across the table from him.

My heart was pounding, beating so rapidly in my chest that I could hear it echoing into my ears. My palms were sweaty, my hands were shaking, and I couldn’t seem to get a coherent thought to form in my head. I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed in and out of my nose, a trick my therapist taught me when I felt a panic attack coming on. After a few moments, I opened them back up and met Ollie’s stare. He looked concerned, but I was fine. I just needed to get this conversation going. The silence between us was nerve-racking and thick.

I wasn’t sure how to start this. He was the one who had asked me to meet him here, after all. I didn’t even know what he thought the problem was, or if he even cared what the problem was. I took my clasped hands off the table and set them in my lap, thinking it was better to not give the opportunity for physical touch at that moment. I knew that if he touched me, I might just fold, and I had to keep my wits about me. I waited quietly for him to speak.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “I know that asking you here when everything is as off-kilter with us as it is had to be hard for you to do. I guess what I want to know is really simple in theory, but probably more complex to explain. Either way, I’m going to get straight to the point. I want to know why you broke things off with me.”

He stared at me, and I swallowed hard, unsure of what to say at that moment. He didn’t understand. How could he? He was living his life. I knew that if I was right, he obviously had fooled himself into thinking that he really did care about me. In the meantime, I was waking up to him telling Lillie that he will love her forever. I knew that I couldn’t be with him, knowing that all I was to him was a distraction, a filler for the place that had been vacant for five years, a replacement for a woman that had died. I wanted him to love me for me. I decided that the best course of action at that point was to tell the truth. I knew if I didn’t, and he realized it—which he would because I was a terrible liar—there would never be any sort of closure between us.

I needed closure. I needed to know that he understood that he was falling for me, but at the same time, telling Lillie he loved her in his dreams. I needed him to know that even though he was allowed to always love Lillie, in a relationship, he had to push that away and love the person that he was with for who they were, not just because they took some of the pain away. Trust me, I knew how it felt to have that void, and then how it felt to be able to feel the warmth in your chest again. The biggest difference between the two of us was the fact that he was romantically involved with her, but she was my best friend. He wasn’t stepping into her shoes, but I was, taking my life from where it was to exactly where Lillie’s was when she tragically died five years ago. No matter how I put it to myself, I was worth way more than that.

“The last night that you stayed with me,” I said, taking a deep breath. “We had fallen asleep in each other’s arms. Everything was fine, perfect even, but then I woke up to the sound of you mumbling in your sleep. At first, I couldn’t understand anything that you were saying. It was just a bunch of gibberish. Then you started saying Lillie’s name. You called out to her over and over again. At first, I understood, having had dreams about Lillie quite frequently. So, I got up and went into the bathroom and got you a drink of water. I was going to wake you up, tell you it was a dream, and make sure you were able to comfortably go back to bed. However, as I walked across the room back to your side, you said something else. You said, ‘I love you, and I always will.’ I didn’t know what to do. I just froze. You continued to mumble and turn in your sleep, whispers of Lillie’s name escaping your lips, and then you rested still for the rest of the time that I was there.”

I looked up at Ollie and watched as a frown moved over his face. I didn’t know if that frown was because of the dream, because of what he said, or because I was bringing it up to him. This wasn’t one of those situations where I fell asleep and dreamed he cheated, waking up and being angry at him for no reason at all. This was his dream and his verbal outpouring of love for his dead fiancée, all while lying next to me in my bed. It was hard to accept, even for me who heard it firsthand. I could only imagine that it may be hard for him to swallow as well, especially since I was assuming he didn’t remember any of this at all. That, to me, made it even worse, and I almost felt like a dream from your subconscious was even more truthful than one that happened in the fleeting moment after you fall to sleep but before you reach the depth of your rest. This was obviously something that came from his subconscious, a manifestation of the woman he really loved, maybe even guilt for having spent so much time with me that weekend.

“All right,” he said. “Go on.”

“It was a really long night for me,” I replied. “I laid awake on the bed for quite a while, mulling it over in my head, feeling the pangs of heartbreak in my chest. My soul felt completely crushed, and by the time I felt the tears coming, I knew I had to get out of the bed. I didn’t want to face anything at that moment, not even the reality that I knew was stewing in the back of my mind.”

“What reality was that?”

I sat there looking at him for several moments, trying to decide what I wanted to say to him. I knew the truth was preferable, but I also knew it would be painful for the both of us. I knew that letting him go completely would put a stamp on that relationship that could never be undone, just more bad past memories for us to both hold onto. I knew that it would be harder for him to accept it because he was the man that had dreamt what it was that he dreamt.

“It’s all right,” he said, nodding. “Say it. Whatever it is, I want to hear the honest truth.”

I nodded and took in a deep breath, closing my eyes and formulating my words. He sat patiently across the table from me, reminding me just how gentle and patient he had always been with me. I pushed that thought out of my head, knowing it wouldn’t make any of this any easier.

“I’m afraid that you’re not over Lillie yet,” I said. “And I understand that you actually may never be. She is your ex by happenstance, not by choice. She was the woman you had chosen to spend the rest of your life with. That cannot be an easy thing to let go of, and in fact, it may be completely impossible to do, especially when you live here where you loved her, where you mourned her, and where you returned, not understanding what kind of impact that it would have on you. That being said, I think that maybe you’re with me because I’m the closest stand-in for Lillie that you could find. We have a history together that included her, and my love for her, though in a different way than yours, was just as strong. Those memories can really take hold of you sometimes. They can make two people feel closer than they ever would have been without that kind of past.”

I watched him as he sat across from me, listening patiently as I explained myself. Maybe coming here was a mistake. Maybe I should have told him all of this through a letter or over the phone. It was really difficult for me to keep my composure while I was staring across the table at his beautiful eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, tears falling down my cheeks. “You’re such a wonderful man, and I really think that this wasn’t intentional. I think that you haven’t even realized how much you still love Lillie and what you were doing with me. If we continue this, if I jump back into a relationship with you, I know that someday you’ll wake up, looking at your life like a stranger. You’ll have reached the point where you finally let her go, only instead of being alone, ready to tackle the world, you will have me in there. You will realize that I’m not Lillie, and from that, our relationship will fall to pieces. I can tell you now, though, I don’t want any more pieces in my life to clean up. I’ve had enough of my own for the last five years. I just want to be happy.”