It Ends With Us (2 page)

“That’s because I don’t live here.” I point in the direction of my apartment. “See that insurance building?”

He squints as he looks in the direction I’m pointing. “Yeah.”

“I live in the building next to it. It’s too short to see from here. It’s only three stories tall.”

He’s facing me again, resting his elbow on the ledge. “If you live over there, why are you here? Your boyfriend live here or something?”

His comment somehow makes me feel cheap. It was too easy—an amateurish pickup line. From the looks of this guy, I know he has better skills than that. It makes me think he saves the more
difficult pickup lines for the women he deems worthy.

“You have a nice roof,” I tell him.

He lifts an eyebrow, waiting for more of an explanation.

“I wanted fresh air. Somewhere to think. I pulled up Google Earth and found the closest apartment complex with a decent rooftop patio.”

He regards me with a smile. “At least you’re economical,” he says. “That’s a good quality to have.”

At least?

I nod, because I
am
economical. And it
is
a good quality to have.

“Why did you need fresh air?” he asks.

Because I buried my father today and gave an epically disastrous eulogy and now I feel like I can’t breathe.

I face forward again and slowly exhale. “Can we just not talk for a little while?”

He seems a bit relieved that I asked for silence. He leans over the ledge and lets an arm dangle as he stares down at the street. He stays like this for a while, and I stare at him the entire
time. He probably knows I’m staring, but he doesn’t seem to care.

“A guy fell off this roof last month,” he says.

I would be annoyed at his lack of respect for my request for silence, but I’m kind of intrigued.

“Was it an accident?”

He shrugs. “No one knows. It happened late in the evening. His wife said she was cooking dinner and he told her he was coming up here to take some pictures of the sunset. He was a
photographer. They think he was leaning over the ledge to get a shot of the skyline, and he slipped.”

I look over the ledge, wondering how someone could possibly put themselves in a situation where they could fall by accident. But then I remember I was just straddling the ledge on the other side
of the roof a few minutes ago.

“When my sister told me what happened, the only thing I could think about was whether or not he got the shot. I was hoping his camera didn’t fall with him, because that would have
been a real waste, you know? To die because of your love of photography, but you didn’t even get the final shot that cost you your life?”

His thought makes me laugh. Although I’m not sure I should have laughed at that. “Do you always say exactly what’s on your mind?”

He shrugs. “Not to most people.”

This makes me smile. I like that he doesn’t even know me, but for whatever reason, I’m not considered
most people
to him.

He rests his back against the ledge and folds his arms over his chest. “Were you born here?”

I shake my head. “No. Moved here from Maine after I graduated college.”

He scrunches up his nose, and it’s kind of hot. Watching this guy—dressed in his Burberry shirt with his two-hundred-dollar haircut—making silly faces.

“So you’re in Boston purgatory, huh? That’s gotta suck.”

“What do you mean?” I ask him.

The corner of his mouth curls up. “The tourists treat you like a local; the locals treat you like a tourist.”

I laugh. “Wow. That’s a very accurate description.”

“I’ve been here two months. I’m not even in purgatory yet, so you’re doing better than I am.”

“What brought you to Boston?”

“My residency. And my sister lives here.” He taps his foot and says, “Right beneath us, actually. Married a tech-savvy Bostonian and they bought the entire top
floor.”

I look down. “The
entire
top floor?”

He nods. “Lucky bastard works from home. Doesn’t even have to change out of his pajamas and makes seven figures a year.”

Lucky bastard, indeed.

“What kind of residency? Are you a doctor?”

He nods. “Neurosurgeon. Less than a year left of my residency and then it’s official.”

Stylish, well spoken,
and
smart.
And smokes pot.
If this were an SAT question, I would ask which one didn’t belong. “Should
doctors be smoking weed?”

He smirks. “Probably not. But if we didn’t indulge on occasion, there would be a lot more of us taking the leap over these ledges, I can promise you that.” He’s facing
forward again with his chin resting on his arms. His eyes are closed now, like he’s enjoying the wind against his face. He doesn’t look as intimidating like this.

“You want to know something that only the locals know?”

“Of course,” he says, bringing his attention back to me.

I point to the east. “See that building? The one with the green roof?”

He nods.

“There’s a building behind it on Melcher. There’s a house on top of the building. Like a legit house, built right on the rooftop. You can’t see it from the street, and
the building is so tall that not many people even know about it.”

He looks impressed. “Really?”

I nod. “I saw it when I was searching Google Earth, so I looked it up. Apparently a permit was granted for the construction in 1982. How cool would that be? To live in a house on top of a
building?”

“You’d get the whole roof to yourself,” he says.

I hadn’t thought of that. If I owned it I could plant gardens up there. I’d have an outlet.

“Who lives there?” he asks.

“No one really knows. It’s one of the great mysteries of Boston.”

He laughs and then looks at me inquisitively. “What’s another great mystery of Boston?”

“Your name.” As soon as I say it, I slap my hand against my forehead. It sounded so much like a cheesy pickup line; the only thing I can do is laugh at myself.

He smiles. “It’s Ryle,” he says. “Ryle Kincaid.”

I sigh, sinking into myself. “That’s a really great name.”

“Why do you sound sad about it?”

“Because, I’d give anything for a great name.”

“You don’t like the name Lily?”

I tilt my head and cock an eyebrow. “My last name . . . is Bloom.”

He’s quiet. I can feel him trying to hold back his pity.

“I know. It’s awful. It’s the name of a two-year-old little girl, not a twenty-three-year-old woman.”

“A two-year-old girl will have the same name no matter how old she gets. Names aren’t something we eventually grow out of, Lily Bloom.”

“Unfortunately for me,” I say. “But what makes it even worse is that I absolutely love gardening. I love flowers. Plants. Growing things. It’s my passion. It’s
always been my dream to open a florist shop, but I’m afraid if I did, people wouldn’t think my desire was authentic. They would think I was trying to capitalize off my name and that
being a florist isn’t really my dream job.”

“Maybe so,” he says. “But what’s that matter?”

“It doesn’t, I suppose.” I catch myself whispering, “
Lily Bloom’s
” quietly. I can see him smiling a little bit. “It really is
a great name for a florist. But I have a master’s degree in business. I’d be downgrading, don’t you think? I work for the biggest marketing firm in Boston.”

“Owning your own business isn’t downgrading,” he says.

I raise an eyebrow. “Unless it flops.”

He nods in agreement. “Unless it flops,” he says. “So what’s your middle name, Lily Bloom?”

I groan, which makes him perk up.

“You mean it gets worse?”

I drop my head in my hands and nod.

“Rose?”

I shake my head. “Worse.”

“Violet?”

“I wish.” I cringe and then mutter, “
Blossom
.”

There’s a moment of silence. “Goddamn,” he says softly.

“Yeah. Blossom is my mother’s maiden name and my parents thought it was fate that their last names were synonyms. So of course when they had me, a flower was their first
choice.”

“Your parents must be real assholes.”

One of them is.
Was.
“My father died this week.”

He glances at me. “Nice try. I’m not falling for that.”

“I’m serious. That’s why I came up here tonight. I think I just needed a good cry.”

He stares at me suspiciously for a moment to make sure I’m not pulling his leg. He doesn’t apologize for the blunder. Instead, his eyes grow a little more curious, like his intrigue
is actually authentic. “Were you close?”

That’s a hard question
. I rest my chin on my arms and look down at the street again. “I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. “As his daughter,
I loved him. But as a human, I hated him.”

I can feel him watching me for a moment, and then he says, “I like that. Your honesty.”

He likes my honesty.
I think I might be blushing.

We’re both quiet again for a while, and then he says, “Do you ever wish people were more transparent?”

“How so?”

He picks at a piece of chipped stucco with his thumb until it breaks loose. He flicks it over the ledge. “I feel like everyone fakes who they really are, when deep down we’re all
equal amounts of screwed up. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others.”

Either his high is setting in, or he’s just very introspective. Either way, I’m okay with it. My favorite conversations are the ones with no real answers.

“I don’t think being a little guarded is a negative thing,” I say. “Naked truths aren’t always pretty.”

He stares at me for a moment. “
Naked truths
,” he repeats. “I like that.” He turns around and walks to the middle of the rooftop. He adjusts the
back on one of the patio loungers behind me and lowers himself onto it. It’s the kind you lie on, so he pulls his hands behind his head and looks up at the sky. I claim the one next to him
and adjust it until I’m in the same position as him.

“Tell me a naked truth, Lily.”

“Pertaining to what?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Something you aren’t proud of. Something that will make me feel a little less screwed up on the inside.”

He’s staring up at the sky, waiting on me to answer. My eyes follow the line of his jaw, the curve of his cheeks, the outline of his lips. His eyebrows are drawn together in contemplation.
I don’t understand why, but he seems to need conversation right now. I think about his question and try to find an honest answer. When I come up with one, I look away from him and back up to
the sky.

“My father was abusive. Not to me—to my mother. He would get so angry when they fought that sometimes he would hit her. When that happened, he would spend the next week or two making
up for it. He would do things like buy her flowers or take us out to a nice dinner. Sometimes he would buy me stuff because he knew I hated it when they fought. When I was a kid, I found myself
looking forward to the nights they would fight. Because I knew if he hit her, the two weeks that followed would be great.” I pause. I’m not sure I’ve ever admitted that to myself.
“Of course if I could, I would have made it to where he never touched her. But the abuse was inevitable with their marriage, and it became our norm. When I got older, I realized that not
doing something about it made me just as guilty. I spent most of my life hating him for being such a bad person, but I’m not so sure I’m much better. Maybe we’re both bad
people.”

Ryle looks over at me with a thoughtful expression. “Lily,” he says pointedly. “There is no such thing as
bad people
. We’re all just people who
sometimes do bad things.”

I open my mouth to respond, but his words strike me silent.
We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.
I guess that’s true in a way. No one is
exclusively bad, nor is anyone exclusively good. Some are just forced to work harder at suppressing the bad.

“Your turn,” I tell him.

Based on his reaction, I think he might not want to play his own game. He sighs heavily and runs a hand through his hair. He opens his mouth to speak, but then clamps it shut again. He thinks
for a bit, and then finally speaks. “I watched a little boy die tonight.” His voice is despondent. “He was only five years old. He and his little brother found a gun in his
parents’ bedroom. The younger brother was holding it and it went off by accident.”

My stomach flips. I think this may be a little too much truth for me.

“There was nothing that could be done by the time he made it to the operating table. Everyone around—nurses, other doctors—they all felt so sorry for the family.
‘
Those poor parents,
’ they said. But when I had to walk into the waiting room and tell those parents that their child didn’t make it, I didn’t feel
an ounce of sorrow for them. I wanted them to suffer. I wanted them to feel the weight of their ignorance for keeping a loaded gun within access of two innocent children. I wanted them to know that
not only did they just lose a child, they just ruined the entire life of the one who accidentally pulled the trigger.”

Jesus Christ.
I wasn’t prepared for something so heavy.

I can’t even conceive how a family moves past that. “That poor boy’s brother,” I say. “I can’t imagine what that’s going to do to him—seeing
something like that.”

Ryle flicks something off the knee of his jeans. “It’ll destroy him for life, that’s what it’ll do.”

I turn on my side to face him, lifting my head up onto my hand. “Is it hard? Seeing things like that every day?”

He gives his head a slight shake. “It should be a lot harder, but the more I’m around death, the more it just becomes a part of life. I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
He makes eye contact with me again. “Give me another one,” he says. “I feel like mine was a little more twisted than yours.”

I disagree, but I tell him about the twisted thing I did a mere twelve hours ago.

“My mother asked me two days ago if I would deliver the eulogy at my father’s funeral today. I told her I didn’t feel comfortable—that I might be crying too hard to speak
in front of a crowd—but that was a lie. I just didn’t want to do it because I feel like eulogies should be delivered by those who respected the deceased. And I didn’t much respect
my father.”