So he doesn’t know. It doesn’t surprise me that my parents kept her death from the neighbors, but it’s also immediately clear to me: she didn’t cross that item off the list because she’d gotten in touch with him herself. It would have been easy. She could have tracked him down or asked our parents if he still lived on their street, and then picked up the phone.
But she couldn’t. Instead, she wrote it on her list and then erased it again. Erased him, the memory of him, the longing. And in doing so probably hoped she could make him disappear from her thoughts as well.
‘Lilly is…’ A sharp pain shoots through my chest. ‘…dead.’ It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, and it feels shitty.
The smile vanishes from his face at once. ‘My God,’ he murmurs, and I can see he’s fighting back tears. ‘What happened?’
‘Cancer.’ I have to clear my throat, then I tell him the whole story. It hurts, but with every further word, the weight on my chest grows lighter.
‘If I’d known, I would have visited her. I would have…’ He claps his hands over his mouth, and I’m surprised. That Lilly was never able to forget him is clear to me by now, but his heart still seems to be attached to her too.
‘You two hadn’t been friends for a long time,’ I say.
He nods, wistfulness reflected in his gaze. ‘Ten years.’
‘Why did your friendship fall apart back then, anyway?’
He lifts his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. One day Lilly just didn’t want to talk to me anymore.’
Definitely not without a reason, something must have happened. ‘When was that?’
Brooding, he looks off into the distance beyond his garden. ‘We were seventeen, I think—yeah, that’s right, that’s how it was—Suzi Miller and I had just become a couple.’
Suzi Miller, right … and there we have our reason. I fish Lilly’s taped-together list out of my pocket and show it to him.
‘What’s that?’ He furrows his brow, looking back and forth between me and the paper.
‘Lilly’s bucket list.’ I point at the erased item eight. ‘Look, here.’
He takes the list and squints so he can read better. ‘Tell Brian you love him? Is that supposed to mea…’
‘She was in love with you, I think her whole life.’ And she wanted him to know, at least in the moment when she wrote that item down.
In my mind I see Lilly as she writes the list. Filled with longing, she sets the pencil to the page and draws the eight. More than anything she wishes she could turn back time, do things differently, face her fear of Brian rejecting her. At least try, because there might be a chance, no matter how small. But she never learned how to do that, she doesn’t know how to deal with fear or with pain. Neither of us knows.
Something about that thought feels wrong. Theknowsshould beknew. Nyla showed me that. That you can do something even though you’re afraid. How to face things that hurt.
‘Lilly was in love with me.’ Incredulous, Brian lets the list sink, then his expression turns sad. ‘Just like I was with her.’
And like I am with Nyla, yet each of us is going our own way right now. Even though our reasons are completely different, we’re also a bit like Camee and Brian.
Thoughtfully, I shake my head. ‘But if you were in love with Lilly, then why were you with Suzi?’
His shoulders slump forward. ‘I wanted to… it’s so stupid, but when you’re seventeen, you’re just stupid.’ With a sigh, he props his face in his hands. ‘I wanted to get some experience. So I’d do everything right with Lilly, so everything would be the way she deserves.’ There’s melancholy in every one of his words. ‘You know, kiss her in a way she’d actually like, make her happy in bed, not come across as a loser, all of that.’
That’s twisted. ‘You were afraid she wouldn’t like you because you were inexperienced or clumsy.’
‘Everything just had to be perfect for her, I couldn’t take any risks,’ he confirms, but I barely hear him.
‘And Lilly thought you’d reject her anyway because you fooled around with Suzi.’ Neither of them said a single word. They were trapped in their fear. ‘You could have been happy together.’
If the two of them had overcome their fears and talked to each other, Lilly would never have had to put this item on her bucket list.
Ten years of fear.
Ten lost years.
‘My God…’ Brian slumps back against the wall.