Chapter Twenty-Five

twenty-five

I was right from the start—Ellie and I are not the stuff of Hallmark movies. No Hallmark executive would’ve green-lighted what just happened in my childhood bedroom under the supervision of a teddy bear and a watercolor elephant. Now, Ellie and I are starfished as much as my full-size bed will allow, both of us entirely spent and baking in the tiny bit of sun that’s fought its way through both the cloud cover and the curtains. It’s early, and I’m exhausted, but I wouldn’t trade a second of this for a full night’s sleep.

When my panting slows to nice, even breaths, I break the silence with a question. “Are accidental sleepovers our thing now?”

Ellie laughs through closed lips. “Who said this was accidental? I fully planned on winding up in your bed. I thought we were on the same page until you brought out the flash cards.”

I turn my head to the side and see that Ellie has already done the same; we’re nose to nose, bathing in each other’s morning breath, but neither of us seems to mind. “So this was all part of your master plan, huh?” I squeeze her side, and Ellie squeals, swatting my hand away. So she’s ticklish. Noted.

“I didn’t have a plan,” she says. “Just a lot of hope.” She laces her fingers into mine as a preventative measure against further tickling, but the warmth of her palm feels more like a prize than a punishment. In another life, maybe I’ll be the type of person who can bask in this glow without analyzing it to death, but right now, I can’t be. Especially not with Ellie heading back to Champaign today. We have so little time, and I’m not wasting any more of it wondering where we stand.

“So,” I say, “what do you think?”

Ellie shifts, and the sheets rustle beneath her. “What do you mean?”

“You know. What do you think about…this?” I sweep my one free hand through the air, gesturing to our sweaty, bare legs, but also to the events of the last hour. Or several hours. I haven’t checked the time. “Was this a one-time thing, or…?”

“I told you that I don’t do the casual thing,” Ellie reminds me.

“You also told me you weren’t looking for anything at all,” I say. “And I think this qualifies as something.”

“Of course it’s something,” she says. Her face softens with sincerity. “I told you already. I like you, Murph.”

“I like you too, Ellie.” It feels like too shallow a word. I’m interested in her. I’m curious about her. About us and what we could be. “But, like, that was all said before…this.” I sweep my hand through the air again, retracing the same path as before. “What does this mean?”

She sits up, letting go of my hand, and looks up at the ceiling. “I think…it means…I really like you.” There must be bad news hovering above us because, when Ellie’s eyes come down to meet mine, she looks worried. “There are a lot of moving pieces though. You don’t know where you’ll be next semester, and I don’t know where I’ll be next year. Even if we tried to make a plan, we’d probably end up needing to change it.”

I nod along as I sit up beside her. I’m no stranger to a changed plan.

“But I like who I am when I’m with you,” Ellie goes on. She nuzzles into the crook of my shoulder, and I breathe in the familiar scent of grapefruit. “I liked the Thanksgiving trial run of what we could be. I like thinking about going to Pride and Cubs games with you. I like kissing you.” She looks up at me with sultry eyes and a hint of a smirk. “I really, really like kissing you.”

“I like kissing you too.” I lean over and press my lips against her forehead, just to prove it.

“And my mom likes you. My aunt likes you. My dad is obsessed with your entire existence. There’s just so much we don’t know.” She drums her fingers against the exposed stretch of skin beneath the hem of my T-shirt before sighing and pulling away, taking my hand again with a smile too small to grant me dimple privileges. “I’m excited about you, Murphy, but I feel like we need more time, and I’m not sure if we’re going to get it.”

There’s a whine trapped deep inside me that I’m dying to let out. I’m too old to be feeling like this, like a little kid who won’t necessarily get her way. I’ve been feeling that way a lot lately. Childish, but not wanting to be. Ready to be better. Ready to grow up. “I just can’t believe I fucked up the U of I application,” I grumble. “If I’d just gotten it in on time, we’d have a semester together to figure it out.”

“You can’t keep beating yourself up for something you can’t change, Murph,” Ellie says, squeezing my hand for emphasis. “It would’ve been amazing to be in the same place, but then what? Maybe I’m not moving to New York, but I’m not staying in Champaign either. If it wasn’t this, it’d just be something else down the line.”

“Cool, so it’s just always gonna be hard,” I say. “Gotcha.”

“Drama queen.” Ellie’s smile stretches, and her dimple barely pokes through.

“I love your dimple,” I say. “Have I told you that?”

“Yeah? It shows up a lot when you’re around.”

Our tender moment is squashed flat by the thunk of pounding on the door. “Thirty minutes until we need to be out!” Mom shouts in a voice that I think she thinks is cheerful but comes across in the key of panic. Ellie and I both jolt all the way upright, and my heart high jumps to the base of my throat. Thirty minutes? That can’t be right. The sun is barely up. I snatch my phone off its charger just in time to watch the time roll over to 9:01. Shit shit shit. How the fuck did I not hear my alarm? Or did we doze off before I remembered to set one?

“Thirty minutes!” Mom calls again. Twenty-nine minutes, technically, but it hardly feels like the time to mention it. “Are you up and moving?”

“I’m up!” I shout back. “I’m moving!” I leap out of bed so it’s not technically a lie. Ellie’s right behind me, springing into action. While I dig through my mostly empty dresser and start drafting an apology to my optometrist for yet another night sleeping in my contacts, Ellie gets to work making the bed in a Chess-approved way, arranging the throw pillows while I put in a fresh set of dailies.

“I’m gonna finish getting ready in the bathroom,” I say, checking our time as I bolt toward the door. It’s 9:06. Shit. “Do you mind picking up in here while I—”

“I’ve got it.” Ellie dismisses me with two flicks of her wrist. “Just go.”

I bolt down the hall, moving so fast I accidentally slam the bathroom door behind me. Brush teeth, wash face, dry shampoo, done. After hitting a PR on my morning routine speed run, I stumble out of the bathroom and into a version of my bedroom that almost looks better than when Chess set it up. Not a pom-pom out of place. “You’re a lifesaver,” I say, squeezing Ellie’s hand extra tight. She squeezes back even tighter.

“What do you need?” Her still-sleepy eyes dart around the room. “Study guide? Phone charger?”

I wave her off between swipes of deodorant. “I’ve got it. Just hand me my backpack.”

She does, and I start clearing away all final, lingering evidence that I have ever lived here. Laptop charger, phone charger, headphones—it all gets swept into my backpack along with my flash cards and laptop. I need to go straight to Sip after my final; they’ll just have to deal with the fact that I’m in the same clothes as yesterday. While Ellie grabs her mug and my half-empty LaCroix from last night, I give the room a quick Febreze, just to be extra safe. “All right,” I sigh, “good enough. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

I practically fall down the stairs to the kitchen, where Ellie calmly buses her mug while I pour frantic gulps of cold brew straight out of the bottle and down my throat. Today’s breakfast of champions gets scooped right from the cereal box, and I hold my hand beneath my chin like I’m a horse at a trough, munching up Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Over the sink, of course, to avoid risk of my parents disowning me. Naturally, I’m licking cinnamon sugar off my palm when I spot a stranger in a golf shirt staring back at me from the living room. Oh right. The other realtor.

“Good morning,” Tom greets me in a singsongy voice, and I try to smile and chew at the same time.

“Morning,” I say through a mouthful of cereal. “Just finishing up. We’ll be out in a sec.”

I’m still rinsing cinnamon sugar from my fingers when Mom and Dad walk in, bringing with them an energy that splits the difference between Ellie’s calm and my utter distress.

“Good morning!” Ellie says in the sort of genuinely cheerful voice Mom tried to emulate earlier.

“Good morning, Ellie,” Mom says, remembering her name by some miracle.

Dad tips his invisible hat. “Morning.”

Neither of them bat an eye at my overnight guest, and in the throes of this nightmare, it feels like a moment of pure grace. That moment ends when I check the time. It’s 9:26. We’ve gotta bounce.

After several apologies for drinking straight from the bottle of cold brew, I shove my arms into my jacket, sling my backpack over one shoulder, and hug Mom and Dad goodbye. We don’t usually hug before I leave the house, but today feels different. I tell them each individually that I love them, and when they say it back, they tack on a “good luck.”

“It was lovely to meet you!” Ellie shouts from the front door, waving with one hand and pulling her beanie down over her bangs with the other.

“You too, sweetheart!” Mom shouts. “Drive safe!”

Only then does it occur to me that Ellie and I are getting into separate cars, and a new brand of panic spills over my nerves. By the time I’m out of my exam, I’m sure she’ll be halfway back to U of I.

“Ellie, wait.” I catch her arm just as we step outside. “Can we finish our conversation from earlier real quick?”

“We don’t have time,” she reminds me. “How far is Weymouth from here? Ten minutes?”

“Fifteen.”

“Shit, Murph, you have to go! “

“And if we don’t talk about this before my test, I’ll be distracted and fail,” I say. “So can we just talk?”

Ellie claws her phone out of her pocket and checks the time. “One minute. We have literally one minute. Shoot.”

I suck in a wobbly breath, steadying my gaze on her wide blue eyes. They stretch a little more, urging me to say something. Time is going too fast. “What you said earlier about this…us…” I pause, trying to make sense of what I’m even saying. “I know we need more time and—”

“There’s no time,” she says, and I nod, because it’s true, but God I wish it weren’t. I wish we had all day, all month, the rest of the year. I wish we had next semester together at U of I. I wish we had three years together back in high school. Ellie takes both of my hands in hers, her cold little thumbs tracing twin hearts on the space between my thumb and forefinger, grounding me. “Murphy,” she says. “Whatever happens next for us—”

“Murphy!” My mother’s voice yells from near the garage. “You’ve got us blocked in, honey!”

Shit. I forgot my parents need to get out of here too.

“TWO SECONDS, MOM!” I yell back. Ellie’s grip loosens, but I know she won’t let go.

“Listen,” Ellie says, “I’m willing to try long distance, no matter what that looks like.” She pauses, then adds, “I mean, so long as you want that too.”

“I do,” I say. “I want that. I want us, even if it’s not perfect.”

Ellie smiles coyly as her fingers wrap a little tighter around mine. “It doesn’t have to be perfect to be good,” she reminds me.

When she kisses me, it’s both.