The Towering Sky

“I heard that you and Max are moving in together,” Atlas went on.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” The apartment in Oxford felt suddenly as fanciful, as detached from reality, as something she had dreamed. Would she really live there?

“Maybe?” he repeated, puzzled.

“I’m not even sure I want to go to Oxford anymore,” Avery admitted.

Atlas was quiet for a moment, digesting that. “It’s funny,” he said at last. “I was so surprised when you first announced that you were applying there. I had always pictured you doing something more adventurous. Like Semester at Sea. Or that school in Peru, the one perched on the edge of a mountain.”

Avery should have known that Atlas would recognize her restlessness, her confused desire to get out of New York and figure out who she was. Atlas, the boy who gave her a magic carpet.

While Max handed her the key-chips to an apartment that came complete with a whole entire life.

Avery lowered herself to the floor, no longer caring about her expensive gown, and looped her arms around her legs to rest her forehead against her knees. “I wish you hadn’t come home,” she heard herself say. “I was doing just fine until you showed up and threw everything out of whack. You wouldn’t understand, Atlas, you’re so obviously happy in Dubai. But it was hard for me, for a long time after we said good-bye.”

She heard him slide down to sit next to her. “I’m not actually that happy in Dubai.”

Avery blinked. “You always seem happy when I see you.”

“Of course. Because definitionally, you only ever see me when I’m with you. And you make me happy, Aves. Just being around you makes me happy.”

The silence stretched between them like a rubber band at breaking point.

“Atlas,” Avery whispered, then broke off. A million things swirled incoherently in her mind. But Atlas was talking again, his words tumbling rapidly over one another.

“Look, I didn’t expect to say any of this tonight, but I can’t help myself. Not anymore.”

She felt him shift next to her in the darkness, a disembodied voice. Maybe it was easier for them to talk like this, she thought, without seeing each other’s faces.

She wondered if he was going to kiss her again. She wondered what she would do, if he did.

“When I broke up with you in Dubai, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought there was no way we could ever be together. But the problem is, there’s no way I can be without you either. I ran away from you like a coward, and everywhere I went, you caught up to me. Everywhere I fled, I kept seeing you,” he finished. “Every time, Avery, you happen to me all over again.”

Avery knew she could make Atlas stop saying these things. One word from her and he would stop, and they would pretend it all away, just as they’d pretended away their kiss.

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Because she didn’t really want him to stop.

Next to her Atlas was acutely still. “When Dad asked me to come back for the election, I told myself I wouldn’t do this. I made a plan and I meant it, I really did, and it would all have been fine except we’re here in the dark and now I have this chance to tell you, and I realize that I have to take it. It kills me every time I see you with Max.”

His hand brushed hers, his pinkie finger curling imperceptibly around hers. Avery made no move to pull away. Where their skin touched, miniature fireworks erupted.

“I thought if I could just see you, make sure you were okay, I might get some kind of closure. I swore to myself I wouldn’t kiss you again, and then I did.” Atlas shook his head. “Obviously I can’t keep my promises, even to myself. Not when it comes to you.”

Tears slid down Avery’s cheeks to splatter on the expensive golden fabric of her gown.

“Tell me right now that I shouldn’t fight for you.” There was a low, urgent note in his voice, as if he were staking his entire life on what she said next. “Tell me that you’ve chosen Max, and I’ll back down, I swear it. You’ll never hear any of this from me again. But I won’t stop unless you tell me to. I had to say something—because I knew this was my very last chance, before I lost you forever.”

Avery opened her mouth again to tell Atlas to stop, to tell him that she was choosing Max, that she loved Max. But she couldn’t.

Max was wonderful, and he would make some girl very happy someday. That girl just wasn’t her.

Avery knew, deep down, that there was really no choice. There never had been, for her. There was only one path forward, and he was right here in the elevator with her.

“Atlas,” she said again, and now she was laughing through her tears. “Why is your timing always so terrible?”

Somehow she’d turned in the darkness and reached for his face, cradling it between both palms as if it was something infinitely precious, her fingers threaded in his hair.

Avery was done fighting this. She had tried so hard not to love Atlas, but her love had always been there, through all the long days they were apart, just waiting for this moment.

Tentatively, she kissed him. His mouth instinctively found hers. Their bodies, like their breath, folded quietly together in the darkness.

“I love you,” she said wonderingly between kisses. “I love you, I love you,” and Atlas was saying it back; and Avery knew this was wrong, that it was cruel to Max, but she couldn’t find it in her to stop. They kissed as if there was no time left in the world for them, and maybe there wasn’t.