It Ends with Us

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