Chapter 74: 74. There’s Still Some Feelings For Me Inside There, And I Will Awaken It

The something she wanted to show turned out to be a narrow staircase at the back of the kitchen supply store that led to a rooftop terrace that the owner let people use when it wasn’t raining. It had four mismatched chairs and a view over the commercial block to the campus and, further, the city.

"Whoa... the hell...?"

"How did you manage to find such a place?" Mike said.

"I was looking for mixing bowls," Ellie said. "The owner saw me looking at the view from the window and took me up."

"She’s eighty-one, and she’s been here since the building was new." She sat in one of the chairs. "I come up here sometimes when I want to think."

"Does it even work?" Mike said.

"Better than the alternative," she said. "Which is sitting in the house thinking about the same things in a smaller space."

He sat in the chair beside her. The city was doing its late-afternoon shift below them, the particular quality of a place transitioning between its working hours and its evening ones.

"Can I ask you something personal?" Ellie said.

"Go ahead."

"Did you ever have anything real?" she said. "With anyone... like... in those twelve years."

"Need a better context for what’s real here," Mike said. "Like existing or some shit?"

She turned to look at him. "Not real like serious or long-term."

"Uhm... it’s real like—" She paused. "Like you actually let someone see you."

"Not a performance of you, but the actual you."

"Hmmm..." Mike looked at the city. "That’s a specific question."

"You’re allowed to say no, by the way," she said. "I’m not asking to make a point right away."

"Then why are you even asking?"

She was quiet for a moment.

"Because I’ve been sitting across from you for four days," she said, "and you’re exactly as I remember you—but more, somehow..."

"More certain about everything. More present... I’m trying to figure out whether that’s because you created it or if it was always within you."

"Both," Mike said.

"Both," she repeated. "That’s the can-it-be-both answer."

"It’s the accurate answer," Mike said.

She looked back at the city. "You didn’t answer the question."

"Nope," Mike said. "I didn’t."

"No, you’ve never let anyone see you," she said, "or no, you’re not going to answer."

"The second one," Mike said.

She almost smiled. "Fair."

They sat in the gentle quiet of two people who had found a comfortable silence, which is rarer than it sounds. Below them, the city moved.

Above them, the sky was the particular blue of late afternoon that doesn’t last long.

"You’re different from how I thought you’d be," Ellie said.

"How did you think I’d be?" Mike said.

"I imagined you, over the years," she said. "Where you were and what you were doing." She

looked at her hands in her lap. "I thought you’d come back and you’d be... I don’t know... softer or harder."

"Either extreme", Ellie giggled. "I thought twelve years of whatever-it-was would have changed the basic thing."

"It didn’t?" Mike said.

"You’re still you," she said. "Just with more rooms added."

She glanced at him. "Some of those rooms are locked."

"Most of them," Mike said.

"I know," she said. "I’m not asking for keys."

She turned back to the view. "I just wanted to say I noticed."

"You always noticed," Mike said.

"Not everything," she said. "Not the street because I didn’t notice that."

"You weren’t supposed to," Mike said. "That one wasn’t for you to notice."

She looked at him. The afternoon light was doing the thing it had been doing since the steps outside the arts building, and Ellie Harper’s expression was the one she’d had since the street story, the one that was quietly reassembling something.

"What was it for?" she said.

"Stan," Mike said. "And you."

"But separately." He held her gaze. "I wanted you both to have what you were going to have."

"I could see it, and I just needed to make sure it got started."

"And you left," she said.

"And I left," Mike said. "So I never saw how it turned out."

"It turned out well," she said. "Mostly."

The word mostly sat in the air between them, and neither of them touched it.

’Weird... she’s usually getting all that excitement when talking about love, but this felt dry...’ Mike thought. "But to be honest, this whole convo felt dry as well...’

’It seems like she still has feelings for me.’

"Hey, would it be alright for me to come to your house right now?" Mike asked.

"Eh...? S-sure. I was about to ask you after five minutes, you know."

"I beat you to it then."

...

They went to the house after.

She prepared the pasta like someone who truly knows how to cook—attentively and without fuss—allowing it to come together seamlessly while engaging in conversation instead of interrupting her flow to supervise it. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Mike perched on the kitchen counter, as there was no immediate reason to refrain from doing so and because he had a habit of sitting on counters whenever there was space available in kitchens. Ellie observed Mike’s behavior and noted that it elicited an unnamed reaction in her expression.

"You did that at Stan’s birthday; remember that?" she said. "Sat on the kitchen counter."

"Oh yeah, I remember," Mike said.

"You ate most of his birthday cake from up there," she said. "His mother was furious."

"She gave me a second piece," Mike said.

"She did," Ellie said. "She also told my mother you were charming, which you were not supposed to hear."

"I heard," Mike said. "It’s understandable because no older woman can resist my charm."

"Oh, you and your narcissistic side," Ellie laughed.

She stirred the sauce without looking up. "How many people’s mothers told them you were charming?"

"Some," Mike said.

"Emma’s mother," Ellie said. "Definitely. Emma’s mother always found reasons to talk to you."

"She made very good biscuits," Mike said.

Ellie pointed the wooden spoon at him. "Don’t do that."

"Do what?"

"Make it about the biscuits," she said. "Emma’s mother was forty-two, and she found you charming because you were fourteen and already had whatever it is you have."

"What do I have?" Mike said. ’And what the fuck... ain’t that sound illegal?’

She turned around and looked at him, leaning against the opposite counter with the spoon still in her hand.

"You look at people," she said. "Like they’re interesting, and like... you’re actually there, and the conversation is the only thing happening."

She tilted her head. "Most people are somewhere else half the time. You’re never somewhere else."

"That bothers you?" Mike said.

"It bothers me that it doesn’t bother me anymore," she said, and she turned back to the sauce.

...

They ate at the kitchen table. Ellie talked about the depot building in District 7, about her thesis proposal, and about the architecture faculty. She talked about District 5 and the neighborhood the way she talked about everything with genuine attention to the details that other people passed over.

She talked about Stanley the way people talk about someone they have known for a very long time.

"He works late a lot," she said at some point.

"Urban planning programs are dense," Mike said. "So it’s reasonable."

"They are," she said. "He’s genuinely good at it."

"That’s never been—" She stopped. "That’s never been the complaint."

"What’s the complaint?" Mike said.

She turned her wine glass in her hands.

"A gap," she said. "There’s a gap. Between what he’s good at and where he puts his attention."

Mike waited. ’Oh here we go...’

’I love it when a woman starts to talk about their relationship not being perfect... this is why I don’t have an official girlfriend other than making them be my bitch that I can fuck anytime.’

"He’d brought a paper to our anniversary dinner," she said. "In his jacket pocket."

’I saw him check it twice." She said it without drama. "He didn’t read it. But he brought it."

"Eleven years is a long time," Mike said.

"It is," she said. "And most of it was good."

She gazed at the glass. "We created something together. Very intentionally. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished."

"But proud is a different feeling from happy, right?" Mike said.

She was quiet for long enough that the silence answered.

Then she looked up. "Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead," Mike said.

"When you left," she said. "Did you think about it after...? About us?"

"I thought about it," Mike said.

"Liar... you said that, but you didn’t reach out," she said.

"No," he said. "What I was doing wasn’t compatible with reaching out, and it would have been worse for you to be connected to me than to not know."

She sat with that.

"So, it seems like you were trying to protect both of us," she said.

"Something like that," Mike said.

"I understood that," she said. "Not the details, just that it wasn’t insignificant."

"It wasn’t nothing," Mike said.

She looked at him across the table. The lamp was warm on her face, and she looked the way she had always looked to him, which was exactly herself.

"You were my first crush," she said, her tone simple and free of self-consciousness. "I was ten, and you were ten, and you had this way of just saying exactly what you were thinking."

"I remember," Mike said.

"I thought it was remarkable," she said. "Everyone else was always thinking one thing and saying another."

"You just... said it." She smiled, and it was a real smile, the kind that reached everything. "And then you left."

"And then I left, that’s true," Mike said.

She looked at him, and the smile shifted to something, asking a question she hadn’t put into words yet.

Mike moved slowly, without urgency or drama. He reached across the table and gently placed two fingers under her chin, as if he were handling something delicate that he wanted to examine closely.

"You’re feeling lonely, huh...?" He tilted her face upward until she was looking directly at him.

"A-a bit..." Ellie didn’t pull away.

She went still—not from tension, but from focus.

"Ellie," he said.

"Yeah," she said, and her voice was quiet.

"Tell me something," he said. "If I had stayed."

He held her gaze. "If I had never left."

"If everything had stayed exactly as it was at fourteen."

She was barely breathing.

"What would have happened?" he said.

She looked at him for a long moment.

"You know what would have happened," she said.

"Say it," he said.

"Mike—"

"Do you want to know what it would have felt like?" he said. "What that version of things would have been?"